I tried to combine a bunch of writing prompts that people were kind enough to submit - Living behind a SPAM factory, Love, Death, my obsession with Ham, Patrick Swayze, The life of a goldfish swimming in its bowl…
I live in a plush office that belongs to the president of the SPAM corporation. I reside on top of an over-sized mahogany desk in a glass bowl. I’m a goldfish. I swim around floating in the grand silence. Free, bubbling joy. All the fresh clean water I need. Sometimes miracle manna falls down from heaven and I eat my fill. It aint bad.
Of course after awhile, this all got amazingly boring so I began to look around. The office wasn’t very interesting, but luckily the President was a sick, fucking mess and he’d had one of the walls made completely out of glass so that we all had a front row seat to the killing floor where they brained the beautiful dumb flesh. Cuz whats life without a little slaughter, right. So I swim around and watch, day and night, night and day, the slaughter is unending. At first I tried to ignore it and then I tried to pretend I was cool with it and that it was actually kinda funny, all this slaughter. But eventual when no one was around I’d break down and cry like the little bitch goldfish I am. Sure, I toughened up I and tried to start a revolution and have the plant shut down but my clever ruse was discovered and I was returned to my bowl but kept under constant armed guard.
It was after that I actually became good friends with the President, his name was Patrick. He was like a father to me. We’d play chess, drink, and sing songs from the old country. I’ll never forget what Patrick once told me, after we’d had a few whiskey’s. He told that when he was a little boy he’d lost his dog Wolfie and he’d never gotten over it. “I never told anyone but it was like a broken part of me that I always to keep hidden.” he said. And he gasped a little, bowing his head and started to cry. “Its so stupid,” he said, “I am a grown man, I was in the war, but I still have dreams,” he smiled at me through his tears, “I am in the fields and I call his name and there he is. He comes running to me.”
We drank the rest of the whiskey in silence, all while the slaughter silently rang on about us.
- Sorry its such a bummer! I’m such a maudlin old whore =)
