So it’s my friend’s bday today. Her goldfish died a month ago, and my best friend and I decided to buy her two goldfish named after ourselves for her birthday (let’s call them Emily and Sam for reference) . None of us know much about goldfish, but we figured that as long as we could keep them alive for a night, it would work out.

Yesterday I wrote a nice card, got Sam and Emily at Petco for 50 cents, and left them in their bag for a few hours in my room until it was night time. I planned to temporarily house them in a quart sized mason jar while transporting them to school and giving it to her, so I took them out of the bag and placed them in the jar with the same water. I then texted an acquaintance who is a goldfish god for some advice. He told me that they might die from ammonia burn, but said that I could stick a water-bound plant in it and they should be fine. I took a porthos cutting, stuck it in the water, and watched them for a few minutes. They swam around and seemed chill so I added a few goldfish flakes and went to bed.

Sam and Emily were really loud while I was going to bed, they were eating bubbles or some shit. It was kind of nice because I typically have very little white noise in my room and as I fell asleep I was thinking about how nice it would be to have an actual fish tank with a filter that I could fall asleep to every night.

Well, I woke up this morning to silence.

Do fish sleep? I wondered. Were they asleep? Or did they die?

I checked the jar and there they were, Sam and Emily’s cold stiff bodies at the top of the water. I got a little teary and gave them a fish funeral in the toilet.

I’m pretty sad atm. I killed two fish because I’m an idiot and I just feel terrible. Now I’m at school, fish-less but not card-less. Damn. I’m a fish killer.