‘Hey Hilda. Come look at this.’
I was sitting in Benji’s room on the floor flicking through magazines and drinking lemonade his mom made for us. It was 100 degrees outside and too hot to be driving around, so we had decided to hang at his house for the day. You wouldn’t know we were in the middle of a heatwave sitting in Benji’s room. His house had air conditioning and was chilled like an icebox. Goose bumps were forming on my flesh.
I worried about Hank in his stuffy old apartment, with those thick, insulating curtains and only a crappy fan to keep him cool. Old people died in weather like this and their bodies weren’t found for days. Not until the smell coming from their apartment became too strong to ignore. I decided I would make sure to visit Hank the next day to see if he was all right. Benji and his parents were heading up to Yosemite for a weekend of rafting and hiking. They’d invited me along but I had made up a story about Lynette having time off work (like that would ever happen) and we were going to have a ‘girls’ weekend together. In truth I had some expeditions of my own planned.
Benji opened his wardrobe and rustled around inside. A moment later he emerged from the darkness holding a small fishbowl. The bottom of the bowl was covered in sparkling pebbles and in the centre was a plastic castle with a hole through the drawbridge large enough for a fish to swim through. For a moment I couldn’t see anything else, then a small flicker of movement caught my eye.
‘Is there a fish in there?’ I asked. ‘I can’t see it.’
‘Yeah. Right there. His name’s Sid Vicious, but I call him Sid Fish-ious.’
Benji tapped the side of the bowl and again something moved. I looked closer and saw a goldfish. It was white.
‘Mom put him in the cupboard when she was cleaning my room and we forgot about him. I found him yesterday when I was looking for my Buzzcocks T-shirt.’
‘I thought goldfish were, you know, gold,’ I said.
‘He was. Without light they lose pigmentation. Cool, huh?’
‘How long has he been in the cupboard for?’
‘Dunno. Probably a couple of weeks.’ Benji tapped the glass again, examined the fish closely. I watched as he placed the bowl back in the closet, in the darkest part, and threw a dirty T-shirt over the top of it.
‘What the hell are you doing?’
Benji took a small notepad from his cupboard, wrote something down with a chewed pencil, then threw the notepad beside the bowl. ‘I’m going to watch him die. Every day I chart the changes in his mood: whether he’s listless, moving around a lot, or has changed colour. Soon he’ll be floating.’
‘You can’t do that Benji! That’s horrible!’
‘Too late. He’s half dead already.’
‘He’s just lost pigmentation. If you bring him out now he might get better.’
‘He might, but this is much more interesting.’
I looked into Benji’s eyes, searched for a hint of madness, the tiniest glint of insanity. But there was nothing lurking in those pin-prick pupils, just a chilling indifference. I remembered the cat in the dumpster, the way Benji had thrown it over the rim like a sack of old spuds.
‘The first step to becoming a serial killer is torturing animals,’ I said. ‘You don’t want to turn out like Jeffrey Dahmer do you?’
‘I’m not torturing anything,’ Benji argued. ‘It’s an experiment. A science experiment. It’s perfectly valid to use animals as test subjects.’
‘Maybe if you’re finding a cure for cancer. But not this.’
He swivelled in his seat like an evil genius from a bad spy movie. ‘Let me ask you a question,’ he said slowly, as if addressing a child. ‘Do you use antibiotics?’
I groaned, which he ignored.
‘Did you know,’ he continued, ‘that Nazi Germany was responsible for some of the greatest scientific breakthroughs mankind has ever known?’
‘Like what? The sound a baby makes when it’s thrown against a wall?’
‘Mock me you may Hilda, but the Holocaust was a period of great scientific discovery. The lack of medical regulations meant doctors could finally test on humans, real people, not rats or pigs or animals that have totally different biological make-ups. The Nazis were the first to discover that smoking caused cancer.’
‘They also injected ink into people’s eyeballs to see if they would change colour.’
‘Hilda, are you telling me you wouldn’t be interested in whether that could actually happen?’
‘So what are you saying? That Sid the Goldfish is being killed for the good of goldfish everywhere? How is torturing your goldfish benefiting mankind?’
‘I’m just saying don’t dismiss things outright because you don’t understand them. Some of mankind’s greatest discoveries were made by thinking outside the square.’
Benji turned back to his computer, satisfied, and my eyes returned to the cupboard. Looking back I could see a pattern, but at the time it was invisible to me. A dead cat had brought me and Benji together, and a dying goldfish would mark the beginning of the end. The scariest part was that Benji’s fish experiment was the first sign of a deeper problem. It was the point where I decided Benji was starting to lose it.
‘I’ve gotta go,’ I said, standing up.
‘You just got here. Faces of Death just arrived from Amazon. Mom’s making popcorn.’
‘I’ve got to help Lynette with a case. Do some research for her. You know how it is.’
Benji wasn’t convinced. ‘Sure I do,’ he sulked. ‘I know how it is.’
‘So, have fun in Yosemite okay?’
‘Whatever.’
I slunk out, leaving him to his computer and his magazines, Sid the fish still in the cupboard. Mrs Connor stopped me in the hallway.
‘Hello dear,’ she said, smiling broadly. ‘Benji tells me you aren’t coming to Yosemite with us.’
‘Sorry Mrs Connor. Lynette wants me to help her with some work.’
‘But surely she can make an exception in this case. We would so love to have you. Benji would be very happy if you came.’
Yeah, well Benji’s too busy in his bedroom playing Mengele, I wanted to say, but instead I frowned as if I was disappointed.
‘I know, but Lynette says she really needs my help.’
‘Oh, then…’ Mrs Connor sighed, giving up. Her blonde ponytail was pulled back so tight I thought her scalp might come off. ‘But if she changes her mind, you will let me know won’t you?’
‘Of course. Thanks Mrs Connor,’ I said, and started off down the hall.
‘Goodbye Hilda,’ I heard her say, and I couldn’t help but catch a hint of sadness in her voice.