Blob Fish!

Home of the Blob Fish

"Welcome to Sinial!
Home of the one and only
Blob Fish!"

    I squint my eyes, trying to read the rusted wooden sign; obscured by bright rays of sunlight. It swings from a chain from the light breeze.

We cross a narrow bridge, the green paint on the railings chipping away, leaving brown specks of rusty metal underneath. It creaks and moans as we drive over the floorboards in Mom's G-Wagon. Soon, we're across the bridge and have entered Sinial.

Although deafeningly quiet, the town is filled with shops. Clothes dangle from hangers behind glass windows and a giant cardboard ice cream cone protrudes above a door to a sweets shop; the neon colors draining any attention from the other ancient buildings. There's a large fountain in the middle of the small town dividing the road into two with a giant blob fish carved from stone,  water spitting from its mouth. Moss growing between the stones in the ground; leading me to assume most cars avoid this place.

An electric sign on a bar's front door blinks on and off at a fast speed, mesmerizing and mocking me with it's quick pace.

I sigh deeply as the car drags on. I can feel my anxiety creeping up my spine like a razor blade attaching itself onto each one of my vertebrae, tearing at my skin from beneath my flesh. I hear the clicking of my mom's dragonfly key chain on the rear view mirror as it hits the glass of the front window.

Click click click.

The sound is louder now due to the violent jolting of the car as we run over stone after stone. The green wings of the charm reflect off the sun's light, allowing the eerie green glint to shine throughout the car.

I play with the edge of my t-shirt. The silence is killing me. I swallow, deciding to speak up but my words get caught in my dry throat. I summon some saliva and gulp, opening my mouth again, my dry lips peeling off of each other.

"What do you think?"

I didn't actually care what she thought about the whole thing and she knew I didn't. We've never been the type of family to chat and ask how each other's day went. After my dad died when I was six my mom and I abruptly grew distant. It's not like we were that close before but things are different now. I call her by Deirdre, her first name.  It feels weird not calling her Mom but she seems so upset when I call her that. She freezes up and grows pale like she walked in on something she shouldn't have or just watched all of the Saw movies in one sitting.

I think it's because my dad would always call her that when they were around me. I stopped using the word after she started crying one day after I said it. I don't know if it was coincidental or something just snapped in her. I think she associated the word so heavily with him that it's difficult for her to hear me say it now. Maybe she doesn't think she deserves to be called one.

Mom was the last person Dad called before he died but she never picked up. He called her three times. They had an argument about the dishwasher, just a stupid little fight the day before. Mom wanted to give him the silent treatment. Obviously that's not why my dad hung himself from a ceiling fan but my mom hates herself for not answering his calls. She thinks that if she answered him he might not have done what he did, but how was she supposed to know why he was calling?

Either way she blames herself for what happened and now, sometimes, she can't stand to look me in the eye. I think it hurts her to see someone who looks so much like Dad.

It was my dad who took care of me most of the time when I was little. Mom would always be on business trips and didn't want to come home to a crying kid who wouldn't stop pissing everywhere. Even though she was busy she didn't earn that much money so we got most of our income from Dad since he had a better paying job. When he died we held onto what we had left and started going to different places trying to start over. City after city, town after town. We went through so many that my mom's car eventually got worn down. She still holds onto the key chain my father gifted to her on their seventh anniversary. I thought it was sweet that she kept it but every time she looked at it she seemed more sad from his memory than happy. I never knew why she kept it if it made her so upset.

Even though we moved to so many different places we never left the state. We couldn't afford it. So we moved every time something felt off. Instead of sitting down as a family to talk things out my mom insisted that we continue moving to start over. We've moved four times in the past year alone. Ten throughout the past ten years since dad passed away. And now, eleven years later, we're still staying in super cheap apartments that smell like athletes foot and sewage. The last time we moved was for a few days at a really shady apartment complex called 'Bill's Bunker'. It was creepy as hell. The lights flickered constantly and the water system was basically mud. The neighbors were loud and the entire building smelled like pot.

At least this place looked more promising than miscellaneous cockroaches and mysterious bed stains.