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“No,” Steven said flatly.
“You said I could name him.”
“Yeah, a fish name. A name name. ‘The Annihilator’ is not a proper name for a goldfish, Marc.”
“What if I told you there’s a story behind it. About Randall.”
“Well, maybe. Let’s hear it.”
“Randall and I used to settle a lot of disputes via rock, paper scissors. I usually wanted to wrestle but being older, I had the advantage, and he said it wasn’t fair. Plus, wrestling doesn’t work so well when you’re seat-belted in a car.”
“You tried, though, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, I was dumb, of course I tried. Anyway, rock, paper, scissors got kind of boring, so we added extra stuff. I added a sword, so he added a shield. He added a gun, so I added a bullet-proof vest.”
“Okay but what takes down a bullet-proof vest?”
“Scissors or sword.”
“I guess that makes more sense than paper beating rock.”
“Right? Well, anyway, at some point I got tired of the constant escalation, so I added the The Annihilator,” He made a devil’s horns sign with his hand, “Which beat everything and was unbeatable.”
“Well, that’s no fair!”
“I was a little shit, we get it. It only lasted a few weeks before he got fed up and started crying about it in front of our mom.”
Steven braced for some scathing remark. Mentions of Wendy were rare and usually about how terribly she treated him. But this was before Randall died. Before she started treating Marc like her own personal punching bag. So, Marc said nothing.
“I didn’t want to get in trouble, so I conceded. I promised him I’d never use The Annihilator again.”
“So why do you want to name the fish that if it’s just something mean you did to him for a few weeks.”
“Story’s not over. He noticed that I didn’t say it was banned from use, just that I wouldn’t use it. So, from then on, he had free use of The Annihilator, and by my own rules, I couldn’t do anything about it. He only ended up living a few months after that. But for the rest of his life, he automatically beat me at every game of rock, paper, scissors we played. I was always secretly of proud of him for that one. He bested me at my own game.”
“That is a sweet story, I’ll give you that.” Steven took a moment to mull it over. “Okay, I guess the name can stay.”
“Yes!”
They watched Gus II and The Annihilator swim around for a few moments. “It’s gonna take some getting used to. I always imagined him as an Ollie or something.”
*****
A few months later, they were finally starting to communicate with Jake. He couldn’t be co-conscious, it seemed, but he would write notes and began to meet them in their shared headspace at times.
The three of them decided that it was time for Jake to get and name his own goldfish. When he got to the store, there was one that stuck out at him. He was the fastest in the tank. He just seemed to cut through the water, like a machete cutting through the jungle.
“Another fish named for a weapon? Not again!”
“What? No. I was just describing how he moved. He’s clearly a Julio.”