‘Freeesssh fiiishhh!!!’

He hated the market place. More specifically, he hated that particular part of the market place, where they were. He hated everything about it. Everything. From the obnoxiously loud vendors, calling for customers at the top of their lungs, to the salty, slightly rotting scent that hung in the air, to the wet damp feel of the place that just made his skin crawl. Yes, he was quite sure that he hated that place.

Unfortunately for him, however, today that was where his wife was heading.

He hesitated at first to follow after, the red plastic basket he carried in his left hand stuffed with fruits and vegetables. Now that he saw where she was going, it felt all the more heavier. He could not go in there.

Then she called his name, loudly, crossly, and like he had just been whipped, he recoiled, before doing as he had been ordered, following her to where they were. All of them, by the hundreds. Lying dead on metal trays, half-covered with ice. As he walked amongst them, he felt their round, dead eyes watching him. He only glimpsed at one of them, and saw its gaping open mouth, leading into a pit of nothingness, and he realized how much they reminded him of his wife. Her mouth was always open. Except that her open mouth always shot insults and curses at him. Always for things he never did right. As much as he hated, as much as he hated these things, at least they were voiceless.

But what was she doing here anyway? Hadn’t he made it perfectly clear to her before they got married that they scared the shit out of him?

He stood silently behind her as she picked her cold, dead corpse carefully. Finally making her decision, she picked the biggest one there- he couldn’t tell what kind it was. They were all the same to him. All evil. All wrong.

Still after the fishmonger had weighed it, wrapped it up and taken her money, she happily dumped it into the basket he was holding with a pleased look on her face.

“You can’t,” he muttered slowly. “I can’t eat…”

Hearing this, her eyes narrowed with annoyance- and there, her mouth opened again.

“Oh for heaven’s sake, George, just because you don’t like fish doesn’t mean I have hate it too!”

Couldn’t she, though?

“There’s this recipe I’ve been dying to try out, and I’m serving it to my sister when she comes over with her husband tomorrow night. If you can’t handle it, you can just eat the vegetables and side dishes.”

He wouldn’t even sit at the table, he decided.

Either way he didn’t reply. He just heaved a long, deep, sigh. Five years into their marriage, he had learned well enough already that arguing with her was pointless. Her mouth was bigger. More powerful. She always wins.

‘But she doesn’t have to, George.’

He froze in place as he first heard that voice. That dark, deep yet feminine voice whispering in his ears. He looked over his shoulder and of course, no one was there.

Meanwhile, up ahead, his wife was already standing at the main exit with a murderous look on her face.

Shaking his head, he kept on walking.

‘You’re not going crazy, George, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

He stopped again.

‘Well, not yet anyway. Another year with that bitch and you will be. You’re already giving in to her every whim, and she never appreciates it, does she? She’s just going to keep on walking all over you….’

“Who’s there?” he called out feebly, again looking around him.

Then he heard the female voice laugh, sending a chill up his spine as she softly answered, ‘Why George. I’m in the basket.’

He’d almost dropped the thing in pure terror then as he gazed back into it and saw its dead eyes looking up at him. And hell, he would have dropped it if his wife hadn’t come marching up to him, yanking it away from him before she started back towards the exit.

‘Just look at how rude she is,’ the female voice continued talking, even though the thing was gaining distance from him. ‘There really is only one way to fix it, George.’

He shook his head. Too much to drink, that was all-

‘Kill her.’

Biting his lip, he hurried his pace into a slight run to catch up with his wife, repeating the words ‘Too much to drink’ in his head over and over and over…

‘Kill her, George,’ the voice had told him again, later that evening while he lay on the sofa, channel surfing. His wife was still in the bedroom, no doubt still applying all of her facial conditioners, lotions and creams to her face. Why she even bothered, he didn’t know. It wasn’t like it made much of a difference anyway, now that she was forty. No, she wasn’t attractive anymore, not that she realized it. At least one fifth of his earnings went into her wallet for her to buy more cosmetics that only succeeded in making her look uglier to him.

“I’m not listening,” he said firmly as he switched the channel.

‘Kill her, George. You know you want to.”

“Not listening,” he intoned simply.

‘Kill her.’

“Not listening.”

‘Kill her.’

“Not listening.”

‘Kill her kill her kill her!’

And just as the word “And” left his mouth, it was stopped by the tall figure that now stood between him and the television.

Wrapped in a maroon bathrobe, with a white towel above her head that made it look not only cone-shaped but twice its normal size, she looked down on him with a questioning look, the wrinkles on her face hidden by layers upon layers of thick, green cream.

“Who are you talking to?” she asked.

He looked up at her, carefully picking his words. “Uh… no one.”

Her eyes narrowed with disbelief. “God, George, I always knew you were a basket case but you don’t have to go out of your way to prove it to me,” she sighed. Then, with one simple move, she swiped the remote control out of his hand.

“Now go do something else,” she said simply. “Passions is coming on.”

Silently, though reluctantly, he rose to his feet and went up to his bedroom.

‘Kill her, George! Just kill that stupid bitch and you’ll get to watch all the football you want!’

He didn’t even bother to argue back. He simply lay down on the bed, made sure that he left three quarters of the bed for his wife to crawl into later (not silently), pulled the blankets up, and closed his eyes.

‘Killherkillherkillherkillherkillher…’

It became a song now, and as quickly as he faded away with his consciousness, stolen by the blackness, it quickly came back, increasing in volume over tenfold as his vision returned, taking him to another place.

There was no ground beneath his feet.

‘Kill her…kill her…’

Then he looked up, and froze, his eyes wide with horror.

It was a fish. A hundred times his size, floating above him in the empty blackness, no, not floating, coming towards him with its mouth open wide, the void beyond that circle calling his name.

And its mouth came down precisely on him, his screams drowned out by the noise that voice was making and the pitch blackness inside the fish.

‘Kill her…kill her…kill her…’

He couldn’t see, but he could feel his feet standing on something cold. Something soft. The stench was getting unbearable now, and he could hardly stand, and so he staggered back, leaning against a soft, fleshy wall with both his hands over his nose, his eyes welling up with tears.

‘Kill her…kill her…’

He felt himself dissolve. It didn’t hurt, but it felt like the walls of the fish’s stomach was absorbing him into its blood, into its flesh. He would have screamed if his mouth still existed-

And when he did have a mouth again, it was dead mouth. A tongueless, round dead mouth, incapable of making any noise to drown out the voice in his head which was going faster and faster now.

The dead mouth came with eyes, but the eyes were at least alive. When his vision was returned to him, he found himself staring at what was definitely the white ceiling in the kitchen.

His scales were pressed against a wooden chopping board.

Wait- scales?

To his horror, he realized that he was the fish now. And all he could do now was sit here and wait, his unmovable eyes surveying that dull white ceiling. Inevitably, his wife would come in and kill him, and go to sleep beside a fish living inside his body.

He screamed.

‘Killherkillherkillherkillherkillher!’

And he woke up screaming, finding himself still alone in bed. He looked at his hands, and the rest of his body- he was human again.

He could vaguely hear the sounds of the television from the living room outside- the bitch was still up. Still the song kept on playing in his head. His head rocked back and forth with it for a while as he sat upright there, his clothes wet with his own sweat. The song was so deafening now, so commanding.

He knew then what he had to do.

Slowly, he got up and walked out the bedroom door. His wife took no notice of him as he passed behind the sofa towards the living room, into the dark, unlit kitchen.

Almost as though it had been waiting for him- he found the largest kitchen knife just lying on the counter.

He picked it up- a maniacal grin appearing on his face.

‘Kill her, kill her, kill her!’

And he went into a mindless frenzy. The voice would leave him alone soon-

He stabbed. He stabbed again. And again. And again. And again.

The song was gone but he kept on stabbing.

God, it felt so goddamn good!

He cut the bitch up so much that she would be unrecognizable if anyone ever found her. But that wasn’t a problem. No one would ever find her. No one would-

The lights in the kitchen went on.

“George, what the hell are you doing?”

Standing at the kitchen doorway, with a horrified expression on her face now was his wife, staring at her husband as though he had committed a mur- oh wait, he had. Her gaze shifted between his face and the pile of flesh in front of him-

And she screamed.

Either way, when her sister came the next day, they had chicken.