Brine Shrimp

My thought process while I waited for a phone call from my mom telling me that my dad was going to be okay. He had gone to the hospital.

She swirled the cube of Brine Shrimp in the medicine cup, tap water coming dangerously close to slopping past the rim. Half the cube disintegrated, releasing tiny see-through bodies of creatures that looked alien, certainly not from earth. She pressed against the remainder of the cube, suppressing the shudder as the sliminess of the small bodies was crushed beneath her finger. Using her finger like a spoon, she swirled it as if it was sugar in a nasty tea. Didn’t people eat fish eggs? What was it called, Hor de’vours? Whatever the word was. She pulled her finger out, a few of the tiny limp bodies stuck to the ridges of her fingerprint. What would they taste like, if she pressed them to her tongue, let the cube melt in her saliva instead of warm tap water? It was an appalling thought, and she smiled bitterly. She, who wouldn’t eat sushi because of the wrapped seaweed she also fed her fish, she, who couldn’t stomach eel or octopus or crab, was staring at little dead shrimp and wondering what it would be like to press them to the roof of her mouth. This was why she shouldn’t be allowed to just sit and think morosely, her mind did funny things.

A slightly maniacal giggle escaped her mouth, and she waltzed over to the tank, lifting the lid as the colorful fish swarmed to the top. For creatures with supposed three-second memories, they always remembered feeding times. Hadn’t the large blue tang been threatening to splash his way out if he wasn’t fed on time just a minute ago? Slowly she added the shrimp, watching them feast on the morsels. Did fish taste? Did they care? She hadn’t tasted her own dinner, what little she’d eaten. Mostly she just ate because she knew it was nutritious and food in the stomach meant she would possibly get better faster rather than waste away sleeping as her body wanted. Her eyes traveled to her phone, silent against her wishes, the black screen receiving her frown. Checking the time, she checked to make sure her sister was in bed, looked to her phone again, 

It was going to be a long night.