Inconvenient Anxiety Fish, by Priya Sridhar

Anxiety woke me with sharp nibbles. I cracked an eye open. Piranha teeth latched onto my arm.

“No, go away.” I waved my arm to shake it off.

My anxiety fish bounced with every shake, but refused to open its mouth. It chewed more, as if to spite me.

Remember what Dr. Pounds told you, I thought. So I took a deep breath.

The anxiety fish did not shrink or dissolve into a million bubbles, as I hoped. Instead, the fish opened its jaws, released my arm (skin unbroken), and drifted to another part of the room.

I sighed and turned over. When I signed up for this experiment, it seemed like a dream come true. Free rent for three months in a house that projected your mindscape; check in with the doctors, and get paid enough of a stipend to cover my recent medical bills. I even got compensation for takeout.

Sadly, the experiment could do nothing about what my day job entailed. More articles in my submissions log, where I had to explain politely that these pieces did not meet website standards. Writers had to submit twenty pieces a month, and many made mistakes. The boss had fired one of my coworkers for ranting on Twitter about how she wasn’t paid enough to handle this much content. She was right, but it meant I had to cover her submissions as well. My fingers tired, and then my phone would buzz. I would dread it was a supervising editor chiding me for missing a deadline again. While I needed a new job, I lacked the energy to update my resume.

They had warned me about side effects, the doctors in charge of this program. The house channeled telepathic energy to manifest all my worries. Once I had a visualization, it would come to life and affect me. My anxiety manifested as bright blue flying fish with chompers.

All I had to do was spend three months with these visuals, keep up with client accounts for my day job, record my feelings, and get paid. I didn’t even have to take time off work.

I kept shaking off the teeth. When my anxiety fish flopped over, it looked like it was swimming through the air. It was a lie of tranquility.. I let myself drift back to dreams, breathing harder.

“How are you feeling overall with this experiment?” Dr. Pounds asked on Saturday.

“I don’t know what this involves.” I hid my face behind a giant mug of coffee. “Seeing my anxieties and dysfunctions rendered this way is supposed to make me feel better. Instead, the fish keep telling me I’m a mess. Work will find out I’m not a good editor.”

A flash of blue dive-bombed from above. I dodged and fell out of the chair onto the wooden floor.Stupid fish, I thought as I rubbed my thigh where I had fallen. A bruise would form there later unless I had the willpower to get ice or rummage for a gel pack in the freezer.

“Goodness, are you okay?” Dr. Pounds called out.

“Yeah,” I called, crawling back into the chair.

“The important thing is they cannot hurt you.”

“Yeah.” Tell that to my leg.

“Sometimes removing these emotions from the abstract can change your feelings about them,” Dr. Pounds continued. “With the house walls reflecting sympathetic energy, you’re bound to see aspects of yourself more.”

“That’s the thing. I’m still anxious, and I still have brain fog. I’m using this office so I don’t edit articles in my room, but I’m still sluggish. And I hate my job, but I don’t know the way forward. If I quit, I’ll be without income or health insurance. What am I doing wrong?”

“You’re doing nothing wrong,” she reassured me. “It’s normal that your anxieties don’t go away overnight. Sometimes we need more time to face stresses that have been ingrained for years.”

That sounded about right. This was the first time in ages that I had left my mother’s house to live somewhere else. When she was in a bad mood, and she was in a bad mood often because of her back pain, she would take it out on the nearest person. I still lived at home while saving up for an apartment. When I told her I was moving out for the entire summer, I lied and said it was a fellowship.

“But there has to be something I can do.” I grabbed one of the anxiety fish and showed her the sharp teeth. “This is getting ridiculous. It feels like I’m failing and I want to do better. You’re doing a lot for me by giving me this space.”

“Are you journaling as usual?” Dr. Pounds asked.

“Yes, every day.”

“How is that going?”

“Some days are easier than others. I don’t want to write out all my to-dos. But I try to scribble a few lines in the progress report.”

“Are you tracking your moods?”

“Yes.” It never made me feel better to track that I was lousy, even with the apps and with the journal.

“Keep doing that. And water? Exercise?”

“I’m hydrating and doing stretches.” My brain berated me for not drinking more than a bottle a day, but my habit app listed a bottle. “One day I’ll remember to clock out before dark and go for a walk.”

“Walks may help with grounding,” Dr. Pounds reassured me. “Many creatives get some mingling with nature. We chose this house because it is near a nature preserve.”

Yeah, I didn’t have the heart to tell her that most of the nature in the preserve was long grass and insects. Since reading science books about snakes and ticks as a kid, I had phobias about ticks and contracting a deadly disease from them. That happened to one of our neighbors, and mom would not stop talking about the poor woman.

“I’ll give it a shot.” By instinct, I lifted my fist and punched one of the anxiety fish as it dive-bombed again. Pain echoed through my knuckles, but that felt very satisfying and worth it. The fish sailed into the air and banged against a picture hanging on the wall of a low-hanging canopy.

“You may not want to do that,” Dr. Pounds said. “Sometimes being aggressive towards your anxieties only strengthens them.”

“Well, I already walk around with a great sense of disaster and all the things I do that will go wrong,” I said. “My brain fog is so bad that I can barely see you, and no matter what I do, I doubt things will change at home when I get back. I don’t think anxiety fish can make it any worse.”

The screen went dark. So did the lights in the work office. All the anxiety fish popped out of existence, like sprites in a video game. The old surge protector in my bedroom beeped.

“No!” I screamed. When you’re from Florida, you expect outages during rainstorms, but not on a day like today when I needed my sessions. More worries. At least my phone was working and I could use that despite the fog; I texted Dr. Pounds about what had happened. She said she also lost power. Mom texted, revealing that the outage had hit her as well.

The lights flickered back on, while the desktop took a few minutes to reboot. Since the surge protector kept beeping, I had to get up and head outside the office to switch it off. Brain fog followed me.

My bedroom had glass windows that overlooked the woods. I usually kept the curtains shut, but pulled them open now to see if any of the generators belonging to the nearby houses were still running, and to get light to find the surge protector.

Flapping of fins out in the distance. I froze. That looked like blue fish straight out of the house. They were loping among the trees. The teeth gleamed under the dry sunlight.

This wasn’t happening. I sent a photo to Dr. Pounds using my phone. My hands shook as I pressed the button on the shutter.

That’s not normal, Dr. Pounds replied. Go find it!

Outside was hot and muggy. I was glad I had thought of switching into baggy jeans. I held a dirty butterfly net from the garage; I had seen it while rushing out through the one door that didn’t require a security code.

Anxiety spiralled into screaming on the inside: What if the people who lived in the nearby houses saw what I was chasing? What if they took photos? Could I lie that I was hunting butterflies? Did that make me a bad person, hunting butterflies for sport? Is my boss going to see this on Twitter if they put up photos and write me up?

More anxiety fish popped into existence. They all latched onto my hair and shoulders.

I wanted to scream. Instead, I stood. This was not a situation that a deep breath would fix.

“Try other grounding techniques,” Dr. Pounds would recommend. “Look at five objects and list them off to yourself.”

Five objects. Count them.One table and two white chairs, part of a garden patio furniture set. That was three. A potted plant, a shrub. An overgrown lemon tree. Five. I studied them, ignoring the pain that ran from my neck to my waist. Some of the fish found out that I was ticklish as well. I twitched as I stood.

Breathe. Count.

They faded, one by one. All the fish dissolved into blue smoke. The pain was making it hard to concentrate, the teeth pinching skin and tightness in my chest.

I gasped in relief. That wouldn’t have happened a few months ago; I would have gotten some cute videos and watched them, risking no sleep. Only one fish to go, that was a runaway.

Then I remembered something else: my cardio abilities had deflated since the pandemic started. Running after the sole fish was not an option, with or without the pun. If it made it to the woods, safe to say that I would not go in; there were limits to what “catching” your anxieties entailed.

This was hopeless. I wanted to slam the butterfly net into the ground. A fish-hunt all around the neighborhood for bright blue piranhas was a no-go.

Then I remembered something: it’s a part of me. The fish reflected my anxieties. We had a connection.

I closed my eyes. A sense of cool blue, straight ahead of me. It was among the ticks and the deer that lingered on the outskirts. Population control and venison in the winter for the locals.

The road would be safer, my thoughts told me. I walked toward the cracked concrete. Maybe I had gotten lucky. But going back to the house to generate more fish and problems was not an option. It would distract me.

Okay. So if a runaway fish was drifting after I had punched it in the face, how would I call it back? Apologize to the air? Why would I say sorry to something that was making me run and give chase? It wasn’t healthy at all to have this much worry. And I hated doing fake apologies. That’s what I had to do with my mom all the time.

The road was empty, with grass beds and flowers adorning the sidewalk. I approached it, thinking. Sometimes I could lie to myself. This was not one of those occasions. The fish would know. So I had to tell the truth.

“Hey. I know you don’t mean to attack me, but I’’m still mad at you,” I said aloud. “You’re reflecting on what my anxieties already do. But while I can punch imaginary things and get rid of them, I can’t get rid of you. Not this way.”

Blue haze taking over my vision. It was like painting acrylics. It welcomed the worries, the irrational and the rational ones, as well as my indecisiveness about what to do about home.

I would have to move out, and face the unknowns that come with all that. My job couldn’t be the only position that an editor with two years’ experience could perform. And I still had things I wanted to create, while not knowing how much time I had on this planet. For now I was here, but here did not dispel the after.

“I can accept you without letting you control me, at least for today. I don’t know about other days.”

Some teeth glinting in the sun. The fish drifted from the trees that bordered the backyard.

“You will not dive-bomb me any more during video calls. Save that for another time.”

Smoke emanated from the fish. It was fading, but not gone. This was the root of my deepest worries, about the after and what that meant, leaving my mother.

“And while going outside once in a while is fine, and I’ll start doing those evening walks, you can’t just run after a power outage.” I gestured. “And I will not hate you, though I hate you now. But I will try harder to love you, because you are a part of me. I love you as you are, while not letting you control me.”

The fish landed in my arms. I caressed it and let it fade.

I got the fish, I texted Dr. Pounds.Should we resume our appointment if power comes back?

Need to raincheck, she said.

Okay. May go for a walk, I responded. I considered the heat and the woods. There was also the road. It had no ticks, and cars were much safer. So I went straight ahead, trusting myself that it was the right path.

Priya Sridhar

A 2016 MBA graduate and published author, Priya Sridhar has been writing fantasy and science fiction for fifteen years, and counting. Capstone published the Powered series, and Unnerving Press published Offstage Offerings. Priya lives in Miami, Florida with her family.

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