Hope Gottschling | A Game of Go Fish | Fiction

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In a tidy little cobblestone house, floating in the middle of a quiet pond, hidden by an expanse of forest in every direction and quite unknown to the rest of the world, a gentle old fellow and his giant Flemish rabbit peacefully enjoyed two bowls of spaghetti, each with four and three-quarter meatballs. When a knock sounded at the door, the stooping man rose to meet it. He returned with a bubbling freckle-faced girl at his tail, whose soaked auburn braids dripped arrhythmically onto the floor. In her small pink hands, she carried a surly goldfish in a misshapen glass bowl which she placed on the leftmost keys of an antique piano perched in the corner, sounding a deep dull hum. Keenly, the rabbit raised his eyes over his thin wire frame glasses, but paid no mind, and hopped softly from his seat to collect a boiling kettle from the fireplace and pour three cups of chamomile tea. To the fish, he presented a scone. The old man kindly covered the girl with a warm towel and handed her the tea, then exclaimed jovially, “Go fish!” With that, the goldfish soared in a majestic arc out of the fishbowl and over the piano, onto the scone with a soft thud. Jumping up, the girl clasped the poor flopping thing between her hands and hurried out the door, diving into the pond below with a magnificent splash. Both the man and the rabbit stared wistfully at the rippling water for a moment, before sitting back down to their meatballs and beginning to deal out cards for a game of Go Fish.