Two Fish

I was wandering around a busy office building, and I came across a phone room where people sat around a large conference table in rolled up shirt sleeves, answering call after call and yelling urgent things across the table to one another. I slipped into the room unnoticed and slid along the wall behind them. In the far corner of the room there was a little kitchenette that they used for a break area. There was a stove there, and on the stove top there were two skillets both filled with about two inches of water. There was a fish in either skillet, and they were both happily exploring the circumference of their little pools of water.

But then I peered down under the skillets and saw a low blue flame simmering under each of them. As the water was getting warmer, I could see that the fish were darting desperately back and forth from edge to edge of either skillet, as though they were trying to escape. I turned to the room of people on the phones, and I tried to call out to get someone's attention. But there never seemed to be a break in the noise. I couldn't find the right moment to say something. I tried to catch a random glance in my direction or an ear perked to hear something beyond the constant hum of business in the room. But nothing. I struggled to even make a sound.

I looked back at the skillets. There was steam rising off the water, and both fish were floating upside down, dead. It made me so sad, the whole accidental tragedy of it. I tried to tell myself that I was in no position to judge any of them for carelessly letting the fish die, since I myself ate meat every day. But this felt different. No had meant for this to happen. The fish weren't being prepared for lunch; they were just dead because no one had been paying attention and someone had left the burners on. I turned off the burners and placed a metal lid over each skillet and left them to go cold.