Eddie's Great Escape
by
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Eddie is a large black and white angelfish living in an aquarium with nine other fish. He measures just slightly over three inches from mouth to tail, and a majestic figure he is with his various fins, feelers and other assorted decorations in black and white hanging down and jutting up and out from his hexagon shaped body.
“Hey Eddie, ya old barnacle!” yells Sor, the largest of the goldfish that occupy the aquarium, as he quickly darts by at a blur and takes a nip or playful bite at the beautifully decorated tail belonging to Eddie. “Catch me if you can!” In the next instant he darts to the far corner of the tank for protection in amongst the green and white leaves of the plant that grows there.
“Sor!!” Eddie bellows as he is in a terrible mood today. He’s tired and hungry too, as the humanoid has apparently gone off already forgetting to feed the fish as he sometimes does. “You pin-point brained little brat!! If I ever catch you doing that again today you won’t like what I’ll do to you. Bad enough I have to live in this nightmarish world woefully controlled by some idiot brained humanoid fool who laughs and sleeps all the time while we all swim around in here from long boring day after day suffering so much in this prison cell of a tank it so pitifully supports, but I sure as salt water don’t need you, little orange monster, taking nips at my gorgeous body to boot!!!” he screams from the bottom of his gills.
“Eddie. Eddie. Eddie. Control, please. Sor’s just bored. He’s been in here almost as long as Lula has. And besides you know he can’t hurt you anyway. Please calm yourself." Anna, Eddie’s wife has just swum over and is trying to console her enraged husband.
“Look,” says Eddie calmly to his wife, “I’m sick and tired of all these moronic little fish, especially these little goldfish tarts, hassling me all the time and taking bites and nips out of all my beautiful body parts to boot.”
“But Eddie,” his wife coos, “we’re all bored. You should understand that more than any of us having actually tasted freedom before.” Then she purrs in her soft little voice that always drives Eddie mad with fishistic passion. “Tell me about freedom again. You know how it fascinates me so.”
“Well,” he begins, “picture if you will a body of water with no end. Why, I remember the day about forty of my brothers and I tried to swim all the way across the lake. Well, we were gone for four days and nights. Our parents thought we were long dead. After the second night we had to turn around and start for home. Boy, did we ever catch it from my father when we returned two days later! And we didn’t even get close to the end of the lake.” And now he continues dramatically, “In the wild, honey, there are no glass walls and no artificial plants. You can swim in a straight line for miles and miles as fast as you can and you will never run into one of these god-forsaken walls. And the water is always clean in the lake. I guess this is just too pitifully small and the lake was just too unimaginably big.”
“Oooooh, Eddie!” his wife sighs. “A body of water that never ends. But it must end somewhere!”
“Well of course it ends somewhere,” Eddie quips, “but let’s just try to keep in mind, dear, that the lake I was born in is probably two or three million times the size as this pitifully small cubicle we try so hard to survive in.”
All the fish are unhappy, but none as much as poor old Eddie. Being the wisest fish in the tank and also being around for several years longer than all the rest, and last but not least, having actually tasted freedom before makes Eddie crave it more than all the other fish could possibly imagine. He has even gone so far as to develop and devise a plan to escape his awful prison aquarium, and he even plans to take his wife along with him. He loves her so. It has to be done when the humanoid is out working or whatever it is it does whenever it leaves the apartment. Eddie’s wife however is very doubtful of the plan. She feels even if they do get out of the tank, won’t they die in the horrible poison air? Eddie had told her again and again that that was a chance they would have to take. He had told her, If, when we hit the floor, we aren’t knocked unconscious, I figure we’ve got enough water left in our gills to last approximately fifteen minutes or so. Next, and this is the most difficult part of the plan, we must actually flip-flop our bodies away from the prison and on into the bathroom. If we’re strong enough to get into the bathroom, we’re almost home. The last step is to flip-flop up and into the toilet. Then, and only then, are we home free. Once we get into the toilet, all we have to do is swim through the pipes to freedom. Eddie isn’t even positive if the pipes lead to freedom or not but it is a chance the desperate fish is willing to take.
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About the Book
Eddie is a black and white freshwater Angelfish. He lives in an aquarium with nine other fish. The aquarium is in an apartment in a large city. These fish are intelligent and can think, reason, and speak. They have personalities, feelings, fears, and anxieties brought on by living everyday inside their tiny world. Eddie is the most intelligent fish and he is different in a special way. All the others were born in pet stores, but not Eddie. Eddie was born in the wild, in a large lake. One day, years ago, Eddie and some brothers and sisters were captured by a man in a boat with a net. Then Eddie's life changed very much. He was moved from one pet shop to another, very uncomfortable for him. Then a man bought him and put him in his aquarium in his apartment. Eddie remembers and never forgets his parents, brothers and sisters, and the lake he called home. He remembers freedom. He wholeheartedly believes that he can get back to freedom, back to his family, and back to the lake. He even has a plan to escape the aquarium, and he wants to take his wife, Anna, with him. Freedom was taken away from Eddie by some man he didn't even know existed, and he's determined to get it back, somehow. But how can a little angelfish escape from an aquarium in an apartment? And even if he could, how could he get back to the lake where he was born? Eddie teaches us, where there's a will there's a way. He teaches us to never give up on your dreams, and maybe, they will come true. If you want to join Eddie's unique and awesome adventure, the only way to do so is to read "Eddie's Great Escape".
About the Author
Jody Janow was born in central Canada in the province of Saskatchewan. He spent ten years living in South East Asia in Thailand from 1987 - 1997. Jody writes many different types of writings including short and long stories, novels, movie scripts, children's books, and poetry. He has won two major awards for his poetry, and has had his poetry published in poetry anthologies both in Canada and America. He has had short stories published in magazines in Thailand. He got the inspiration for "Eddie's Great Escape" while living in Thailand when he was sitting in front of an aquarium at a friend's house and while looking at his own aquarium in his apartment. He thought to himself, If those fish could think, talk, and reason, what would they be thinking? Would they be happy? Would they be sad? What would they think of their tiny world having to live every day of their lives inside their little aquarium? Jody is a very creative writer with a uniquely interesting style. He has an extremely vivid imagination as can be seen by the example of his children's book, "Eddie's Great Escape". Jody lives with his wife in Vancouver, B.C. Canada.