Maggie's Fish Story

JULY 14, 1998: My name is Maggie Borghildr Melville. I'm 13 and from East Rochester, New York. Mom, Dad, and I visited Durand Eastman Beach for a picnic today. Dad told me a story about a thing that lives in this lake called a Gaasyendietha (I looked up). A giant serpent that the Seneca people say is in Lake Ontario. Dad says it flew here on a trail of fire and spits fire. He says it came from space. Mom says Dad's joking. Mom gave me this journal because she says I don't think before I talk. She says this will make me more reflective. I don't think so. They gave me a goldfish. We went to Dr. Doolittle. I'll name him Rodney. Is it a boy fish?

JULY 15, 1998: Asked Grandpa Mely if he knew if Rodney was a boy or a girl. He said lady goldfish are very round and smooth. Boy goldfish are pointy. I don't know what that means. I've never seen pointy goldfish. Are they all ladies? Do the boys hide? I already named it Rodney.

JULY 16, 1998: We went to the library to get books on goldfish. They talk about tanks and what different fish look like, but they don't talk about the good stuff. I want to grow Rodney really big. The encyclopedia is good but is short. It says that they can grow 16 inches. I'm going to write a better book on goldfish. Their scientific name is Carassius Auratus." Carassius" means carp. Grandpa and I go fishing for carp and perch sometimes. Auratus is Latin for 'golden." Auratus is now Rodney’s last name. Since I still don't know if they're a boy or girl, I'll call them "RA," like the Egyptian sun god. 

JUNE 10, 2004: Found this diary while visiting from college. I knew myself well. It's fantastic that 13-year-old me knew herself well enough to know she'd never write in this. I'm older. Wiser? I drink more, so no.

SEPTEMBER 25, 2004: I took this journal with me to school. Intro to Psych says journaling is good for mental health. I'm not sure if I like Psych as my major. Biology? Prof Kinzie seems cool. Everyone talks about how he's responsible for Jefferson Airplane. Is that like Jefferson Starship? WE BUILT THIS CITY! I'll try to read "Life Crawls Upstream" and see if it inspires. Thought about taking Ra with me. Mom said it'd make Dad sad if he couldn't take care of Ra for me. I'll get a tattoo instead. Hip or ankle?

SEPTEMBER 30, 2004: Hip.

OCTOBER 1, 2004: Going with bio now. Also - Ray Akana asked me out. I think I said yes?

NOVEMBER 10, 2006: Going to grad school! PhD in Biology!

NOVEMBER 23, 2010: Rodney Auratus passed. Dad is crushed.

NOVEMBER 24, 2010: Ray proposed!! While the answer is obviously yes, I can't shake the idea that he's trying to cheer me up because of Ra.

JULY 14, 2011: Wedding is in a couple of days. I don't know if I'm nervous. I'll be Doctor Melville by next spring. I'm more nervous about that. Weird to be back in Rochester, but I'm excited all the same. Excited. Ex-cited. EXCITED. The word means nothing now.

JULY 29, 2011: Thinking about falling into an old family business. Grandpa Mely used to tell me stories of his Great Grandma in Bordeaux who raised leeches. Hirudiculture. Leech farmers. Ray's sister was looking for a leech provider for the plastic surgery office. Her office pays insane amounts of money for "clean leeches." Demi Moore uses them to stay young. The hirudin in leech saliva is one of the best anticoagulant and anti-platelet agents. Prevents blood clots in damaged tissue. I never wrote that book about goldfish. Maybe I'll do that too? Dedicate it to Ra?

DECEMBER 3, 2012: Got "Hirudiculturist" business cards. They say "Dr. Maggie Melville" on them along with the phrase "Everything old is new again." Ray says that no one will get it. But how often is a leech farmer passing out business cards?

JUNE 3, 2025: Found this journal in a moving box in the basement. From two moves ago? Still in the Rochester area. We're DINKs. Better house. We have enough land for a koi pond in the backyard. Ray has a boat on Lake Ontario too. We go see his family in Hawaii a few times a year. Life is good and quiet. I still need to write that book about goldfish or leeches.

JUNE 7, 2025: Started my book on goldfish! Fell down a rabbit hole reading about the goldfish infestation of Lake Ontario. I keep thinking about how I almost sent Ra out that way so he could get big. Ray and I went to the lake and saw something downright bizarre. A small school of about a dozen very weird goldfish. They looked like Bubble-eye goldfish, with giant inflated sacs filled with lymphatic fluid below their eyes. They also had bulbous round bodies like Meteor goldfish. They're golden nugget clusters trailing dramatic billowing fins. Like gold asteroids trailing through the water. They were also huge. Football sized? Made me think of Gaasyendietha for the first time in forever.

JUNE 21, 2025: Ray and I spent the last few weeks trolling Lake Ontario in "The Leaky Lady." We're looking for those fish. Caught one - it's enormous! We put it in the pond because it wouldn't fit anywhere else. There are finally koi in the koi pond. I've named it "Gaasy" Auratus.

JULY 14, 2025: Gaasy appears to have increased in size. Not by a lot, but enough to notice. Today, I witnessed something I've never heard of in freshwater fish. I thought I'd take measurements and classify this guy, and in doing that, I accidentally hit it with a net. Gaasy deflated in an instant, and the pond overflowed with goo. In a snap! As it spewed goo, it stretched into something long and cylindrical, like a loose fleshed gold eel. It lost all koi features. My assumption (guess) is that what I'd assumed was lymphatic fluid was actually like a Hagfish's slime matrix of water, mucus, and protein. A defense mechanism that expands thousands of times its original size, suffocating predators.

JULY 15, 2025: All the plants around the pond have disappeared. Anything the overflow pond water touched seemed to have dissolved, but the water was clear. Gassy swam around like normal. I assumed the slime dissolved everything it touched? I'll try to set Gaasy off again but on camera.

JULY 23, 2025: I can't watch the video. I remember sticking the electrofishing rod into the pond to give it a mild shock. Stun it. Instead, it deflated again, but with more goo this time. The water was thick and viscous and rose fast. It surged. I was an idiot. I wore only high tops, and my feet were caught in the flood. My feet started to burn. The slime clung to the material. As it grew more intense, every step I took felt like I was running on melting rubber. It was like I was melting into the ground. A nightmare. Ray heard me. He got me to the hospital. The doctors called them cid burns. It digested my feet.

I told Ray I wanted them gone.

No one's seen Ray.