When Carla woke between them on Saturday as a small fish, flopping and gasping under the duvet, they decided to put her in the bathtub while they figured out how to get her back. They argued for a while over what temperature the water should be. Lorna said cold and Alex said lukewarm. 

Actually no, Alex said. Body temperature.

But what body, what was its temperature? Was it the same it had been before, i.e. hot core, cold peripheries, and occasionally smouldering all over? How hot were fish?

They looked on the internet, and discovered they’d both been somehow right; Carla had the capacity to be both cold and lukewarm.

Lorna was looking at the internet and not at Alex when she said, Carla isn’t hot anymore. Alex ignored her. They adapt to the temperature of their surroundings, she read out from the internet.

They watched Carla flopping around in the empty bathtub for a moment before Lorna turned open the cold tap. She’s cold-blooded now, she said.

Doesn’t mean she has to freeze. He flicked at Lorna’s face with a fingernail and turned open the hot tap, adjusting the cold to a trickle. 

You’ll scald her, Lorna said. She didn’t sound jealous anymore, only panicked. She was thinking about the pot full of lobsters her father had boiled when she was ten, how he’d made her watch. And then about frogs being heated up so slowly they boiled to death before they noticed anything amiss.

They wrestled over the taps. They laughed as they tussled, and forgot they were worried about Carla, who was gasping and flopping against the enamel now. The bathtub wasn’t particularly clean, Carla’s transformation having happened before the Saturday clean.

The water was the temperature of tepid tea and came up to Alex’s knuckles when he stuck his hand into the tub. Carla swum up and down, performing tight little u-turns at either end. Lorna and Alex stood watching, their arms slung around each other’s waists. 

Now what? Lorna asked.

We wait, I guess. Maybe she’ll be better tomorrow.

She’s not sick, Alex, Lorna said. She’s a fish.

Lorna and Alex tried to carry on as normal, but things weren’t normal without Carla. They’d grown accustomed to finding her on their couch reading when they got home from work. They missed her wicked laugh, and how she played them off against each other in a way that was funny not mean. They also missed things they’d found annoying, like how she preferred wearing their clothes to her own, how she often left the fridge door open. They found they would’ve given a lot to find the fridge door ajar and Carla on the sofa, cackling, wearing Alex’s T-shirt and Lorna’s leggings.

The new Carla’s mouth opened and closed dumbly. She had gills, which was weird. And her large fish eyes, which protruded from her face, stared up unrelentingly at them when they were in the bathroom. 

She’s like the Mona Lisa, Alex said. Her eyes follow me around everywhere. She watches me poop.

Neither of them had ever seen the actual Mona Lisa, but they knew what she looked like through cultural osmosis.

She makes me uncomfortable, he whispered.

They wanted to keep talking to her, but they weren’t sure how much she heard or understood. They thought perhaps the water distorted the things they said, or perhaps she no longer knew English. 

Blink twice if you understand, Lorna said desperately one day. But Carla wouldn’t blink. 

Fish don’t have eyelids, Alex told her through the closed bathroom door.

Carla and I are having a private conversation, Lorna said. 

I’m just saying, Alex said. Tell her to do something else. Like swim three circles anti-clockwise. She did it for me the other day.

Swim three circles anti-clockwise, Lorna said when she was sure Alex wasn’t listening. But Carla didn’t move at all, only stared and stared, bobbing, as if treading water with her fins. It wasn’t even really Lorna she was staring at, but somewhere a few inches above her forehead. Lorna, losing her patience, threw a toilet roll into the tub.

When Alex and Lorna showered, they scooped Carla out with their hands and transferred her temporarily to the sink. They started showering every other day.

They fed Carla fish food they got from a nearby fish shop.

What kind of fish do you have, the young bored man behind the fish shop counter asked. His T-shirt had a starfish embroidered onto it, but neither Alex nor Lorna saw starfish for sale. 

Lorna and Alex looked at each other. Lorna shrugged.

Um… Alex said.

The young bored man sighed and rolled his eyes. He turned to a shelf behind him that was stacked with fish food. Let’s assume it’s a goldfish, he said. Was their fish gold?

We have a photo, Alex said, brandishing his phone.

Ah, said the young bored man, sounding slightly less bored. A Celestial Eye Goldfish. A Stargazer. Initially bred by the Chinese. Telescope eyes. Interesting. The man took the phone from Alex’s hand without asking and looked intently at the picture. Are you keeping it in a bathtub? he asked incredulously.

After several weeks, they’d resigned themselves, more or less (Alex more, Lorna less), to the idea that Carla as they knew her might not be coming back. They tried new things. Alex came back after a long winter night’s shift at the bakery and made up his mind to have a bath without first transferring Carla to the sink. He made the water a little cooler than usual, because he, too, thought often about the boiling lobsters Lorna had told him about on a date many years ago, and how she said they’d screamed. He also didn’t add bath oil. 

I’m coming in, he said to Carla as he lowered one foot into the clear warm water, waiting for it to adjust to the temperature. And then the second foot. Be careful, he warned her as he slid his whole body into the tub. Once submerged, he closed his eyes briefly and groaned with pleasure. When he opened them again, Carla was bobbing at the far end of the tub very close to his left foot. He thought there was something different in the way she was watching him. He lay back and waited. Before long, he felt Carla’s body brushing against his left shin, and then against his ribs. She emerged just below his chin, bulbous eyes on his. A fin brushed the skin of his throat. Adam swallowed, clenched and unclenched his toes. 

Carla? he said very quietly.

Carla swum triangles in the water above his body. He told himself that she was using his nipples and Adam’s apple as coordinates. When Lorna got home, Alex reluctantly drained the bath. He began bathing more frequently.

A small part of Lorna still believed Carla might revert back. It was likely, she thought, that this transformation could only occur in the same place as the initial transformation. Lorna waited until Alex had left for a Saturday shift, and then fetched Carla from the bathtub. She carried her small fish body gently in her cupped hands, cooing reassuring but meaningless things as she walked. Carla didn’t like to be out of water, Lorna could tell. Her mouth was gaping open and shut faster than it usually did. Her gills flapped uselessly. 

Lorna laid Carla down gently in the middle of the bed. She drew a circle with her toe on the bedroom floor, and placed a squat red candle in a bowl at the centre of this invisible circle. She poured water into the bowl with the watering can, until the candle was almost but not quite submerged. Carla flopped this way and that on the bed as Lorna sprinkled salt into the water and lit the candle. 

Intently, Lorna watched the candle burn. Her mouth silently formed a metamorphosis incantation she’d found on the internet.

The candle burnt down incrementally, and it wasn’t long before the flame was extinguished by the water. On the duvet, Carla was barely moving at all. Lorna cast her a desperate look and removed the candle from the bowl. The internet instructed her to snap it in two and visualise a burst of energy radiating out from the invisible circle she’d drawn. After that, she’d have to bury the candle in the courtyard and pour the water from the bowl around the burial spot. But the candle was unsnappable, she hadn’t bought the right kind, and Carla was still a fish, twitching only slightly now, her scales dull. Lorna moaned and plunged Carla into the bowl of water. I’m so sorry, she said as she took her back to the bathroom. I’m so sorry. Carla retreated to the tap-end of the bath and bobbed unresponsively for the rest of the day. Lorna didn’t tell Alex. He would’ve made fun of Lorna having resorted to witchcraft. Neither of them really believed in magic.

Several weeks passed this way. Alex bathed almost every day. He persuaded Lorna to join them, once, but it hadn’t ended well. Was Carla the fish capable of jealousy? Carla the human had rarely been jealous. Either way, they hadn’t known she had teeth but there she was, nipping at the most delicate parts of their bodies as they kissed.

Lorna didn’t try magic again. She spent more time in the bathroom telling Carla what she was thinking and feeling. It wasn’t unlike how she spoke to her grandmother on the rare occasions that she visited her grave. She felt, as did Alex, that Carla the fish displayed far more personality than a normal fish.

It was Sunday. Alex woke and realised with horror he’d forgotten what Carla had smelled like as a human. Lorna had washed their sheets, and her shampoo-and-scalp smell was gone, her face-cream smell, her sleep-and-sex-smell. As he made coffee, he toyed with the idea of using Carla’s spare key, which she’d given them in case she locked herself out of the little flat she rented down the road, to get some of her things. A worn T-shirt, something else from the laundry hamper.

The thought struck him that they should do something with her flat and let her family know. How could it be that no one had contacted them about Carla being gone? It occurred to them that perhaps Carla had not told anyone about them.

Lorna fluffed up the pillows and scrolled blearily through Carla’s Instagram. She found only the sky in various shades of sunset and sunrise, cloud formations and the tops of trees, no selfies. It was a shame that they hadn’t taken more photos of the three of them together. There was only one, and in it, Carla wasn’t looking at the camera.

Babe, Lorna said. She dropped her phone off the bed and propped herself on an elbow.

Alex blanched. They laughed at people who called each other babe.

Sorry, she said. Don’t know where that came from.

What’s up? Alex said. He reached up to draw Lorna a mustache with the milky foam of his coffee. This suits you, he murmured.

Do you think we should do something with Carla? Lorna batted away his hand and wiped off her mustache.

Like what? He stopped drawing.

Like stop keeping her in the bath?

Take her out of the bath? Alex was dismayed. Where else would we keep her?

Think about it, Lorna said, and it looked like she was going to carry on talking but nothing came out of her mouth.

Alex slumped back into the pillows. She’s not coming back, he said, is she?

After a moment, he realised she was crying. His eyes stung, too. 

I guess not, Lorna said after a while. It’d be good to have closure. And the bathtub back.

Carla watched them from behind the glass of their new fish tank. She could only hear them now when they shouted at each other, or when they opened the lid to sprinkle pinches of fish food onto the surface of the water. Carla, they called, dinner time, and they seemed delighted when she swam up to greet their fingers. She watched them eat real dinners, pumpkin risotto, steak and chip, watched them get drunk on wine. She tried to remember how things tasted. She’d liked it better in the bathtub, she’d felt included. 

There were fronds of plant stuck in among the gravel at the bottom of the tank, and by night she wove around them, sleeping with her eyes open. Half her small brain remained alert, waiting for a light to turn on, for one of them to pass by on their way to the bathroom. She pleaded with her large eyes if they looked at her, following them along the tank from left to right. There were other fish in the tank, little neon ones, a clown fish, and an ugly one who said he was a plecostomus, but they kept their distance, sensing there was something fishy about her. 

Nothing remarkable happened for a long time, at least one year in human time. Carla was getting old. Then one day, Alex summoned her from the bottom of the tank. It was strange, because it wasn’t dinner time. The clown fish had been pissing Carla off, and she’d hidden in a hollow bit of log, but now she swam up towards the light and Alex’s fingers. He was folding his whole hand carefully into the water, and she swam into it. He lifted her to his face. Bath time, he said. He hummed a tuneless made-up song as he took her into the bath.

It happened several times after that. Lorna didn’t seem to know. When Alex stopped taking her out, Carla thought maybe she’d dreamed it. The clown fish ate her food and continued to piss her off in a myriad of small ways. It ate a neon fish, the remains of which floated sideways around the tank for a day.

The baths stopping coincided with the appearance of someone called Miriam. 

Cute, Miriam said, tapping at the glass. Carla heard her despite the lid being closed. She had a very loud voice that penetrated the glass.

I like this one, Miriam said. Trippy eyes.

Carla saw Lorna and Alex exchange glances.

Later, Carla watched them kiss, eat roast vegetables, kiss some more. After they had sex on the sofa, Miriam disappeared into the bathroom. When she came back, hair dripping, she sat down on looking content, and Carla saw she was wearing Lorna’s leggings and a T-shirt that belonged to Alex.

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Charlie Wührer is a queer writer and literary translator from the UK. She lives in Berlin. Charlie’s writing can be found in literary journals, in writing competition anthologies, spoken on audio porn apps, dramatically read at events in Berlin, and on surtitle screens in theatres across Germany.