I know that it was only a fish, and I know that most people wouldn’t feel bad about its death, but that night—bear with me—it was like the fish was teaching me something about my soul. Teaching me that my soul was faulty. I know this is stupid, but it’s what I thought, and I wasn’t even high. I thought the fish was saying: Yes, Jack, you are wicked. Something went wrong inside your machinery, maybe in utero, maybe in childhood, and now you’re wound to the wrong moral time zone, maybe even to the wrong solar system. You, Jack, are coldhearted. And you have no excuse.
