Kami
A Red-tailed Catfish Becomes an Internet Celebrity.
The Owner got a red-tailed catfish. Tiny, black, shiny.
Love at first sight.
He grew fast, loved bugs and ate from the Owner's hand.
The catfish's whiskers were luxurious. His skin black as night.
Always hungry. Bugs disappeared as he grew, but the Owner loved him.
Worried the Beast might be lonely, the Owner got him some fish friends.
When he turned two years old, his other fish friends disappeared.
The Beast was three feet long.
His owner made him a new pond out of an inflatable pool.
He fed him on YouTube and had millions of followers.
They helped him fund his fish's prodigious eating habits.
Once he graduated to live frogs, the show exploded.
He made lots of money on merchandizing his fish's phenomenal story.
The Beast continued to grow.
With the money he made from his influencer opportunities, he bought a new home. Complete with a retrofitted pool turned into a super fish habitat.
With giant koi purchased to keep the Beast company.
The beast is now five feet long and needs three frogs a day to be happy.
The Beast insists on being hand fed.
Three months later, the terrarium cleaner arrived and the seventy other koi were gone.
The Beast sat listless in the corner.
Having a Beast-cam, or three they tried to figure out what happened to the other fish.
There was no footage ever captured which explained what happened to the other fish.
The Beast is now ten feet long.
It spends most of the day staring into the camera.
It turns to face each camera, keeping time like a clock.
The Beast Cam becomes one of the most watched shows on television.
The owner introduces dozens of koi into the pool.
People try to prove the Beast is eating them. Wagers fly.
The Beast becomes a television celebrity and a scientific anomaly.
He gets his own pool at the aquarium.
He learns where all the cameras are. He faces them once again, a clock’s hour hand.
The Beast becomes more famous, keeping time accurately as a fine Swiss watch.
His owner comes to see him less and less.
His fame keeps him busy.
The Beast continues to make the other koi disappear.
The Beast eats mysteriously and keeps time perfectly.
The Beast becomes the weirdest channel online.
The owner of the Beast dictating his new podcast: The World According to the Beast!
The Beast slows down. It still keeps time, but that is all it does.
It becomes strange looking. Its eyes become rheumy. Fans scream.
How can you do this? How did you let the Beast, the beautiful Beast come to this?
“Get back to feeding him by hand,” they demand.
The Beast is five years old.
Its owner has become a millionaire. Science has discovered an anomaly.
The owner knew what he needed to do.
Everyone will know where they were.
He loved the Beast. The Beast loved him.
He held a marathon podcast.
Five days slated to end on the Beast's seventh birthday.
Famous people came out and sat by the pool with the Beast.
Long days, long nights. The guests were great.
The Beast kept time but somehow became more lively.
More animated. Energized even.
On the last day, the Owner told his fans how much he loved them.
He appreciated this opportunity to give the Beast a spotlight.
To make him something other people treasured as much as he did.
He slid into the pool with a fresh bucket of koi.
Techs stood by to dump other koi as well.
The water swarmed with hundreds of koi.
A wild frenzy, water foaming, swirling, momentarily clouded.
A few minutes later, the koi were gone. The Owner could not be found.
The video tape became one of the most studied on Earth.
The Beast shone bright, whiskers glossy, muscles surging as it kept time in seconds.
On its seventh birthday, the Beast became a legend,
the highest rated live feed video on social media.
The aquarium became a tourist attraction overnight.
The Owner was never seen again.
The Beast and its aquarium were well-cared for,
through the power of merchandising.
After the disappearance of an aquarium employee on feeding day;
No one was ever allowed to be in the pool alone again.
The cameras, however, recorded nothing.
