Scurrying across the road, I am repulsed by my instinct to scurry. My legs carry me in an automatic rhythm, away from my friend who lay on his side in the street. He's dead. Fish, I mean. You know when you... you can sort of tell. You can tell. The beast came swiftly and then was gone again. It changes forms each time. Sometimes it is big and the color of after-lunch sunshine. Sometimes it is quiet and small, it's outsides white like the springtime clouds. I'm rarely caught around them, I stick to walls and branches and bushes. Fish didn't. He avoided death so many times, far more than nine I would say. I had almost begun to believe in his immortality too. But now he is sprawled out with his paws criss-crossed and I am on the neighbors roof. Alone, but alive.