It’s been a year since Beetlejuice and Madame Geoffrey passed, and the authorities have not added to the Mansion’s population of one: Silent Hermit Tiki. They’ve talked about it. They’ve scoped out fish stores that only sell cichlids. They’ve talked some more and continue to put it off. Some think this is for the best, but it comes with consequences.

Without fish to gossip about, The Bubbly Review hit on hard times and ran out of money. They had to let go of all the journalists. Except for Kyle Sand, who refuses to leave and says he’s happy to “work for free” despite nothing to report. It’s been a long 14-year journey, and we’ve enjoyed ratting out the authorities’ incompetence. We want to thank all our readers and contributors for making The Bubbly Review a great publication and wish you all the best.

Your Friends,

Editor in Chief Sea Cucumber     

Journalist Seahorse Sally             Reporter Slimy Sea Foam

Journalist Clammy Oyster           Reporter Squid Tentacle

Journalist Tidal Wave                  Dover Scale, Gravel Channel Announcer                                                                                      

Journalist Kyle Sand                   Mackerel Fins, Gravel Channel Announcer

Author’s note:

Thank you for going on the As The Water Swirls journey with me. I hope these stories have entertained you and you’ve enjoyed my fish as much as I have. I’m sure I’ll get more at some point—Tiki really needs frenemies—but this seems like the logical place to end the series.

It’s been a month since Beetlejuice left the watery sometimes-but-usually-not haven. Madame Geoffrey enjoyed full reign of the tank for a week while authorities cleaned up the hospital.  

“I don’t know why they waited until I’m old, half-blind, and sick to let me enjoy a large tank,” she told us when we asked how it felt. She then moved on to give her opinion about Tiki (which was unfavorable, of course, since she couldn’t “eat him”) and wondered what authorities did with Beetlejuice. “Not that I want him back or anything,” she assured us with some fin flashing. We think she does, though, because her next complaint was that she was bored. The Good Madame was quite perturbed when she was moved back to the small confines of the hospital.

“I wish they’d stop trying to prolong my life,” Madame Geoffrey sighed after the first round of medication, “and put me back in the Mansion. I want to swim free for a while.”

Those of us at The Bubbly Review agreed with her. She’s obviously at the end of her life. Why not just let her be?

True to form, authorities ignored comments about quality of life.

Yesterday, the soul of Madame Geoffrey, our Mistress of Pain, left the small confines of the hospital to the great underocean. We hope she found her Sassy and they have ghostly fry until their hearts are content.

Authorities are distraught, Tiki is indifferent, and we wonder what will happen to our little publication. Hopefully, Hermit Tiki will add to our stories or get new frenemies soon.

—The Bubbly Review

Authorities decided Beetlejuice was more miserable than Madame Geoffery and should be medicated first. Plus, he’d started to float sideways. The authorities couldn’t decide which promising antibiotic to use, so they did both separately, proving they’ve learned at least a little throughout the years. Beetlejuice hadn’t been in the med tank for years, which led to some surprises that shouldn’t have been. Number one, Beetlejuice had grown…like a lot…and barely fit into the largest net the authorities could find that wasn’t for recreational fishing. Number two, getting him out of the Mansion and into the Palace/Supermax Prison turned Hospital was a tight fit. Number three, although authorities took down all the artwork, moved all the furniture, placed towels and blankets on bookshelves, and electronics to keep things reasonably dry when they moved Beetlejuice, they should have anticipated the explosion of water when cleaning the Hospital and not only worn face shields but covered the ceiling, wall art, bookshelves, floor, dining table, and favorite comfy chair with plastic because towels were not enough.

All of this could’ve been avoided if they had just moved Tiki into the Palace/Supermax Prison and turned the Mansion into the Hospital to take care of Madame Geoffrey and Beetlejuice at the same time. They said something about the cost of the meds being more, but honestly, considering the mess and consequences of moving Beetlejuice, the extra expense would’ve been worth it.

The treatment was working, and everyone was relieved until the 3rd cleaning of the tank when Beetlejuice freaked out. Once again, water, now medicated, went everywhere. Beetlejuice banged his head into the glass, then the rocks, the rocks again, and finally, the rocks. Concussed, he floated sideways, like he had been when they first moved him. They put him in the net to keep him submerged. No amount of soft talking helped as it had with Madame Geoffrey in the past, and an hour later, Beetlejuice died.

They chastised him for dying during a snowstorm when the ground was too hard to bury him. This seemed appropriate. They did scold him a lot, after all. Instead of burying him in the rose garden, they put him in the trash.

Authorities are upset and keep looking at the empty Hospital looking for him and almost seeing him or mistakenly seeing him.

“We think his ghost is still around,” they said.

Because they kept thinking that he was still in the fish tank, authorities considered digging him out of the trash to have a more appropriate funeral. After twelve hours of deliberation, they exhumed his rotting, not to mention rubbery, corpse from the garbage. Alas, the ground was still too frozen to bury him (we don’t know what they were thinking—snow was everywhere), so he was returned to the receptacle for eggshells, carrot skins, and used paper towels. It was weird. We thought it was weird. Playing with dead things and all. His ghost will probably haunt the authorities forever. Out of all As The Water Swirls deaths, Beetlejuice’s is particularly tough, and we’re all surprised about how depressed the authorities are now that he’s gone.

He’s survived by Madame Geoffery (big surprise there: being blind and having cancer) and Tiki.

—The Bubbly Review  

Beetlejuice’s aggression toward Madame Geoffrey has intensified. However, authorities are no longer certain it’s because the two have a deep-seated animosity for the other.

Beetlejuice’s race across the tank and slamming into the wall has started to look absurd. It begins as an undignified dance that consists of wriggling about and itching on the rocks and usually finishes with him hitting the wall with his face so hard that it moves a bit. What attracted everyone’s attention was not the tiresome display of aggression but the lack of wriggling and itching when Madame Geoffrey was removed from the Mansion.

Madame Geoffery’s been in and out of the repurposed Palace/Supermax Prison turned hospital with a cold that keeps resurging. Whenever she is moved back into the Mansion, Beetlejuice starts his weird dance within minutes. A month of this behavior has everyone, even us at The Bubbly Review, suspecting that Madame Geoffrey has something that affects Beetlejuice; whether it’s a parasite or bacterial disease is unknown because the doctors have tried everything on her. Anxiety is rising among the authorities because whatever is bothering Beetlejuice is making him sick with…something that isn’t ick but acts like swim bladder disease half the time. No one can decide who should be medicated first: Beetlejuice or the dear Madame. There is also the problem of no one knowing what medicine to use.

Authorities have been researching antibiotics, which are hard to get without an aquatic vet’s prescription, as well as other weird medications. Two antibiotic concoctions seem promising, but the authorities are indecisive.

We’re all holding our breath while authorities muddle about like usual. Getting rid of extra fish tanks has failed since authorities have a sick tank up yet again.

—The Bubbly Review

M. Geoffrey has been eating less. At first, it looked like she’d finally learned moderation in her elder years. However, the amount of food raining around her and the viciousness with which she gulped down the food only in front of her was very unlike her style of eating—very ungluttonous of her (the lack of gluttony is concerning). Authorities started watching her carefully and noticed a few other out-of-character actions. For instance, while she still taunts Beetlejuice whenever he starts smacking the wall (which he’s now able to move one micro-inch at a time), she isn’t rising to the occasion as much and sometimes outright ignores him—something that seems to infuriate him as much as her taunting. She’s over ten years old, so authorities expect some slowing down. However, when they consider the massive amount of food that she’s allowing to fall harmlessly around her and rot on the gravel and the lack of attention to the bully she likes to bully, it’s obvious that something is wrong. Of course, if they had asked The Bubbly Review, we could have saved them weeks of observation and told them that the good Madame is going blind. But then, the authorities have never been too astute or tried to listen to us, so we asked them what they were going to do in the hope that they would finally ask us for a solution.

“We can’t continue to feed her in this manner,” one authority complained. “The amount of food that is going to waste makes the tank toxic, and moving Tiki over to her side of the tank everyday to clean up her mess is not an option.”

We agree. Stressing Tiki out to clean up M. Geoffrey’s mess every day is a horrible idea. Not just because taking him in and out of the tank is mean, but because they have to put M. Geoffrey into a breeder cage (another name for jail) to keep her from trying to eat Tiki, despite them being the same size. After all these years, the authorities have finally learned something. Per usual, they did not ask us for help, but they did come up with an amusing, if not unique, solution.

“We can’t hand-feed her. It scares her,” Dinner Authority said.

Everyone agreed that she needed to be hand-fed. To remedy the situation, Dinner Authority bought a few plastic tongs that looked like long needles to hold M. Geoffrey’s food and then tapped her on the mouth to get her to eat. Unfortunately, this failed—repeatedly. Authorities returned to raining food down upon her and ensuring she ate at least four mouthfuls.

“We always wanted her to learn food moderation, and in a sense she has, but it’s forced and that’s not right.”

Once again, authorities are failing, but at least this time, they aren’t the ones to blame. Not directly, anyway. Some of us wonder if M. Geoffrey is going blind because of the overhead LED lights, which are all the rage. Their illumination is so bright, and fish don’t have eyelids to protect themselves from the glare when coming up to feed, but we can’t blame that on the authorities. Plus, it’s hard to find definitive proof that the fish tank lights are the cause.

—The Bubbly Review

Beetlejuice’s new hobby wakes authorities up late at night, and they’re cranky. Their crankiness might be due to them not figuring out what was making the noise for a few weeks. It also might be because they didn’t know where the noises were coming from, and it freaked them out. When things go bump in the night, most people tend to overreact.

Beetlejuice noticed six months after moving into the Mansion that he could touch the glass lid and make it move. This is his new pass time when he gets tired of trying to make the wall between him and M. Geoffrey move. It took about a month for the authorities to realize that Beetlejuice was thumping the lid at all hours of the night. They figured it out when he decided that making the lid jump to tell them he was hungry got their attention much better than doing the up-and-down happy dance. The first time he did it, authorities fed him, not realizing at the time that they were reinforcing his behavior. Beetlejuice redoubled his efforts by adding daytime thumping exercises.  

“I fully admit that I find satisfaction in the ability to have scared the authorities into thinking about their possible death and then to keep them up at night or interrupt their conversations when company comes over,” Beetlejuice told us in between attacks on the wall.

“At first we thought his antics were amusing, even a bit cute, but the constant disruption of our sleep has gotten old,” groused one of the authorities as she placed a water bottle on the lid. “The weight of this should give us a good night’s sleep.”

Those of us at the Review feel that after all the trauma the watery residents have endured at the hands of the authorities, some noise in the night is less than they deserve.

—The Bubbly Review  

Pineapple Upside-down Cake (PUC), previously known as Ivan the Terrible, joined his beloved Sweettart in the watery above and beyond in the great spiritual sea—just two months after her death. He complained about not feeling well and shoved his too-large body into a small hole Brain/Einstein couldn’t fit into. Brain/Einstein patrolled the area with a special kind of vicious vigilance. PUC’s fry, Squirt, tried to comfort his dad, but PUC wanted nothing to do with him and chased him off whenever he got close. The stress of Brian/Einstein’s constant bullying, the death of his wife, and not feeling well was too much for our favorite upside-down eater. RIP PUC  2015-2020.  

Little Squirt died tragically during a tank cleaning. He was the last of his family. He survived his mother for a month and a half and his father for three weeks. Little Squirt found a safe home in a hole in Beetlejuice’s cave. Brain/Einstein couldn’t get him, and Beetlejuice didn’t care. Unfortunately, authorities didn’t think to shake the cave violently to toss Little Squirt out of his safe spot when they took the cave out of the tank. He did not survive the hot water used to clean the home. RIP Little Squirt 2020-2020. We are so sorry.

Brain/Einstein is not really dead, but he is dead to us. His thuggish behavior reached a crescendo with PUC and Little Squirt’s deaths. He started to challenge Beetlejuice despite fifty-five gallons of room and despite Beetlejuice being five times bigger than him and able to swallow him whole. Something snapped in the authorities—in all of us, really. Brain/Einstein was gifted to a fish store—which was happy to take the expensive Fairy Cichlid over the phone; however, when they saw that he was fully grown, they complained about his size when the authorities handed them the sandwich bag incarcerating Brain/Einstein. They took him, of course. The fish store complaining about receiving a free Fairy Cichlid that can be sold for $24-$70 put a bad taste in the authorities’ mouths. They will not get fish from them in the future. Those of us at The Bubbly Review think that perhaps the authorities shouldn’t get fish from any store…ever. Good riddance, Brain/Einstein 2015-2020.

We keep thinking that Madame Geoffery’s cancer will be the death of her, if not that, then the ick she keeps contracting, but she’s a strong one and still full of happiness despite the ugly tumor on her dorsal fin.

—The Bubbly Review

Milktoast outgrew the tank—not a surprise since feeding fish makes them grow. Instead of buying a new tank, authorities found Milktoast a new home. They regretted this almost immediately as they tried to replace her with dwarf plecos who wouldn’t outgrow a tank.  The story goes like this:                                      

One, brown algae friend who was chomped, survived, and then taken away to new friends with an uncontrollable tick.

Two, albino dwarf pleco friend who was chewed, spat out, then gobbled down. She floats somewhere in fish heaven.

Three and Four, adorable dwarf pair—one black and one white—swam in a tank of green. They were by themselves and could hardly be seen. Authorities went on vacation and worried that the plecos might not have enough food (why yes, you’re right, they aren’t that bright). They added a vacation pellet, and when they returned, the pair was dead from too much food.

Five, cutesy little guy, plopped into the neighborhood—all wiggly and squiggly. We found him on his back quite dead three days later.

Six, Seven, and Eight, albino dwarf plecos. Seven attacked Six, don’t worry, he survived. Eight ignored the boys, and the three lived reasonably happy for some time.

Six and Eight stayed together and grew ever so slowly.

Five months later:

A new tank was built, and the three plecos moved.

 All seemed fine. Until…

Spiteful Brain/Einstein ripped Eight in half, then removed Seven’s jaw. He didn’t eat them, but they died just the same. At least Madame Geoffery cleans up her mess.

Beetlejuice ate Six.   

Dwarf plecos are not the answer.

If authorities could find Milktoast, they would.

—The Bubbly Review

The new deluxe mansion is ready for residents. The, as promised, seventy-five gallon tank is properly cycled, the usual rectangular shape with new décor, including decorative paper on the backside, and has a secure dividing wall. Moving day for the watery neighborhood happened yesterday. Madame Geoffrey will not be moving in until she’s finished with a round of medicine that authorities are hoping is ick or something and not the tumor on her fin acting up.

Moving is stressful for everyone, and this one was no exception. No fish likes being put into a net, yanked out of the water, and carried a few feet over to a new watery haven. Beetlejuice had a particularly hard time because he’s big and getting him through the oddly shaped lid opening of the old tank took some maneuvering. Our journalist, Kyle Sand, asked authorities: ‘Why not remove the weird lid and then remove Beetlejuice instead of tossing him about until finding a good angle to yank him out?’  Although we secretly suspect a desire on the authorities’ part to get low-stakes revenge on Beetlejuice for killing Sweettart, the authorities said they didn’t want to have to let Beetlejuice out of the net, remove the lid, and then recatch Beetlejuice. In short, they are either lazy, our suspicion is correct, or both. Beetlejuice says he’s considering suing authorities for emotional damages.

Upon arrival at their new home, Brain/Einstine, PUC, Beetlejuice, and Squirt (PUC’s fry) immediately found homes. Brain/Einstine grabbed a corner, PUC decided on the eyeball in a tree (making authorities nervous that he’ll get stuck because that space is far more appropriate for the size of his son), and Squirt in a hole under Beetlejuice’s large cave. We thought everyone was happy until we saw Beetlejuice, his fins in the obvious “I’m depressed” wilt as he stared at the back wall.

For the last five years, when the residents looked at the back of their tank, they saw a white wall and filter wires. When he moved into the neighborhood, Beetlejuice was only a year old, so decorative paper is a new experience for him.

He’s convinced that the paper is actually the ocean and now spends his time pushing against the glass with all his might.

“If I push hard enough, I know this glass will move. Then I can swim away from everyone.” His left eye twitched. “I can go into the unknown and not ever deal with the authorities again!”

Mr. Sand wanted to suggest that the unknown may not be better than where Beetlejuice is now, but his manic look suggested that silence was the better part of valor in this situation.

—The Bubbly Review