Future visitors to my apartment should proceed with caution - approach the fish tanks at the risk of your disappearance. You just might get picked up through the tear in the timestream and be whisked away to an alternate universe.

At least that is the only explanation I can can think of to explain what just occurred last night.

I've had a lovely vistor from North Carolina via Israel, taliakit. She and I took a nice stroll through the city on Sunday, stopping off at my favorite aquarium store in Murray Hill. There, I found this beautiful loach - long, brown mottled with crisp gold, perky and active. I spent $20 for this fish - the most I have ever spent for an individual fish.

I did everything I was supposed to do to introduce it into its new home. Took my time, did everything right. Eventually, I released him from the bag, and a-swimming he went. He seemed right at home, swimming along with my 3 clown loaches.

I went to bed watching him swim, enjoying my new resident.

Then I came back from work last night. And the fish was gone.

I mean, gone. Nowhere to be found. Dissapeared without a trace. It's as if he was never purchased in the first place. No corpse, no bones, so I ruled out being eaten. I searched every hiding spot, raked the gravel, took out plants and the cave. Nothing. I searched underneath all the nearby furniture, tried to project his trajectory if he were to jump out of the tank for freedom.

Nothing.

There simply is no fish. And the other fish swim by without a care in the world. I have both taliakit and eisa as my witnesses - there was no new fish.

Clearly, he is in another dimension. Taken away by some cosmic accident.

 I hope he's having fun.