A/N: Dear readers, I was shocked and amused the number of comments regarding the goldfish suicide reference in chapter 9. I have heard your questions, and in a fit of bemused humour, have relayed the back-story behind Anderson's goldfish committing suicide.

Disclaimer: The Usual. No goldfish or cats were harmed in the writing of this story.

His name was Bob.

Bob was a goldfish. A common garden-variety goldfish of scaly golden-hue and plain fins.

Regrettably, Bob had the misfortune of coming to reside at 1615 Terrance Drive where a funny looking pathologist and his wife lived.

~221b~

It all began several weeks previously. Bob and his fiancée, Betty, were floating along, blowing bubbles together and playfully nibbling at each other's fins.

"I'm such a lucky guy, Betty," he fanned his gills, "who would have guessed that such a plain fish like me could ever end up with someone with such surpassing beauty as yourself."

"Oh, Bob!" Betty giggled and bubbles cascades to the surface of their aquarium.

"You're beautiful. Just look at your high dorsal fin, that wonderful gossamer quadruple caudal tail, not to mention your pearlscales and enchanting potbelly."

If goldfish could blush, Betty would have gone from her pale orange to a russet red right then. "I love you, Bob," she wiggled her tail fins enticingly. "Let's go play in the seaweed where's there a bit more privacy from ol' googly eyes over there."

~221b~

Bob's life was perfect. His aquarium was cleaned daily. Food twice a day. Sure, he had to share the space with other goldfish, but, all in all, he rather enjoyed the opportunity to go out and hang with his mates for a bit of manly pebble tossing. He never paid much attention to the letters on the outside of his aquarium that read "goldfish for sale" (goldfish can't read, after all). Occasionally, a distant acquaintance would mysteriously disappear out of their lives; it seemed to correlate with the annoying intrusions of a large, sweeper-net thing.

"I want to have lots of children, honey," Betty puckered her mouth and smiled at Bob. "Hundreds – a whole school of baby fish fry. Won't that be lovely?"

Bob swooned at the thought. Hundreds of fish fry? That was a lot of responsibility! He smiled mutely at Betty.

~221b~

Then IT happened.

"Mummy, I want that one!" A youngster on the opposite of the glass pointed at an egg-shaped, pearlscaled beauty lazily floating along in the aquarium.

"Bob! Bob! Help!" her cries became strangled in her throat as she gasped to breath, caught in the strange net-thing.

"NOoooooooo! Betty! Come back. Don't leave me!" Bob swam in frantic circles. He jumped as high as his rudder fin could propel him. All to no avail. Betty was gone.

Bob waited and search for her endlessly. "She's not coming back, mate," his friends informed him. "She's gone forever, just like all the other ones."

Bob's life went from fishy-go-lucky to meaningless fishdrums. He swam listlessly around the tank.

And if that wasn't enough, THE MURDER happened. Bob saw it all through the crystal clear pane of glass. The boy at the shop's cash register came up from behind and choked a man with a dog lead. It was horrible! Bob's eyes almost popped out like a fancy bubble-eye fish.

The police came and searched for clues. "No one seems to have seen anything," a uniformed man shrugged. "No witnesses once again."

His co-worker continued writing, "Pet shop killer. That's what the press are calling him. Always in pet shops. Different modes of killing but always involve some reference to pets. Crazy." He shook his head. "Wish we'd get a witness one day."

Bob wished he could be the witness. He tried communicating but of course, no one paid any attention to a goldfish.

"I'm useless all around," he flapped his fins dismally. When the sweeper net-thingy invaded the aquarium, he didn't even try to swim away. Without so much as a tail flap, he prostrated himself on the netting.

~221b~

"Look what I brought you, honey. A little souvenir from my latest case. You keep saying you want another pet." Anderson held up the plastic baggy with Bob inside and smiled proudly.

"A fish? You bought me a dumb goldfish?! You idiot!" Anderson's wife was not impressed. "You think a little fish is going to make up for all those other women? I don't think so." She packed her bags and left for her parent's house in the country that very night.

"Ah, well, I guess it's just you and me tonight, little fishy," Anderson sighed, "and Tabby of course, though I don't know where that darn cat has wandered off to now." He dumped Bob unceremoniously in a small fish bowl. A little gravel and tiny plastic fake seaweed decorated the bowel.

Bob swam in endless circles in the tiny glass bowel. Occasionally Anderson remembered to drop some fish food in his vicinity. The man was preoccupied elsewhere though. He often didn't come home. And, sometimes, when he did, he'd have a strange woman with him and Bob was the last thing on either of their minds.

Tabby occasionally stalked into the house. She survived mainly on the generous spirit of other neighbours who fed her. She never said anything, just stared. Hours of intense watching of Bob as he swam. It made the scales on his body shiver. Those eyes! He wished he could hide. He felt so exposed. The small bowel with the pathetic seaweed strand did not help.

Bob had nightmares. Although he never entered deep sleep since goldfish don't sleep the way humans do, when his mind would drift, it would inevitably turn to Betty. He'd startle with screams bubbling out of his mouth at visions of Betty being captured, Betty being tortured, Betty being strangled by a dog's chain, Betty dying… He yearned to get away from it all. To escape.

Endless days went by. Anderson forgot to change the water. The ammonia levels were intolerable. Bob was slowly suffocating – both physically and psychologically. He just couldn't keep his head below water anymore. He couldn't stay under.

Bob's scales began to fall off from The Ick. The sides of his bowel were green and slimy. Even the plastic plant wilted a bit. Bob was alone in his dark watery fears. He stopped eating. He couldn't sleep a decent fishy sleep. He was restless. His skin burned from the ammonia. His fins were ragged and rotting off. Poor Bob!

One day he spied Tabby on the floor outside his bowel. With the last of his meagre fish power, he leapt out and over the rim of his bowel… Tabby mercifully hastened his end.

~221b~

BUT… don't despair dear reader! Haven't you read, "All goldfish go to heaven?"… Bob is now in fishy heaven. After about a year, his fiancée, Betty, joined him. They are happily married with hundreds and hundreds of little baby fish fry.

And they lived happily ever after. The End.

A/N: We will be back in the hospital with Sherlock next chapter.