Little Fish: A First Draft Begun

Here is the rough opening of my new story inspired by the lionfish, an invasive predator who evidently makes a great ceviche:

Killing him could be easy…just a matter of lowering the salinity to a certain level in the tank. Pour some faucet water in, maybe disable the monitoring contraption on the side. Heinrich’s parched cells would absorb water until they drowned and floated upside down to the surface. He’d bloat a bit and become taut at the skin, but wouldn’t explode, as I might have hoped. How satisfying to watch him dart from side to side instead, panicked, whipping his brilliantly striped spines in and out like some southern belle snapping a brisé fan. Not so easy though to spear the asshole through his gillhole with a carving knife, my least favorite knife. My father kept it sinfully sharp. All of his knives were kept in white paper sleeves and never washed in the dishwasher. Now used by the daughter he abandoned to slaughter his only friend. Heinrich the dickhead lionfish.