Smorgasbord
I’m in the deepest, darkest corner of the tank. The others are lazily swimming around in the water; swimming in the sense that they are mindlessly floating, bumping into each other, and agitating their already bruised bodies with more scars than they could count. We are all scarred and bruised. The pain is the only company we willingly keep as we are far too sick of each other to do anything else than acknowledge the other’s existence while ignoring the presence.
Why can I not ignore my pain the way I can them? It is not just my tortured flesh that brings me down with furious agony; it’s the others’ lack of awareness as well. Probably I would be better off without it myself, if I could help it, that is. I feel resentful for my fellow lobsters as they function only at the bare minimum, exist without a thought, without a conscience. They eat like starving little pets, not realizing that they are being fattened for the purpose of fattening others. They are not the kings and queens of the vast water tank but the weakest link in the food chain, mere delicacies on the Humans’ smorgasbord. Oh, the Humans... If I resented my species, I could not find a word to describe how I felt towards them. They call themselves People; men and women, and children. They come near the tank like schools of fish, all so dissimilar but far too alike for the likes of me to tell them apart. Some are tall, some are tiny, but most of them are fat as their flesh prospered on ours. Their pink paws were the worst of all their bizarre, bare fleshed bodies. When you sit in the tank and see it coming you know that there will be one less of us for the night, just for the paw to replace the missing fellow later on with an unsuspecting newbie.
As the top of the tank revealed the Human, The Chef they call it, a huge, cruel paw appeared, searching, grasping for the next victim. I thrust myself away from the bottom of the tank and swam as fast as my tiny, tired, legs could allow me. Today, I had to be the chosen one as I was prepared for whatever was to come. The fear of death had been beaten out of my battered body long ago, thus, the thought of sweet release was already a holy balm to my weathered soul. The moment I victoriously reached the cruel appendage, it dared to changed direction and grabbed onto the largest lobster in the tank, ignoring the desperate, thin lobster I was. I lost, again. For a while, the anger that filled me was so elemental, so devastating that I felt more terrified of myself, than of my own situation. Then just as suddenly as it came, the anger left me, as did my strength, leaving me with the void of unfulfilled destiny. Only the furious and consistent roar of my beating heart was the proof of my continuing existence.
Slowly, the serene silence of the water swept away my emptiness, replacing it with the worst, likely most permanent feeling I was to ever feel - resignation. With no hope at all and more future than I wished to think of, I settled back at my place in the deepest, darkest corner of the tank.