You're in the Wrong Place

Will they parrot themselves into something that we could never recognize as anything other than gibberish? Never even quite registering what the other says but replying for the lack of anything else.

Is that boredom?

Could aliens find that in some far off time and think to themselves "Nothing of value was really lost here." The difference between that being disappointment or tragedy is the human element. Truly experienced decisions. We don't value the medical enthusiast who lives through documentaries of other people doing the work he wishes to, we value the doctor who has done that work. One day they might be able to talk to each other with terminology that belongs to the field, but who would you want to be under the knife of?

If you looked back and learned that everything you were told was just the cold sum of a thousand lives, pictures superimposed on each other so much that you couldn't recognize a single one, would you be able to trust that any of it was intended for you?

This gender non-conforming fuck!

That's right, I'm flexing right now. I'm not respected and I'm willing to DDT someone about it.

I can't even bring myself to talk to her.

This is a form of animal sanctuary, keeping a small variety of creatures on a farm-like property. Despite this, I am a snail. Waking up, something feels wrong. The body feels off. I have been resurrected and things feel incomplete. There are many, larger creatures who have received this and are in various states of decay from life and who have different forms of payment struck from them. For this new life, a man takes my eyestalk.

No longer a snail, I am myself as a separate entity. I too live as a person, with the same caretaking responsibilities in real life. The place is quaint and small, but always messy. The rain falls often, leaving everything muddy both inside and out. There is no main building, just many smaller shacks that house a variety of animals. More in pens outside. This is not an animal sanctuary. Handling a few of the pipes on the property, I hear the man, my brother whose name is Raphael, bring a group of rambunctious teenagers through. They walk their bikes through the mud in a line past me, chattering excitedly about what they're going to do to the animals. The problem children, here to release urges and delight in a sick sadism. They are led to the sheep pens.

There is to be an inspection, or some kind of visit from an animal services offer. Raphael is cleaning house. His cleaning and my cleaning are very different. He seeks to purge and I lay worrying over the dirt and the loss. I tell my father and continue to clean, staying well away from the undead massacre. How the man handles the disposal, I don't care to know.

The foxes that I'm feeding have kits; it's life, distinctly untouched by the cycle here. Cute but so terribly tragic that they are here. Grey and orange parents, with a group of orange and grey kits. I'm particularly fond of a iron-blue colored one, different and smaller than its litter-mates. They are doomed. Returning to my paralyzed father, I find him perched like a gargoyle at the edge of his bed facing me. How he could get into that position himself is beyond me. He says something must be done about Raphael. I don't know what can be done, but I can get a gun. I should not have one, I am just as much of a danger to myself as other people with one. But, it's necessary.-

I am gathering the foxes, no just the kits as parents are sick and won't fit in the hard-shelled case I've brought along to smuggle them. They do not want to leave the adults, crying for the soft inconvenience to the future they'd have here. Four creatures is so few among the many that were here. Keeping them in the case is difficult as I'm walking it through the property, they are muffled enough to be silent but somehow this locking case isn't staying closed. Little paws yearn to be free.

Nerves strike like a hammer on hot steel, passing the earlier teens after their 'fun'. I can see the blood, splashed on their fronts and wet up the cuff of their pants. They are cleaning the sin from themselves with a garden hose as I pass, the case kept out of their line of sight by my too thin body. Their eyes can be felt boring into my back. Raphael makes monsters out of his tragedies.

Now with my father, I release the kits into the room. It feels so very claustrophobic in here, but Raphael does not enter this room. He's comfortably immobile again in bed, I do not bring up our earlier meeting. The foxes need homes, I need a gun. In a brief contact with someone I know they will be safe with, I have a place to take them. It isn't long before three are gathered, leaving the smallest one. I was ever so fond of him, and he stayed in my father's arms. Besides, Raphael never came in here.

The ride is bittersweet; I've gotten away, but the sheer weight of all these years and coming situation I'm putting myself in is crushing. Thankfully, it is easy and I don't have to explain much. Saving life and buying the volatile end of one just after. A pistol, this dark 1911.

I return to the hunched, gangly form of Raphael standing over the head of my father's bed. Time catches in my throat; he should not be here. The steel-grey kit lies motionless of the floor, and I fear that my dad lays the same. This monster turns around, ready to speak, but I'm faster and resolve strikes in the hot flash of a metal fragment.

Rather than blackness, the backs of your eyelids are obscured by bubbling seafoam like static.

Imagine suddenly paying tithes to the architects (not the constructors) of your building for every time a customer walks through the door.