Y tercero, ¿qué le importa?

He steps forward, each foot placed deliberately, every swing of the leg calculated. The crowd parts to let him pass, whispers trailing in his wake. He stops in front of a teenager, who meets his gaze with pools of liquid fear. “Am I next?” they ask querulously, unable to speak above a whisper.

He merely looks back at them for a few moments, helpless both to their predicament and to stop the silence from stretching out between them. “I know not,” he answers truthfully, softly. “But we shall discuss solutions to this issue.”

“What could we possibly do?” one of the matriarchs shrills, her children hovering behind her nervously. “It rarely takes our youngest, our infants. In the past it’s taken one of you. But mostly, our teenagers get abducted. We can’t hide them forever.”

“These caverns have a limit,” adds a child next to her, nervously fidgeting as they speak. “We can only run so fast, so far. But it knows how to… to expand the caverns, to change their shape. It hunts us through the walls!”

The elder hesitates. “We… could leave,” he murmurs, mostly to himself. “I have seen what it is like outside… bright, brighter than anything I have ever seen before. But there is a world out there beyond these caverns, maybe a world where we are all safe.”

“You’re the only one who can fly!” snaps another matriarch. “Are you going to leave us behind while you chase a fantasy? Fat lot of good that did when the previous elder did the same. He got put back in this pit with the rest of us, and where is he now? Dead! Dead and gone! Do you really believe those ramblings of his?”

He sighs, his movements stilling. He remembers the stories told by the previous elder, about the bright world beyond. Strange sights, stranger smells, and the hint of… freedom. Like a sixth sense that somewhere, in a place they couldn’t see, couldn’t sense, there was a better world that they couldn’t get to. It was a feeling deep in your gut, said the previous elder, shaking as he preached. A feeling that if you try hard enough, go far enough, you’ll reach it, because it’s out there somewhere.

He left, once, briefly, when he was young, carried along on a detached chunk of the cavern walls. He saw… shapes, none of which made sense, forms he could tell were used to do something, but the purpose and origin eluded him. That was only a small piece of freedom, a fraction of what the previous elder raved about. If he ponders it for too long, he feels the truth twist his psyche, corrupting it until he no longer remembers who he is, and who he’s supposed to be.

“Is it really that bad here?” one of the youngest pipes up, staring up at their mother with confused eyes. “We get food, and water, and sometimes yummy slime. And it’s warm here!”

“Food to fatten you up and warmth to make you grow faster!” The matriarch scoffs. “It’s all a trap! We’re all dead meat here, and we’re just sitting here waiting to be eaten.”

“Can we huddle deeper?” another teen suggests, glancing towards the rest of the caverns. “If we hide where the light doesn’t penetrate, maybe it’ll leave us be.”

“No,” the elder says, shaking his head. “No, that will not do. It knows to dig. It will find you, no matter how deep you go, until it is satisfied.”

“Then—then what do we do?” squeaks the teen, panic entering their voice. “Can we do anything?”

“I do not know,” the elder answers truthfully, mournfully. “I do not know.”

Boom. The walls rattle. The whole congregation shrieks and screams, the cacophony echoing off the cavern walls as everyone scrambles over each other to run deeper into the safety of the darkness. He waits, standing still, letting the vibrations of its approach reverberate through him, harder and heavier and it shakes him to his very core until—

Light.

It sears into his vision, flooding his senses. He stares into it, unflinchingly, basking in it. There is something, somewhere, out there. The light is proof. There is more beyond these nooks and crannies they hide in. There is more.

A formless mass reaches towards him. Over him. He watches as the teenager screams, squirms in its grasp, going up and up and up, until he can no longer see them. And it returns for more, rooting around and destroying the caverns until it reaches another teenager, always digging for more. But never him.

He just watches.

*

“It’s bug day!”

The human cheerfully walks over to the tank of dubia roaches, watched by the expectant gaze of a bearded dragon. They open the tank, rummaging around inside for appropriately sized roaches. “Let’s see who we have here today…”

They pick up a piece of cardboard, flipping it over. An adult male dubia roach stares back at them, while an adolescent roach skitters past above him. “Ah, perfect.” They pluck the adolescent off the cardboard and drop it into the feeding container. The bugs scramble around inside, thwarted by the slippery plastic walls.

Once the container has seven roaches, the human stands up, dusting themself off. They reach for a few powders next to the bearded dragon’s tank, adding them to the container and swirling the bugs around until all of them are coated in a fine layer of powder. “Ready to hunt?” the human asks the beardie, opening her tank door. “Here, eat slowly—“

The beardie lunges at the roaches, immediately face deep in the tub as she crunches down on the insects. The human sighs, but laughs, shaking their head as the beardie messily gorges herself. “Anything for her.”

*

behold, the roach destroyer: Jessie the bearded dragon