Rats
It's scurrying in my hand and I believe when I die I'll wash up on a shore, across the abyssal tide of space it awaits me and when it's my time i'll be confronted by a garden of eyes, all in despair and I'll recognize each pair as the eyes of someone i hurt, the pain frozen upon them with a glossy finish. I don't believe this because a church told me to, or because it was taught to me by my mentors in childhood, I believe it because it forces me to be better. I've never once considered if this garden will have the eyes of animals but now that I have the rat that's been keeping me awake for weeks in one hand, and a giant rusty nail in the other I don't know what the right thing is. Do I kill it now in the quickest and most painless way or do I give it a chance in nature where it will likely be killed within days. A hawk would grab it with its talons and scrape its insides out or maybe it'll just pick it up and let it plummet from 2000 feet high before swooping down to devour it. A snake would sneak up on it from the tall grass and snap through the rodents bones with its fangs, injecting poison and holding it still until it slowly dies, decaying while still breathing. The snake might even swallow it whole if it's big enough, and lets say it lives through the fall and makes it to winter just to get cannibalized by its own kind in a dirty pit or maybe it's colony will sneak into my house for warmth and one night while they all sleep together their tails will get tangled up and it'll starve to death with its friends and family. Despite the cruelty of nature I still find it less depressing than the man made world, instead of searching for food we search for purpose, instead of searching for a cave to sleep we search for a job and spend years slaving away just to afford a home owned by us. I know this life is worse because given the chance I'd snuff the life out of every child below the age of three to save them from the misery of being all alone in a broken down wood cabin where my lives greatest achievement was catching a rat, I honestly envy him. In my frustration I'd accidentally squeezed the rat to death, its head popping off entirely, my palm covered in red and one of its eyes caught between my anorexic skin and my boney collar bone. And yet despite the disgusting condition of my body now I feel nothing but relief. If I'd let the rat live I'd live with the guilt of knowing its painful death was inevitable. If I'd killed the rat to save it from despair it would only make sense I kill myself to save myself from even worse misery and condemn myself to the garden of eyes where the rodents eyes would stare at me in pain for eternity.
