Melancholy Marine
I was the only one to see him. He stood so still. He stood so small. He stood so precious. I could only see his profile but I remember his eye omniscient and dark. I glanced over with a crooked smile. He looked nowhere. My hand held up my head, my eyes peering transfixed on the creature. Slowly he turned his fluffy face and I gasped. I noticed his eye socket protruding from his face, his fur ripped, smashed. He started twitching and I started screaming. "OH NO! OH NO!" My eyes squinted and worried wrinkles enveloped my forehead. He started to twitch more, and more, and more, conveying an endless struggle. And the more he twitched, the more I watched, and the more I watched, the more my insides twisted and cringed. I thought he was going to stop, but he didn't. He just didn't. He just kept jerking and trembling. "PLEASE STOP", I yelled "PLEASE STOP!" But my words were as useless as a cry from the deep sea. I felt like I was sinking, farther, farther down. And each gasp filled my lungs with water, and while I watched my eyes stung with chlorine. We were suffering, suffering, suffering, both him and I. I wished to relieve his pain. I watched crimson; I watched rust; I watched wine drip from mangled wounds. He was distant and disjointed. My insides kept tightening with agony. I was twisting, twisting tighter and tighter while goosebumps ran across the landscape of my forearms. I closed my distressed eyelids and cringed, my jaw clamping tight. Then I shouted, "PLEASE, PLEASE LORD LET HIM NOT SUFFER ANYMORE". My screaming paired with his silence made the world seem cold. It was a cold deep sea collapsing in my lungs. And I didn't want him to just sit by the side of the road, half destroyed, half frozen for cars to gawk at him while he remained suffering to death. His fluff delicately moving in the breeze, his tiny soft paws were tucked under his umber fur. His left side seemed ordinary, but the right was repulsive. He just twitched like he was enduring multiple seizures over and over and over, and his body was in shock and so close to the road and I wanted to kill him to stop the pain. I wanted to kill to stop the pain. We want to kill to stop the pain. I sat in idol traffic dwelling over the critter's aches I could not relieve. The car moved forward and I remained silent from behind the glass for six years.
-grace gutekanst
