:: Life in the Lost Lane ::

Life in the Lost Lane
A collective of English Gentlemen

Thursday, November 21

Last night I went up to my bathroom. As I stood there, I happened to look down into the sink. A woodlouse had made its way into the basin. It struggles up out of the darkness towards the warmth of the room. It now struggles on, against the walls of the sink.

The smooth surface and the rolling plain of the porcelain make the task impossible for the crustacea.

It has a tiny body. A dark shell that hinges and flexes around a skeleton of mind numbing intricacy and scale. It is a living entity. It has no sense of my existence, or of anything other than its current physical plight.

Who mourns it when I crush it under my finger? Who will weep when the creature is no more? It has no family to speak of. When I leave it a small bloody pustule on the white cold clean porcelain, will it matter?

I do not obliterate it. I watch it move. Transfixed, I wait a moment longer. I do not kill it.

I realise that the fine legs, which support the creature, are working so hard. No human could maintain that level of effort. What is really mysterious is the fact I can see the future - in this little moment.

Under the legs and feet of the crustacean, water is amassing. A gradual build up of fluid. These little monsters need water or else they dehydrate. A woodlouse in permeable. But his louse is doomed. The water is building into a drop, a flow. It follows the louse up the edge of the sink. It cannot escape it.

Over every tiny droplet of water, every driplet of moisture the louse accumulates more. It drags it down. It tries again. It gets weighed down. It fails.

I say I saw the future. I knew then it would not escape the water and when I returned later that night, it was not there. Was it destroyed after all?
Not by me.

posted by E! @ 4:27 PM

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