The clean up

“Write a story with the lines-‘I know what you did”

The clean-up

I could hear their screams from ‘two, maybe three, blocks away; Such high pitched screams that could only be detected by ‘the likes of us’!

We could not retaliate, nor could we escape the forthcoming onslaught, being forever contained in this circle of darkness and coolness, but these restrictive conditions suited us- “this was the way that it was, this was the way that it had always been, and this was the way that we liked it,”, but instant exposure would normally soon be followed with a quick death, and for those who were younger, smaller and weaker, then exposure to the hot sunlight would cease their existence immediately, whilst those who were bigger and older, would writhe in pain for a short period, before death would soon come, after we had been drained from all of our internal moisture!

The piercing screams continued, so sharp and clear, yet easily ignored by those that cause it! The cause of these screams would usually be an innocent action, but it would be a devastating one for us, and I feared that these sounds would probably be the sad, and the final, haunting noises that I would hear!

We had done nobody any harm, and we had been peacefully and happily undetected for many months! We were all of the same ‘build’ and size, except for ‘this one individual’, who liked to be known as ‘the King’, and to be fair, he was the biggest, the strongest, and he did have the ability to look down upon his ‘fellow soldiers’, because, unlike all of us, he had ‘the means in which to fly’, and he could view, and fly high above his followers and family!

The King’, was a bigger, and a superior version of us…………but he too, would also be helpless, and hopeless in ‘this’ battle, and his dominance might only determine his early destruction?

Those chilling and high pitched screams, were now getting alarmingly closer, and I could hear their terminator in unforgiving action, ‘swishing away’ in unwanted detail, slicing through those that were in its way, and this daunting experience would soon fall upon us!

My fellow species, that were close by, were thoughtlessly, and quickly ‘cut-down’, and were easily deleted without care, and the brief introduction to life, and the start of feeling and sensing emotion had begun!

The carefree ‘swishing sounds’ from these swords, were easily deleting their existence, and our immediate response would not be a verbal one, nor would it be a violent one, but we did gather tightly together to form a unity, a bond, and, ‘what would seem’, a hopeless resistance, and I feared that it would not be one that wouldn’t have too much difficulty to overcome!

“What do we do, where do we go”? I was encased in earth and maybe that would be my protector, or was it the cause? There seemed to be no way of surviving this, and we huddled closely together, before our fate was finally met, and our panicked acquaintances were cruelly cut short!

“Together we live, and together we die,

in a world of darkness, so cool, moist and never

dry;

We lived together, ate together, and that’s how it had always

been,

and we’ve lived in total darkness, and we were rarely seen”!

We sensed our fate, and our writhing, and our puny resistance would not be a deterrent, and our natural, and our automatic resistance, that was a unison of writhing, would have no affect, but it might have suggested that, ‘at least’, our existence was not terminated without feeling like we showed some kind of resistance!

But, what would our lives ‘count for’? Were we at the very first stage to becoming a human being? Were we creating an emotion?

Fear, would be created here in these final moments, and this emotion would increase in its magnitude as we developed further along ‘this path’, and to its possible final destination- “in the human being”! We sometimes, ‘unknowingly’, pre-ordain the continual process of life, and in some circumstances the phrase- ‘what goes around …..comes around’, can be confusingly accurate!

“What have I done to deserve this, what did I possibly do,

‘some people’ believe it’s Karma, ‘catching up with you”!

Do you feel shy, is your confidence low, do you feel ‘of no

worth’,

were you badly treated as an animal, before your human

birth”?

Will wild animals ever become tame, and will hate and pain be

words from the past,

will this World forever have diseases, famines, and Wars

that’ll leave you aghast?

Are many emotions created here, and many comparisons

made,

In those human beings, whose lives may sadly fade!

Cleaning the garden patio, and reorganising the flower pots would feel rewarding, the garden looked tidier and I was happy, and I returned inside, initially feeling contented with myself, until I was greeted by my wife’s stern face, “I know what you did”, she said with brief annoyance, and then that sentence concluded with a smile, and she continued by saying, “I saw you, cruelly and mercilessly killing those poor innocent insects”, but she had failed to witness my final act, which was that I had carefully brushed up those little insects, and then they were carefully placed in the long grass, that was in the field that was beyond our garden wall, but was that act of thoughtfulness in vain, was I just throwing those little insects into the mouths of larger insects or rodents?

“The thought was there, but was it in vain,

I doubt that I would ever see those insects again,

unless they were in the mouths of larger animals I’d see,

and before they were eaten, and then swallowed maybe”!

“I could do more, I can try to restore ‘kind’,

with the words that I write for you to find!

Many, many, many years ago, when I was still wearing shorts and carrying a satchel on my way to primary school, I would hear about the deaths of some people, and that many had left great sums of money to their pets, which was instantly laughed or frowned upon, but as you near death this rotation of life becomes clearer, and this thought (“although it should extend to animal charities perhaps”!) doesn’t seem so ridiculous!