# The System

Author: Simmer
Tags: Death, Drama, Foodchain, Philosophy

Hello everyone, I have an unusually shorter-than-short short story coming out today. I hope you like it! I'm trying to get out of the abstract-super highbrow semi-hipster philosophical vibe a little. I'd like to make something a little more action-focused soon, but I'm lacking a little inspiration now... If you have any ideas you would like me to steal, let me know :)

Once upon a time, there was a rock,
indiscernible from millions of other rocks in the world, with approximately two
hundred woodlice living underneath it. Woodlice that don't live in wood (as
their name would suggest) sound interesting. They are not. They sat there,
doing whatever it is that woodlice do before their rock is lifted by a curious
passer-by. Most of them were perfectly content. One was not. 
 
Me, he thought one day.
I'm thinking, he thought immediately
afterwards.    
 
Something had changed. It could not be seen by an outside observer, even if
there had been light underneath the rock, and it could not be felt, not even by
the other woodlouse sitting right on top of him at that very moment to conserve
heat. But if this little louse had had adrenal glands, his body temperature
might have risen a tiny bit at that particular moment.
 
Sheer terror set in as he realized that although
he could move across the ground for as far and long as he wanted (he could not
possibly imagine the scale of the rock), there was a surface above him that he
would never be able to penetrate and he suddenly felt what we would call
trapped.
 
How wonderful it would be if the rock would
disappear, he thought, and he imagined the beauty of the world
above as he cursed and raged at his misfortune, the injustice of being born and
having to live his life in this two-dimensional cage. He thought and wept about
it every minute of every day. No wonder he felt it was all somehow his fault
when one day, the rock did disappear at the hands of a bored toddler. One by
one, the insects dried up in the sun, and peacefully departed the world without
having ever seen it. The little thinking louse was, as he felt death approach,
one day lifted from the ground by an incredible force.
Either I have been sufficiently punished for my
arrogance, and this is what dying is like, he thought, or
this is only the beginning of my atonement. In fact neither was true.
He became lunch for a young sparrow, that lived in an oak with his two
siblings. 
 
His favorite part of the day was not when his parents came home to feed
them, but when they left. He never missed an opportunity  to admire their
powerful backs, their smooth wings that curved so subtly to provide optimal
lift. The sparrow liked to look up at the sky and watch the grown birds dancing
through the treetops. They were weightless, free to come and go as they
pleased, while he was bound to the nest by his big, clumsy body. 
 There's no way, he thought, I can ever be like them. I will
never be so light and yet so strong, so elegant and so fast. I'll have to leave
here soon, to hunt and hide and nest myself. But how? His siblings never doubted. They had full confidence in their DNA.
Eventually, they would be able to do all that, and more, no matter how bald and
helpless they were now. Chicks became birds, whether they wanted to or not.
That was the way it had always been, and it would always be. His parents
told him the stories of their own youth, that he was too young to be
worrying and how everything was going to be all right, wait and see. The
young sparrow stopped trying to explain why he was different from all the other
nervous little birds throughout history that had all turned out all right in
the end. He waited, but never saw.  
 
Fluffy was old, but not completely off his game yet. Sparrows can give one
some trouble, so he waited for about fifteen minutes until the parents were
both gone before raiding the nest. Maybe he'd come back some time later and try
his luck with the adults. In the past, he would have immediately gone for it
without hesitation, but time had made his joints creaky and his teeth blunt.
Old men must learn to be patient if they want to become even older. These
little excursions in the yard were the favorite part of his otherwise boring
day. 
 
Fluffy yawned and turned his head to the sunset.
He lay on the porch every evening, wondering how many suns he had outlived
already and how many he had left. Old cats don't constantly feel the need to
remind the rest of the world of their age like old people do. They just assess
the damage now and then. Fluffy knew he was lucky in that regard. Most of his
interior still worked fine, of the majority of embarrassing problems that
tomcats his age could suffer from he had been spared. No bowel-related
unpleasantness, no prostate trouble. Yet. He gave so much attention to himself
nowadays, as if he was any more important than that of the hatchling he had
murdered. Or that of the Rottweiler from across the street who had been hit by
a semi last week. The big picture had outgrown him, in a sense. He was too
tired to consider himself with the world at large. 
 
Fluffy was in good health, but not immune to the bane of pets that was feared
equally by all. Lice. On the back of his neck, Fluffy had taken on a stowaway
during a stroll in the bushes. The insect had managed to attach itself in the
unluckiest of places. the back of the neck is one of the rare spots where even
cats can't scratch. Frolicking in gravel might help sometimes, but never
for long. If a louse clings on to where he wants to stay, they're harder to get
rid of than most brain parasites.
 
Chugga-chugga, the jackpot had been won from the
opposite perspective. The louse had drank two times his bodyweight in blood
already and was just working on his third. That was his life. Here and now. He
didn't have the brainpower to visualize a future, all he knew was sparsity and
plenty, interchangeable at a moment's notice. 


And there was now plenty, so he gorged himself and gorged himself and the louse
was happy in the warm and clammy darkness. His body began to swell, so weighed
down by blood and joy he couldn't have moved if he wanted to. 
 
But was this the only way it had ever been? Had he not once been small, and
light, and free, and hungry? Compared to anything else he had ever experienced,
this thought was so fascinating he stopped sucking for a fraction of a second.
That young louse waiting for his big break was not someone else, it was him.
And yet here he was, round and content. 
Apparently, staying in one place took a lot more effort than he thought, (what
an informative day!) because the next moment, he wasn't there anymore. The
blades of grass rose up to the sky. The thumping footsteps of his former host
moved farther and farther away. So that's
life, he thought. One moment you're
in paradise, then you accidentally let go of a hair and you're back to zero.  
 
It was getting dark now. The louse considered climbing up a blade of grass
to look around. How much energy would that take? He had a stomach full of blood
that would last him... weeks? Longer? Maybe tomorrow. Night gathered around him,
but he wasn't scared. In fact, if he had been anatomically able to smile, he
might have. He'd be all right. Hadn't he been right before?
 

Source: https://sofurry.com/view/885898