Trembling With Fear 09/01/2019

Rock, Paper, Scissors

1.

The first animal belonged to the air. It was thin and white. Its edges were perfectly straight, and its corners were square.

Long vessels striped the animal’s body, spaced in horizontal rows. They carried blood, light blue. Oxygen entered these vessels by means of three hole punches, set into the left wing. Wind, swishing through the holes, ferried away carbon dioxide, in addition to excess heat.

The animal was pregnant. Its fetus, which was only half grown, produced a faint thickening, just left of center. The animal was the heavier for that. It was also the hungrier.

Now, eager to hunt, the animal descended. It adjusted its wings, flattening and refolding them, along its body’s central crease. Its motions produced soft whispers, like pages turning.

Sweeping low over the savannah grass, the animal perceived a flash of reflected light. There was a faint smell also, like hot metal.

Panicked, the animal tried to abort its dive. But it was too late.

From below, two blades ascended. The blades caught the animal along its crease, and severed its body into two equal sheets. Snap!

Along this new edge, the creature’s fetus slipped out, like a letter from an envelope. The fetus was composed of coarser fibers, not yet bleached. In the air, it quivered briefly, then went still.

2.

The blades belonged to a second animal. They were versatile appendages, hinged at the center. Held out, as now, they served as a set of sharp jaws.

Over its dead prey, the second animal snapped these jaws, over and over. To execute each snap, the animal pressed together two metal loops, which served, for the moment, as its skull. With each snap, it created a new flurry of confetti.

The animal slid these confetti pieces through a thin orifice, located at the base of the blades, right at the hinge. As the animal swallowed, its hunger began to ease.

Mid-meal, the animal heard a distant thump. Then a low rumble, as of some heavy body, beginning to roll.

With a spurt of adrenaline, the animal upended itself. In this new configuration, its appendages took on modified functions. Its jaws became its legs, and the metal loops became its hips.

The animal ran, ran, in a seesawing gallop, driven by a primal fear. Its hips compressed, then split apart; compressed, then split apart. Clack, Clack, Clack.

But, as fast as it went, the rumble behind it only became louder. Until at last, with a thunderous collision, its attacker closed the gap.

Thrown to the ground, the animal was frantic to use its blades, either as weapons or as legs. But the collision had dented the appendages–and partially fused them–and the animal could no longer pull them apart.

Rolling back, the attacker made a second pass. Then a third. Then a fourth. Then a fifth. Out of the splintered handles, the animal’s brain oozed out, bloody and molten.

For a little while, the animal’s peripheral nerves continued to send feeble instructions: twitch, twitch, twitch. But then the animal went still.

3.

     The third animal was immense and grey. Tiny crevices pocked its skin, which served to admit light and sound.

     Viewed from a distance, the animal was a sphere, almost a perfect one. It had no upper half and no lower. This was the secret of its locomotion–its ability to roll back and forth, if given a slope to start from.

Now, positioned above its prey, the animal commenced to feed. It opened its lips, stone against stone. With a scraping sound, it everted its stomach.

Sharp bits of stone lined this stomach, which served as teeth. Using these teeth, the animal ground its prey into small, glittering flecks, suited to easy absorption. Then, with a clench, it funneled the flecks into its intestines.

As it ate, the animal perceived a shadow. Then a soft whisper, as near-weightless feet alighted on its hull.

At these cues, the animal began to ready itself for a defensive roll. It pumped its abdominal muscles, initiating the time-consuming maneuvers that would be required for stomach retraction. But it was already doomed.

Over one of its skyward-facing blowholes, the animal felt an obstruction. It tried to breathe: in, out. But its attacker’s body adhered to the opening, forming a tight seal.

Denied that oxygen, the animal was unable to mobilize its ponderous body. It rocked forward, then back. Forward, then back. But it could not roll.

Then, with a soft tickle–so soft that the animal almost failed to perceive it–two venomous fibers snaked through a crevice on its hull.

After the tickle, the animal became stiffer. Then stiffer. Finally, with a few grinding beats, its heart became hard, as hard as its outer hull, and everything went dark.

4.

The fourth animal, like the first, was white and thin. It crouched above its dead prey, wings extended–ready to fly, if it were forced to.

From the body, the animal retracted its injectable fibers, which were connected to the lines of its venom-containing blood. Light blue, set against white.

The animal’s triumph at the killing was backgrounded by a deep exhaustion. Just that morning, the animal’s mate had been eaten, together with their unborn child.

The animal’s brain was not quite complex enough to experience grief. But it felt the waste of it, all the same. All of the energy that the animal had spent: in wooing, in the complicated acrobatics of in-flight copulation, and, later, in fighting off rivals…all of that had come to nothing.

Now, it would have to start over.

This late in the season, the effort would be desperate. What mates remained would be deeply imperfect creatures, with rips in their skin, or uneven edges, or misfolded wings.

But the animal had to. It had to. And it felt the urgency of that, both in the flattest part of its brainstem and also in its loins.

To survive the nuptial flight, the animal would need fuel. Fuel for the exhausting courtship dance, above and below the clouds. Fuel to withstand the shuddering mechanics of the thrust, and the loss of its remaining testicular granules.

Driven by that need, the animal had hunted. Now, to complete the harvest, it extruded a rectangular strip of tissue, coated in a corrosive saliva.

At the blowhole, where the prey’s hull was weakest, the animal dabbed this strip. And then it licked and it licked, with slow caustic strokes, enough to dissolve the stone.

The End