I do declare the situation to be a horrible mess. The problem is not that she was communicating with me again, which in and of itself has caused many a problems for me and my family, but of what she was actually saying to me. “My soul has an emptiness to it, as the ocean has its depths,” she says. I thought of it as perhaps ironic, coming from her. Maybe even clever, the sly rat. Of all the things she could speak out about, it would be the simmering of the soul. This was troubling me, being a man of appreciable rational. I know the nature and right societal places of some things, and a lady such as herself should not be having these kinds of problems. I sat down next to her containment cell.
“Listen sugar, I reckon something is wrong. That is fine; I can understand that. Every soul is its own cage - I can conceive of that within my ownself. But you cannot be doing this to me again, Miss Shelley Parkfield. I cannot handle you all by myself. I go around telling folks about this and that, they are going to think that I am off my rocker. I am not going down that road again with you, darlin’. Please, listen to what I am saying to you. Understand. Sympathize.”
In all of this babbling, she did not display the least amount of outward emotional investment in what I was saying. Her stoic nature unsettled. She just sat, staring, staring. Her big, obsidian eyes downright bore into a man’s soul. They alluded to a deep, archaic knowledge of things. I now figure that whatever was there before long made for greener pastures, leaving nothing but those placid husks in its place.
“Open the door,” she said, her voice neutral and even.
Her voice also carried soft tones to it.
Everything she said had a soft, airy feel to it. It was the voice of an android accented with honey. I reckon the nature of the allure came from some kind of psychological comfort thing. It harkened back to something long forgotten, if you’re catching on to what I mean. Maybe it was of your momma’s sweet little nothings being cooed into your little kid ears, as your world fell apart from around you for the fourth time since breakfast. Or more than that, perhaps it was just a promise of innocence lost, returned. Whatever it was, it had a deeply personal and profound affect. I am sure it was more perceived warmth of spirit than any kind of mysticism.
“You’re safe. It’s fine, I’m not how I used to be…how I used to be…back then. Back before the sour apple…” she stopped. Now, you must understand, this here pause of hers was not quite long enough for me to make note of it at the time, but it was long enough so that I now suspect that she was trying to regain her composure. “Sour apple rehabilitation. I am told that it has a ninety percent succ- oh yes, thank you. See? It’s fine. Relax.”
She began to approach me. Her gait was more of a cautious waddle than anything else. Her front was taking one step at a time, each step deliberate. Her rear was making due with its mechanical grace, each step stunted.
“Eat a pellet, make a pellet,” she sighed audibly, presumably for no other’s benefit than mine, as she maneuvered through her own waste. Piles of defecation. Crystallized urine. Nobody had bothered themselves enough to clean her cage in weeks. It was an evil thing to do. Seeing her like that broke my cold heart up like the sun breaks the night.
“Miss Shelley Parkfield, you are in quite the rut here. I do not know of matters of the heart, for I am but a southernly gentleman, but I do know of matters of cleanliness. If I may, Miss Shelley Parkfield, may I clean your cage?”
She did not feel so compelled to respond to me direct-like. Instead of articulating however she so felt on the issue, she did not say. She reached the front of the cage. The door was utterly open and useless as a defense, laying flat against the ground. I do say that I fidgeted a little, when she put her first paw on the threshold of cage and freedom. I did nothing. She put the other. I reckon that I should be ashamed of not moving to stop her, but shame only gets a man so far. When she had assured herself that her shenanigans were not facing any threat, she did about the damned nearest last thing I figured she would do. She stretched her torso out to a great length, and she began to sniff. I suppose that folk of her type have a higher predilection to appreciating inhalation than humans do.
By any rate, when she had her fill, she peered up at me. It was slow, but it was particular. She took her time. She had wanted to me to know just exactly she was up to at this point. I matched her look, not straying in the least. Her eyes had the same illustrious sheen they had, from all of those years ago. I did not know what to say. There she was, stretching about half of her mass into freedom (and supporting it all as well, mind you, she was a girl of considerable girth) well aware that she could break free at any time, but instead, all she did was look at me. I felt dizzy, like I was punched right in the head. I tried to speak, but suddenly I had cotton mouth. Opening my mouth and flexing my tongue here and there was unproductive.
Now, do not misunderstand me here. I want to get on even grounds - it’s my job as story teller to tell the tale whole, as it happened. It was not love, for I do not know what that is, but it was of the shock of seeing her eyes whole, for what they really are. Shelley and folks of her kind do not have pupils. I got down real close, and it was one solid mass. I have since learned from a preacher friend of mine that they aren’t blessed with the same plethora of color vision as man is. That is neither here nor there, but it helped me understand her world a little bit better. It helped me conceive of her worldview a bit more, if I may be so bold.
She peered into my eyes for just a few moments before retreating back wholly into the cage. Her gaze remained steady on mine. She held out for just a few more seconds before determining how exactly she was going to pursue conversation with me. She blinked, then began.
“My great aunt Mitzi-doma used to tell me tales. There were great tales, there were little tales, but they all held significance. It was tradition. It was telling stories that would inform our decisions later in life. Sometimes, what was being said didn’t matter as much as what was not being said. Other times, it was merely the togetherness that served a purpose. Purpose,” she blinked again. Before this encounter, I had not seen her blink once. In the time it took me to assimilate this into my cognitive perception, she had ruminated where to go next. It was the most indecisive I had ever seen her.
“Coprophagia. What purpose does this serve, eating our own defecation? I am told that it’s a resonance of times long gone. Mitzi-doma explained this as a way for us to remember our past. Years ago, we were a carnivorous tribe of people. We were feared, we were revered. We were at the top. We saw everything below us as dung, not worth anything. So we ate them, knowing that that was the ultimate gift conceivable. Not a token sacrifice, or any nature of agricultural offerings, but their bodies’ itself.
Over time, our food supply dwindled. Hamsters were our favorite, and for unspecified political reasons, they migrated south. We were soon left with either the undesirable gerbil to feed on, or starve. My kind are a versatile people. We can understand when the climate has changed, when the game has changed. We adapted. We became vegans, for what essentially came down to PR reasons. It was a complex situation with a beautifully simple solution. The hamsters would only return upon being respected and treated as equals. That way, we could work together for a new future. We needed their horticultural technology, for all we had were weapons of war. To this day, we eat our own poop to remember the horrors and injustices we inflicted on our hamster friends in the past.”
I now understood. My guinea pig wanted me to return the hamster to Petco. The crazy fucker.
