Soliloquy Of A Mammal
From beneath an ancient rock, sat a small creature with red eyes. The beady, paranoid eyes looked out from the stony shelter at the countryside spread out before them. Trees, bushes and ferns adorned the prehistoric landscape under a cloudless blue sky. Mountains, whose jagged peaks seemed to stab the heavens, lined the horizon like the jewels of a crown.
The frightened, paranoid eyes darted about the peaceful scene searching for signs of the beasts that prowled the plain.
But there was nothing.
The small creature dared to move into the sunlight, revealing a furry rodent snout. The small pink nose that sat at the end of the snout sniffed the air, searching for the odor of those beasts that prowled the plains. Instead he found the mingling aromas of morning dew and blossoming flowers.
A little black paw pressed itself against the earth, searching for the tremors that came in the wake of the thunderous footsteps of the beasts that prowled the plain, but felt nothing, save for dirt and pebbles collecting between his toes.
Finally, from beneath the ancient rock, a small squeaky voice, a voice rarely used, for fear of giving itself away, spoke two excited words: “They’re gone.”
From beneath the ancient rock, crawled out the small, furry body of a prehistoric rodent. In the light of the new day, the rodent stood up in the open plain, stretching his joints that had become cramped from years of hiding in the dark pits of the earth.
The little pink nose breathed in the morning air; so much fresher than the musky, stuffy air, of his shelters of dirt and stone. His beady eyes winced at the brilliant light he’d stayed out of for fear of being spotted.
“They’re all gone!”
A gust of warm wind rippled through his fur, and he gazed into the empty plain. How inviting it now seemed.
“It’s over!” he said to the empty plain. “No longer must I cower in the dirt, waiting to be crushed under the weight of some reptilian monstrosity!”
“No longer when I feel a warm breeze will I freeze in terror that it might be the hot breath that escapes through the jagged jaws of a scaly snout.”
“No longer need I lie restlessly at night, fearful of what tomorrow might bring!”
“Yes! After eons upon eons, the reign of the terrible lizards has ended! And we, the mammalian oppressed, are free from their tyrannical chains!”
“Free!” clear tears began to drip down the rodent’s furry snout as he spoke the words that had been waiting inside him for so long.
“To graze in their fields! To drink from their springs! To make the world ours! Yes!” He looked upon the field before him through watery eyes, and his mind filled with the possibilities for the future.
The rodent looked up to the sky above him, and lifted his small fist to it.
“Where once stomped the brutish reptiles, a new order shall be formed-”
A spear of stone and wood penetrated the rodent chest, cutting short his soliloquy.
A five fingered hand lifted the injured creature into the air, and a pair of white and brown eyes that sat beneath a flat brow examined it. The red eyes of the dying rodent looked upon their attacker. There was no mistaking; it was a beast that prowled the plain.
But this one was different, for in place of pebbly scales was soft flesh. Where one would expect the ridges and spikes of a lizard, sat thick wads of hair that sprouted from the body, like leaves from a tree.
He was a mammal like the rodent brother he now held limply in his hands, except in one way; the eyes. The same menacing, yet indifferent eyes of the terrible lizards, now stared back at the rodent, from this armed mammal.
The beast tossed the rodent to the ground, and walked into the field below. Beady dying eyes that had been stained with bloody tears watched as other mammals with spears began to congregate in the plains. He looked down at the vertical slit that now sat on his torso.
Spread eagle on the dirty earth, he finished his soliloquy, his final words pouring from his mouth with the blood that dripped from his lips.
“And the mammals shall reign supreme.”
This story can also be found in the short fiction collection, Symphony of Humanity.
