Specimen

It lies still in the box, so beautiful and elegant, breathing quietly with its head out of the water.

Its skin is so smooth and radiant, makes it perfect for a specimen.

All I need to do is to inject a small tube of air into its blood vessels, and then everything will be over.

It twitches a few times, and dies without a struggle.

Open it up, take out the organs, and apply antiseptic. I carefully hang it up on the hooks at the edge of the cabin roof. What I need to do now is to wait for it to dry up.

I sit down and make myself a warm cup of tea while I wait...



This cabin belonged to my grandpa. When I was young, I lived here with him. We had a great time together, just him and me. I've never met my parents, but I never cared, because grandpa was nice to me.

We had two pigs in the yard. Grandpa loved the pigs as much as he loved me. When it's Christmas, people kill their pigs to make pork chops or pie, but grandpa refused to, he loved them too much. When the pigs got old, they fell ill, and lay in the pigpen for days without eating. Grandpa took out a knife and started sharpening it.

When grandpa killed the pigs, he cried, because the pigs were quiet like an infant.



He chopped the pigs into pieces, and hung them over a giant hearth to smoke. Along side with the pigs were some other pieces of unknown meat, all black and oily because of the heat. I couldn't tell how long they've been hung above the hearth; I was only told that I couldn't eat those.



Others couldn't understand why grandpa wouldn't eat those pigs.

But grandpa said, "Precious things are to be saved, and carefully observed."

Because of that, I became a librarian. I look through vintage books every day, and fix broken pages.

When I go home, I practice taxidermy as a hobby. Sometimes butterflies, sometimes ravens, sometimes fishes...



Then I grew up, and I met him. He was a philosophy professor. "The only way to save beauty is to end it; use death to reach its infinity" was what he said. I felt he's the only person who understood me, and I fell in love with him.



I thought about putting parts of him in the fridge; his nose, his mouth, his fingers, his muscles, his genital... But then he said, "marry me, be my wife", so I didn't.



Life after marriage was a disappointment.  We had no common language except for the baby I was about to have.

Everyday, he gets off work, and talks to my swollen belly. Maybe he loved me, maybe he loved the child, I don't know.

All I knew was, when the baby's born, it'd be the end of everything. We will have to face endless of tedious things.



The child will grow, study, marry, and have babies -

And we will get old, suspicious, spiteful, and irritable.



I suddenly realized why my parents left me - the world is too scary, you can never top it.

No wonder when grandpa died, he asked to be chopped into pieces, and hung above the hearth with his pigs and children.



After I gave birth, I immediately left the hospital with my newborn child, and went straight to the cabin where I grew up.

The cabin was dark and shabby, just the way I left it.

I peacefully stood in front of my father, mother, grandpa, and the pigs; I've never felt better.

And my baby was lying still in the box, so beautiful and elegant, breathing quietly with its head out of the water.