A Slug's Rainbow

A Slug's Rainbow

I saw the rain…

…and downward dove the bird; the beast of oh such vindictive intent, without any prejudice or any thought – condemning me to suffer. I am the meager casualty of Fate’s perverse plan, and in perpetuity my soul shall curse the winged creature that is most fowl.

For I once slid along the muddy ground, every muscle in my body shifting in communion, to one motion. But then the bird pecked, and I barely escaped my demise - for the worse. My muscles move with menace, every inch I strive to move seems like a perpetuity of pain.

Blood trickles down my side, my tentacles wane with the lethargy of my body. I’m a slug...a dead slug sliding. My fateful shadow is looming before me; just waiting for the suited time, just like the slime at my tail trails me wherever I go.

It’s showering, and all I long for is the rainbow after the storm. The soil is blemished with velvet rain falling down my lubricated exterior, flawed by a spiteful act of sadism.

The dew of the morning is absent, replaced by large droplets lying upon the flattened grass. Seems like the ideal day for a slug to die. The warmth, the delicate moistness of the dew has eluded the morning, my body being bombarded with rain instead.

The rain gradually gets heavier, and heavier, and heavier. Exploding upon impact against my tender membrane, every drop now as ruinous upon my body as hail. And then it comes, masses of ice stoning me. Why me? An innocuous slug!

And so I find refuge under the chilly shade of a fallen leaf, my body, now colored black-and-blue by the grueling tempest. Looking out into the jungle, I see the towering threads of grass, embedded in muddy earth, ice strewn as far as my eyes can see. I’ll be leaving this place soon.

Then the squall subsides. My hopes arise. The clouds dispatch, revealing the night: the storm has lasted the day. The chunks of dire ice now thawing away into the marshy earth, my gash healed by my blistering flesh. Bruised and battered, I am, but the worst is over.

Infinitesimal black points I spy moving along the horizon - ants, coming out after the storm; breathing the unsullied crisp air; taking in the beautiful devastation of the rain. But the points come towards me, closer and closer.

The day elapses and I remain, lingering under the shadows of the fallen leaf. Then abruptly the ants arrive, and I notice the blood. A velvet pattern of earth leading to the place where I lay. Murderous ants. Damn them to hell!

My optimism falls, like a bird from the sky, and I am surmounted. They see the feeble, and they see a prospect for blood and flesh. In my debility I cannot forbear. Prickly pinpoints stinging my body, poisoning me unhurriedly; I see my last visions of the jungle in the new morning radiance.

Then I see the rainbow.