Horseshoe Crab

The horseshoe crab is struggling. I'm sure that if I spoke horseshoe crab, I would hear screams and pleadings. After all I'm holding it up to the fire on the beach. Aren't I cruel? Hideously cruel. I mean I've thrown twelve bottles of empty beer into the ocean. With every throw I hoped a whale would choke. I scratched my name and address into the glass, painstakingly. I wanted to be on the news. I wanted to be that bastard who choked a whale to death with an empty beer bottle.

Now look at me, now I'm just a fuck-up holding a horseshoe crab up to a campfire on the beach. How cruel.

The ocean is rolling in. It forms a nice background for the sizzles and pops. The crackle as the shell gets smaller and the insides of the horseshoe crab get larger, the snap as the shell cracks; these are the noises that I focus on over the endless chorus of waves coming in and going out.

I drove away all my friends this way.

Not by roasting horseshoe crabs. Not at all. I'm sure they wouldn't care. They've all got kids and careers and lives, they wouldn't care about one little horseshoe crab.

No I drove everyone away by holding myself over the fire. I tried to make them all hear the sizzles and pops. I wanted them to hear the crackle as the shell of my life got smaller and my insides forced themselves out through the cracks.

I'm not sure when the final pop happened, but now here I am alone on the beach. I'm staring up at the moon, and I wish I could find a way to hold it over a fire. I want to hear what happens to the moon when it starts cracking. How cruel am I?

I've tried to keep a steady balance, make sure no one loved me too much. I held everyone at a distance, even when I wanted them all to gather around and throw up their lunches at the sounds of my insides coming out. I wanted to turn their stomachs with the things I told them. I wanted to be the most fucked up of fuck-ups. I wanted a crown. I wanted a fucked up throne. because in my own little beach-combing mind I'm the god damned king of fucking-up.

I pissed away anything that ever meant something to me. That or someone took it away from me.

It all makes sense though. Especially when I look at the way the crab"s legs curl up in on themselves when the flame hits them. I want them to curl so far inward that they pierce the shell even further. I want the crab to rip off its own carapace in its dying struggles. Those meaningless dying struggles.

But here I am alone on the beach. Holding a crab over a fire. Listening to the pop and sizzle of something that isn't even edible. I'm watching the waves roll in, distorting the moon on the water. I'm wondering why I ever though ti was a good idea to be a horseshoe crab.