Moving to a new country!

Haven't had a chance to write anything in the last few months because I am monstrously lazy, am going to live on a different continent AGAIN and have yet to establish readers what I can disappoint when I don't update. Considering the latter, I don't know why I'm writing this anyway. I will write again once I'm a penniless vagrant in California. Ah, such high hopes.

The Secret Lives of Small Animals #3 - Thomas the Gecko

What is The Secret Lives of Small Animals?

Thomas the gecko never could rid himself of his strange dreams. Each night, Thomas dreamt of a past which, in his waking life, he was unable to comprehend. By morning, Thomas would lie awake staring at the ceiling with an unbearable sense of loss eating at his insides. He would carry this sense of loss with him from his bed to the breakfast table where he had his morning coffee, after which it would be dissolved by the black liquid and forgotten. By the time Thomas was ready for morning prayers, having put on his freshly cleaned vestments, he would no longer be able to recall his dreams from the night before, nor would he be able to recall that he couldn’t recall them. Compared to his waking moments, Thomas’ disposition would have morphed into a complete opposite as he stepped through the temple gates. Listening to the chanting of the younger initiates, Thomas would begin his morning duties with a stern seriousness that was unrivalled by all his predecessors. It was in this way, this unwavering routine, that Thomas was able to divide his life cleanly in two. During the day, he was the Patriarch that held the unrelenting sway over hundreds of devout followers; but in his sleep, he was trapped in the unrelenting grip of the past. It was only through the contortions of his own mind that Thomas was able to keep each half of his life separate and unaware of the other. If he had known himself better, known more of this conflict within him between his dreams and his waking life, Thomas would certainly not have been able to remain sane.

Despite the countless years stretching back into a dull oblivion of memory, Thomas still managed to feel shivers along his scales during every morning ceremony. As he stood at the altar, looking down at the countless faces staring up at him, Thomas could feel the happiness, the contentment and the love swelling up within the room. With each word he spoke, Thomas knew he was giving their lives meaning. The feeling that surged through his heart caused his cold blood to ignite. For a moment, Thomas felt that the burning under his scales would cause his whole body to burst into glorious, righteous flame. He could almost see himself as an avatar rising up above their heads, leading them along a path to salvation that only he could see. Upon his command to rise, the assembly rose. Upon his command to sing, the assembly sang. But Thomas did not see himself as a ruler. He knew that just as these people needed him to transmit salvation to them, Thomas needed these people to listen to his words. His task, in its very essence, was to deliver to these people; appease them, satisfy them. He saw them as fundamental to his existence. He saw himself as being amongst them, tied to them; almost burdened by his leadership of them. In his mind, Thomas was more a servant than a ruler. He asked for nothing in return, being content with his station within the church; completely defined by it. His mind was set, both in his actions and in books of ancient lore written by countless that came before him, and he could see clearly the course of the remainder of his life. Thomas never expected anything else to happen to him. Thomas was blissfully unaware of his past’s, as of yet, failed attempts at haunting him.

At night, Thomas dreamt of rotting wood. Within the soft underbelly of the discarded corpse of a tree trunk, Thomas waited. The air was thick and heavy. Dampness leaked out of every inch of his tiny burrow. Sweat clung to Thomas’ face but he lay still, meditative. He could hear rattling along the surface and he knew that soon he would have to make a desperate dash for food. His brain felt electric as the adrenaline began to move through his body. The tapping sound that was coming from outside began to grow louder and more steady. His claws sank, slow and smooth, further into the soft and pungent wood in anticipation. Thomas extended his forked tongue into the air to catch the scent of his prey; tasted the sweetness that hung there. The tapping on the outside of his lair grew erratic and showed signs of confusion. Thomas coiled his body into a tight knot, ready to spring. It wasn’t long before the tapping above Thomas’ head grew in determination, haplessly heading towards him. Just as the faintest shudders could be felt against the crown of his head, tiny patters with increasing tempo, Thomas darted his tongue in and out one last time. His decisions for what to do next were split into two: act now and give chase, or starve. Thomas crouched low and levelled his head, the tension increasing throughout his body. His eyes lined up with the diffused light that reached him, through moss and fungus, in his hole. As the tapping feet crossed over his hiding place, Thomas leapt towards the daylight. He burst through the surface in an explosion of damp wood and launched himself forward. The world lay below Thomas, green pieces of moss floating peacefully down to it like descending angels, and the rotten trunk lay above him; gravity was meaningless. Thomas’ shadow eclipsed his prey as he bore down upon it. It looked back into his face, shuddering, and saw only the open mouth and the eyes red with hunger.

The congregation of believers made their slow way out of the temple to the sound of coins dropped into collection boxes. The hushed tones reached Thomas’ ears and gave him reason to smile. He did have the desire to remain longer and be amongst his people, but that day was an especially important one. Duty demanded his presence amongst the clergy. According to church canon Thomas, as Patriarch, was not allowed to be present at any of the divining rituals of the Mystics. His presence was only required once every three years, when a new Herald was chosen. At that time, Thomas would go out amongst his followers to reveal to them the face of the chosen Herald. And so it was through Thomas that the Mystics of the church, otherwise shrouded in mystery and locked away from the public, spoke. Although no one person was ever allowed to know every detail of the church, for such as act was considered heresy, it was towards Thomas that all information flowed from the myriad groups housed within the temple. As he descended the ancient stone stairway Thomas could feel the culmination of his duty to the followers of the church. Soon the most important ceremony of the church would be upon them and the celebration would hopefully be as joyous as it was three years before. Entering the Mystic’s chamber, the dull red light of the rubies in the centre statue’s eyes was the first thing to capture Thomas’ attention. He imagined the statues would always amaze him, perched around the ancient room; the deepest part of the temple. And while each statue was an ancient and sacred treasure of the church, fully worthy of his awe, it was the soft red light emanating from the statue raised on the dais in the centre of the room that drew him inwards. The far corner of the room opened up to a pit, which Thomas was loathe to go near as he moved closer to the great statue and cloaked beings that stood silent around it. The statue was hideous and beautiful, terrifying and alluring; it appeared as every dichotomy united as one. It bent the mind towards and around it. Its eyes were blood red rubies, its mouth wide open to represent its eternal hunger and its claws intricately chiselled out of the mysterious rock it was carved from. It loomed high above the clergy, dwarfing Thomas. It towered, like the greatest and most powerful thing to ever exist; this statue of the Rock Monitor Lizard. Thomas bowed his head slightly to the image of his reptilian god.

In a dream, Thomas clung comfortably sideways to a wall. The sharp crack of chitin echoed in the soft rain that fell around him. As he swallowed back a full mouth of food, Thomas felt satisfaction well throughout his tired body. Choosing to ignore the wound in his side, Thomas crawled down and slunk into a hole in the base of the wall. Dry, safe and warm for a moment, Thomas dozed quietly. Although his current surroundings had been very rewarding so far, he still worried frantically about his next meal. Thomas had begun to wonder about the purpose of his life; if it truly was to go blindly from meal to meal. This unbearable thought caused agitation within Thomas. His hunger was his worst enemy, but satisfying his hunger was his life’s greatest pleasure. These thoughts moved inside Thomas’ mind as he became weary of his day’s hunting and slowly began to doze closer and closer to sleep. His day would have played out peacefully had it not been for the loud crash of a gong he heard in the distance. Thomas stirred, opened one eye and glanced around in weary confusion. The second crash of sound caused Thomas to leave his wall and venture out into the rain. Driven mostly by curiosity, Thomas climbed back up the sheer slope of the wall. As he neared the top, he was able to hear the faint sound of voices rising up in the rain. Somewhere over the wall, a group of people were chanting. Though it had begun softly, it had reached louder and louder upwards over the buildings of the village. Thomas felt a deep fear creep up his scales in unison with his own creeping up the town walls. He had never entered into the village, dreading civilisation in all forms and instead taking solace in the abundant wilds surrounding it. But now, for reasons far beyond him, Thomas was drawn to the source of the sound. He tried to shake it off as he looked out from the wall. To him, the expanse of buildings lying before and below him was like a world that he did not belong in, that he was not a part of. But still the chanting haunted him. Each sound beckoned him, drew him forwards. Finally, Thomas could not resist the siren’s chant any longer. He looked down at his feet. One had somehow become planted on the other side of the wall, over the edge. Thomas stared down at the five toes, each stuck powerfully in place by a million microscopic reactions. To his horror, Thomas could not release his foot from its place. It told him that his purpose lay in front of him.

To say it was a rare event in the history of the church was understatement. The last written record of the chosen Herald being a high ranked member of the church, and not just coming from amongst the devout followers, was well over five hundred years ago. So when Thomas, the Patriarch himself, was chosen it caused waves of dissention to run through the ecclesiastic foundations of the church. Certain councils argued in hushed whispers that the Mystics must have surely made a mistake, but to do so aloud would have meant banishment from the church. Some called it a plot against Thomas; others called it an omen of a new era and rejoiced. Despite all voices crying out in confusion over what it all could mean, there was one thing that everyone could agree on: they would need a new Patriarch. Although Thomas remained serenely silent on the matter, in truth he was supremely shocked. Thomas felt the stability of his life, the predictability of it, stripped away from him in one cloaked gesture of a group of strange, hooded whisperers. His life and future were suddenly in a spiralling state of turmoil. Thomas felt guilt over his lack of gratitude; being chosen as Herald was seen by many people as an ascension from simple follower to indelible icon of the church. It was the purest, most necessary role that someone could fill. But despite years of training within the church, Thomas could not help but feel the opposite. He brooded in his chambers that night. He could remember nothing before the church, had no discernable past. Thomas was not only a mystery to the clergy, but to himself as well. No one knew of Thomas ever having any existence that was not intricately tied to the church and the very walls of the temple. Despite his misgivings, he was not physically able to defy the ancient laws that he owed his whole existence to. That night, Thomas did not dream.

The next morning, Thomas did not put on his vestments. In reality, they were no longer his vestments to put on. With the rising of the morning sun, Thomas had stopped being the Patriarch of the church. He would still perform his duties until a replacement could be found, but his official title was taken from him. In the changing routines of the morning, within the complicated bustle of hundreds of church members preparing for groundbreaking changes, one small and seemingly harmless fact went unnoticed. As part of the preparation for becoming the Herald, Thomas was made to undertake a period of cleansing. This meant that while he was allowed the comfort of his former bedchambers, he was greatly restricted in what he could eat. It was of eminent importance to the beliefs of the church that Thomas’ body be as healthy and focused as possible. No one in the church, not even Thomas himself, would ever suspect that the fate of everything they strived for spiritually balanced so delicately on one tiny cup of coffee. Something so small, containing just the perfect amount of caffeine. Something that could be removed from a daily ritual without second thought sent out shockwaves in its absence. As Thomas dressed for his morning duties he felt something that he could not remember ever feeling before, and yet it oddly felt so incredibly familiar. He stared at himself in the mirror and wondered where these feelings could be coming from, this jarring memory of a loss he couldn’t place. After a few moments he shrugged and decided it must be connected to recent events, even though it felt locked inside his bones; ancient and unreachable.

Thomas felt worse the next day. His other emotions were being pushed out of his body by a dread that he was finding it increasingly difficult to explain away with trivial justifications. Each day, he inspected himself in front of the mirror for longer and longer. Each day seemed to move past him in a blur of activity. Thomas’ body began to react to his stricter diet; it became leaner and firmer. At first the food rationing didn’t bother Thomas, but over time he found himself hungry before he went to sleep each night. Soon after, he started to get hungry by noon. Thomas would look at each meal he received with a cautious eye, trying to be sure that they remained the same size each day. He began to make sure that no part of his meal was wasted, no scrap uneaten. And still he felt hungry by the time he went to sleep. Coinciding with Thomas’ first vague dreams of hunger, the other members of the church began to notice a change in his disposition. Where they had once found him to always be warm and benevolent, Thomas now grew silent and distant. They noticed him staring at the walls and ceiling of the church as though he saw things with his eyes that they couldn’t with theirs. At first, it was widely considered the effect of stress on Thomas; but when he eventually ceased to talk altogether, hushed questions regarding his sanity were raised in secret circles. Thomas had lost all concern for the thoughts of his peers. His dreams had become more and more distinct, filled with red eyes and snapping jaws. Thomas’ dreams were punctuated by graphic violence; smaller creatures being torn apart in an uncontrollable fury. He would awake in a cold sweat. Thomas would look at himself in the mirror and be deeply disturbed; not by the images from his dreams, but by the intense delight that they brought him. He felt something stirring deep within his body.

For weeks, Thomas moved through the regular motions of his day with as little focus as possible. He began to feel that everything in the world around him was too slow, too flat and uninteresting. He tried to keep his attention on his duties, but their importance, something that was once paramount to him, seemed less and less solid as the days faded away. He would find himself intently watching hanging cloths blown by the wind and trying to anticipate the slightest movements of his followers. His feet began to twitch and he constantly felt the urge to no longer stand erect, but to crawl instead. Thomas felt wrong inside his own scales. And always, slowly and steadily, the day that he would need to perform his new duties as Herald was approaching. The followers of the church began to talk about it more and more; discussions became heated and were carried on long into the night regarding every possible outcome of the rituals. On the morning of the ceremony, Thomas woke up with the burning desire to run away and was shocked at his own heart. Ashamed, he looked at himself in the mirror and what he saw in the reflection caused Thomas to take complete and utter leave of his sanity.

In his dreams Thomas had followed the faint smell of hot food up temple walls, with arrogant disregard of who he might be wronging in doing so. At first, Thomas was only drawn by an incurable curiosity to the courtyard, where he slinked in the corners listening to the chanting. He stared carefully at the mysterious procession he witnessed before the temples gates, unsure of its purpose. Thomas found himself torn between a desire to smirk at the outlandish robes of the group and a desire to discover more about them. Thomas slipped over the gate, and moved stealthily around the corner of the large, gothic building. It was at that point that he smelt a faint aroma of hot food wafting down from a chamber high in the wing of the temple. It could have been a soup, or possibly even a stew. Thomas felt the deep and dark urge to eat overtaking him and he flicked his forked tongue in and out in anticipation. With far less hesitation than the situation warranted, Thomas darted up the side of the building. He was sure that no one had seen him slip over the gates, but still remained cautious. Once again choosing to ignore the ever intensifying pain from the wound in his side, Thomas confidently placed the pads of his feet resolutely onto the slippery surface. No amount of rain could have lessened his grip on the dark and ancient stone. He moved with what was almost fury, ready to bear down on the food with an incredible rage. As he recklessly darted into a window, Thomas found himself in a large room with luxurious trappings. Looking around, he couldn’t see any food, but a faint scent was coming from underneath the door. Since Thomas had no need or desire to own anything in his life, the room was entirely uninteresting to him; but as he moved across the ceiling he noticed a mirror in the corner. Having lived most of his life in wild seclusion, Thomas had not seen much of mirrors, and thus himself, in his life. He crept closer across the ceiling and looked into in it. Thomas’ eyes widened suddenly as he found himself looking face to face with a completely different gecko. Before his eyes a gecko stood, who stared back at him with equal shock. The two appeared as mirror images of each other. One was old, the other was young. One clung fervently to the ceiling, the other stood resolutely on the floor. But despite all else, the colours of their scales were identical. The wound in Thomas’ left side had begun to bleed again and he looked cautiously at it, scared to take an eye off the figure in the mirror. In unison, the mirror-gecko lifted his robes to reveal a deep scar in its right side.

Thomas reeled from the image in the mirror, the young horrified creature stuck to the ceiling. He turned and left his chamber as quickly as he could. His mind was struggling to understand what had just been revealed to him. From deep and dark places within Thomas, the past was assaulting his mind. A thousand suppressed memories were rising up in a torrent to attack his sensibilities. Thomas rushed out to find someone or something that could help him; that could save him from himself. Down the hallway, Thomas rushed into a waiting group of clergymen. They looked at him in bafflement, unsure of the cause of his unrest; but Thomas was still unable to speak. Instead of receiving help, he was lead towards the ceremony chambers. Stepping out from the shadowed hallways, the light that hit Thomas caused his eyes to ache. He was in a large room, the largest and most central in the temple, and standing before a congregation of what could have possibly been every member of the church. At the far end of the room, robed church members surrounded a raised altar. Beyond the dais stretched an enormous black chasm that seemed to extend into the very depths of the Earth. Thomas’ hold on reality was slipping as he was lead through the crowd towards the cloaked figures. Thomas knew he had witnessed this ceremony before, he knew that the fate of the Herald was suddenly extremely important to understand; but every time he tried to remember what would happen next, deeper and darker memory would come floating across the tangled mists of his mind. Thoughts of violence and hunting came through and clouded all ability Thomas possessed to understand his immediate surroundings. Suddenly, Thomas was lying down on the altar. His eyes darted back and forth and tried to discern the faces of the figures that stood around him. As the horns and chanting started Thomas was pestered by the feeling that something monumental was about to happen, but at each attempt to remember what it could be he was instead given misplaced memories from a forgotten past. Almost as though in response to the chanting of the gathered crowd an ominous, echoing sound was heard from deep within the chasm. A sudden hush fell over the congregation and Thomas could feel an ice-cold shadow creep over the altar. Suddenly, Thomas could remember everything. He realised that overhead loomed the greatest and most powerful thing he had ever seen. Thomas lay in shock, stiff against the cold stone of the altar, staring directly into the cold, empty eyes of his god.

The rock monitor lizard filled more than half the room. It looked out over the gathered mass in complete silence. Everyone stood in awe of the giant beast, paralysed by equal measures of devotion and fear. From amongst the cloaked figures that surrounded him, Thomas saw the new Patriarch of the church step towards him. Thomas could recall vaguely from weeks just past the choosing of a new Patriarch, but now strange memories of crawling upside-down on rotten logs seemed nearer and more real. Through the mists of his memory Thomas suddenly realised that he was the Herald; and that the new Patriarch would be doing to him what Thomas had done to so many Heralds before. As the Patriarch drew the sacrificial dagger out from within his robes, the gathered crowd began a chorus of chanting. As the chanting grew louder and louder, the rock monitor lizard began to open its mouth wider and wider. The rancid smell of death assaulted Thomas as he stared back into its widening, terrifying mouth. The blue tongue lay still and expectant. Thomas closed his eyes and considered his options. His decisions for what to do next were split into two: defy the will of the church and act, or die horribly. But Thomas was no longer the Patriarch; he was reborn as an older, and younger, self. From deep within the smoky jungle of his memory, a ghost of Thomas’ past had come forward to take his body. His decision was quick and easy.

Thomas opened his eyes to see the dagger descending towards him. He twisted quickly to the side and the dagger clanged against the hard surface of the altar. A gasp rose up from the spectators that were close enough to witness it. Firm hands cruelly caught hold of Thomas by the tail. The Patriarch moved closer with a scowl on his face and raised the dagger a second time. Thomas smirked to himself, remembering an old trick from his youth. Making sure his timing was perfect, Thomas waited for the Patriarch to thrust the dagger down again. Just as the blade was half-way through the air, Thomas pulled hard on the muscles in the tail. To the soft click of fractured vertebrae, Thomas’ tail came loose from his body. The tail wriggled free in the shocked hands of his captors. Thomas flicked his feet up into the air and caught the extended hand of the Patriarch, and then flipped himself up into the air and onto the Patriarch’s back. Screams of terror burst out of the crowd and the tail fell amongst it, spraying blood out across the clergy. Thomas was quick to bring his open jaw firmly down on the neck of the Patriarch. As the screams of pain and terror filled the room the rock monitor lizard stirred, becoming aware that something was amiss with his promised meal. It looked from side to side and moved a giant claw forward. Wood splintered and flew into the air as the giant lizard began to move from its chasm into the temple itself. Thomas released his grip from the bloodied Patriarch as he collapsed to the floor. Grapping the dagger between his jaws, Thomas leapt high into the air and clung to the walls that surrounded the altar. Panic spread throughout the room, people were crushed as they rushed towards the doorways and the robed clergy tried desperately to escape both the enraged reptilian deity and the crazed Thomas.

For Thomas the entire world had been reduced to black and white. As he scaled higher up the walls he found himself filled with anger and hatred towards having gained and lost so much in one lifetime. As Thomas reached heights above even the monitor lizard that was slowly moving towards the fleeing crowd, pushing destructively at the room; he realised exactly what he needed to do to make peace with himself. Thomas coiled his body into a tight knot, ready to spring. At the exact moment that the giant creature reached the middle of the room, Thomas leapt. As he fell through the air, dagger in hand, Thomas closed his eyes and felt the air brush against his smiling face. For one brief moment he felt something that used to swell up inside him. For one brief moment, Thomas felt completely free. He landed solidly on the face of the beast. The lizard swung his head up to try shake Thomas off, but he remained stuck fast to the creature. Without hesitation Thomas raised himself and brought the dagger down, fury driving it faster, into the eye of the lizard. It roared with pain and swung its head from side to side, bashing it into the walls of the room. Pieces of the ceiling began to fall and shatter amongst the escaping crowd. Shockwaves could be felt throughout the entire temple as Thomas struggled with the monitor lizard, the ancient god. As the dagger was torn out of the wounded eye socket, the lizard tried furiously to shake Thomas off. Thomas, driven mad by bloodlust, instead decided to leap directly into the mouth of the beast. He stood on the blue tongue and knew that no hunger that ever existed could compare to his own. Thomas’ mouth was larger than the lizard’s. He held the dagger firmly in his hands and he knew exactly where it was going: straight through the roof of the mouth. With both feet planted firmly, Thomas mustered all the strength that ran through his cold blood and forced the blade upwards as the lizard closed its mouth. The sound of tearing flesh and cracking bone produced a sadistic stab of delight in Thomas’ brain.

Thomas was thrown out of the lizard’s mouth as it twisted in exquisite pain. He crashed to the floor and lay amongst the debris. He was able to watch the creature in its death throes as he lay exhausted on the floor. All around him the temple’s foundations were being torn apart. Thomas knew that he had caused the end of the Church of the Rock Monitor Lizard; he had even killed its god. Strangely, Thomas didn’t feel any regret over it. He just felt at peace, as though every part of him was finally drawn into a cool and silent centre. Thomas knew that he would never have to go without again, that he would never crave for more or be haunted by loss. For the first and only time in his life, Thomas felt complete. Images of dancing along the underside of rotten tree trunks flashed across Thomas’ eyes as he closed them and breathed no more. Thomas lay and dreamt his final dream; was given back his final memory.

As the guards burst into the room where he stood staring at his older self in the mirror, Thomas made a desperate and startled attempt to flee, but the pain in his side caused him to collapse. The wound had become serious, and could no longer be ignored with nothing more than sheer willpower and ravenous hunger. Thomas curled up in a small ball and, unable to move, waited for the final blows to fall upon him. To his surprise, he was instead lifted up by many gentle arms. Thomas opened his eyes to see a concerned face looking intently at him. He would later learn that it was the face of the Patriarch of the church. Orders were given and people were sent for from all corners of the temple. Slowly, Thomas was carried down to the infirmary, where his wound was cleaned and bandaged. Still too weak to react, Thomas marvelled at the sudden turn of fate he was experiencing. Then, much to his own shock, into his cold and aching claws, which he used as hands for the first time in his life, was placed a steaming bowl of stew. As he drunk large mouthfuls of it, Thomas could feel the tears welling up in his eyes. He looked around at the kind, smiling faces surrounding him and was completely overcome with joy. The acts of kindness that he witnessed that day changed Thomas forever. He discovered the ideals of the church that he had known nothing about, had felt firsthand the effects of those teachings. Thomas looked down into the empty bowl in his lap and back up into the faces of the people that had saved him and was completely astounded with the idea of how beautiful the world could be if it only followed those ideals.

The Secret Lives of Small Animals #2 - Jennifer the Bee

What is The Secret Lives of Small Animals?

It was on the flight home that Jennifer the bee found the long play record. She had just finished her shift out in the flower fields, looking for especially delicious nectar. In her mind, Jennifer was gratefully looking forward to having some time to relax and possibly enjoy a nice bath. However, Jennifer also got closer and closer to home with an increasing sense of unease. The long hours that lay ahead of Jennifer before her next flight into the field bothered her. Although Jennifer enjoyed to rest as much as any other bee, which is a considerably large amount due to how famously busy they all are; she was often overwhelmed by the long, dull hours of having nothing to do in her hexagon. It was while Jennifer was thinking of this painful stretch of time she would have to endure that she noticed a sign in the corner of her compound eye. The sign simply said ‘Garage Sale’. Noticing the opportunity to at least put off inevitable boredom, Jennifer swooped down on the sale and began to peruse the many antiquated goods.

Of the things that exist in the world, Jennifer began to realise, there are many which are of little or no use to a bee. And yet despite herself she became absorbed in all the old and once, but no longer, loved items. When considering the bowling ball, the Rubik’s Cube, the electric keyboard and the playing cards, Jennifer found her biggest problem to be her lack of fingers. She was similarly unable to invest much enthusiasm in the faded parachute pants and inflatable couch. Eventually, Jennifer realised that she would have to buy something and began to go through everything on sale carefully eliminating the items she couldn’t use. She came close to purchasing a lava lamp, but worried that the heat might melt the wax in the Hive. Close to giving up, Jennifer suddenly found herself transfixed with an old vinyl record player. She looked at it curiously, not being sure if she had even seen a bee with one before. The owner of the garage became anxious to get Jennifer to move on, and started offering her prices for the sound system. Unfortunately, Jennifer had hardly any money with her and couldn’t justify spending it on something so unpractical. She wasn’t even sure if she would be able to hear it over the buzz of the Hive. But Jennifer could find no way to put the record player down now that she had picked it up. Jennifer felt bound to it, as though it were to become a part of her identity and even her destiny. Eventually, she managed to dance out a deal with the seller that allowed her to leave with the record player and a single long play record. Jennifer randomly grabbed from the stuffed and dusty box of records and found herself hurrying home with a new, if somewhat old, record player and copy of ‘DJ Blendah’s Greatest Disco Anthems’.

After emptying out the contents of her nectar stomach, Jennifer quickly returned to her hexagon and placed the record player right in the middle of it. At first, Jennifer was afraid to play her one and only record and simply sat staring at the device. She inspected every last dial and button on it until she was completely satisfied that she had absolutely no idea what any of them did. Eventually, just before going to sleep, Jennifer found the courage to place the record lightly onto the record player and very delicately move the needle over to meet the vinyl surface. As the needle touched its point somewhere in the middle of the record the speakers gasped with a muffled, white-noise cry for breath, and then shouted out with music that Jennifer had never heard before. For a few seconds she was locked in absolute horror at the new sounds. Then she suddenly came to her senses and violently pushed the needle off the record. The speakers managed to screech in pain as the needle tore across the tiny, black ridges before Jennifer could throw a small blanket over the sound system and quickly get into bed. She lay awake for a few minutes, shaken by the strange music she had heard and trying not to think of it. Eventually Jennifer fell asleep and had the most intense nightmares that she had ever had in her life. In her dreams, Jennifer watched as technicolor meteors rained down from the sky and engulfed the entire Hive in pulsating, strobe lights; all to the sound of heavy, hypnotic disco.

The next day, Jennifer resolved to focus on collecting pollen and nectar for the Hive without being distracted by thoughts of what she had heard the night before. For the first half of her day, she managed to do exactly that, but as the afternoon faded and the sky began to illuminate the fields in an orange glow, Jennifer began to feel strange. She found herself looking at the field as though it were a dance floor. In her mind the orange light was slowly spinning around her, reflected off of the mirror ball that the sun had suddenly become. Jennifer gazed out at this illusion, or possible dementia, with absolute shock and terror. Slowly in the distance, the sounds from the long play record faded into her hearing range. As the music grew louder, so too did a sense of exhilaration grow deep inside of Jennifer. Her legs began to twitch and move in time to the music in her head, and her head moved back and forth as though it were possessed by an evil spirit of dance. It was while Jennifer was completely trapped inside this illusion, sometimes spiralling from the air unaware and sometimes spinning in circles furiously, that she reached the Hive. It took Jennifer a few seconds to realise exactly where she was and that the guard bees where staring at her strangely. She sheepishly laughed, shook herself off and entered the Hive.

Once inside, Jennifer was greeted by the familiar buzz of thousands and thousands of worker bees all tending to the needs of the Queen and her Hive, although most bees refuse to distinguish between the two. But somehow, in Jennifer’s seemingly now damaged mind, the buzz was different. Underneath the steady and unrelenting drone, Jennifer could hear a slowly rising beat. As she retreated into her hexagon, Jennifer could hear the beat growing louder and louder. She tried to shut the sound out. She tried to refuse to hear it. For the first time in her life, Jennifer had discovered something bigger, more powerful and more efficient than the Hive itself. As she sat trembling on the floor of her hexagon, Jennifer could hear the distant sounds of hands clapping, trumpets blaring and the occasional wail of a backup singer. Slowly the walls began to shake back and forth, and the ground began to throb in time to the music. Disco lights seemed to be leaking through the surface of the wax, and started to surround and engulf Jennifer. Once she realised that she was listening to the record, she knew that she had to hear everything; both sides of the record. As the visions that gripped her ebbed and flowed in and out of her brain, Jennifer started to dance. Like all bees Jennifer was a gifted dancer, but these strange new songs from a place she couldn’t imagine caused her to move in bizarre and unfamiliar ways. Jennifer felt as though she were vibrating at incredible speeds, existing in several places at once. She felt like several entities layered over themselves to produce a single image infinitely deep. She threw her limbs into the air, and swung her wings from side to side until she was drenched in sweat. As the music finally stopped, Jennifer collapsed into sleep. That night, Jennifer had no dreams and slept more deeply and peacefully than she had ever slept before.

Jennifer woke up the next day as a different bee. She moved through her morning routine with a burning at the tips of her limbs and a throbbing sensation in her mandibles. As she moved slowly through the Hive, the bees around her seemed to blur and blend together into a sticky paste. Jennifer was beginning to dread the long hours that her shift would bring. She was so enamoured with the music and her need to hear it again that Jennifer became completely convinced that a long trip out into the flower fields would actually kill her. She was consumed with the thought of shrivelling up and dying in the midday sun without the sounds of disco to revive her. It was as Jennifer approached her shift manager that she began to notice sideways glances from the other bees. She wondered how she could be so different now that every other bee in the Hive would need to stop and cast quick glances at her. After a few minutes she looked down and realised that it wasn’t her that had changed at all. The other bees had been looking at Jennifer because they were curious about the strange object wrapped in blankets that she cradled in her legs. Jennifer was shocked. She had no idea how the record player had managed to trick her into carrying it out into the centre of the Hive. She immediately threw it down onto the waxy ground and stared at it in bewilderment. Other bees that saw this edged closer to inspect the strange device as it lay there harmlessly. A slow buzzing murmur took shape amongst the gathered bees as questions were raised about the purpose and origin of the record player. However, Jennifer remained utterly stricken still with terror. She had vague memories, as though seen through a hazy tunnel, of tampering with the record player in complete darkness. She could mistily recall understanding the machine completely as she was guided by deep, melodic voices that spoke through a heavy beat. It was because of these memories flooding back into her consciousness that Jennifer was horrified with what was about to happen; so much so that she couldn’t even warn the unsuspecting bees surrounding her.

When the disco music started, it seemed impossibly loud. The volume was enough to almost drown out the steady and incessant buzzing of thousands and thousands of bees. At first the bees of the Hive were merely stunned by the sheer force of the music, not being affected as Jennifer had been. Instead, the bees bent their curiosity onto Jennifer herself, who was now overcome in a frenetic bout of dancing. A new buzz of excitement spread through the watching bees as they began to jump to obscene conclusions as to what the dancing could mean. A group of scouting bees hovered closely over Jennifer and took her dancing to be the directions to an ancient and once-lost grove of indescribably delicious flowers. They immediately took flight and tore out of the Hive. Once outside and consumed with lust for pollen, the scouting bees turned right sharply and flew directly into a window pane at breakneck speeds, breaking their necks. Back inside the Hive, the bees were discovering the limits of their usually exemplary abilities in interpretive dance. Each bee managed to see Jennifer’s dance to mean something different entirely. But no matter the bee, the meaning always seemed to be the key in obtaining their deepest and most selfish desires. And in trying to achieve those desires, the bees were unleashing pandemonium within their home. Suddenly, worker bees were throwing drone bees out of the Hive. Some bees took to tearing down the waxen walls of the honey vats, causing pouring torrents of honey to spread out throughout the Hive. The helpless and deserted larvae met a terrifying end as they were drowned in the sweet, sweet honey that swept over their hexagons. Some bees were dive-bombing directly into the royal jelly, either gorging till their insides ruptured or emerging and stinging themselves to death in a maniacal fury. The flapping of bee wings grew to such an intense and uncoordinated height that debris and bodies were whipped around the Hive in a tiny tornado. With her last shred of sanity, the Queen herself burst out of the Hive with a hideous shriek of mixed rage and pain. Following after their Queen, her royal servants spiralled through the air insanely, babbling and spitting as they swooped fatally into fence posts and road signs. With the Hive abandoned by the Queen, its life was irreversibly cut short.

As the last escaping bee managed to find their way out of the nigh demolished Hive, small fires impossibly sprung up throughout its foundations. Dismembered wings and thoraxes slowly burnt as they floated through the air. Bees lay trapped in honey, extending legs outward in pleas for help but finding none. Everything was silent. Amongst the wreckage, a record player lay smashed to bits. And beside it, Jennifer lay gasping for breath. Not once during her dancing had she been disturbed and she now lay exhausted amongst the rubble of what was once her home, having only been distantly aware of what had happened around her. Jennifer lay as the sole survivor of her once huge family, whose entire lives had always been an uncontested utopia of working together until one of them discovered disco.

The Secret Lives of Small Animals #1 - Wallace the Snail

What is The Secret Lives of Small Animals?

From the perspective of a casual observer Wallace the Snail had a terribly ordinary life. Wallace lived in a small house in a quiet suburb, with his snail wife and his 4 year old snail daughter. Wallace spent his weekdays working as the assistant manager at the town used car lot. He was not particularly talented at his job, nor was he particularly bad at it either. On weekends, Wallace would occasionally watch motor sports on television. He enjoyed motor sports enough to watch them, but not enough to call himself a fan of them either. Wallace made enough money to have an ordinary retirement fund and take a single vacation each year. This was usually a week-long trip to the beach, where his wife would spend all day alternating between reading books in the sun and building quaint, but unrealistic, sand castles with their daughter. Wallace would celebrate his time off by barbequing and cooking far too much food for just himself and the two other people he brought with him. Afterwards, they would return home, show photos to their neighbours and never speak about their vacation again. Wallace didn’t talk a lot, only drank on special occasions and was reasonably liked by his community for not being much of anything. Wallace’s life seemed to be possessed with such rhythmical monotony that it might have been enough to obliterate all the colour and glory from it. However, inside Wallace’s routine was a different snail entirely and deep inside Wallace’s soul was an intense burning fury waiting to explode.

Every Friday afternoon at exactly 5 minutes to 5, Wallace would call his wife and ask her if she wanted anything from the store. Regardless of whether she needed it or not, she would always ask for something. She did this mostly for fear of her husband dropping dead at something unexpected happening. Whatever she asked for, Wallace would tell her that he would pick it up on the way home from bowling. Wallace’s wife believed that he went bowling with his friends every Friday, after work. Wallace did not go bowling. His wife never suspected as much, though she did secretly think it odd that Wallace actually had friends. After ending the call, Wallace would wait patiently as the last few customers left, no longer interested in selling them cars. After turning out the lights and locking up the lot, Wallace would stand outside in his coat and smoke a cigarette. The only cigarette he would smoke each week. Then he would slowly stroll around the lot and open the third garage from the left. For the next three hours of his life, Wallace would wear greasy overalls and spend each and every minute lovingly working on a car. This car was Wallace’s dragster and he loved it more than anything else in the world. Wallace had wanted to tell his wife about the car at first, but he knew she couldn’t possibly understand. After a few months it was even more difficult for Wallace to tell his wife, and after a few years it was impossible. Over the course of seven years, Wallace had spent whatever money he could spare on the car. He had gotten cheaper haircuts, bought cheaper lunches, cheaper clothes, cheaper gifts for his wife and daughter. Whatever money he could save without his wife knowing, he would spend on parts for his car. In the long months when he didn’t have any new parts to put on his car, Wallace would sit quietly tuning it, cleaning it and being absorbed in the process. Wallace had a small library in the spare garage; all mechanic’s manuals. He thought back to his part-time job as a mechanic’s assistant in high school and, for a few hours every Friday, felt strangely complete.

But in those seven years Wallace did not once see the approaching disaster he faced. One Friday afternoon, he looked over his beloved car and realised that he had made a backwards mistake. He had finished it. He had used all the knowledge he could get from his manuals and experience. Wallace was satisfied with the parts that his relatively meagre allowance had afforded. The car was complete; Wallace was empty. He had grown too attached to his car to sell it. He was deep in thought as he drove it around the closed stores and empty streets, making sure that everything was in as good a condition as he could achieve. Wallace realised that he could now spend his Fridays on leisurely drives in the car that he loved, but he knew that that would be wrong. The car was not meant to be driven, it was meant to be raced. Wallace trembled. He drove the car straight back to the lot, covered it in a cloth and locked it in the garage. On the way home, he picked up a cucumber for his wife. When he got home, Wallace kissed his wife on the cheek and helped his daughter finish a puzzle. It was a picture of a wizard riding a pink unicorn, but Wallace’s daughter had lost the piece with the wizard’s face on it. After dinner he washed his eye stalks and got into bed. For three weeks, Wallace went nowhere near his dragster. He told his wife the bowling alley had been closed for renovations and outwardly he appeared calm and collected, but on the inside he was screaming. For the first time in his life, Wallace had no idea what was going to happen. One night, Wallace’s wife woke him up to tell him that he had been crying in his sleep. He remarked at how strange that was and lay in bed terrified.

When the Friday on which he couldn’t stall any longer finally arrived, Wallace phoned his wife at exactly 5 minutes to 5 and told her he would be joining a bowling tournament with his friends and might be home late. Over the phone she seemed unsuspicious, but Wallace was shaking as he hung up. After his weekly cigarette, he drove out to the city. Completely unsure of where to go in the cold night, Wallace drove around looking for a race. Whether it was legal or not didn’t matter to him, he just needed something to calm the burning in his shell. He was drenched in sweat and eager to push his love’s seven year work to its destined limit. 4 hours later, Wallace returned home. He walked inside quietly, hung up his coat and kissed his wife on the cheek. She asked him how the tournament was and he mumbled something about loosing. He ate his dinner in silence, got up to brush his eye stalks and then got straight into bed, having come nowhere near a drag race. This time, his car remained locked and untouched in the spare garage for four weeks. Wallace began to consider what kind of price he could sell it for and if it would be worth building a second car with the money. But eventually the deranged little creature inside Wallace began to scream and tear at his insides. In those four weeks, Wallace’s wife woke him up twice to tell him he had once again been crying in his sleep. So after four weeks, Wallace made the phone call to his wife and told her about the second tournament he would be entering. Then he made sure to spend some time consulting maps and calling race tracks, asking for any help that he could get.

On his second trip into the city, Wallace found what he was looking for. Driving into the race track, Wallace was greeted by a completely different world of people. The youths were half his age and greeted him with jeers and nasty names, and anyone close to his own age was grim and cold. After a lot of foolish standing around and stammering, Wallace managed to enter himself into a race. Smelling new blood, the local drivers insisted that Wallace place a hefty bet on the race. Not knowing any better, Wallace did exactly that. When the race began, something happened to Wallace. The fury that had been burning inside him for so long suddenly cooled into a cold and hard point at the centre of his being. And that point was dragging him towards the finish line at a speed he had never travelled at before. He felt as though he were moving too fast to ever be stopped. He lost the race, terribly. He returned home that night having lost a not insignificant amount of money. He told his wife that the tournament was great, ate his dinner in silence, washed his eye stalks and got into bed. He slept soundly. The next week, Wallace took his dragster to a mechanic. The mechanic told him that there were many ways to improve the speed of the car. Wallace’s desire to win burned away his love for all the care he had put into each individual piece of the car, and he was quick to agree with any decision that would contribute to that singular goal of winning. However, getting the best parts would cost Wallace far too much. He thought about how much money he could afford to use without his wife getting suspicious, consulted his bank books and sacrificed the money he had saved for his annual vacation. That Friday Wallace told his wife that he and his friends had entered a bowling league and now they would be competing in tournaments every week. He explained that some of the tournaments would start as much as 2 hours later than the times he usually bowled, and his wife was quick to reassure him that it was okay with her if he stayed out longer on a Friday. He forgot to ask if she needed anything from the store. Wallace was ecstatic as he drove out to the city and confident in the power of his new parts in his car. That night he lost terribly, again.

The next week, Wallace’s whole life seemed to have accelerated to such an incredible pace that he couldn’t recall what day of the week it was anymore. Blinking his eyes seemed to advance his day several hours and sleep seemed more and more unnecessary. Wallace found himself taking a short trip to the bank and withdrawing money from his savings account, reasoning that he could win the money back with a faster car. A second trip to the mechanic was far more fruitful and Wallace could feel the screaming in his soul subside as he drove his car out to the city that Friday night. He won his race that night. Afterwards, the hostile locals began to soften to him. They invited him out to a bar for a drink. Wallace was already drunk on the raw power of his car and his first win that he couldn’t begin to hesitate. When he returned home at midnight that night, his wife was waiting for him. She was horrified to see him, falling over his own shell. She told him that she wouldn’t stand for it. But, being a snail, she wasn’t sure if she ever stood at all. His only explanation was that he had won. That night Wallace woke up covered in his own tears, his wife sleeping soundly next to him.

Over the course of the next few months, Wallace began to win more and more races. At the same time that his car was becoming better and faster his savings account, retirement fund and pension began to slowly shrink. His life began to screech past him in jumps of weeks at a time. He couldn’t sit still anymore and thought of nothing other than racing. After his races, Wallace began to celebrate more and more with his new friends, now thinking of himself as one of their peers. He returned home drunk more and more often. His wife no longer waited for him, instead she left his dinner in the oven and pretended to sleep as he washed his eye stalks and got into bed. Wallace’s car became a beast, an abominable fusion of steel and burning fury. Eventually he was not only winning his races, but also the attention of the girls that came to watch. By the time he had slept with the second girl, his guilt had completely vanished. Eventually Wallace was taking whichever girl he wanted to hotels with him after his races and having furious, raucous sex with them for hours on end. Wallace’s wife began to sit in bed and watch him cry in his sleep, not making a sound for fear of waking him.

It wasn’t long before Wallace attracted the attention of serious racers. It was a cold night when he received his challenge from the driver in the black scarf. This driver was notorious and feared throughout the city. The locals at Wallace’s track spoke in hushed tones about how dangerous and cruel he could be. Everyone that knew him told Wallace it was better to refuse, that any race would be out of his league. But Wallace was far beyond reasoning. His whole life had become a high octane burn straight into Damnation. He accepted the challenge. The race date and location was decided and Wallace found himself with a week before the most important moment of his life. And that week seemed like torture. When the race finally arrived, Wallace no longer felt anything inside. All his rage and fury had cooled into that single point of steel which pointed towards the finish line. Wallace climbed into his car to the screams and cheers of his friends. And for a single moment before the race began, Wallace sat in absolute silence in the cab of his car. For the first time in years, Wallace felt time stop completely. He felt like he had been sitting in that seat his whole life and would always be sitting in it. He looked around at the people in suspended animation around him, at the driver in the black scarf frozen as he climbed into his pitch black car. And the slower that everything moved around him, the less and less that Wallace felt. In the distance, he thought he might have heard children laughing, but he shook his head and let time return to normal. He looked around and the fury in his soul started to return as he focussed on the lights, waiting for the green. The race was not close. Wallace annihilated his opponent. He screeched across the finish line as though he were the angel of death moving towards Egypt. The driver in the black scarf left in total shame, and the celebration was incredible. For the other drivers, Wallace had gone from being an awkward and hated old snail to being a god walking amongst them. The drinks flowed, drugs were passed around with complete abandon and girls hung onto Wallace as though he were salvation itself. He took two of them into the back seat of his car and screwed them into oblivion in front of the other drivers as they whooped and cheered for him.

Wallace returned home at 9 in the morning. The house was empty, he noticed immediately. On the kitchen table he found a note.

Wallace could not say how long he stared at it. Time was no longer on predictable terms with him. In fact, Wallace wondered if Time itself hated him. He felt the whole weight of his life, the crushing feeling of all his disappointments and successes, bearing down on him. He felt squashed and reduced to nothingness. And for the first time in months, Wallace knew exactly what was going to happen. Wallace knew exactly what he was going to do. He moved from the kitchen table over to the cupboard. He reached up to the top shelf and got out a thick plastic bag and poured its contents into a bowl. Then Wallace got a table spoon from out of the drawer by the fridge and put it into the bowl. Wallace sat down at the kitchen table with his bowl of salt and, without making a sound, began to eat.

What is The Secret Lives of Small Animals?

Did you know that there are ants that farm both plants and other animals? What about the caterpillar with over 4,000 distinct muscles? The 300,000 plus species of beetle?

The Secret Lives of Small Animals is the culmination of 50 years of research, which is being presented to you now in hopes of explaining what those damn crickets are so chirpy about.

None of these collections of entirely factual information are technically complete and so any feedback and/or criticism is not only welcome, but required on a spiritual level (one of the vaguest ones).

If you are a zoologist (and honestly, who isn't in this day and age?) your feedback about the absolute factual nature of these collections is most appreciated. Otherwise, expect updates every Friday. Please enjoy what my brain has cooked up and stay safe.

Thanks, as always,
Greg F.