Salad Days

Said the young lobster: Everything, the men and their little dances, their Philistine appetites; this land is artificial, all of you so contrived. When, after all, is this so-called Judgment Day? See the fish and their naïveté, the bliss of their unconscious ends. Methinks I have done nothing to deserve this awareness, to deserve purgatory, posited the lobster. Why has He cursed us so? Just then a bell rang. The eldest was removed from the tank, scorched until pure, his screams muted, his flesh paired with clarified butter.