Slugs

Who could have dreamed them up? At least snails have shells, but all these have is—nothing. Small black antennae like fat pins wave as if they could take in enough to get them through. Turn them over, they’re the soles of new shoes, pale and unmarked as babies. They flow, the soil itself learning how to move and, moving, almost staying still, their silver monorail the only evidence of where they’d been. And they die quiet, or at least (thankfully) out of the human ear’s range, between two stones, under heels, shriveling in salt or piss, at the tips of sharp sticks. Fight back, I hear myself say, do something. Don’t just take it. But they die as they had lived, exuding slime, like the smaller boys, who’d just stand there, miserable in short pants, school socks down to their ankles, school tie unknotted and askew, and flowing from noses slow cauls of snot that from time to time they’d lick or sniff back up part way, until it flowed again, coating the upper lip, falling into the mouth, mixing with tears before anything had been done, the fear itself enough, so even if we wanted we couldn’t let them off. Sometimes it was the knee “where you daren’t show your mother,” other times the kick in the shins, the stick over the head, the punch in the mouth, while they just stood there, or double up, gasping for breath, and we did it again.