The End of the World

June 2021

I was still a toddler when the humans came. My brother Humpty and I were living a normal life up until that fateful day in June 2021.  On that day, Humpty and I tried hard to hide from the big faces that stared down at us. Our mother let us hide under her legs, but it would not help in the end. The massive hands of a human reached into the human-made cage that we lived in. A young human girl with pigtails and braces was jumping up and down in excitement, hurting my ears with her incessant high-pitched yelling. Mother squeaked as the hand took out my brother Humpty. I followed her example, squeaking angrily. Why would someone take my brother away from us? Where were they going to take him? Much to my dismay, I would find out.

My mother squeaked even more desperately as the hand reached in a second time, lifting me above the ground and then out of the cage. I felt dizzy when I looked down, the height made my heart beat a hundred times faster.

A cage can be a home if you are with the ones you love. But without them, a cage is just that. A cage. I had never looked at my home from this perspective. Despite the dizziness, I forced myself to look down. When would I see my mother again?

I almost passed out, but I did not want to miss one second. What if I could escape? What if I could make it? The hand lowered me, at a scary pace, into a dark container. The door locked behind me and I started to scream for my life. My brother screamed with me. For a long time, nothing happened. We could feel the container moving underneath us. Sometimes it was difficult to keep balancing our tiny bodies in the right way and we stumbled and fell onto the floor. After we realized that screaming was not going to help our situation, we sat in silence. It was better to be with my brother than to be alone. What fate would await us? We never could have imagined it at this point. 

It felt like forever until we saw the sunlight again. Humpty and I had fallen asleep many times over. Seeing the sunlight after such a long time would have been a moment to celebrate, but the pubescent sounds of the young human girl took over the moment and turned it into something else. Her hands were softer than that of the big human. Nevertheless, I did not like being imprisoned by any person. The thought of my brother sharing the same fate made it even worse.

I am not one to generalize easily but for me, all humans are the same. All they do is control, put you in cages, they push their massive hands against your back and your head. Why?

The cage Humpty and I shared was smaller than the last one. Without our mother, and without our sisters and brothers, everything felt cold. We looked through the glass and we saw a gray world, no colors, and no loved ones. At that moment all we had was each other.