(sept. 23, 2010)

Four months after one of my boring birthdays, I found a hamster just outside our front door. It was just lying on the marble floor, snuggling on its own body and didn’t even move even if I almost stepped on it. The little adorable pathetic creature seemed to be dumped by another pathetic being, I thought to myself.

I took an empty fish bowl, put some soft fresh grass on the bottom and placed the slumbering thing inside. The circular glass became its new home and I would stay up late at night just to watch it eat, drink and play around. Sometimes I would let it lay half dreaming on top of my palm or just leave it inside its cage next to my bed as we watch late night shows on the tube.

But after a week or so, my silent companion just became hostile. For no reasons known to me it started trying to bite my hand whenever it gets the chance to. And out of no actual fact to explain the lost of bond between us, I started concluding that the air inside its cage might have just gotten polluted and the poor little thing has been going insane.

I was sort of heartbroken that I couldn’t bear to look at it. So I decided to place a mirror adjacent to its cage and watch it from there. This way I don’t have to stay close, keep ourselves from hurting each other and still watch it from a safe distance.

And from the reflection, I see how it changed each day. My little teddy bear had stopped becoming nocturnal, in fact it didn’t sleep at all. It ransacked its own home spilling the water and food and it lay down on its own piss. Its eyes started to become red and its soft fur had grown sticky, dirty and spiky making it look like a small porcupine. Yet in a way I felt as if that’s what it wanted. It thought that being a cute teddy bear hamster is boring and suffocating that it is rebelling to become something else. Although it is stupid coz it can’t actually become anything different and so being a porcupine clone made it look all silly and annoying.

Tonight, as I watch its reflection move wildly in circles like a boar inside the glass, I am thinking of putting down my cigarette for a while, picking up my Kafka book and walk to the tabletop where the cage annoyingly rests. And from there I’ll decide if I’ll cover the hole with the book, lift the cage and shake it madly until the pretentious bastard bleeds to death.

Then I’ll make myself a coffee and play some Johnny Cash.

NIGHTNIGHT by DEDDY