ÆMPATHY FOR GOD’S CRITTERS

Evan Michaels is snuggled solo on his full-size mattress, swiping along on his iPhone, leering into the digital void. He scrolls through Instagram reels with rabid vigor, flying past videos of police officers pummeling citizens, ICE agents aggressively handcuffing parents and taking them away from their kindergarten-aged children (who they leave crying alone in crowded streets), heavily-armed military personnel setting food aid traps to perform target practice with unarmed, starving, wafer-thin humans of all ages, extreme, infrastructure disrupting weather events, and various others of death, destruction and doom. It is all quite routine.

But then, the regularly scheduled program is cleaved as his sensors are tripped. He stops and swings back up the feed when he’s caught off guard by a surveillance style video which shows a pet-owner putting the paws to their dog in the hallway of an apartment complex; smacking, kicking, whipping the beast. “What the fuck?! Are you fucking kidding me?!” He watches the clip play through thrice, then wastes no more time in leaping to the comment section. He scrolls down, taking the temperature of the angry thumb mob before depositing a relic of his own indignation.

He taps on the text bar and lets it rip—

Man, FUCK this guy! Let’s string him up and fucking neuter HIM! If you can’t handle being a pet owner, DON’T GET A FUCKING PET YOU WORTHLESS SCUMFUCK!

Evan closes the app, locks his phone screen, tosses it aside and sits, stewing and bubbling like a pot of bone broth stock, nursing a good twenty to thirty second seethe.

Once the burners are off and he has simmered down—it isn’t terribly difficult for the mind to travel elsewhere from point to point to point in these turbulent modern times—his attention pivots to his roiling stomach. He snatches up his phone, kicks the goose feather duvet away from his nude body and hops down to the floor, spreading and clenching his toes, combing them through the shag carpet. As he shuffles out of the bedroom and down the hallway, his humble hog jostles like a hooked worm in waiting waters. His phone flutters in his hand in sequence with the chime of a notification: 10 people like your comment

The rush of dopamine tickles him from top to taint and flushes him with unearned altruistic tingles. He is a solemn soldier for the misfortunate, a guardian of justice, defender of the downtrodden. But he knows he could do more; he should do more. That digital visual of abuse replays in his cerebral theater and the fury begins to resurface. He pounds his fist on the kitchen counter. How can people be so fucking cruel?!

The blaze in his eyes burns hot as the flames of the two front stovetop cookers he has just ignited. He turns to the fridge and acquires the raw strips of flesh from a pig and two fertilized then aborted hen embryos. He gently lays the pork ribbons into their crackling cast iron bed on the left, then cracks open the two shell vessels, releasing the Phoebus fetuses hugged in amniotic goop into the one on the right. He doesn’t even need to tell himself that this is not cruelty, it is sustenance, survival, for this factual differentiation is merely instinctual, engrained. This cooking ceremony is brief and culminates with the metallic spring up of blackened bread from the toaster.

As he sits at the head of the dining room table, the only sounds to be heard are the wet, squelching chew noises of sloppy eggs and tough meat along with the faint clicks of skin and keratin on plastic. He is back to the doom and gloom scrolling; back to the reward chemical hunt. Evan consumes his late breakfast with great fervor and greater anxiety. His right leg is bouncing like a washing machine with its spin cycle set to ludicrous speed. Speaking of, he crams the last hunk of hog into his gullet, swabs the grease from his lips with a paper towel, then makes his way toward the laundry room.

He packs the front-loading washer with designer brand shirts and jeans and closes the circular hatch, sealing it with a clunk. As he crouches down to bleed the slim rubber nozzle of the machine’s used water reservoir tank, he mentally preps for the inevitable vision-tunnel-head-rush that will accompany his eventual return to stance. He watches the translucent stream trickle and plop, splashing and ricocheting across the rigid concrete, a sort of aquatic war zone. He shifts his sight just in time to witness a direct hit, and its wriggling casualty slugging along under the weight of the water mortar that had just struck it with cosmic precision. What initially appears to be the oddly beautiful, sentient result of a coffee bean mated with a spaghetti strand, soon can be identified as a millipede, struggling toward freedom from its surprise liquid restraint.

He watches it, unblinking, for what feels like an hour (about thirty-seven seconds) before deciding to don the proverbial cape and rescue the hapless creature. Scanning about, he spots a group of discarded clothing tags atop the dryer and plucks one up between his thumb and ‘fuck-you’ finger, observing some of its text—H&M—L—Made in Bangladesh—as he swoops it down to the cement wetlands. It’s only a couple seconds before the desperate creeper has pulled itself onto the paper salvation presented to it. “Here you go little buddy, let’s get you to a med tent.” Evan speaks proudly as he gently glides the cardstock craft and its lone passenger down onto the bone-dry brick riser.

He beams, thinking this must be how god feels on one of those days he decides to divinely intervene: like guiding that star quarterback’s cannon to deliver the Hail Mary touchdown pass—or planting the winning powerball numbers into some Bobby-Sue Shitstain’s booze-riddled brain—or sending a fully packed passenger train spiraling off track and into the landscape like a cruel titan’s power drill, spewing forth dirt and bone, flesh, blood and viscera—absolute power—all creation’s fates quivering in his palm. But then Evan remembers that he is not God, and that squirming little noodle is just a bug that’s lucky it crossed paths with a guy who respects the sanctity of life.

He carries this sanctimonious prestige—along with a basket of cleansed, crisp linens from the dryer—back into his bedroom. He sets down the washed and dried cloth but hangs onto the sense of pride as he slips on some silky boxer briefs, a pair of denim slacks and an overpriced plain white tee, all purchased from an Urban Outfitters retail shop.

Evan exits his home and enters his almost fully charged red Range Rover Evoque, firing up its clean emitting motor and hitting the road. Along his quest, he cruises past three separate settings of dirt-dressed, disheveled looking panhandlers, and though he does regard each with sympathy, he makes eye contact with none of them; not the one with the Anything Will Help, God Bless sign, or the one with the Will Work for Food sign, not even the one with the sign that reads Homeless Family, Desperate, Four Hungry Children, Please Help Us, God Bless. That third sign-bearer even has a baby in her arms and an adolescent child at her side. The other two kids must have been with the father at a different locale. This, however, is not a thought that comes anywhere near Evan’s mind in the moment. His mind is on a large iced salted caramel macchiato with four espresso shots and an almond milk substitute. This caffeination ritual will ensure that he does not burn all his midnight oil before high noon.

He pulls into the Starbucks drive-thru, obtains his order, and guzzles it down within a minute and a half, still slurping with a straw sweep when the gurgling suction sound signifies that he has reached its sweet terminus.

As he ventures back toward the homestead, the traffic lights next to where the family with the sign are posted flip to yellow much too far ahead for him to try gunning it through, and so he must come to a stop directly next to them. Shit. From his peripheral, he can feel the mother’s solemn daggers and he chances a glance. For a most fleeting moment, eye contact is made and a pained smile sneaks onto his face. Ah goddammit. He looks down to his wallet, seated in the vehicle’s center console. He takes hold of it and begins to rifle through it anxiously, finding a fiver and two singles among the litany of receipts and various papers. Once he has retrieved the crinkled currency, he looks back to the mother, now realizing that the father and the other two children have joined the procession. He places his pointer on the passenger window button and pushes it, sending the glass barrier to the outer world down into the door, then leans to the opening, holding out three crimped bills. “Hello.” The dejected woman lowers and tucks her sign into the creased pit of her left arm and moves to him, bobbing nods as she does. “Thank you, thank you so much. God bless you.” She takes hold of Evan’s offering, still bobbing her sorrowful eyes up and away from him, and prayerfully folds her free hand over the cash-gripping fist. “God bless you, sir. Thank you.” Her disconsolate face mirrors Evan’s as a faint despair overtakes him. “You’re welcome. Take care.” She steps back, still bowing to him in thanks and he affirms the family with despondent nods.

BEEP! BEEP!

The bark from a car horn behind jerks him from his melancholy, replacing it with outrage. He looks up to his rear-view mirror with wide-eyed, brow bent ire and hollers, throwing his hands about in wild gestures. “Hey, fuck you cocksucker!” He slams his foot down on the accelerator and rockets off, swearing to himself, but at the asshole who dared to honk at him while he was committing a good deed, a selfless act of humanitarianism. His pupils shift manically back and forth between the road and the rear-view. “Fucking stupid bitch prick piece of shit! How about some fucking patience you idiot fuck?! I know you see those people in need, but you can’t be bothered to wait two fucking seconds! Fuck! Y—”

A loud, heavy crunching bang cuts off Evan’s tirade—K’THUNK!

He stomps down, damn near pushing the brake pedal through the floor, bringing the SUV to a sliding, shrieking halt. His clenched hands are affixed to the steering wheel, eyes are bloodshot golf balls. He pants in short, labored breaths, staring forward, petrified, reluctant to become witness to whatever aftermath he just seeded. He hears a cacophony of muffled pedestrian screams and bellows crescendoing outside his automotive safe haven.

When he finally musters the valor to look toward the chaos, he turns and appears to have no reaction. What he sees is a human form laying still within the white paint ladder of a crosswalk, a swathing stroke of red smearing from it toward him. The human looks to be holding onto the plastic lead of a snapped and frayed guiding leash. Evan’s breathing intensifies. Slowly, he scans further into the street, nearing hyperventilation. Then, he spots a panting, but seemingly smiling, golden retriever with two to three feet of broken leash attached to its collar. His phone dings. His gaze shoots briefly to it—100 people like your comment—then back.

The dog moves hesitantly toward the twisted body in the crosswalk, head down, sniffing. Evan can see no blood, no limp, no damage to the fluffy critter. He lets out a small bagel-lipped breath of relief. Well—fuck—Goddammit man—At least the dog is ok.

E. Harold Murphy is a writer from the Illinois side of the Quad Cities. He has been writing lyrics, screenplays and various little stories for 25 years, along with producing music, editing and designing sound and audio, filmmaking, and creating a variety of multimedia art. After the passing of his father in January of 2025, the finding of a small stack of Stephen King books near him on the nightstand, and a need for creative catharsis, a new inspiration arose and E. Harold began writing his first novel (still in the works), and a number of short stories.