little creatures

The creatures were never meant to exist but that didn’t matter once he saw them breathe life.  He was just trying to grow stuff and wondered what would happen if he threw a little bit of this and a little bit of that in. Before he went to bed he threw in three red lentils and never thought anything of it again until he got home from work the next day. The lentils seemed to have grown little leg like appendages and were crawling around. He pulled them out and placed them on the table for closer observation. He looked closely and had it not been for what seemed like their intention to avoid his probing fingers, he would never had suspected anything. He looked closer and could see they had small mouths that would gulp for air as they leaned back on what he assumed were their hind leg. Then he realized that maybe they weren’t gulping for air but were hungry for food. The only thing he could think of were bread crumbs. He pulled some out of an old bag and crumbled one into little bits near by the red lentil creatures. They didn’t seem to understand that the crumbs were an offering of food so he started to nudge one over in the direction of the crumbs but he nudged a little too firmly and partially squished the red lentil creature causing about a third or more of its innards to squish over the table top and on his finger. Given that the red lentil creature was the size of a red lentil, a third of innards weren’t much but he could see that the innards consisted of little organs and a biological tissue like substance. It surprised him because he assumed its innards would have simply been lentil mush but the presence of small organs and biological tissue suggested something much more alive than he originally imagined. He looked at the partially smooshed red lentil creature and saw that it seemed to be writhing in pain from having been partially smooshed. His heart immediately sank and he instinctually thought he should put it out of its misery. Without thinking further, he fully smooshed the creature out of existence.  All that was left was a smear of those small organs and more biological tissues. The other two creatures seemed to notice what happened and moved over towards the smear that had been their friend. They seemed to look at the smear and then look up him. Other than their primitive mouths, they didn’t have any facial features but still he could recognize the look of sadness and disappointment on whatever it was they had instead of faces. Their gaze indicted him of his crime. He didn’t mean to do it but nonetheless it happened and he couldn’t rescue his heart from murky pond of guilt it had sunk in even if the night before these creatures had been nothing more that red lentils.