“If only you’d fight back,” said the scratch upon which I had focused my attention. Even I knew this was a bad sign.

But having given up caring, I answered, “Look at me. No, you are me. You know. I can’t fight back. I am nothing, a shell.”

It laughed. The verdammt thing laughed at me. Not caring is one thing, and putting up with being insulted is another. But the laughing didn’t last too long. Or it lasted a few hours. I’m not entirely sure.

“Oh, the vanity of man,” the crack said, as if it wasn’t even talking to me, as if it had someone else to address, “to think that anything and everything is about, from, and within him.”

Tears, an almost forgotten commodity to me, burst from both eyes, and I yelled from my feeble mouth, “Even if I could…even if I could fight back! Even if I…es is shade, I can’t.” Reluctantly, I closed my eyes, praying not to sleep but to somehow affect a closing of my mad ears.

“Wait, and remember…rebmemer dna ,tiaW”