A story for children and the young at heart.^*

I’m Larry, and I’m just like any other lobster. I totally swoon if the water temperature is jus’ right baby! Oh yeah, I’m as much a blue blooded lobster as the next lobster. Every time I see another lobster I imagine a whole swathe of obscene sexual occurrences. I mean, I consider myself rational, but the sight of hot young lobsters turns me from the sensible bank manager I am into a real brute. I introduce myself this way, because I know what you’ll think when I tell you what I’m going to tell you in the next sentence, and I want you to know that I am not an incrustacean pervert. I recently went in a human ornamental string box.

The practice of lobsters putting themselves in the hairless mammal’s handicrafts (which, my friend, Barry, tells me, are part of some adorable sexual display) has been going on for some time. Indeed, it has become the white elephant fish in the cave. The fact is, we all have fantasies about these, and the supposed sensations when you get in one of their strange hot water baths. I made the decision to have a go so went down to the shady part of town in Criehaven, Maine. Some dodgy lobster told me somewhere he’d seen a few handicrafts in return for a few bits of old crab. As I saw the handicraft, already loaded with other sex fiends who had probably found out about it online, I started to feel like I did when I saw Jennifer Worthington molt. My heart was racing as I went through their little conical one way entrances (My mate Dave told me that this is cos they think we think it is rude to leave via them, and that our presence renders their treasures more attractive to aficionados).

My proximity to the other blokes (surprise, surprise, they’re all blokes – If I get my claws on the dodgy guy that recommended this string box!), was extremely irritating. What was especially aggravating was that most of them were offensive laddish types. The exception being a shy, strange looking fellow called Ted. One of the bigger lads was pushing Ted around a bit and I said ‘leave off mate’. Big mistake. I barely survived. In this instance I would happily, have had a two way door. After a severe beating, I passed out. Thanks for helping me out Ted.

When I awoke I was in a fish tank. It was bizarre, being next to all these total cunts was really starting to piss me off. I lashed out a few times. In reality, everyone was getting angry. I shut my eyes and tried to stay calm, and have a little empathy for the other poor buggers. Through the glass I could see a hot bath and realised that a human was coming to get us. He picked three of us out and took us to the hot bath. He put the other two in and left me out because there wasn’t room. I saw everything I expected. The scream of gas escaping from under the skin. The crazed sexual writhing induced by the heat. In the moments of final sexual bliss, seconds before they expired in a moment of pure pleasure, I suddenly started to question the sensibility of this whole endeavour. I imagined what they would have thought, when they inspected their end at close hand. For the first time in my life, I made a decision.

I slipped the rubber bondage bands from my claws, and went at this cheffy mammal. I took his right upper eye lid in two. I hit the floor and ran right out the restaurant. Outside, I jumped on a bus and made for anywhere. I got off in the countryside. I scuttled into a bush of stinging nettles and began to assess the situation. Perhaps you expected it, I didn’t, but perhaps you did. This is to be a story of brutal vengeance.

I found the chef’s house. I found his bathroom. I set the boiler temperature to 95 degrees. I waited.

He got in from work, tired, and came into the bathroom, where I hid in a cupboard. He took his clothes off and showed me his hideous pallid meat. He took a glass of red wine and put it on the side of the bath. He set both taps running. I waited some more. He got in to the bath and started to wash himself. He masturbated and his vile ejaculate floated around on the surface of the water. As he took a sip of red wine, his eyes fell shut. The scar on the right eye had turned into a purple line that made his eye look like a leafless pine tree on the horizon after a volcano has ejaculated.

This was the right moment. I started to rock back and forth on the top shelf of the cupboard. Eventually, I had enough momentum and the cupbard fell across the bath. It was a large mahogany number and the weight held him there. He could breath cos his head was just missed by the edge of the wooden tombstone. I immediately jumped out and threw his iPhone in the bath rendering it as useless as a door on a human ornamental string box. I then turned the hot tap on. I struggled with the slippery tap but I got there. As he tried to turn the cold tap on or the hot off I snipped his toes. He died a gruesome death after what was an horrific ordeal. I torched the restaurant.

I went to the sea and swam off. I still think about that time in my life. I regret it because humans are objectively more intelligent and capable of a greater degree of suffering. Truth is, I’m not a typical lobster. I’m just not like the other lobsters.

This article owes a great deal to Michel Comeau and Fernand Savoie’s seminal Journal of Crustacean Biology article, Maturity and Reproductive Cycle of the Female American Lobster, Homarus Americanus, in the Southern Gulf of St. Lawrence, Canada.

Savour life,

* Not suitable for children.