The Shrimp in the Wall
I had already eaten half of my shrimps one afternoon when my mind brought the picture of the shrimp in the wall before my eyes again. It looked like a huge shrimp with long orange and white legs like a big bird eating spider or tarantula stuck in a broken red brick wall. Each leg looked as big as a shrimp. I tried to pull a leg to drag it out but it was fixed. Finally a leg was torn and I saw the creature was still alive. This ruined my appetite; I felt sick and threw up.

The picture imposed itself on me while eating my shrimps now and I vowed I would stop eating them again. But I continued eating the rest hurriedly to get rid of them for I couldn’t leave the rest on my plate and risk being asked: Why don’t you eat your shrimps? I couldn’t have told the story of the shrimp in the wall while eating shrimps? Could I?

When I finished I was relieved but felt sick again and decided that if I brushed my teeth and ate some fruit like bananas the horrible taste in my mouth would go. I devoured two bananas and some orange but it didn’t go. Besides, the picture was still so real in my mind that I could draw every little detail and movement of the legs. I went to bed and hoped that the next day everything would be fine.

But I woke up with a headache and with the huge shrimp’s legs moving permanently before my eyes. There was practically no escape from it even if I closed my eyes. So I decided to go to the broken wall again and see if it was still there. The shrimp was gone but the broken leg was lying in the hole with ants piled on it.

Jamshid
Bremen, 23 February 2010