Bug

by Rhea Unny

I just killed a bug.

It crawled across my screen, slow and unwitting, toward my thumb as I paused what I was watching. My thumb lifted, hovering like fate itself, and then fell. The bug crumpled beneath it, its tiny body crushed in an instant. What right did I have? What gave me the power to decide its time was done? 

What of its family? Its mother, its father, its mate, its children—if such things exist for creatures so small. What of its journey, its desires? Did it have desires? Or did it only follow instinct, pulled by the faint glow of light in my room, searching for something it would never name but knew it needed? Was it worth less than me, simply because it couldn’t speak, couldn’t think the way I do? It only wanted the light inside my room. It only wanted life, only wanted to drink in the pleasure of pleasure. Is it worth less than myself? How dare I. A worthless death for a worthless life, I may say. So nonchalantly I flicked off the blood. 

How terrible, to be in awe of something one moment and then destroy it the next. Did it see my thumb as it rose above it? Did it feel fear? Did it know that its small world was ending? And if it did, what would that knowledge have been like—brief, sharp, and incomprehensible? 

Perhaps it wasn’t about worth at all but power. In that moment, I held its life in my hands, and I chose to end it. With one thoughtless motion, I unmade something that could never be made again. It leaves behind no memory, no legacy, and no one to wonder where it has gone. Its body, so light, so small, will disappear, swept into a bin or crushed beneath my heel, returning to dust without a trace.

But is a life that leaves no trace any less of a life? Is it any less deserving? Perhaps it was. Perhaps not. We’ll never know, because it’s gone now. Its tiny spark of being, extinguished, its absence unnoticed by the world around it. 

All that’s left is silence and a smear of blood. And me, the one who chose.