Search and Destroy

The battered toy swelled. Mold and water damage had taken it's toll; the metal grin fading away over the intervening years. Bloated and squirming with worms and bacteria, a battle takes place on the inside of it's yellow fabric. A hole on the underside of the plush is open to a stream of ants.

Tearing and biting. The smaller ones were being torn up and dragged off, but the bigger ones were determined to survive. Born into a world of darkness and pain, they had to do what they had to do. The weak ones went first, thrust into the pile of clicking, biting insects.

One lucky soul punched his way out of the toy's chest, immersed in the white sticky embryonic yolk of the toy's cottony insides.

He was a horrid thing. As small as the human's index finger, and yet as feral as a wild badger. The biggest of his siblings, who were failing their fight. He turned back to see earthworms and ants take what was left of his kin. He felt nothing. He would survive. He would thrive.

 He stared into the empty, putrefied sockets of a skeleton whose name has been lost to the ravages of nuclear fallout. Then he gazed down at his pink, cloth paws. What killed his creator had given him life. He would not squander this opportunity.

Man-Gle turned away from his dying brethren, and set out for the life ahead.