In the morning I remembered the Lobster.
The rich taste was like butter in my mouth. When I yawned the sun came pouring in, the sensation melted, the glorious flavor bloomed and vanished. I felt sick opening my eyes. My head was cooked from anxious dreams I couldn’t ever remember. I tore away the cream-colored silk and milk-white blankets from my bed, buried my feet in the steaming carpets, and sat up in the sun for a few quiet moments. I thought about the Lobster.
It wasn’t until I scanned the local newspaper that I fell apart. The black square of toast with a haphazard slick of jelly I held in suspension, my mouth slightly open and poised to bite. Then the hand began to tremble uncontrollably, leaving little burnt flakes of the breakfast slice upon the smooth oak table like ash. The creamed and sugared coffee in my mouth took on a bitterness that stung. I tried to swallow, but I saw his picture and I read what happened and last night came back all too quickly, a tide you hoped as a boy wouldn’t come back to sink your pitiful sand castle on the Ocean’s edge. But here it is, and here I am, ruined again, set to building it all back up just where it was before. Last night I went out.
That doesn’t mean anything, I always go out, almost every night; I swing the gold-trimmed pocket watch around my wrist and catch the time in my hand with a hellish smile. I don’t recall where I went. But I ate Lobster.
The thick, buttery taste and tender, salty meat of the sea-born animal was a marvel of the night, had me walking home with a sloppy, bloated step, as I nodded my head back and forth in a happy dream not given yet by sleep. I hummed some simple, stupid tune as my delusions carried me, still licking the lingering Lobster flavor on my lips. Hands deep in the pockets of my trench coat, I walked into that other part of town, unknowingly, the part that lends my feet to swifter, quieter steps when I do not reek with that heavy poison: the gleaming reds and whites of expensive wine. Furry rats peeled the plastered unread papers from crooked bricks; every dumpster was dry, a thousand hands having plundered its sacred treasures. There was an ancient building sunk in shame and shadow: who knows what hungry eyes stalked me from that perch.
I sent the brilliant pocket watch to orbit ‘round my wrist like a golden moon, round and round and round and round and round until the motions made me dizzy, threw the orbit askew. Had I not turned my head I would have never known, remained safe and ignorant in the wealth-induced coma of my life. But instead the wind blew shrill and I turned the soft skin of my cheek away and saw the gun, the flash, the innocent eyes screaming out in the night. Good God, I had never seen so much blood. As the sweet tastes and sleepy drinks of the dinner washed out of my head in a cold breath, I caught the ticking timepiece and froze. The wounded creature slumped to the ground. I don’t think he saw me standing there. With every step of approach I took two of retreat. The time shook in my hand. I abandoned the golden moon to those wretched streets and by my feet I was carried home, my hand locked me inside, and my mind fled to my dreams. I read about him in the paper this morning. What monster am I?

Last night I ate Lobster and let a man die: In the morning I remembered the Lobster.