Sipsworth

by Simon Van Booy

Now the television went all night. An endless loop of voices. Even if there was no one in the studio or watching at home, it kept on, seeking to fill the emptiness but only intensifying it.

And herein lies the cruel paradox of human existence⁠—not that you die, but that all happiness eventually turns against you.

None of this has any effect on her. It is no longer Helen’s world to worry about. And in her mind it is the same news over and over again, with the only difference being that people think they’re hearing it for the first time.

“The only consolation of being the last to go,” she admits, “is knowing the people you loved the most won’t suffer the way you do in their absence.”

The paw on page forty-five advises caregivers that mice sometimes practice coprophagy, whereby eating their own feces allows them to “synthesize their own vitamin C and efficiently recover many B vitamins also.”