Freewrite #11. This vignette was written as one of a series of quick exercises designed to be both an outlet for refining vague ideas and an opportunity to improve the flow and dynamics of my writing. Imagery. Personalization. Perhaps a bit of philosophy. There's more going on in one given moment than what little we are aware of.

The rain hovers in place beneath leaden skies, glaring with malice down at the grimy concrete and steel of the city. It strives to corrode the abomination of cold streets, to free the land for the plants and animals once more. They understood the balance, unlike the man-demons. They never sundered the circle with their will.

The city stretches into gray heights, blessing the very rain that curses it, awaiting the next refreshing drop and the sweet release of another particle of dirt. The filth weighs so heavily upon its walls and streets, a disease that clings and sickens the once-proud construct. It peers out from a thousand smeared windows and wonders why the men who built it have come to hate it so.

The insect peeks its head out from the maze within the city's walls, its jointed antennae held high with frantic agitation. The burn of the chemical in its belly is nothing compared to the inferno of blind, frustrated rage that claims its tiny brain. Damn those monsters and their cruel tricks! Damn their murderous, demented crusade against its kind and its way of life! Their huge feet crush so many; their traps imprison and starve thousands more; and today the tainted food it had unknowingly brought back to its hungry family would kill them all. The dying cockroach doesn't know why humanity hates its kind, but it most definitely hates humanity back.

The little cat stares at the emerging insect, her big eyes luminescent under the sickly-green glare of the streetlight. Barely more than a kitten, she has already earned several scars and sniffed at the limp bodies of each of her siblings. If she is lucky, the roach will be tonight's dinner. If not, then she will go hungry again, for the rain has chased most of the vermin off the streets, and she has never had any other way to find food. She is not as lucky as the other cats she has seen through the lit city windows, the ones who stare out at her with innocent eyes and fat bellies, their fur all soft and clean. She is chased and kicked instead of pampered and loved, and all she can do is fight to survive in the unyielding streets and wonder why she has no human of her own.

The man glances at the scrawny kitten out of the corner of his eye, paused mid-motion in the act of darting across the trash-littered street. Although he sees the mangy, starved waif, his mind does not register her presence any more than it does the ruddy carapace of the cockroach peeking out of the crack beside her. All he knows are his own thoughts, and they linger in anticipation of the empty pleasure awaiting him in his heavy right pocket. Tonight's trip will be a welcome distraction from another bad day at work and another fight with his live-in girlfriend. He thinks he's unhappy because he's not rich enough, not powerful enough. He thinks he needs a better place to live than his roach-infested, third-floor hole-in-the-wall, but all he can bring himself to do about it is to curse his decrepit building and set out a few traps. He hates his life; he hates his city; and he definitely hates the rain.