Editor’s Note: This article is purely satirical and fictitious. All attributions in this article are not genuine, and this story should be read in the context of pure entertainment only.

The change was sudden, so sudden I could barely perceive it. One minute I was alone, peacefully having a heroin-fueled aneurysm in my condo, and the next, I was a microscopic, barely sensible E. Coli bacterium, floating around in the lower intestinal tract of what I now believe was a sterile hybrid between a French Poodle and whatever the wrinkly one is.

I quickly interrogated my surroundings, and attempted to make conversation with my fellow paramecia. However, it quickly became apparent to me that I was in a world of wretchedness and flagellation and filth to which my previous life of debauchery and hedonism paled in comparison. We were, quite literally, swimming in shit, and there was no limit to the public indecency to which I was exposed by my brothers and sisters. All around me, individuals were engaged in asexual intercourse with no sense as to the standards of propriety or good reason, which I found extremely distasteful indeed.

The filth around me festered and multiplied, and I even found myself producing an offspring myself, one who, tragically, inherited all of my vices. I attempted to make conversation, but my doppelganger was more interested in playing with his own flagellum than pondering questions of spirituality, enlightenment, and redemption. I hated him, and our relationship quickly grew further strained when he would not let me see my own grandchild.

And when it finally came time for my apoptosis, neither my compatriots nor my offspring were there to comfort me. As I felt my cytoplasm leak through my membrane, I saw for the first time the truth of reincarnation, and the soul’s long struggle towards enlightenment. And as I faded from this mortal coil, I took the next painful step in my slow, fitful path toward nirvana.

***

I awoke to green pastures. Blue sky. Warmth. Heat. I was a cow! Grazing on a vast, lush, verdant field with my cow brethren. My hopes had been answered! I knew that the cow was considered sacred in many faiths, and that this would likely afford me a long life of study and contemplation. I was excited, and caught up in the beauty of the day. 

Then the gate at the other end of the pasture opened, and a man in a cowboy hat walked through. He placed a loop of rope around one of the other cow’s necks and led it out of the gate and to a low, sinister building about a hundred feet away. Ten minutes later, the man in the hat walked out of the building; the other cow never did. That was when it hit me: I was a cow… in America. A cow. In. America. 

All my thoughts of enlightenment and peace vanished. As I watched one of my brothers unload a stream of dung onto the long grass, only one thought streamed through my mind: 

Shit.