Loganoh had not eaten in days. As a result, he spent most of his time sleeping. Today he decided to leave the safety of herdlet and venture back to his favourite spot at the cliffs. This would be the first time since the day he saw the Hwicks throwing lemmings into the ocean.
He hadn’t told anyone about that day. Who would believe him? Why would the Hwicks do it? What purpose would it serve? Why would a lemming watch such a thing? This last question was the one he feared being asked the most. No sane lemming would do such a thing. A sane lemming’s first instinct would be to run away from danger, not to observe it. What kind of a lemming would watch his herdmates be tossed into the sea by those lumbering two-legged Hwicks?
“They’d call me a deviant. They’d be right.” He turned his head side to side to see if anyone heard him. No one was there of course. Loganoh was alone. Lately he feared that he was indeed some sort of deviant. To his mind, his fondness for being alone and his ability to watch gruesome death were proof of it.
Despite his troubled thoughts, the exertion of the walk proved to be too much and Loganoh fell asleep almost instantly upon arriving at the cliffs.
He had nightmare.
It was dark. He could hear a rolling sound, deep like thunder, but much closer. He realized that he was moving. The source of the sound was forcing him forward. The darkness was actually the crush of lemmings all around him. There were so many of them and all running in the same direction. Plainly, it was not just his herdlet but the entire herd. What could make the entire herd run so? He could not see past the lemmings that surrounded him. Where could they possibly be heading?
“What’s going on?” he yelled to the lemming next to him. “What happened?”
The other lemming moved his mouth and made sounds, but he could not hear the words over the hundreds of running lemming feet. Loganoh noticed the expression on the lemmings face. The mouth was smiling, but the eyes were empty. The face scared Loganoh. He noticed that the other lemmings around him all shared the same euphoric yet vacuous expression.
The run had brought them to a crest of a hill and for the first time Loganoh could see what lay before them. He was right; it was the entire herd. They covered the earth in front of him. He looked ahead and saw that they were heading for the cliffs. Loganoh choked on his breath as he saw the first lemmings run right off the edge of the cliff without any hesitation.
Loganoh’s legs gave out but the throng kept moving him forward. He tried to dig his paws into the ground but he ended up being pushed into a roll by the other lemmings. He tried desperately to turn around, hoping to climb over the lemmings behind him. It was no use. He couldn’t do anything to slow his pace let alone stop.
He tried to yell a warning, but he couldn’t hear his own voice. All he could hear were the hundreds of lemming paws running on the ground and the growing sound of the sea. Suddenly the ground beneath his feet disappeared. He looked down at his paws and all he could see were lemmings in free fall and the sea far below.
