On the one hand, Dan wanted to avoid the fate lurking just outside the tank pushed against the back wall of the restaurant foyer. He wasn't really crazy enough to actually want to experience being cooked, served, and eaten. Was he?
Along his entire body, from his plump, fan-shaped tail to the tips of his spindly antennae, Dan felt an electric sensation travel from one ganglia to the next, firing his entire crustacean body with something that could only be described as intense desire.
"Oh god," he shuddered and tried to use the tip of a jagged claw to hook the tag fastened around the middle of his shell. Even without his claws being securely bound, he lacked the dexterity to manipulate the firmly fastened tag advertising him as the nightly special. The tag's message [Nightly Special: $30] might as well have been a beacon inviting all customers to look at him, a succulent Maine lobster ripe for the boil pot.
A couple arrived. Dinner was not a special event. They hadn't been dating long enough to observe an anniversary. They were hungry, and the woman suggested the restaurant. The man, hoping for rather specific post-dinner recreational activities, meant to please her by ordering anything on the menu that she desired. When she mentioned lobster, his heart sank as he contemplated the pinch to his wallet until he noticed the bright yellow tag attached to one of the tank's plumper lobsters advertising a nightly special. In a discreet aside to their server, the man asked if the tag was accurate.
"Yes, it is," the server replied. "It's a fantastic deal."
The server escorted them to a nearby table, the tank still in view across the room.
"She will have that lobster," the man spoke with more enthusiasm, knowing the money he would be saving and the fun he might be purchasing for later in the evening. "I'll have a sirloin steak, well done."
The server, who had barely had time to seat them, smiled and departed, announcing he would inform the kitchen at once.
Meanwhile, Dan scuttled, albeit nervously, around the tank, hoping if he kept on the move he might somehow make the yellow tag a little less obvious to customers.
"If I can make it through the next few hours I..."
His optimism evaporated with the sudden intrusion of a gigantic pair of tongs that grabbed Dan around the middle and pulled him from the water. The employee was no novice. He had a bowl of partially melted ice cubes ready to receive the selected lobster. The cubes crunched and moved aside as the tongs forcefully nestled Dan deeper into the shocking cold of the waiting bowl.
An instant earlier, all ganglia had been firing with maximum efficiency. Now, Dan felt his responses growing sluggish as his crustacean's form reacted to the numbing quality of the icy bath. Everything outside the bowl appeared to coalesce into a slow-motion blur as Dan's effectively sedated body was carried into a clamorous, busy kitchen at the peak of the dinner hour.
His antennae poked above the ice and waved weakly. "I...have...got...to...escape..."
Even with the full force of urgent motivation behind him, Dan could barely think. Movement proved even more impossible.
"Oh...no..."
The complete experience of his lobster birthright was barreling toward Dan at full-throttle!