By Robin J Bartley

August 2025

“Pending review by a jurah of your peers, with all accounted evidence having been presented and mulled over, and having given a plea of not guilty to the accused crime, what have you to say as final remarks, Doctuh Murrah? Here you have been charged with the abuse of little animals, and a violent streak against rabbits and coworkers who attempted to stop you, in the potential face of thuhree consecutive life sentences. Please speak now before this honorable court. Might I remind you, doctor, all jury members have already, privately, been shown the videos of your… actions, as have I.”

A man in a spindly suit stands behind his table– Doctor Murry. He’s got patches on his elderly elbows, tired from his defense and hours of evidential review, and his neck is long and pale and limp where it meets his bald chin. His head is bald too, but the mind beneath it is a tempest of swirling  response. His fingers rest on the table like pale spiders, skeletal and shaking in the courtroom. The jury feels sick, and one man feels oddly full.

“Your honor, let me begin to dissect the root of your query. You say that the sentence I face is longer than one life– three in fact, farcical as that sounds in theory– reimagined under the account of one life which, according to this here state is defined as thirty years, would see me dead behind federal bars. I am an old man, your honor, my body and mind simply could not take it in there. You all hold the key to my rehabilitation or my death behind cell locks. Given that, and the threatened outcome of this here trial, I would say there is little choice for me but to defend my position until the end of my days in this court, against an aforementioned ‘haul of evidence,’ as said by the lovely prosecution and her photographic encyclopedia of my work. A lifelong sentence. How can I manage?

I imagine the words ‘crimes against the animal kingdom’ are ringing in the heads of my jurors as judgement of my supposed legal error, though I wouldn’t call them peers– not when I can’t summon even one of their names from memory. Thank you madam prosecutor for the kind words, but so much a crime, I would call it not. Not in my dictionary of knowledge. More so a simple fulfillment of supply to demand, of my own needs from my own supply, readily available to anyone of my staff that I have been hereby barred from contacting, despite my efforts in necessary defense of this trial, because as a man with a body that, like yours and yours and yours, hungers for food and water and sex, under certain working conditions of the ‘pharmaceutical lords’ I did exactly what was necessary to fulfill my needs not met by the company in which I was employed. A company I have been kept from mentioning by name by way of a non-disclosure and non-disparagement clause, and by my limited means I met my needs entirely within the grounds of both the company and the resources at my disposal, under the conditions in which I was subjected, for twenty years. So much like a rat I must’ve become that the irony cannot escape the maze! Your honor!-”

“-Your closing argument thus is, what, Doctor Murrahh?… That you were trapped in the laboratoruh at the time of the incident?-”

“-No!- Yes, precisely! Trapped for years! That I was the rat in the maze! For hours on days, on weeks, months and years, layered like a cheese parfait, I was that soul in the maze of laboratory rats; their language to me became endless, translatable and understandable by even my human ears– my human needs unmet!– by the so-called bossmen, whom did not translate for my tongue which hungered and yearned for anything at mealtime, for anyone at mealtime to sit by my side!– which, by nature, I had no choice but to fulfill with rats on both end of the tail, both sides of the sprung trap that offered me cheese where there was no cheese, no fortune of pay that I had been promised, that my coworkers reveled in as their research became fruitful in cosmetic causes where I, I sought cures and potions to ail the masses I could not meet, for I was not allotted the hours beyond the meat of rat and mice and little bunny creatures that fed me– no matter the contamination because it was too late! I was already contaminated! They– I was already hungry! And they did not feed me! Those rats did not feed themselves, nor did they free themselves from the maze! Why? Oh, why did they not free themselves? Why did they let me eat them?!”

The doctor lays his palms on his table and shakes his head down where his chin kisses his collar, angry like a dog that’s chewed on his own tail.

“They kept me alive to work to death, as this jury’s choice will keep me alive to squirm in a maze of gangs and little ratty minds that nip at each other’s skin like I ripped the flesh off rats and bunnies that tasted oh so much more like the fruit of my research than the years I spent toiling the maze, which was never enough! It was never enough! There was no cure, not yet! I must be allowed to continue my research as the master of the maze, or else there will be no cure!–”

“–So you blame the company for your choices?”, the judge asks, browning his nose under his little copper glasses, “Too many useless hours wasted?”

“What choices are there in the maze they constructed?! I broke the law! I broke the contracts and clauses– I fell from the moral precarity of my place! Yet I stand here to speak on my own behalf as the rat that survived the maze! I lived because I ate the papers of your laws because that is the medicine I was forced to be given, to give! I cured nothing, because they didn’t want me to! Too many hours, too little assistance. They wanted to keep rats and to watch them toil! To dress them up for make-ups and toxic shampoos, while I watched on the side alone! Well, I watched! I watched until I no longer could and then, then, I feasted as they watched their little bunny noses! I ate as they cooked– I was not the chef! That! That is why I am not guilty– by reason of insanity! Or rather I am guilty by my insanity! Driven by those men in that booth there, that subjected me to the maze of wages and rats! While I toiled, they tampered! They starved me, gave me nothing but rats and bunnies to watch. They are the truest mice– the rats, the bossmen cats in their fancy-suited disguises. Let them be held accountable for the little lives I have consumed!- For the contamination I have wreaked!”

The jury mumbles the way the professor points, as the judge leans back, “I see.”

“Don’t you? Don’t you all see? The rats. They are sentenced, not silenced. They eat what they are given. I ate what I was given.”

Robin J Bartley is a fantasy novelist and writer born and raised in Oak Park, Chicago, with a heavy focus on the psychological elements in both themself and their characters. They work to build intricate worlds for their readers to get lost in, and is known for crafting thematically rich stories and characters meant to display the depths of the conscious mind. With hands-on experience in the magnitude of such larger projects, and an unmatched dedication to their characters and themes, they offer limitless drive and unmatched creative passion.