Young Ofeg's Ditties/Ditty 6
VI.
The old I lay in bed between white sheets at the point of death; the new I sat a piece away, and his features were lost in the gloom.
"Help me!" whimpered the old I.
"Do you ask help from your foe?" answered the new I.
"Help me!"
"No, you must die."
And the delirium of death seized the sick man, and he shrieked that great black rats were springing over the white sheets, over his hands and over his face.
"They are your old thoughts coming again," the voice made answer out of the gloom; "they are filth thrown off by your brain."
"Have you then no mercy?"
"No, not for you. You are a coward to sue me for mercy. Did you shew me any mercy? When I was new born did you treat me as a father; when the milk seethed in my mother's pails did you give me to drink; when I lay on the stone floors and shivered, did you put me to bed?"
"Silence! Oh silence! mercy!"
"When I grew to manhood, do you remember how you tried to assassinate me, do you remember how you drove me from your house; do you remember how you tried to gash me in the foot, put out my eyes, so that I might be halt and blind?"
Then the dying man writhed like a worm that has been trodden upon, and blood-flecked foam stained his lips.
"Do you remember how you got all your friends and acquaintances to conspire against me, to mock me, wound me, and embitter my life? You hid food from me, and gave me sorry fare, you and yours, and you spattered the vileness of your own souls over those who were dear to me?
"Now you shall die."
And the sick man shrieked as when death bends over the bed, and he called out that the rats were crawling into his mouth and sitting in his brain, and he rolled himself into a ball, arms and legs and sheets like a mass of tangled white maggots, and gave up the ghost.