This piece was written for the weekly Unicorn Challenge to write up to 250 words in response to a photo prompt. Any resemblance to actual life in France or to the actual thought processes of snails is purely coincidental.

There I was, minding my own business, up a tree in Catalonian Barthelona, when this cherry-pickin’ monster rocks up and hurls me into a bin. I went into my shell for survival and when I was game enough to stick my head out again I discovered that, far from being a bowl, life had become a box of cherries. In a French market no less, with men shrugging as they blew Gauloise smoke into my eyes and women carrying over-laden baskets with baguettes sticking out as they gazed about with their bedroom eyes.

This is the land of the sauvage (and not the perfumed kind), I thought to myself. Over on the deli stalls sat jars of mardi foie gras gleaned from the livers of gullible force-fed geese. Beneath the tables there were a myriad of frog amputees frantically rolling their wheelchairs away in case some other part of their anatomy became a delicacy.

And of course I was only too well aware of their penchant for my own kind, calling it escargot to disguise its murderous origins. To make us edible, they starve us for days to eliminate our ability to make slime and then cook us up for the pleasure of bar patrons, who remove our corpses with toothpicks as they sip their Burgundy.

Which is why I am hurtling with as much pace as a snail can muster to find safety amongst the cabbages, leaving behind me as many snail trails as a honeymoon bed.