Chapter 1

A Chapter by Katliegh Merrier

There they scattered like so many little ants. Or mice, rats even, with eyes glowing red, their pale coverings dingy with the smell of musk that encased their timid, slender bodies, content with survival, with breeding, with the smallest fleck of food. Noses pointed towards the sky in reverence, as if the ones who trotted the ground before them were gods. The parade was as successfully jovial as ever, despite the desperate conditions. It was hot and dusty, nonetheless the crowd was pleased. Banners waved high, colors so bright and so cheerful as to induce illness in any rational-minded persons attending, as if there were any. The great rat spoke once more, surely he only smiled of the whiskers that tickled his chin; it was the only thing I could find to smile about. Instead, he spoke of the peace to be expected, the victorious ending of the war soon to come, all while belittling the droughts and famines of the day that lingered in the bodies, but sadly not the minds, of those in the crowd. I listened, intently, cross-examining his every syllable, his nonexistent facial ticks. Listening, I found myself soothed by his voice, and for a short while believed his lies to be truth. I, caught up in the crowd, found myself smiling, not at anguish as I usually did, but alongside the others in this shared intellectual masochistic , but of sincere happiness at the sound of his voice.
Yes, rodents, bugs, pests of every variety, but certainly not men, for not in a long time has there been anything of comparison to men. Of course, there are still warm bodies, the very same genetic makeup as before, with hearts beating the same circadian rhythms as before, rhythms they have still have yet to hear, while speaking so fluently in tongues they do not understand, breathing air they know not they pollute. These disappointing traits may yet be the only proof yet of their humanity, as these traits never change. That is how She wishes it to be, however. Blissful ignorance is part of our nature; we must accept the most devastating acts of depravity in order to cope.
However, it seems so different now, just no one mentions it anymore. In the beginning it was rumored to be something in the water, but only in hushed tones, between candid intellectuals in dimly lit rooms on stormy nights. Madness! the proletariat called so hastily, as the government has had no such influence since the dark times, and here we are today, in this, the age of white, of supposed purity, of clean, a society borne of infantile revolution. And in this, the majority silenced the few, as it always does. My mind tells me that it wasn't the water, no, I drank it all the same, watering from the same dirty pool as all the other bleached white animals. Yet, in my own eyes at least, I had suffered no noticeable affliction.
Dead, they are all zombified corpses, not in the most biological sense of course, as they possess a pulse that beats and a brain that functions, but not a mind to think. They all walk so confidently, so proud, and speak with such a certainty, so abrupt with their words, yet always they form meaningless sentences about things they know nothing about. They breathed in the air, without understanding, and with that they were filled to the brim. As a whole, they possess the most beautifully kept bodies to be seen, as if they were preserved in wax, with no blemishes or impurities to pierce their delicate skin. Under their gazeless eyes lies no darkness, but there hides a coldness, a chilling lack of fixation, even as as sounds escape their lips, simple noises uttered as heads nod and bob in unison, yet try as they might, no true and telligible words may form on the lips of these lost souls.
Yes, dead, the whole lot of them! Never thinking, barely feeling anything except their somber sort of happiness, a dimmed perpetual euphoria none wished to escape. These people lie engorged in a world continually centered around something so odd, something so perpetually foreign to me. It begins with the slow creep of the edges of the mouth, crinkling into a smile which in turn forms on the lips, seeming to seep into the brain like a poison, dripping into the very soul, and in the end you become one of them. Happy, so incessantly happy, that in itself is a sickness. News of the war comes so softly to them, as statistics roll off the screen which consensually invade their homes, showcasing charts of wartime victories, presenting public enemies to scoff at and loathe, executions to pencil in their precious time to watch. They swallow it all, dutifully, daily, as one would a fiber pill, to cleanse the system of any resistance, all while passing through untouched.
These people are insane.