You Will Know Us By Our Dead

An Excerpt Bubble* from "The God of Nightmares"



The wedding was in a tasteless style, whatever that meant. To the people throwing it, it meant that it was an avant garde “fuck you” to traditional marriage. Really, it was just a cry for attention. That middle child cry of “pay attention, any attention to validate me” that so many people fell into.
I wasn't there as either a guest, or friend, or server or anything. I wasn't crashing. These people were on my turf. This was my space that they'd decided to have their vegan friendly, P.E.T.A. Approved civil union of non-gender specific roles of whatever politically charged dross you want to insert.
They could have been fascist anarchists and it would not change the fact that I would be here long after their petty little squabbles turned to dust.
They saw me as they wanted to see me. The same way a cat sees a rock. A cat will play with a ball of yarn because it has the potential for movement. The cat sees that movement and assumes life, and does what it can to kill that life for sport. To a cat, a rock is not part of its perception. To a human, I am nothing more than a rock.
I am not a rock, nor do I look like one in a limited way.
I heard this joke once. It was “God created us in His image”, and the punchline was that people thought this meant that God had two arms and eyes and all that. They didn't even understand how it was a joke. A shadow is created in the image of a person. It doesn't have organs. Yet these shadow people somehow thought that being created in an image was a duplication process. A Polaroid captures the light that leaves a persons face, it's an image. How they could ever mistake that for godhood is beyond even me.
I have to water down my meanings. I have to create connections that you can understand, but that you might not understand. Or even like. Might even hate the connections I make. If I call you a retard, it is not meant to be insulting, especially if its true. In that same regard I have an affection towards the stupid little mortals that populate this world. The same way a person with their genetic code mostly intact would look at a puppy with down-syndrome as “cute”.
Humans, even with all their killing and stupid acts, are “cute” to me. You are toddlers that fall down and curse the universe.
Its so adorable. Like that time you obliterated Nagasaki out pure childishness. You were all so serious about it. Your planet and culture could be completely snuffed out right this instant and you argue over so much. Less than a thousand years from now, if your descendants have made it that far, they won't care that you argued over GMO foods.


*Bubbles are a term I use when I pull a character out of their universe and have them speak about a topic.  It may or may not be part of the novel.