We Have Seen The Enemy, And It’s Them (and us)
We Have Seen The Enemy, And It’s Them (and us)
Holidays of Your Own Hellish Making
December 23, 2020
Pumpkins, Lightbulbs, and the Merry Apocalypse
“Why,” she asks as we dig another grave.
“Why didn’t anyone do what they were supposed to do? Why didn’t anyone listen to anyone at all? Why did they choose greed, ignorance and now, death?”
My arms ache after a long day of burying the dead and listening to the cries of the dying.
“Pumpkins for Halloween,” she says. “They used billions of gallons of water and millions of acres of land to grow pumpkins that did not feed a single person. They wanted pumpkins for decorations. They bred billions of turkeys and fed them drugs turning them into monsters, just for one meal. They, for centuries, raped valuable land and used priceless oceans of water to grow Christmas trees that fed no one and then just died alone. And the electricity. All the coal that was burned for your goddamn Christmas lights. For decades and decades. A ridiculous orgy of consumption and waste.”
She is crying. The stench of death is paralyzing.
The wails of the maimed and the doomed assault our ears. It is snowing. Christmas is almost here. Christmas in the final days under an orange, acid sky.
“I don’t have an answer,” I tell her as I shovel more dirt on another poor departed soul. “Manmade global warming certainly did contribute to dooming the human race to this fate. And we might be the last ones alive and we might not even make it to the next Christmas. But remember, the poisonous Martians weren’t any help, either.”
Another flying saucer whooshes by and a little green man gives us the finger and yells, “keep diggin’, you earth scum! Ha-ha-ha!”
We both sigh.
“Yes,” she agrees. “Those guys are dicks.” --TK
Wednesday, December 23, 2020