In the Year 2567

When the Bantara came to my planet, I was not frightened, nor elevated at my potential “rescue” from the loneliness of my solar system. I was repentant. I had enslaved the entirety of New York City; eight and a half million of my former species members, all treated me with as much deference as they did the deity that had stripped them of their humanity. I saw what God had done, I saw the blank stares, the nakedness, the filth, the animality. They were truly godless. So, I thought, if they have lost the ability to perceive a symbolic deity, maybe I can be their physical deity? These demons were just the extremity of my very own primal half, surely I could know how to control them using the other half of my soul?

I had a gun in my drawer when the Rapture came. That gun became my god. These filthy demons had a God, too; that was me. But I worshipped this pile of shit revolving .38 with the reverence of a deity, for it allowed me to give unto them what it gave to me.

The day it happened, the first one I discovered was my wife. She woke up in a craze, frothing at the mouth and scampering around the bedroom on all fours. She came up to me and studied me intently, sniffing and slobbering. I asked her what the fuck was going on. I got no response, only a shrill scream and a view of her piss-soaked ass bolting towards the door. Before I could even get the comforter off, I heard the soft cries of my children. These cries weren’t of fear, or pain, or excitement, but guttural noises of contentment. I rushed through the doorway into my two children’s room and found my wife, stark naked, with one of my children suckling the nipple of each of her breasts. My children were 6 and 8.

Those three didn’t pay me any mind. God’s butchery had been merciful enough to leave behind their primal understanding of familial loyalty. My former friends, however, were left with no such reminder. It wasn’t long before the pounding on my doors, windows and walls drowned out the haunting, primal screams of my family and friends. I had my God in hand, 6 .38 rounds hastily jammed into the cylinder, back to my family, facing the front door. The door exploded open and entered in Tank. I call him Tank because I think that’s a funny name for a large, brutish figure and because I cannot fucking remember what this person’s name was. I shot him twice in the chest and once in the head. The deafening reverberations of the gunshots bounced between me, my family, and Tank’s innards which were scattered across my foyer floor.

Man tends to feel shock at extreme juxtapositions. The juxtaposition between not having and having a 3-inch hole in his chest, the juxtaposition between not seeing your child’s intestinal mess thrown about their room and seeing it. The shock lies within the event horizon between two states, and once that event horizon is crossed, there is no going back. All of the pounding, the screams, the cries, the calls, the tears that tore through my home were snuffed out at the settling of the gunshot’s echoes. All but two. My young son, at six years old, what was left at him, was cradled by my wailing wife whose screams towards the ceiling would have unnerved God himself. His stomach had been torn open; strings of intestines lay about him, gore scattered across my wife’s face. His attacker, a small, skeevy man who I remember calling “Tim,” stood in the corner, eyes wide, mouth agape, fingernails dripping with flesh and blood, pieces of broken window caught in his blue and grey sweater. The harmony of primeval sounds uttered by my wife and son created a feeling of shock, anguish, grief, and hatred in such quick succession that my mind barely had time to process the shock before I was consumed with the hatred.

I hadn’t known, at this moment, that the creatures surrounding me thought the firearm in my hand was an extension of my body and that that gun would be my Ark on the path to their salvation. I didn’t even comprehend that there were beings around me. I walked up to Tim, three rounds in the chamber, him, mouth agape, saliva dripping down his sweaty, greasy chin onto his fucking sweater and shot his balls off. I watched the small pile of gore hit the floor and reveled in the sweet soprano tones that his wails of agony added to my wife and son’s chorus.

I hadn’t known it at the time, but my actions on the day of my son’s death cemented my being as the God amongst godless humanity.