The Red Rats

The Red Rats

By Amanda Orive.

I believe in Satan. That is to say, I believe that he exists. Yes, that is an outdated perspective belonging to the generations of old that looked at the stars in the sky and said, “What a marvel! There must be a God!” (And of course, that thought naturally led to His perfect opposite). However, heed my words well: I know not whether there ever was a God, but I know that True Evil exists, for I have witnessed it firsthand. And yes, I have perpetuated it, too.

A French philosopher once said that Evil was not the opposite of Good, but a radical indifference to it. I believe that statement to be partially correct. There is also a kind of evil that permeates into being through direct will power. There is some evil which manifests itself not in chaos, but in the intent to harm, in the fundamentally human desire to cause pain.

Take the late dictator Trump, for example, and the generation that put him in power. He wanted harm inflicted; they liked him because he was cruel. That kind of emotion spreads like wildfire, especially when social agreement is involved.

That is the evil of which I speak today.

Senator Mann convinced his enemies that he was a fool, and carefully weaved his way into the hearts of an abused, poverty ridden, terrified populace: my generation. He convinced them—us—and the ever growing Party of Red Rats, that he could see the future, that he knew truths and possessed a wisdom unlike the other white-wigs; that he would bring about true change; that the scary stuff in the news was propaganda from the Chinese; that the plagues were vanquishable, and the famines perishable. We believed in him because he offered a strange semblance of hope, with the satisfaction of rage.

In some ways there was a true genius to him. He convinced his followers that he was unlike the rest of the liars in Washington, that his riches, and many accusations of assault, meant nothing compared to the dedication he had to his flock. He warned us of the famines to come and the plagues that would haunt future generations, “and they will look to us and wonder why we did nothing.” The hypocrite honestly said that.

So the people asked their great hero, “what shall we do?”

To which he replied, “Kill them all.”

Can you guess what we did?

You got it: we obeyed.

Every. Single. Cat.

Murdered. Dismembered. Disemboweled. Burned alive. Poisoned. Beaten. Anything and everything to appease "The Mann."

What did Senator Mann do when he was held responsible for the riots and the cat-killings, you ask? He smiled, smiled at the fact that they had taken a mere idea of his (Euthanization Day) and applied it without permission from the government. He loved it.

Everyone loved it.

Thereafter a reporter asked him, “Senator Mann, how do you respond to the comments of Dr. Raould at the W.H.O. that your idea will actually cause the famines and plagues to worsen, and that it could have apocalyptic results?”

He never had the chance to reply.

On that very day, just three months after his followers had induced their own “euthanization day,” a horde of enormous rats took over the city square.

Someone in the crowd took a shot at them, and everyone panicked.

I cannot say that I am saddened by the fact that he got trampled by a sea of his own vermin-followers. Nor am I ashamed to say that I’m glad he’s dead.

He deserved to die a much worse death than what he got.

Allow me to return to the original ponderance: dear future, do you want to know who, or what, Satan really is?

I can tell you.

He's an entire populace, putting investment into their own destruction.

I am one of the lucky ones, one of the evil-doers who survived, and has seen the evil of their ways (but I have paid a price). I do not beseech your forgiveness: I beg your understanding. Do better than we did. Strive ever to be more; for we made ourselves lesser, when we could have been marginally good. Now there is no honor left in the world.

There's hardly anything anymore.

All my hope is in your hands,

D.

July 17, 2039.

Lost, somewhere in the former southern United States of America.