[Original Novel] Pariah of the Little People, Part 19

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If you boil it down to the basic mechanics, it’s really very simple. Something to make you join. Something to make you stay. Something to make you fear your doubts, and suppress critical thought. “For we walk by faith, not by sight”. “Lean not on your own understanding”. “The wisdom of men is foolishness to God”. “There is a way that seems right to a man but leads to death”, as Tyler once told me.

It’s just information structured in such a way as to motivate patterns of human behavior which defend, reinforce, and spread it to as many hosts as possible for as long as possible. Like a chain letter, which promises wealth or good luck if you send it to 5 friends, but visitation by a scary ghost if you don’t. Or a computer virus. Or…

I thought back to my research into the oil company Dad’s been “distributing” for. One guy at the top who started it, spreading exponentially via recruitment. But then, that’s just one parallel. A fire engine and apple are both red, that doesn’t make them identical. The commonalities didn’t end there, though. The more I thought about it, the more of them I recognized.

The unfalsifiable promise of future wealth if you stuck to it, and recruited as many friends as possible. The fear of missing out if you don’t. The suppression of all contrary information, coaching employees to be defensive and belligerent to anybody trying to clue them into the nature of the scheme or to former “distributors” trying to warn others.

Zombies. That’s what they seem like, anyway. Afflicted with a contagion of the mind which compels them to spread it to others, and to fight every effort to remove it from them. My heart sank still further as I contemplated what I might do about it. I’m too late, aren’t I? Twenty centuries too late. The battle to contain it was already lost long before I’d been born. I’ve felt pretty small and helpless before, but never more than I did right then.

I already knew from experience that they don’t listen. If you try to reason them out of it they just get angry, sometimes violent. And there’s so many of them that you cannot overcome them by force. The minute any significant number realize you’re not afflicted, they converge on you like sunlight focused through a magnifying glass on some unlucky ant.

The principal ended on a bit about how Al Gore is the cult leader of Global Warmism, the ultimate false Christ of our times. “The difference between global warming and armageddon is that only one of them will really happen. Jesus Christ will return, and reveal all imitators for what they are!” Everybody clapped, while I just sat there looking forlorn.

They could recognize all of this about Mormonism, because they aren’t Mormons. Mormons wouldn’t agree, being just as carefully sheltered as these people are. They can see that it’s how Islam began too, because they aren’t Muslims. Nobody in one of these things can see, from the inside, what it really is. But they can look at people in other religions and chuckle to themselves about how lost they are.

Like they have this huge, selective blind spot when it comes to whatever religion they’re personally a member of, sparing it the same scrutiny they subject other religions to. They take for granted that it’s true just because it feels that way, not realizing that’s just how whatever you’re raised to believe normally feels. That it’s why Islam feels true to Muslims, Mormonism feels true to Mormons and so on.

The perversity of it all threatened to overwhelm me. How had these things spread so effectively? Didn’t anybody ever put together organized opposition? Just follow them back to their nest and burn it so it can’t produce more of ‘em like you do with ants. The principal headed for the bathroom, and one of the teachers put on some sort of brief puppet show about abstinence to keep us entertained.

I whispered “These people are in a cult, aren’t they?” to Katerinka. She found it terribly funny, so I asked if there was something I’d misunderstood. “No, no. Is as you say. Very successful cult, of the sort that preaches end of world is near. Those weary homeless men with sandwich signs reading ‘end is near!’ you sometimes see on the street corner are trying to start their own. Sometimes, one of them gets a few to listen. Then because a few listen, he seems to know something, so more come and listen. Then he seems even more credible, so yet more follow him, and so on.”

I pulled at my hair, still gripped with anxiety, and begged to know what could be done. “Well, one man in old Russia have idea to simply shoot and bury them until they are all in the ground. Bulldoze their corpses into landfills, demolish churches, prevent ever from taking root again. He is why Babulya fled to America, and why her mother and father did not make it.”

That sobered me up quick. I hadn’t really thought through my imagined solution to its logical conclusion. What would the crone think of me if she’d known I would entertain such ideas? Katerinka surprised me again by taking the opposite perspective.

“Are these not same people who purged witches? I argue many times with Babulya that they would kill her if they could. For all of their history, whenever they had the power to destroy people they did not like, they never hesitated to.

Often they have killed on the basis of false accusations they invented, like the ‘blood libel’ they used as pretext to massacre Jews. Or accusations of witchcraft, or that other religion worships demon, or that God of universe hate gay people. Then, when finally they receive long overdue payback, oh how they cry! How they wail and sob, saying “such victims are we” to any who will listen!”

Listening to her speak never fails to chill me. I wondered if, should she ever perform an inventory of her own heart, she might come back empty handed. The part about gay people perked my ears up though. Before I could ask about it, the principal returned, looking refreshed but morose.

“Before I let you go, I have an important announcement about a former student of ours known to many of you. Some weeks ago, Tyler Allen was sent to a special camp outside of the US. It is run by strong, Bible believing men of God who strive to correct wayward youths who have fallen prey to the spiritual corruption of homosexuality.

This is accomplished by time tested methods for re-educating stubborn teens, like hard labor in the hot sun, group Bible readings and condemnation of sin, isolation in ‘the box’ for those who are rebellious, rare but necessary acts of ‘physical correction’, and so forth. It is grueling, but tough love always is. They assure me it’s a sound methodology which has cured many of their sickness. However, some do not survive the process.”

I began to feel sick. He couldn’t possibly mean….? But he did.

“It breaks my heart to tell you all that Tyler died from a combination of dehydration, exhaustion, and attempted exorcism of the demons inhabiting his body which have for so long caused him to sin. It further grieves me to say that, based on the best information available to me, Tyler is now in Hell receiving due punishment for his error.

I know many of you were close to him. Know that he died fighting Satan, but sometimes that old serpent is just too strong. There will be a memorial organized by his parents this Sunday after services. Those wishing to mourn him are welcome to attend. That is all.”

I sat there blinking, still not absorbing it. Some sort of joke, surely. Having a laugh at the expense of monkey boy. But no punchline followed. He just stepped down from the stage and headed back to his office as other kids around me stood up and headed for the big double doors.

Katerinka put her hand on mine and started to say something a few times, but never got it out. Was she in on it too? Tyler can’t be dead. Ludicrous. What sort of camp kills children? How could such a thing exist in the world? Katerinka withdrew, but continued to watch me from afar as I stumbled along in a daze. Even Heather kept her distance for once.

Tyler dead? No, can’t be. He’ll come back. That’s how it was planned to happen so it still has to. He said we’d always be friends, no matter what. One horror compounded onto the next. It never ends. However I struggled to hold onto my precious epiphany from the quarry, I could feel it slipping away. Torn to shreds by the news that these foul, reprehensible creatures had killed Tyler.

The reality of it set in gradually. Even when Katerinka tried to approach me, I pushed her away. How could she understand what I felt? I’d never seen her feel anything. Heather, too, cooed and fawned over me. I did not react. To react is to tacitly acknowledge the reality going on around me. As if refusal to do so might snap me back into the world where he’s still alive.

I drew a lot of pictures of him in my binder, tuning out whatever the lesson was in each class. I hardly cared about that anymore. I just wanted to make sure I hadn’t yet forgotten his face. Like writing down a dream while it’s still fresh in memory after you wake up. All the while, I dwelled on what the principal told us concerning the circumstances of Tyler’s death.

I thought back to the little fellows. Their funny hats. Their little white houses. And their fenced in camps. I only had an inkling of what they were for at the time, perhaps wishing to believe they didn’t have it in them to do such a thing. What if I never interfered? Would they really have gone through with it?

Too much like us, the crone said. Fatally similar. As the days went by, they began to blur. Then turned into one long, grey smear. Monster world finally reabsorbed me. I fooled myself into thinking I’d finally escaped. But of course, there is no escape. Never was. All the while my drawings of Tyler started to deviate. I instead began to draw machines.

Hopeless, cold mechanisms. A long line of people fed into one end. The other students, and the faculty from this horrid place. They moved along a conveyor belt. Stripped by robot arms, blasted with water and soap, then subjected to assembly line torture. Each station performed some act of mechanical brutality, after which the conveyor belt whisked them along to the next station.

Electrocution at first. Then briefly blasted with flame. Then stabbed with needles, then their fingers would be severed. Each step organized in order of severity, so they’d stay alive until the very end. At that point their remains were processed into biofuel and used to power the entire mechanism.

I filled page after page with these sharp, detailed schematics. Something like an automated industrial slaughterhouse with me at the controls. I am helpless but to devise machines. It’s just something my mind does while idle. That habit now intersected with my grief over Tyler’s death as it spiraled out of control.

What variety. What creativity. A machine consisting of a moving wall which pushes them over the edge unless they can fit through a small hole. So that they starve, bicker and fight, the few who make it going on to terrorize the next set.

A room where the whole floor is a slow moving conveyor belt with a furnace at the far end. So they can never rest or sleep, but must keep moving until they collapse from exhaustion and are consumed by the fire.

A room with a low ceiling and an exit which opens only once enough weight is applied to a button just large enough for one person to stand on, such that one of them must eat the rest in order to escape. Of course all that waits for him through the exit is whirling blades.

The designs all employed proven principles and included both electrical and plumbing diagrams. I could not be satisfied unless I knew they would work if built. Some part of be desperately yearned for a day when I could really build these machines, and feed into them their intended fuel.

It pained me to think of how the crone would regard what I’ve become. But I just kept drawing, because so long as I was doing that, I wasn’t thinking about Tyler. When I filled one binder I just moved on to a fresh one, and rapidly filled that as well. How it stewed within me. How I roasted, slowly, glistening, in the fires of my own hatred.

I could feel it ruining me. But try as I might, I couldn’t be any other way. Not after what happened. Not after what they did. Deeper and deeper I descended into parts of monster world I’d never seen before. All color vanished, immersed in a samey amalgam of dull, putrid garbage. Garbage people, garbage school, garbage planet.

Perfect, pure hatred. Burning away every soft part of me. Leaving only the relentless, ravenous, desperate urge to hoist the black flag and begin slitting throats. Of course they’d been persecuted throughout history.

I cannot possibly be the first to discover their nature and recoil from it. They richly deserved the suffering heaped on them until they took control of Rome as decent, sane people realized what they were spreading and tried to fight it.

But the winner writes the history books. So they painted themselves as martyrs, persecuted bearers of a vital truth rather than simply the most successful of many cults. Even when they’re the ones with their boot on your neck, they play the role of mournful but optimistic victims intent on reconciling with their so called persecutors, who in most cases are actually their victims.

At all costs they won’t break character if it means garnering sympathy and maintaining the appearance of moral superiority. If ever they can make their accuser doubt himself, he’ll be carefully steered to a point where he must apologize, prostrate himself before them and otherwise vindicate their narrative.

They always get away with it, too. There’s just too many of them to oppose, they already occupy every seat of power, and have repeated the lie that they are the golden standard of morality so often that it’s become true in the minds of the general public. Everything they do which appears merciful, from hospitals and prison ministries to third world mission trips, has the underlying purpose of gaining access to the wounded, the gullible, the downtrodden. Ideal targets for conversion.

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^{Stay Tuned for Part 20!}