A wretched wasteland lies branded across what feels like a distant continent. Its sparsely scattered greenery serving no greater purpose than to accent the rampant devastation.

Massive structures where sentient life once gathered in unity now lies in crumbling heaps and hollow shells.

A dreary fog of death litters the air, forever warm with the heat of tragedy.

Still standing corpses charred to the bone, their horror preserved and their names forgotten.

Hunger reigns as king.

Anxious Man gnaws on a living crab at the shore, the crashing waves providing the pounding soundtrack to his frantic work. The sound doesn’t soothe as much as it taunts. A crushing reminder that this is the final destination. The waters have rushed from the ends of the Earth to crash here, lightly spraying its murky waste onto Anxious Man’s hands.

He raises his eyes to the vile sea that lies before him. Only now do they stabilize, his pupils no longer swimming, simply floating, soaking up the everlasting scenery before him. He wonders if somewhere past the horizon the waters might shed their venomous hue and emit the serene blue of liquid life.

The gulls standing on the lifeless sand at his back now take to the skies, suddenly aware of the approaching thing that Anxious Man’s ears fail to detect.

Soaring through the air, the gnarled gulls ascend as close to the heavens as they can. Blocking their path sits a dense cloud of smog, drooping over the land that it covers. It infects all light and rain that passes through, lightly infusing it with its own sickness and painting everything below in a sickly shade.

Unable to rise any further, the gulls simply press onward, eventually passing over the crumbling cave of Small Man.

Protection reigns as king.

Standing on the backs of Weak Man and Desperate Woman, Small Man with his willfully dense congregation praise the otherworldly metal monstrosity half buried under the soil at their feet.

The warhead lies dormant, waiting to be stirred from its uneasy slumber.

Small Man knows nothing at all, only that the air feels cleaner while perched on the spines of others. Armed with the bone-chilling fear that he will be seen as he truly is, he digs his heals deeper into those that prop him up to his newfound height.

Weak Man laps up his words like a cur at a putrid watering hole, dreaming of the time when he can one day stand as tall as Small Man.

Desperate Woman is not fooled, but kneels all the same. She prefers the shield of his boot over the wrath of his hands and the universe that granted them to him.

United in an uneasy alliance they languish together on the edge of death in their dilapidated shelter, not recognizing the light at the end of the tunnel as an escape. After all, it might not be.

Night has fallen, but the smog cloud remains on high. The dark is unyielding.

Unseen at the opposite end of the field with bones and the rusted remains of a place where children played, Vengeful Woman harnesses Desperate Man. They ready themselves for the continuous war against Small Man and his congregation.

Far from this imminent skirmish is the resting place of Smiling Man. Deep into the night he finally returns, blood messily splattered across his frame, and the head of Anxious Man dangling from his left hand by the hair.

Pleasure reigns as king.

Smiling Man playfully tosses the decapitated head into the nearest pile of his discarded play things. Discarded for the moment, with no promise to be allowed the grace of peaceful decay.

Smiling Man has grown numb to the stench of fleeting life and the discomfort of snuffing it out.

Smiling Man’s abode is exactly how he wants it. It exists as a messy menagerie of all things he wants, wanted, and may want later. Muffled screams eke out from a hole in the most distant corner.

Turning a deaf ear to their pleas, Smiling Man lies down, wrapping himself in a tattered flag that means something to someone.

As slumber gently overtakes Smiling Man, his smile fades, his current identity melting away as he dreams of all the things he lost.

A pitiable state if he weren’t determined to return to his playground as soon as morning comes for him.

Whether that morning comes with beaconing rays of sun, or the glimmering knife of Enraged Man, it matters not. While sleeping peace can be found, coupled with the ethereal longing of dreams.

For all those tortured souls barely existing within their lives in this land, sleep provides a brief reprieve from it all. A calm pause, even if disrupted by the fear of what may lurk in the darkness. The stolen moments of oblivion are cherished. Then the sun rises, and their hell awakes anew.

Meanwhile, in the place where the smog was birthed, there are others immersed in a different hell.

Their waters clean and their birds uncaged. They walk their streets with their masks plastered onto their faces, strapped from chin to forehead.

In fact, Anxious Man is there. So is Small Man, Weak Man, Desperate Woman, Vengeful Woman, Desperate Man, Smiling Man, Passive Woman, Enraged Man, Deranged Woman, Foolish Man, Towering Woman, Curious Man and many more of their variations. They intermingle as they hide their nature beneath their chosen facades, unveiling features here and there when deeming it fit.

Together they gaze from a safe distance at the land they feel separate from. They gasp politely at the forsaken residences and polluted earth. Shaking their heads at the rampant bloodshed and sickening practices of the brethren they don’t identify with, they all resume their days in peace.

Peacefully cannibalizing their weak, quietly sacrificing their loved ones, and gleefully poisoning themselves. Indulging in their hell while applauding their civility, their reassurance never runs dry.

Even still this world has room for more. Others stand off to the side, leering around every proverbial corner.

The ones who provide a peek into hells both familiar and foreign, be it by news or novel, for their kindred Man and Woman to examine. The ones who highlight the grandiose gore of what seems distant, wielding their pens as it gives them nods of approval from the page. Earnestly grinning to themselves with faith that their work supplies radiant deliverance and not merely a gratuitous camera flash as the loose stone strikes the rusty warhead.

Ah…brutal, brutal, brutal.