Freaks

"A strange kind of obedience. Like a lust had fallen over them, these freaks, and encumbered them in a dull trance. Skin flaking, stomachs rotten and fat, the freaks of Androgynis simply walked around in a strange haze for their entire lives.

Their stores were everywhere. As if they had beckoned the freaks, calling them to their doom. Nothing was left but a sea of cattle being herded between them, wreaking havoc on the atmosphere of Androgynis through automobile exhaust and giant smoking factories.

Churning the freaks left and right by the signs swaying over their heads. Dusky, gawdy cars traveling into and out of shopping centers, annihilating any chance these poor things ever had of a life. Life was staring into a flashing commercial screen, waiting for your next impulse buy.

Pollution reeked. Everything seemed to power the commerce of Androgynis with nothing left to content the poor swine idling in its malls and shops. Everything coughed smoke. The only decency there was left to the lives of the freaks of this hellhole world was an occasional product gleaming on the aisles worth a damn, a nice smoke bought at a smoking shop, or a little peace and quiet between shopping mall visits.

The freaks themselves. It was a ghastly glow. Their faces lit up like commercial fire, eyes wild with retrospect and compassion for the thing they used to be a long time ago. Just a baby, wandering into a world of commerce, immediately clashed into by the wild blinking of machines and repugnant expectations of the commercial slime around them. There was hardly any mind left, merely a blinking receptacle of commercial viewing and drudgery from one bleak task to the next. Nothing danced, and nothing sung.

Neither men nor women, these freaks had long forgotten their sexualities or genders in a world of barren commerce and horrid unsophistication. No one clung to each other anymore, the expressions on their faces were mute, and any show of candor or affection would be treated with harsh glares or physical attack.

Signs ahead. What would the world of Androgynis do? What would happen next to prove life had any other purpose or meaning? It was creeping into the media. Like a dark cloud, ominously taking over the advertisements, changing media on signs. Curtailing any effort to maintain a harsh and mindless consumeristic existence. A black cloud, sweeping over their world, proving to them they had done something wrong.

As some freaks sat dreamily by their flashing commercial screens, glad for the reprieve."