Mad man

This world only gets worse. Day by day. Hell, hour by hour. In the end, nothing we do matters much. We go through life expecting to accomplish something, to matter in a grander scheme. Invent something to change the world. Write something profound enough to enact change. Continue our bloodline to achieve some semblance of immortality through each descendant for years to come.

Inventions become obsolete. Words printed to paper fade, or exist long enough only to be warped to fit another’s twisted viewpoint. Mere accidents or even fate, if you believe in such a thing, can cut down any family tree in an instant.

Effort and intent mean very little. These shadows, they reach far and keep stretching to gain more ground. No weapon can combat it. Words can never halt its spread. Every terrible act we commit feeds it, giving it strength – and we allow that to happen because, behind every intricate mask we sculpt for ourselves with false smiles and empty words, under all protests to the contrary, we’re just animals.

Beasts – unaware of what we are, born with a superiority complex and boisterous pride that we haven’t earned. Perhaps even animals know better than us. Wolves hunt in packs, and even simple-minded cattle form into herds. Our sense of community is decayed. Rotting. In an age of selfies and selfie sticks, in a time when legalizing drugs is a priority for far too many people, when we seem to get dumber even with limitless information available on a whim… there seems to be no room for simple decency. Compassion. Understanding. Humanity.

Inhumanity reigns unchallenged. Nothing will change that now. So, why even try? Why try to be better? Why strive for something more? There is little to be achieved by doing good. Nothing to earn. These beasts, they all vie to be the strongest, the best, the last. The one left to plant a flag at the hilltop, munching on the grass grown from nutrients derived from all the corpses. The one there to witness the final sunset in the end of days, lost in the nuclear plume before our flesh boils and melts away.

It’s time to announce my entry into this rat race, the contest with no champion. I’ll be the one to pull ahead. It will be me smiling at the end, sitting in my castle made from the bones of every living zombie who dared challenge me. If none of us are worthy of greatness, I’ll at least come the closest. Me. My resolve. My blood. My weapons… and you brought this on yourselves.

You couldn’t let me live my life. ME. Steve Noah. Soon to be Alpha with no Omega, because no one else matters. Nothing else matters. Nothing matters, period. Just the mission. My cause. I probably won’t succeed. There are an awful lot of zombies in this world, after all. But I can blend. My mask, its complexity is unmatched. I’ll mimic your speech and shambling walk, emit the same incessant moans until you see only yourself in me. Then I’ll prove there can only be me.

But hey, what do I know? These are just the ramblings of a mad man.

Written by C.D. Cobb. Find him on Twitter and Youtube, where he runs the CDC PLAYS GAMES channel. He is an Associate Writer for Middle Of Nowhere Gaming, and can also be found on Gamesgrabr.