Thursday, July 15, 2010

Bathroom Monologue: “I’d rather be a rising ape than a fallen angel.” –Terry Pratchett, interview with The Guardian

The demon watched as hairy mammals played on the forest floor. Their forelegs had nearly evolved into arms, and in a few more strokes the species would adapt hands.

“They grow up so quick,” the demon said wistfully to himself. His wings, so dark they were invisible, fluttered. For a moment, he wished he were one of those rising apes.

Then he reflected on his amazing physique, eternal existence, and knowledge of the meaning of life. Boy, was the lack of those three things going to fuck with the primates’ descendants. He used his cosmic awareness to look ahead, chuckling at the inventions of skirts, headscarves and landmines. There was culture coming, that was for certain, but in all that culture he saw himself. There he was tormenting thousands of primate descendants, in naughty dreams and vivid visions, in unmedicatable madness and morning wood. He even caused a war.

“Which is only fair,” he told himself. The primates had caused his kind a nasty war, one cosmic week ago. The trouble he’d start by puppeteering a European oligarch would be payback. And besides, they’d cause themselves a thousand wars for any one his kind dropped in the bucket.

Across the ether, a succubus waved at him to join the coming poker game. He looked down at the mammals, which were now feasting on each other’s young.

“No,” he decided. “I think I’d rather be me.”

9 comments:

  1. This is brilliant, and really well done. Loved it, tweeting it all over the place.

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  2. Nice one, John. Very well done.

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  3. Yes I think the fallen angels have it far better off. Hehe

    P.S. Sending you some award love on my blog. I must warn you, it's pink. Cheers!

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  4. Ha, thanks you three. Really glad you enjoyed it.

    TS, I'll pop over there in a bit. I can live with pink. I've even written an anthropomorphic Bathroom Monologue defending that color's toughness.

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  5. I like that they're playing poker. Did humans rediscover it on their own, or did demons sneak it into our psyche?

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  6. Actually Max, we learned it from dogs.

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  7. Great perspective on humans vs angels. Thanks for sharing this with us at ThursdayTales. So true: for every trouble we may have that is not of our own creation, we have loads more that are. We certainly don't need any help in that direction.

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  8. A fun bit of misanthropy. I didn't see the movie Legion, but I'm guessing you did a better job in a few paragraphs than it did in 2-plus hours.

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