part0013

H ugo Peeters growled at the video playing on his laptop, then punched the headboard of his twin-sized bed eliciting an angry shout from his father upstairs. He ignored it. This was simply too much. It was outrageous.

And it made him hate humanity even more than he already did.

The world was screwed, and as far as he was concerned, he was fine with that. He hoped civilization collapsed, that the cities crumbled, that his decadent parents upstairs would be the last generation to thrive, and that his would preside over the transition as this wretched planet was handed back to Mother Earth, to whom it belonged.

His only concern was the creatures that were meant to survive.

The animals were being harmed by humanity’s wickedness, by its cruelness, by its inconsiderate slaughter. To call the way animals were treated as inhumane was fundamentally flawed, for there was no humanity in humans. Humans were cruel by necessity. They always had been, and if it weren’t for opposable thumbs and a larger brain, would be either extinct by now, or no more important in the grand scheme of things than chimpanzees were today.

Yet humanity had thrived and created a society based on cruelty. Animals were farmed for food, oceans were emptied of their resources, forests were raped for building materials and to make room for farms, the creatures that had once made these cleared landscapes their homes, left to die.

The world disgusted him.

And now it disgusted him even more, the rich and famous gathering in two weeks to celebrate the discovery of a Bible made over a thousand years ago, one so decadent and cruel, that it required the slaughter of over 500 baby cows just to make the thousand pages upon which it was written.

The number was staggering.

And apparently, there had been three others, this one unknown to history. That meant 2000 calves were slaughtered, and he had no doubt that anyone so cruel as to think this was a good idea, left to rot what remained after their flesh was torn from their bodies.

He attacked his keyboard, diving down the rabbit hole he so often did, researching what was about to become his next cause. He would gather the Animal Protection Brigade for a meeting, everything else they had planned now on hold. The gala, planned for two weeks from now, couldn’t be allowed to proceed, not without a statement being made, not without the rich and powerful of this world knowing that what they were celebrating was an abomination.

His heart nearly stopped at what he saw in front of him.

A post on Facebook from a name he recognized, a name he trusted.

I just heard from a very reliable source that they’re going to announce a plan to create another one of these monstrosities, using the original methods! That means another 500 innocent creatures will be massacred!

His blood boiled, his pulse pounded in his ears, and his stomach contracted with rage at the very notion. The gall of these one-percenters, the entitlement of these monsters, had him seeing red, the world losing focus as his rage turned to irrepressible fury.

He drew a deep breath, calming slightly, his mind turning to what could be done, what must be done, and how it might be accomplished. He smiled slightly as he realized there was someone among them who had the knowledge the Animal Protection Brigade would need to do what was necessary.

But one wouldn’t be enough. He would have to ask the other few he had found that believed as he did, to commit the ultimate sacrifice with him, for this was too great a task.