All is well.
This Land… Satire Kieran Blake, kieranblakewriter.org Photo Rose McGowan Darkness enveloped the land. A depressing grey pall hung heavily over the land and fomented despicable violence which entrenched anger, frustration, despair and fear in those victimised by birth. Toxic masculinity leeched from the pores of rabid salivating animals and sullied the pristine waterways, the same waterways that had offered solace and retreat in an imagined past; the whitecapped waves and golden sands since converted into a haven for leering eyes and lecherous ghouls. Fear racked the fairer sex. Survival strategies were devised and disseminated, carried in nervous whispers through 36 The Beast May 2021
the darkened streets and the darker web. Clothes, make-up and sobriety were scrutinised before safety was promised in the world outside - the land outside which they called home. Home, where violence had been domesticated, by those who had not. Keys to unlock inherited power were now held between forefingers. Capsicum spray sat beside scented spray and selfcare acquiesced to self-defence. Avoid the darkness, they were told, but darkness was everywhere. Darkness had swallowed the land and voraciously consumed all that was good. Emboldened by self-appointed truth tellers and by the
weakness of their rulers, they threatened and struck, abused and demeaned, dismissed and suppressed. Emboldened by the apathy, silence and spin of the law makers. Law makers or law breakers? The lines had blurred, the distinction lost. Depravity extended its greedy tentacles from the distant corridors of power to the hallowed grounds of prestige, where the elite schooled their offspring in the perpetuation of power. How good! they cheer, How good! to leer. Retain your grace, remain the same, Make-up your face, your words be tame. Enough is enough, the victims declared, but it was never enough. Never enough for the rapacious scourge which infested their world and controlled their bodies, and the bodies within bodies. The fair were few and far between, ignored in print, ignored on screen. They and their allies drowned under a deluge of ignorance and noise as the heavens unleashed a torrent of hate and lies, and cowardly cries. It comes from the sky, it comes from up high, the news we use to justify. Dystopia was not an imagined future, dystopia was a lived present, dictated for eternity by one bite of a forbidden fruit. Then he emerged. Short in stature, but bold of heart. Follow me, he declared, in messianic tones, and I will deliver you from darkness and into light. I will protect you, he promised. So, follow him they did and the light returned. Joy, gaiety and unimagined bliss filled their souls. Pink roses blossomed. Pink roses bloomed with hope and the promise of a new future. All was well in the land of pink roses.
