prompt: hint, title: the bill comes due in misc. flash fiction

It really is all your fault, y’know. The horrible state of the world, the fire and ice, the floods, the earthquakes. The rising tide of fascism, the collapse of nations, the existence of that ‘rock-band’ Nickelback. All of it, it’s all on you. You specifically, you just want to pretend it somehow isn’t.

Of course, not directly? None of it directly. The causes that led to those effects are not on you, of course. Mostly the short-term thinking of greedy men, hiding under the obfuscating petticoats of corporate law, of pleasing the shareholders, of clean handshakes between the dirtiest of monsters. Giving the worst people permission to be the very worst of yourselves just to make a couple bills off the sale of hats or gasoline or Funko Pop figurines or digital downloads of Nickelback. Yeah! Even I hate Nickelback. Even The Devil loathes Nickelback. Even I have some standards, friend.

Have you gotten the hint yet? Has the thrust of the situation struck you full? Who you are, who I am, your role in the salvation of a species of idiotic bald apes? How easy it is to undo, to pull the human race and that planet you infest out of the rancid dumpster blaze you are all marinating in? Because even though you didn’t personally cause it, you could end it all in one single twinkling.

What isn’t happening on account of the greasy dealings between pustulent decrepit inheritors of other thieves’ wealth really isn’t any person’s fault. Some of it is just the cycles of Earth’s nature your kind hasn’t been smart enough to cotton to, radiation from super-novae fifteen million solar systems away, butterflies flapping their wings in China causing tornadoes for Topeka. The awful musical taste of the American lower-middle-class ‘white’ suburbanite is actually caused by some ancient curse. I let that one go through because it made me laugh but then, blamm-o. Nickelback.

But it’s still your fault, little sapien, because you could make it all go away. Just like that. Petrol sheiks and blood-thirsty conmen alike, down off their pedestals into cages or graves. Whichever your preference! We could work that bit out, either way. Clean sky, green fields, peace on Earth and goodwill to man, whatever the hell that means. Whatever that could ever mean, it is well in your mitt. You could wipe it all away like the fog off a mirror after a particularly-balmy shower.

All you have to do is sell your soul to me. After you accept an eternity of agony and sufferings, after you will yourself over to someone else, to change you at a whim. The damnation of just a single person against the tableau of your billions enslaved by craven trust-fund babies. I am no mathematician, more a lawyer for the persecution, but it certainly sounds fair-trade to me. Sign that line. Become everything you hate to save all you ever loved. It’s easy. Tell you what, chum.

I’ll even let you keep the pen.