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queennicoleinboots · 3 years

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The Office Got Fucked Up, part 5 (Count Macrula POV)

The title of this story was supposed to be "Office Woes, part 5," but it wouldn't be enough to cover the absolute insanity that happened in this account. So, it is called "The Office Got Fucked Up, part 5." in the viewpoint of Count Macrula.

I returned to the office to find it burning in flames. I blinked and realized the irony of this situation. Last time I checked, I assumed we were in league with the Gwinnett County Fire Department.

"Why is my office on fire?" I asked before having a full-on 15-minute laughing fit. I then decided to fly in the air, unzip my black slacks, and rain vampire lord urine on the building. It turns out that I had to urinate like a horse of the apocalypse, so my urination quenched those unholy flames.

I zipped up my black slacks and then flew down into the ashen building.

"This is my hoooooooommmmmeeeee!!!!" I shouted on baritone opera that astounded the heavens.

Nathan Explosion from Metalocalypse started riding his motorcycle through the building and starting screaming, "Awaken Awaken Awaken Awaken! Take the land that must be taken!"

"The time has come. To Awaken Him," I spoke in a death metal voice.

"Musta-krakish! Musta-krakish! Musta-krakish!" Nathan Explosion chanted.

"I call upon the ancient lords of the underworld," I spoke in a death metal voice.

"Musta-krakish!" Nathan Explosion chanted.

"To bring forth this beast and-" I started to say in a death metal voice.

"Awaken, awaken, awaken, awaken

Take the land, that must be taken

Awaken, awaken, awaken, awaken

Devour worlds, smite forsaken

Rise up from your thousand year-old sleep

Break forth from your grave eternally

I command you to rise, rise, rise, rise

Rise, rise, rise, rise

I'm the conjurer of demons

I'm the father of your death

I bring forth the ancient evil

I control his every breath

I instigate your misfortune

With the birth of killing trolls

I awaken armageddon

Feeding on a thousand souls

Awaken

Awaken Awaken Awaken Awaken! Take the land that must be taken!" Nathan Explosion and I growled.

A full version of Nathan Explosion's and my duet can be found here: https://youtu.be/PcICrqowVkc

I then screamed as I mimicked Nathan Explosion, "I COMMAND YOU TO RISE!!! RISE!!!!! RISE!!! RISE!!!!" Then I said in my normal Count Macrula voice, "And awaken!"

Oh shit. I just rose the dead and brought forth a Kraken to destroy Gwinnett County. At least I know how to start a riot. The FBI will shit their pants when they see this. The riots on Capitol Hill and on Georgia's Capitol building were pathetic and pointless. 'Trumpanzees' was the correct word to describe that nonsense. I will rain dark shit on them, and my fruit will be zombies with death ray eyes.

One of those zombies was my ex-co-worker Christoff. He was a good worker one time, and then he got caught into too many accidents near I-85. Once he was traumatized from literally being a target of every disgruntled driver in Gwinnett County, he began to become disgruntled at the job. He was opening tickets instead of closing them. Needless to say, I developed laryngitis every day up to the time of his death. One would think I killed him out of frustration, but actually Ahayah struck him down just because he was so goddamn stupid.

I was traumatized seeing him again, so FOR NOW ON, THIS STORY WILL BE IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE LARYNGITIS, HERE I COME!

"THIS IS BULLSHIT!!!!!" I SHOUTED. I LAUGHED HYSTERICALLY.

"BULLSHIT! BULLSHIT! BULLSHIT! BULLSHIT! THIS IS THE LAND, THAT IS PURE BULLSHIT!" NATHAN EXPLOSION AND I SANG TOGETHER.

"WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?!" MELISSA THE GREAT ARC ANGEL ASKED AS SHE FLEW DOWN. "I WENT ON LUNCH BREAK, AND THE OFFICE IS BURNED DOWN AND THE DEAD HAVE RISEN!!! AND WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?! YOUR HAIR LOOKS LIKE HOSS DELGATO'S FROM THE GRIM ADVENTURES OF BILLY AND MANDY!"

(I am going to pause ALL CAPS for a minute and explain that while flying through an existential time warp to get to the ruined Gwinnet County Riot Station 32, my hair had grown slightly past my shoulders and turned the color of hot blood from simply... being sick of working.)

"I BLAME ANTIFA AND PROUD BOYS!!!! AND.... come to think of it, I have no idea. I was Michael the Great Arc Angel after I was the Grim Reaper Named Mike. Then I was Count Macrula from October 2020 and was stuck in the freezer called the office. And now that I grew red hair, I am not sure. A lot has changed in the past year," I said thoughtfully as I stared at Melissa the Great Arc Angel.

"WHO ROSE THE DEAD!? YOU, ANTIFA, THE PROUD BOYS, BLACK LIVES MATTER, BEAR LIVES MATTER, DONALD TRUMP, JOSEPH BIDEN, OR NATHAN EXPLOSION? THESE ARE THINGS I MUST KNOW" MELISSA THE GREAT ARC ANGEL SHOUTED BEFORE HER VOICE WAS NORMAL. "Well, I am glad you decided to grow hair after 750 years. I have waited forever for this moment. Thank you, ...." Then she yelled again. "WHAT DO I CALL YOU?!"

"NO! NATHAN EXPLOSION AND I DID THAT!!!" I SHOUTED. "I EVEN BROUGHT CRISTOFF BACK TO LIFE! AND MACRULA IS TRANSYLVANIAN FOR MACRO, WHICH MEANS LARGE. MACRULA IT IS! THANK YOU, NATHAN EXPLOSION!" I SHOUTED TO THE HEAVENS.

"THAT'S GREAT! YOU OPENED UP 100,000,087 TICKETS!" MELISSA THE GREAT ARC ANGEL SHOUTED. "I'M SORRY. YOU CLEARING UP THE REASON FOR YOUR IDENTITY CHANGE MAKES THAT 100,000,086 TICKETS. AT LEAST YOU ARE NOT BUYING INTO GENDER REASSIGNMENT."

"IT WAS THE WILL OF THE POWERS THAT BE! I'M SORRY!!!" I SHOUTED. "AND TACO MAC WITH COUNT MACULA, JR. AND ME WAS NECESSARY! ALSO, I AM PROUD OF MY MASCULINITY. AMERICA, PLEASE STOP SHAMING MEN FOR BEING MEN. THIS WAS UNHEARD OF UNTIL ABOUT 50 YEARS AGO."

THE CAST OF PEEWEE HERMAN SCREAMED LIKE HELL. THEY WORE ZOMBIE MASKS.

"ARE YOU REALLY BETTER THAN CHRISTOFF!?" MELISSA THE GREAT ARC ANGEL SHOUTED.

WE ARE DISCUSSING TICKETS AT WORK, AND ZOMBIE ARMIES ARE RIOTING IN THE STREETS OF GWINNETT COUNTY. MELISSA THE GREAT ARC ANGEL'S PRIORITIES ARE A BIT OFF, BUT SO IS EVERYTHING ELSE. FUCK IT. I'M SICK OF WORKING! WHO KNOWS HOW MANY BUILDINGS THEY SET ON FIRE IN THE PROCESS? MORTAL RIOTS KNOW NOTHING.

"YES! BECAUSE WE NEED TO DESTROY THEM ONCE AND FOR ALL!!" I SHOUTED AS I FLEW OUT OF THE BURNT BUILDING. A PART OF THE ROOF FELL DOWN. I SLAYED THE DEAD AND SHOT DEATH RAYS AT THEM. SOME SHOT DEATH RAYS BACK, BUT I DODGED THEM.

ACTUALLY, LOWER CASE IS NECESSARY ALL OF A SUDDEN.

"Excuse me, sir. Were you formerly Michael the Great Arc Angel?" a goat who was driving a gray Gwinnett County Service jeep asked. "Where did the hair coooome from?"

"Yes," I responded. "And that is even a mystery to me. I guess hair follicles grow when you enter an existential time warp."

"Hoooollllyyyyy Shiiiiiiit. Swamp Business, part 2 is occurring in Gwinnett County Fire Station 32. Can you assist us?" the terrified goat asked us. He bleated in fright.

"Is this story supposed to be called "Office Woes, part 5 or Swamp Business, part 2? Because I think at this point it should be called The Office Got Fucked Up." I said as I blinked with my icy blue eyes.

The goat bleated.

"HOW ABOUT MICHAEL, EXCUSE ME, MACRULA THE GREAT IDIOT SUMMONED THE UNDEAD BECAUSE HE HAD A MOMENT OF DARKNESS, PART 4?!" Melissa the Great Arc Angel shouted.

She was correct. I have summoned the undead three previous times. One was when I worked for the Angel of Death as a grim reaper under the identity of The Grim Reaper Named Mike. I had a Jamaican accent then before it was considered racist. Everything is racist now, but I digress. The second time was during Halloween of 2007 when I summoned real zombies to haunt Norcross, Georgia. And the third time was during the Ferguson riots in 2013 when I summoned Nazi zombies to scare the protestors.

"Will that title fit?" I asked.

The zombies just stared at us. One shot lasers through his eyes at a pig that happened to be there. Someone's having barbecue pork for lunch.

At that point, I looked around and then had a laughing fit that was disguising the mental breakdown I was having. My mortality was real.

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Crickets with angel wings, winged zombies, bats, and locusts with human faces of those who burned in hell were flying around Gwinnett and surrounding counties for an hour. Hell truly was unleashed upon the Earth. Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones were having a field day taking asses and kicking names.

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"WHAT IS THIS MADNESS?!" Melissa the Great Arc Angel asked.

A group of pigs came back to the office before they saw zombies walking toward them with open tickets.

"Ahhhh hell nah!" the thinner pig from the break room scene in Office Woes, part 3 (?) said.

"Man, you crazy for making me work in this kind of environment!" a big black female pig said.

The pigs oinked.

"IT'S YO JOB! GET ON THE PHONE AND ANSWER DIS BITCH!" I SHOUTED.

"Boy, is you crazy? They zombies in there!" A fat pig said as she put her elbow on the window ledge of the passenger seat and looked at me with big bugged out eyes. "You look like damn Alucard from the Castlevania series on Super Nintendo, bruh! What happened to you?"

When I heard "Boy," I immediately set the car they were in on fire with my eye rays. I was going for roasted pork, but apparently, I had to wait.

The Apparently Kid from Youtube yelled "APPARENTLY!" at the other kid who looked like a zombie and liked turtles. YouTube and children make a funny combo. They are much more interesting than arguing with a bunch of big female pigs that only Gwinnett County had the AUDACITY to hire.

"Okay! Okay! Okay!" the pigs said as they squeezed out of the car and went to their desks. "Excuse me! Excuse me!" They shouted at the zombies.

One of the zombies bit the biggest pig on the ass.

I whispered to the goat, "All we need is barbeque sauce."

The goat laughed. "Exactly! Are you ready for Swamp Business, part 2? Gwinnett County Fire Station 32 is in some deep shit right now."

"I KNOW THEY BE ZOMBIES WALKING ROUND YOUR HOUSE!!! They walking around our office. One just ate a goat for real... I DON'T KNOW. Read the Bible OUT LOUD or somedin," one of the pigs said over the phone as she bobbed her head back and forth. She looked like a bobble head toy that sits on the dash of the car. The pigs Gwinnett County hires, I swear. I need a new position ASAP.

I looked at the goat and said, "Hell no. I was recently at the STUPIDEST party and got stuck in a freezer for a few months prior because the office put me there, and I haven't recovered from the mental stress and agony of GROCERY shopping in 2020! I'm just being honest." I laughed so hard. Holy Shit I'm almost human at this point...maybe. I flapped my black wings to validate my existence as a dark angel. This Earth is too much. I wonder how my parents remained the angels they were. My dad was a human before my parents met.

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I stepped out of the story and into a faded black backdrop scene to destroy the fourth wall. I used my sword and hacked and slashed for ten seconds before I composed myself.

"Number 1, Section C, Subsection 1a, Clause 43: Never, never, never make parents main or even minor characters in stories unless they have one line or less. Unless the stories fall under a sub category of Clause 44, which states, "This story is relevant to certain kinks which require parenthood or a parent ROLE. DDLG and ABDL to name a few." OR Subsection 1b, Clause 27: THEY ARE OFF THE RECORD!" I spoke before taking a breath. "I WILL NOT PARTAKE IN THOSE STORIES!!!! EVER!!!!... And if I do, they will be off the record." I smiled a huge smile.

With that note, I returned to the story after a giant rule book fell from the heavens and squashed me.

--------------------------------------------------

I saw Melissa the Great Arc Angel organizing the zombies into a "Zombie Lives Matter" riot, call it what it is, and marching toward Martin Luther King Boulevard and Ponce De Leon Avenue while shouting "Braaaaaains." Yes, Georgia, you need brains. And I need to get the fuck out of Georgia. She played Latin American music as she and the zombies marched and danced.

The goat waited for me. "Have you composed yourself?"

"Yeah. These crazy angels made me work in a burntass building with zombies. Thank GAAHHDD, the female crazy angel organized the zombies into a riot to go to downtown Atlanta. This be cray! The FBI gonna have they hands full with that!.... Mhhhhhmmmm!!! Russia and China got plenty o'time to come up in here and starting takin' over shit. These motha fuckas in this country be stupid as hell man!" a thinner pig said over the phone as she bobbed her head and laughed loudly.

She had a point. I'm letting the FBI deal with that shit. Fuck all of that.

"Hang on, goat. I have not fully composed myself," I said as I went to the burnt ashes that used to be my office. I sang an angelic song about resigning from this God-Forsaken job to the Heavens.

The face of Ahayah shown through the clouds. He spoke in a language that only angels and very few humans knew. He said something that could be roughly translated as, "Duly noted."

A horde of zombies started eating the flesh of one of the goat secretaries.

She screamed and bleated, "I SHOULD HAVE QUIT MY JOB LAST WEEK WHEN I HAD THE CHAAAAAAANCE!" Her hooves were in the air, and she was begging Ahayah to take her soul to heaven with him.

He took her soul to Heaven. Fly on, great goat woman. Her soul bleated in happiness, and she turned into a lamb. The lamb bleated and galloped up in the sky to Ahayah.

One zombie hobbled over with the bottle of barbecue sauce I kept in the fridge for moments like this. He poured some on the goat flesh. One zombie literally began to eat her pussy. Necrophilia at its finest. Welcome to the office.

The swamp from Gwinnett County Fire Station 32 swallowed our office building after the zombies finished eating her flesh, and we entered "Doing Business As Swamp Business."

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King Joebear growled and was eating a large barbecue chicken leg. That big black bear was wearing a crown. Xara walked in the woods naked.

Should I have averted my eyes?

Zombies were walking behind her before they gang-banged her.

I guess not.

There were days I wanted to violate her temple as much as they wanted to. I never had my chance. I shall never. There is too much off-the-record material to explain my reasons. I was in a freezer, but I was not frozen. The series that will never be written: Frozen: The Non-Disney Adventures of Count Macrula and His Lengthy Visit to Hotel Transylvania in Wintertime.

"Bae Whuhh!!!!" she shouted. "Join us."

"JOIN US, BAE WHUHHH!!!" the zombies shouted.

Xara and the zombies then danced to seriously spicy salsa music.

But King Joebear's fat ass was not ready to dance to seriously spicy salsa. He was taking a shit that made even swamps smell like fresh cut roses. It seems that the sewer was flying out of King Joebear's sacred fat ass. Holy Shit that bear had a fat ass.

A young black and white cat named Miss Oreo came storming into the swamp. Kissy, their female orange cat that grew to be twice the size she was months ago, followed Miss Oreo. Garfield's soul had just left his body to be with Ahayah.

Kissy introduced me to being part of this Swamp Business.

I screamed and brought more humidity upon them. A wall of rain fell from the sky.

"Hoowoo Bae Whuhh you sexy!" Xara said. At that moment, she started her period. She had swamp vagina. She needed business more than ever. "BAE WHUHH!!! I NEED BUSINESS BAEWHUHH!!!"She was also crying because she missed Garfield.

"Kissy! Kissy!" King Joebear said in a low melodic voice. "I need you, Kissy Kissy."

Kissy ran over there to lay with him. Oh Shit! They were about to cry.

King Joebear called to his wife, "Bae! Come lay with me!"

Xara laid with her bear. A barbeque chicken pizza fell out of the sky. Her bear ate pizza. She ate pizza.

Count Macula, Jr. walked over to them while he was eating pizza. He was still a forever young white cub. Apparently, he was also in a freezer.

The Apparently Kid from YouTube yelled "APPARENTLY" before the remaining cast of PeeWee Herman shouted while wearing zombie masks.

A YouTube ad was shown on one of the trees in the swamp. The narrator's voice boomed, "COMING SOON, A STORY THAT WILL WARM YOUR HEART, RATTLE YOUR BRAIN, AND SEND YOU IN ANOTHER DIMENSION. DISNEY'S NEW FILM: COUNT MACULA, JR. CLIMBS A WINTERY MOUNTAIN IN TRANSYLVANIA TO FIND HIS FAMILY THAT HAD BEEN ABDUCTED BY THE FBI. HE FINDS MANY FRIENDS ALONG THE WAY, AND THEY CLIMB A MOUNTAIN TOGETHER AND FORM A BOND LIKE NO OTHER. WHAT DO THEY FIND? ONLY THE FBI KNOWS."

The video shows the title: FROZEN: COUNT MACULA, JR.'S SAGA.

The narrator continued, "COMING TO A THEATRE NEAR YOU. Youcanonlyenterthetheatreifyouhave receivedtheCoronavirusvaccine."

The ad stopped playing.

"Goddamn the FBI knows my life story. Goddamn the FBI knows my life story. Goddamn the FBI knows my life story. Goddamn the FBI knows my life story. Goddamn the FBI knows my life story. Goddamn the FBI knows my life story. Goddamn the FBI knows my life story.

Goddamn the FBI knows my life story.

Goddamn the FBI knows my life story," Count Macula, Jr. said in his high-pitched Southern accent as he sat down and ate his pizza. "I didn't take the vaccine, so I am not making a dime off of it. They're a bunch of crooks in the Beast system. They will go to Hell for this. They will go to Hell for this. They will go to Hell for this. They will go to Hell for this. They will go to Hell for this. They will go to Hell for this. They will go to Hell for this. They will go to Hell for this."

A super hot curly-haired woman with green eyes and glasses was also eating pizza, but she was dancing in ballet style around in a purple form-fitting crop top and a pink bekini. The bottom of her supple C-cup breasts would show when she jumped in the air. She was 7'4" and looked like an Amazonian woman. I have a boner. She was a perfect hour glass figure, AND I WANT TO VIOLATE HER OVER AND OVER!!!!

Bruce the Ace of Brake-fixing and Megara were also eating pizza. They had three female cubs. He sang opera as entertainment for dinner. I sang with him because his voice moved my soul like wind blowing through the trees. He brought life to an otherwise soul of death and destruction. He could be a bear angel, but he has never asked for physical wings or powers.

Paul the Goat rode Hollywood while they both ate pizza.

Kissy, a large orange female cat, then ate Xara's pizza crust and meowed as though she were a wind-up toy. It was the longest and most beautiful meow I had ever heard. I was honored to hear it once more.

Her meow called upon me. THAT'S MY CUE!!!

--------------------------------------------------------------------I descended from the Heavens as quickly as I could. Nothing in my life was more urgent than answering the call of that beautiful, angelic meow. KISSY! I COME TO THEE!

Count Macula, Jr. blinked as he looked at me and took a bite of his pizza. "Apparently we have entered Heaven. This pizza tastes like Heaven. Excuse me. I have a cub call to make. I have a cub call to make. I have a cub call to make. I have a cub call to make. I have a cub call to make. I have a cub call to make. I have a cub call to make. I have a cub call to make," he spoke before he growled a great cub growl eight times.

Bruce the Ace of Brake-fixing did some vocal exercises before he, too, joined in bear chorus.

King Joebear growled in bear chorus before Miss Oreo stole a bite of pizza from him. "OREO, lay down!" he growled at her. Miss Oreo stared at him before she continued to chew.

Paul the Goat bleated before Hollywood neighed loudly.

The super hot curly-haired woman with green eyes and glasses started to bleat before she looked up at me and asked, "Who the hell are you?"

I spoke with vigor, "I am Macrula, a dark angel with regrets, angel wings of redemption, and have traveled across many planes of existence. A cat called upon me. What shall she have me do?"

I have a boner. I could not describe how much I wanted to pull that Amazonian woman's long brown curly hair and use it as a handle to yank her pussy back and forth on my cock. GODDAAMN!!!!!

Kissy looked at Miss Oreo. Miss Oreo looked at Kissy. They were confused cats.

I spoke again, "I heard a cat that sounded like a wind-up toy." Then I thought, 'And if I am not careful, I will defile this woman in front of you kittens.'

Kissy looked at me and meowed again. "Sorry about that. I was excited about pizza crust. When I eat pizza crust, I'm in heaven. Thank you for coming."

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mjbookreviews · 7 years

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Reviews for the End of the World

I wrote this piece for a practicum I was a part of in college. Still pretty recent, still pretty relevant.

Lately I have been thinking a lot about the end of the world. Maybe it’s because in multiple classes I’m in this semester we have been discussing zombie novels and climate change. Maybe it’s because I’ll be going to Los Angeles soon and I’m pretty sure that North Korea is going to nuke it. Maybe it’s because I’m graduating from college in a month and have no idea what I’m doing next. Whatever it is, I’ve found that the best way to feed my fears is to read dystopian literature, and these have been great for reminding me that there is very little hope for the future. According to my literary research, the world is going to end in one of three ways (or through a combination of the three): widespread plague (zombie kind included), environmental destruction, and/or total political collapse. So I guess the thing here is, pick your poison. Humans seem to be to blame for the end of the world any way you slice it.

I have to say, I love zombie stories. Yes, it got really annoying when a few years ago literally everything had to do with zombies (which is the context for when this first novel was published), but that trend has kind of died down now, and I can get behind it again. There’s something comfortingly ridiculous about zombies, like they’re scary, but completely unrealistic. No way the world is going to end in a zombie apocalypse. Plus, all that talk of plague kind of makes it feel like it’s not the fault of humans; it’s “nature… correcting an imbalance… comeuppance for a flatlined culture,” as the Lieutenant says in Colson Whitehead’s Zone One. And in a way this is true, but Whitehead’s novel does not shy away from the idea that humans are getting what’s coming to them; after all, it is their dead, sleepy culture, transfixed by technology, that has lulled them into a false sense of security. Whitehead also makes an effort to point out the environmental damage that was occurring in the world before the zombie apocalypse broke out. Clearly, something (many things) should have been done to prevent this. Yet if the zombie apocalypse had not occurred, our protagonist, Mark Spitz, would not be the main character of anyone’s story. Mark Spitz is the most average man on the planet, according to even himself. He does nothing out of the ordinary, never pushes himself to excel or lets himself completely fail; he is, as he says, a solid B in everything. But his ability to adjust to his environment, to allow himself to blend in and do what must be done, is what allows him to survive among the undead, and frankly, it is in this environment that he thrives, never seeming to be anything special but always able to survive.

First he survives the Last Night, when the virus that turns humans to zombies broke out for real. He then makes his way to New York City, the place he’d always wanted to live before the outbreak, and it is here that he finds some semblance of civilization. Mark Spitz, along with his unit, is assigned the task of clearing out Zone One (Manhattan) of remaining zombies (“skels”) that were not killed by an initial sweep conducted by the military, as well as stragglers, zombies that are fixed to certain spots that were important to them in their lives before—unmoving, unresponsive, slowly decaying corpses. Whitehead’s version of zombies is uniquely compelling, in the way the disorienting timeline, shifting fluidly from past to present, is presented and in its provoking portrayal of the human condition after the world has experienced such trauma, such as the exploration of “Post-Apocalyptic Stress Disorder” (PASD) and whether or not racism will exist if the world ever reconstructs itself (hint: it’s suggested that it unfortunately probably will). I have no delusion that I would make it very far in a zombie apocalypse, but Whitehead’s vision of the future world is interesting and thrilling enough that I would almost want to live in it for a moment. Almost, but not really.

In a slightly more realist vein, Octavia Butler’s classic Parable of the Sower looks at Los Angeles in the 2020s, when America has fallen to environmental and economic disaster. Lauren Olamina, a preacher’s daughter, lives just outside of Los Angeles in a small, gated community that is not wealthy but provides adequate protection. Predicting that the world she knows in her gated community will soon come crashing down, Lauren prepares herself for when she might need to flee north, where it is rumored there are still jobs and plentiful water. Described in crazy close detail through Lauren’s journal entries, her vigilance proves to be warranted as pyromaniac drug addicts storm her community and kill her family and friends. Lauren then journeys north with little more than the baggage of her loss and grief and the company of two friends from her old life, growing into a group of survivors she picks up along the way. Butler’s tale seems to weave in a little of everything: religion, politics, race, gender, class. Through Lauren’s honest and straightforward narrative voice, Butler creates an America that is entirely new yet somehow all too familiar, and Lauren’s ultimate goal in creating a community around a religion she has shaped, Earthseed, in incredibly inventive. To start each chapter, Butler includes a quote from the parables Lauren has created for Earthseed:

“God is Power—

Infinite,

Irresistible,

Inexorable,

Indifferent,

And yet, God is Pliable—

Trickster,

Teacher,

Chaos,

Clay.

God exists to be shaped.

God is Change.”

Heavy stuff from a girl who is only fifteen when the novel starts. Lauren is the kind of person you want on your side during the apocalypse, and she also knows how to write a good parable for her audience of ragtag survivalists. Butler’s skill at placing herself in this future where “God is Change” is truly astonishing.

Here is the kind of novel that scares me the most in its horrifically exact detail. Though I somewhat doubt that America will end up in the state that this novel describes within the next ten years, fifty years from now does not seem unrealistic, especially considering that this book was published in 1993, looking thirty years into the future. The environmental disaster described in Parable of the Sower is all too frightening for someone who lives in Los Angeles and recognizes the accuracy of the problems in the novel relating to fire and lack of water. I find the end of this book to be somewhat more hopeful than other dystopian novels I’ve read (no spoilers), and I think that a lot of this has to do with Lauren’s insistence on building a community; this is a somewhat strange community based on Earthseed, but the book does seem to point to the idea that even when the world is ending, there will be people who will try to keep human warmth and contact a priority. I found Parable of the Sower interesting also in its depiction of the government and corporations. The government here hasn’t completely fallen, but corporations have basically been given free reign, and Lauren and her band of followers ponder on the idea that these corporations seem to be bringing back a new form of slavery, one not totally based on race like in America’s early history but still closely linked, an idea that seriously occupies the mind of Lauren, who is black.

A great predecessor of the previous two books, Margaret Atwood’s 1985 book, The Handmaid’s Tale, also deals with religion, gender, and class, though in many different ways and on the opposite coast. If race is the dominant issue for Butler (which I’m not necessarily saying it is), gender will be the main concern in the future according to Atwood. In The Handmaid’s Tale, we have finally arrived at a dystopia where the government has truly fallen, and it is women who suffer under a new regime. Environmental destruction plays out in the background of this novel; because of pollution and toxic waste, fertility rates have dropped drastically in the world, and women who have been arrested or declared sterile can be shipped off to the ecological wastelands of the Colonies for the rest of their lives. However, it is in the continental United States that the action is occurring. After years of sexual liberation and feminist movements, men feel as if they have no purpose in life anymore, as they have no one to protect or take care of—there was a pandemic “inability to feel” for men in the old days. A governmental coup is arranged, and the Republic of Gilead is born. In this society, women are not allowed to read or to go out on their own except on specified occasions, such as shopping trips. The novel’s protagonist is Offred, who becomes a Handmaid, women who are basically concubines for high-ranking officials in the government. Once a month, Offred must have sex with the Commander that she lives with while his wife, Serena Joy, is in the bed with them. Offred’s sole job is to produce an heir for the Commander, but in this age of drastically decreased fertility, it is a risky job to hold.

In Atwood’s rendering, this future totalitarian state is icky and repressive and deservedly a rallying cry in feminist literature. I read an interview by Atwood once that said that everything that happens in The Handmaid’s Tale was taken from stories around the world of events that have already happened before (i.e. Puritans, Communist Romania, etc.), and this presents another terrifying way that the world as we know it could fall. Everything that we thought could never happen in a country like the United States (in its technologically advanced, democratic civilization or whatever) could very well happen. And if it’s a world where women are completely subjugated and not even allowed to read, this is the world of my nightmares. Atwood’s book again gives at least a somewhat hopeful ending, firstly by including an epilogue and secondly just in Offred’s act of recording her story, or, more precisely, in that she “would like to believe this is a story [she’s] telling” because “if it’s a story [she’s] telling, then [she has] control over the ending. Then there will be an ending, to the story, and real life will come after it.” I think that this novel then offers the greatest hope of the three for possible human redemption, seeing as there could be an “after,” but how well humans can redeem themselves is still questionable.

Whitehead is clearly working under the lineage of Butler and Atwood, building his own vision from the legacies they left. Nearly thirty years separates The Handmaid’s Tale and Zone One, but writers are obviously still not done thinking that the end of life as we know it is fairly eminent. And as someone who has just spent the last eight months writing my own dystopian-esque thesis/novella, the questions and themes relevant to these works have been on my mind a lot, adding to the list of reasons why I’ve recently been so interested in apocalyptic literature. Honestly, I basically wrote a dystopian piece in response to the astonishment and horror I felt at the 2016 US Presidential election of Donald Trump. And arguably, Spitz, Butler, and Atwood are not just fantastically writing about the future either; we respond to our current situation by predicting how contemporary events will play out into the future, and sometimes, as especially is the case of Atwood and Butler, we look to the past to find patterns for what lies ahead. This presents a pretty disheartening view of writers’ outlooks on the present state of the world; if we use the present and the past as our models of zombie- and authoritarian-filled futures, there seems little hope that humans will magically change their ways anytime soon. But I guess that’s what makes these books so powerful and so gripping in our imaginations; at first glance they may seem far-fetched, even absurd, but by following the stories of these individuals who have survived and are sharing their intimate secrets with us, we pick up on little details that seem all too familiar to our lives and our current world, and suddenly we are face to face with the idea that, oh god, we kind of believe this could happen to us, too.

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