Come With Us To Gomorrah, Opportunity Knocks But Once
Had fun wondering what I would do about this one. Maybe I'll think up something brilliant to add later, but enjoy for what it's worth.
What is the reality we dream of?
I sat pondering this, scraped and scarred in the dust, as I watched my fellow man putting bullets through each other's brains. On a better day, in a better context, maybe it was giving your life for your country, or dying for your god--but all I saw was corpses being made.
I grunted, pushed an egg along its course as an old wound tried to fester--but my body didn't let it. No, the time for that was passed--I had accepted Gomorrah's invite; felt now as my body formed a strong oviduct, fusing what was beneath me; my genitals, my anus, into what was irrefutably a cloaca for both waste removal and production of offspring alike.
Externally? I was neither a man, nor a woman... nor an 'it' as it is perceived. Perhaps I was more than any of these notions; perhaps these were broken notions. What I was becoming... was complete. None of those old and familiar things. I would not have virgins heralding my success, or the praise of my forefathers--but this was a road I had chosen to travel.
One bite to draw you over the doorstep into Gomorrah--one knock that must be answered. I opened the door, and extended my hand; felt my hair fall long like a woman's, and my nose draw out like a dog's. I licked the air with a forked whip of a tongue--a prescience of my anatomy surfacing as if it were being taught to me by my mother.
I guess the proper biological term for what I was, was somewhere between. A monotreme, maybe; like a platypus. A good deal of the people dying in my mind, would probably view me as hideous--a monster. It didn't matter; to me, it was all equally monstrous, just more or less familiar. Passing this bulge was what mattered now; putting another incubating life into the world, from the seed I'd accepted. Gomorrah changes you--see--it's not a place, or a city, or a nation--but a state of mind, a kinship; choosing to be something that maybe normal people: maybe your brother or your sister, or your mother or father, or the next door neighbors, your coworkers, or the senator in office despises--but because they've not explored it, not dared to explore it.
Only those who explore Gomorrah can know its pleasure, and those who answer the call cannot return. You might see it as an alien invasion, or a cult, but it is no more alien than the fish in the sea, or the birds of the sky; the dirt under your nails, and the remnants of your corpse. You might see a lack of virtue, or thought--but each of us makes the conscious choice to be a Gomorran. We are a rising and mighty nation, you might percieve--but we care not for conquest. Gomorrah is a state of dystopian, zoological utopia--not an oath you make on a Bible, or the safety of your Jihad, telling you who to fight and die for--but pure, raw, biological intent. We live, we reproduce, we offer to others to join in doing the same. If there is extermination of another kin, or clan, or species, it is because we eat them, or because they offer to us--to walk as Gomorrans.
Is there love among animals? Ask yourself--are you not built on the same schematics, that cause a bird or beast to breathe, to act, to think? Do you think there is another, invisible, unquantifiable force, that drives you above them, in importance, power, or faculty? Tell me when you've seen its source--I'll be waiting--long, you'll be dead, gone, another source of detritus, decay, 'food'.
Can you lay shelled, protected eggs, or scent your former commander's sweat from a mile, or bound on all fours on paws as the fox does--clench the life from a mouse's throat with your fangs, taste the satisfaction of each breath shared, until only one's ends--call yourself still, 'alive?'
"Have we really lost perspective, waiting for life after death, when life is here, in front of us? No. I entreat you--live now, join our call. Savor the pleasure of childbirth, the pain of strife, the rush of running and scents of the hunt." That is what I would ask, of any onlooker, beholding my transformation now, thinking me hideous. I would offer the same to them, in love. Birth with me, hunt with me--forget all boundaries but those between kin and prey.
Hearing again, the battle cries, the screams, the rattling of machine-gun fire and the whistling of bombshells--I realize I would be killed by many I would make this offer to.
I don't know if that pleases me or not.