Humans could have never guessed that, in the far future, they would need to cover their faces with fancy masks in order to not scare other species.
It’s so strange, isn’t it? To think that fragiles humans could give so much fear to others that they have to cover their most human features. There’s species that look so much scarier than you - things that float, things with sharp razor teeth -, but you are the only ones that need to cover yourselves.
Everyone, however, seems to be terrified of humans. Their small teeth, single pair of eyes, weird-shaped nose… Separated, those things don’t scare anyone. But together, and combined with the bipedal shape and weird claws humans refer to as “nails”?
No one can look at all of this combined without wanting to run away.
Humans have found this to be strange, but they quickly got used to it. They made fancy masks, experimented with cloths, made new fashion trends to they could adapt to their new alien friends.There were laws regarding what humans should hide from others, too. They all varied from planet to planet, but were always there.
The earthlings wanted an explanation. Why were they the only ones who had to do it? Why just them? Why not others? Why?
They researched for a long time. Libraries, databases, rumours all across the Universe. Some even tried to contact spirits via an Ouija board in order to get some answers! It obviously didn’t work, and that story should be left for another day, but, eventually, an answer was… Almost found.
It was apparent that every single alien culture had a myth about the death of the Galaxy. A war so big and outrageous that it killed almost everything - and what was left either died, or was locked away for someone to find. And you know what one of the things that was left looked like?
Descriptions always referred to it as “bipedal, furless and scaleless, with two things that could see, two to smell, and another to consume”. The world’s first universal boogeyman! A little thing to scare children off.
Humans, however, didn’t know what to do with that information. Sure, they matched the description, but so many species also matched each other’s descriptions of monsters! Why would they be any different?
But you don’t care, do you?
You are a human from the 21st century. You are almost ashamed of how soft you are. How your insides break so easily, how all it takes is a single conflict for you to go to the hospital. You go to your little friends and talk about how fragile you are. “Look at me!”, you say, and you just don’t care. “Look at this scar I got!”
Stupid human. You are one of the few that can survive so many scars. Stupid, foolish human, who forgot that your parameters of survival were made inside a death world.
But you don’t care, do you? You will finish reading this. You will think of this as fun. You will forget.
Stupid. Foolish. Naive. Little. Human.
Born inside a death world, raised to hate, made to protect.
Earth was the prison someone made to contain you. And you grew to love it. You grew to care for it. You grew to become a part of it. And then you tried to get away from it, to distance yourselves from the nature that you broke your bodies to become a part of, because suddenly you felt all too good for it. And then you killed it.
But you were scared, weren’t you? You were soooo scared of killing your own little prison. You were so terrified for it. You replaced your claws with nails and your canines with fragile teeth and your eyes with souls to become a part of it. The prison made trees and changed its shape so it could be a part of you. And you were so scared of that sudden acceptance, weren’t you? Earth loved you, but all you wanted was to be alone.
And then you felt even worse. Because your species was made to be social, and the planet became a part of your stupid little pack, and now that there wasn’t anyone else to worry for, you began to worry about yourselves, and realized that your destiny was to die on this miserable wasteland all alone because you were too afraid to lose something you loved.
There’s acid on your stomachs, electricity on your bodies and blood on your veins. Things that kill. You were made to kill. Not care. Kill.
And you just had to kill the only part of you that didn’t feel remorse. You just had to do it, didn’t you? You killed it and ate it raw because you were starving, and then your little minds crumbled down in shame because now you could think clearly.
You rebuilt Earth. Made it love you again. Centuries of trying to do better, that’s what you did. Centuries of going to other planets and making them love you just like your home does, but you were small and stupid and did not realize that your parameters of living were based on a deathworld that hated you first before realizing you were a monster that was thrown away to die.
Everyone knows what you did. Everyone knows what you were. A monster, a weapon that killed the galaxy before being found and thrown away to the most lonely deathworld this Universe has ever seen.
And you just had to kill the part of you that made you hate the world, didn’t you?
Just like you simply had to kill the part of Earth that despised you.
