The Fruit of the Vine is Lord and Master of the Ten Realms, I burst out
Full of my usual incoherent ludicrously misplaced enthusiasm
I was on the point of letting out another incoherent roar when all of a sudden
I didn’t
The small vicious shrew-like creatures had arrived on the scene
With their protuberant noses and sharp teeth
They were looking at me with their tiny eager eyes
Eyes that were full of the natural bloodthirsty menace
Of their kind
Out came their little pink tongues
Flicking in and out of their mouths with excitement
Moving in one me from all sides
The creatures were bigger now
They were swelling up all around me
Becoming ominous
Some had the faces of people I knew
The bad ones
Others had the faces of slavering dogs and grinning maniacal baboons
‘We’ve come for you, you know’ they said,
Telepathically implanting the words in my mind
With great precision and care
‘It’s no good you trying to outsmart us,’ they said
‘Because we know your thoughts even before you do…’
Predation on this planet
Has reached a whole new level of sophistication, I realized
They had upped their game and so should I
If was to have any chance at all of getting out of this alive!
The predators controlled reality
They sucked you into their own tailor-made worlds
Before you knew what had happened to you
A world where they had all the advantages
A world in which they held all the aces
I looked down –
I had morphed into a ridiculous weak blobby creature with no legs or arms
And no way of defending itself
A creature that couldn’t move
Very much
My pink skin is soft and tender and easily ripped
And I am meek and easily frightened
The predators mass all around me – full-sized and savage now
Slavering with excitement
They can’t wait to tear the succulent flesh
From my bones
With their razor-sharp never-ending rows of teeth
A cascade of poisonous drool drips unceasingly
From their long red whip-like tongues
‘We hold all the aces here’, they tell me
‘We want to harvest your fear…’
These were the Harvesters, I realize then
Mankind’s secret oppressors
Harvesting was all they knew –
Or care about
No wonder the world is in such a bad shape!
Damn, I think, I’d been having such fun
Before the Harvesters arrived
Even though I hadn’t really
I should have known better, I say
I should have stayed away
I never should have tangled with those old Harvesters
It never seems to work out
For me
Those old Harvesters harvest me every time…