The Narrator

This is an interlude which will precede the ongoing story of Ella and Shamblin' Sam, the first of which you can find here:

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The end of the world was not natural, but supernatural. Or maybe pseudoscientific, if you really believe that stuff.

Who am I?

Just think of me as The Narrator. I decided to deviate from my usual third person narrative and address you personally for this one. There are some things that need explaining and I just want to move the story along and get to what’s important, so forgive the deus ex machina.

I do want to take this moment, however, to thank you for giving me the power to tell your stories. I don’t exist without you! Telling your stories, well… that is my story!

So, here’s a toast to you!

Anyway, as I was saying, the end of the world was not natural, but supernatural. A certain burger-flipper didn’t follow through with the original plan, so the Almighty had to resort to Plan B, involving an alchemical apparatus which was treated disdainfully by the scientific experts of the day as nothing more than a legend, but which was, in fact, the most powerful object in the world.

That’s right, the philosopher’s stone! Though it was not an actual stone, nor did it have much to do with philosophy. In fact, insofar as it had any consciousness, it hated philosophers, thinking them all pompous asses, and disdained the association.

It was a box with a single button and a plaque beneath which read:

PRESS ONLY IN CASE OF ARMEGEDDON

The ruse, however, is that it causes Armageddon when some alarmist idiot runs in and presses it before any Armageddon arrives! Yes, “God” has a sense of humor!

And, of course, there being no shortage of alarmist idiots in the world, and most of them being in the sort of clandestine organizations that were, through the various underground avenues of power and influence, privy to the knowledge of the box’s supposed purpose and whereabouts, it should be no surprise for you to find out that, in the midst of some petty factional squabble, one of these alarmist idiots, mistaking the event for Armageddon, pressed the damning button.

War ensued, but war for no reason. People were literally driven into a fighting frenzy as if overtaken with some unholy madness. Some people thought it a virus or plague, but it was odd how they still formed factions and fought against each other, as if some unseen hand moved pieces on a gameboard.

Oddest of all, they did not pick sides according to the old political biases. It was completely arbitrary, like neighborhood kids might choose teams before a pickup game at the park. But they killed each other to the man, woman, and child. If one of them found themselves too long alive with no one to kill, they killed themselves.

Only a very few were immune to this madness. It was a ragtag assortment, with no rhyme or reason as to why they were unaffected while their loved ones were overcome with bloodlust.

Shamblin’ Sam was such a one, and so was Ella, Queen of the Damned. Now, why she came to be called Ella, Queen of the Damned, I’ll tell you later, from back behind the old fourth wall, but I wanted you to know, that in this post-apocalyptic world, literally anything is possible, no matter how absurd it might seem according to what you think of as the laws of physics or biology or reality or whatever.

This is your world, with the veil ripped away, exposing both incredible beauty and sadness. The beauty is in the malleable nature of the world itself, whereas the sadness, the gravest sorrow, lies in the way that we shape that clay, as perhaps we were too roughly misshapen ourselves, or perhaps we are, as with that alarmist idiot who pressed the fateful button on the philosopher’s stone (which is really a box that hates philosophers) merely the butt of a joke.

With that, dear reader, I beckon you to put your ear to the wall, and I’ll take you along on more of the adventures of Shamblin’ Sam and Ella, Queen of the Damned.

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Thanks for reading! If you start to get the itch to attack your neighbors for no good reason, I strongly suggest you resist... if you can! Here's the next chapter:

If you're interested in the story of the burger-flipper who rejected the apocalypse, you can find that here: