Caught In The Lights: Short Story

They sat frozen in place, like bags of dead meat. Their eyes fixated on the glowing, blinking lights and its illusions of changing shapes and colours. Thirst and hunger could not move them. Little things of metal, wire and plastic moved on their command. The press of a button and bottles of milk, wine would appear. Another press, meals would be presented at their feet. Nothing to do, nowhere to go. To consume, the only imperative.

They could not even turn and see the ones who sat next to them, hypnotised much the same, eyes turned lifeless in service of glass with dancing images and thrilling noises. To turn away and look elsewhere, maybe at the sky, aglow with sun and clouds adrift, or at green-leafed trees swaying to the wind’s rhythms, would mean to miss out on the designs behind the glowing glass, newer each moment. And to miss out would be to fall behind all who sat similarly in rows, columns, crowds, amassed endlessly wherever the glowing, blinking phantasms appeared with their colourful trance. And what sin could be bigger than falling behind? Even if ahead lay an abysmal chasm.

Those who made the glass-traps knew business was good. Not just good. Booming.

With a steady stream of newer images and noises, ever-louder, ever-brighter, ever-growing, none of the prey would move. They would stay, obedient to the cacophonous barrage they think they chose freely.

The makers were right. No one moved. They remained as they were. Lost in the fun of the new. And it was pleasant too, not having to do anything to feel good. Pleasure produced and offered itself up on a platter. They obliged and gobbled it up.

Soon though, something began to happen. Stagnancy began to exact its toll. Deprived of sun, wind, rain, soil, they began to rot. Mould grew ferociously on their skin, flesh turned to putrid mush, eyes shrivelled and shrank and yellowed, hair eroded away, teeth fell out. But they didn’t notice. The perverted magic of the screens had burrowed its way deep inside them, had fouled and corroded away their most precious part: the Spirit. With that lost, they did not even notice the unholy metamorphosis they were caught in; it got worse and worse and worse till all that was left of each of them was a decaying, amorphous, puss-like pile of goo, made of the tar of willing ignorance, reeking of spiritual subversion.

All these little individual blobs soon began to pull together, attracted by the craving they shared: of better, shinier, louder, faster, easier. The craving of more. The magnetism at the heart of it. They kept coming together, joining, pooling, growing until there was a singular pungent heap, more massive than the most massive mountain in the world. Totally devoid of any features, any remnants of the individuality of its once-human constituents. A gigantic tunnel-like hole appeared through its body, staring outward. Likely for ocular purposes, because the screen was still there and its hypnosis still strong, still escalating. Frozen and fixated, it stared.