(Image courtesy of an internet search.)
It seemed safe, lying there dozing, seemingly inanimate – a huge grey mass. You could barely detect it’s breath. You wouldn’t have said it was alive. No one actually believed it was a living beast. But I knew. I watched, I felt its breath. I watched the drones scurrying to and fro within it, feeding it, constantly. Its appetite was insatiable - it could never get enough. It fed off human energy – drawing bodies into its cavernous gut in the morning, spitting out the remnants at the end of the day. At night it slumbered with its eyes wide open - glittering eyes which shone into the night.
They tried to convince me I was imagining its life-force. They laughed at me, said I had an overactive imagination. But I knew. It used to suck me in every morning, kept me scurrying about all day long and in the evening it spat me out, sapped and exhausted - a mere shell.
I used to swear I wouldn’t return. But I did. Day after day, month after month, year after year. I watched those who’d been feeding the beast for years - ten years, twenty years, thirty years... as though they were wed to it, until they finally had nothing left to give, and it sent them away grey-faced, almost lifeless.
You might wonder why we all returned. But it’s an easy answer. As we fed the beast, so the beast fed us. It paid us for our energy - often handsomely. Rewarded us with various sorts of care. It provided for our old age, helped us educate our children. It ensnared us with promises.
The more it fed the stronger it grew, and the more it grew the more it needed to feed. It began to employ devious means to gain energy. It learned how to pit humans one against another so it could feed off their anger, their greed. It seemed to prefer the darker energies. It had no use for happiness or joy or peace or harmony. It sowed discontent and lapped up what flowed forth from that bounty. It learned to turn on its own kind, laying traps to that it might absorb the weaker creatures. It prime objective was to grow, become more powerful.
The beast's energy disturbed me, made me unwell. I knew it was a malevolent creature. Knew it cared only for itself - and nothing else despite how it might try to promote itself. I left eventually. I felt I had a right to my own life - a life that would fulfill me, not some giant monster. I walked away - embraced my freedom, wiser, more aware. From the outside I watched my friends - wondered how they could endure it. I was grateful when I found some of them leaving. They would come to me and say, “You were right to go. We’ve never been happier. It’s like we’ve been set free. Maybe you were right all along when you said it was alive…”
As the giant beast - and others of its kind - has grown, so it has become more cunning, driving its own greed, its own need. When we humans granted the beast legal rights, according it all the rights of people – and far more – we granted it immortality, enormous wealth and power, gave it the power to act and choose with few constraints... But we never gave it a soul – and so instead, it continues to suck on ours, intent on draining our very life-force so it might live and reign supreme.
Beware of the giant beasts that seemingly slumber in our midst, slowly devouring us and our world as their hunger grows and grows and grows…
