Vicious Indifference

It was a day full of tristesse. The birds knew it, dogs, wolves and roaches sensed it, yet, the one chosen to die, was in its own daydream. It had been, over the centuries, a nice enough existence. Watching and waiting, participating, in all that life had to offer. The word was proud of itself, and what it stood for. At one time it had even considered to ask for that little 'von', which would be a sign of nobility. But, everyone, everywhere, even the bad people were in awe, and thus, in agreement that there was an integrity, and a bit of godliness in the term, and that it was, by all indications, and with the wisdom of empiricism, an indispensable word. Humane. And when the day came, where tristesse itself paid a visit, perhaps in a vain effort to alleviate any suffering to come about, there was no big drama, no explosion of a man-made bomb. No missiles were fired. Just a brief crack of thunder, and the word humane was no more. Killed by, it was later found, through a committee sent from Heaven, a monster named Vicious Indifference. But, as sometimes happens, the committee had no executive powers, and left after the verdict had been delivered to the local priest, who had to be disturbed, pulled out of bed by his cohabitating housekeeper. Later that night, both the housekeeper and the priest, were seen entering, what some in the congregation secretly had baptised The Kingdom Of Bacchus, and that's where they spent the days until it was high time for the Sunday Sermon. Meanwhile, in the absence of objections or common sense, the people had agreed that Vicious Indifference be the new Mayor, and by democratic global extrapolation, the new leader. It was expected that the priest would, without delay, make the appropriate announcement, on Sunday, from the height and authority of the pulpit. He did his best, having forgotten his spectacles in the Kingdom, to decipher a hastily scribbled note, but he did what was required. Tristesse left that day, in the afternoon, its own nature, which was sadness, was unable to withstand what the new order stood for. Nothing was the same, nor would it ever be, again. No. Only the priest, whose stipend was immediately increased, drastically, and whose life did change for the better through the abolition of celibacy, and all other restrictions, deemed unnecessary by his Highness, the new Emperor, only the Man of God felt that nothing untoward had happened. And God? He cursed the day he had, in a fit of malic acidosis, decreed that Heaven could not interfere. He would have liked to, as he had felt like that on countless previous occasions, when unspeakable sins were committed, and he had to watch. But then, he said to himself, in a whisper, that 'a word is a word', referring to his decree, not to the word that had been murdered. And he found that indifference, at this time, and any other time, was, indeed heavenly.