WEDNESDAYS WORDS

I'd never seen a sky like it. Three moons, two planets, a multitude of stars pasted against a dark blue and red backdrop. Please don't for one minute think that the twist at the end here will be the very "Planet of the Apes"-esque "Oh, it was Earth all along!" because I'm afraid this really isn't. This place is a visual paradise. An amalgamation of beauty and splendor. Rather, I should say Beauty and Splendor. And I do use "amalgamation" literally. You see, Beauty and Splendor are companies each dealing in their namesake sectors. Beauty deals with beauty and Splendor with splendor. The former is a cosmetics company- that is they can give you everything from natural soap right through to cosmetic surgery- while the latter deals in all things happy- dealing out teddies, witty greetings cards and prozac, amongst a myriad other things.

I didn't choose to come to this place. I used to live on the aforementioned intolerable Earth and I barely remember any prolonged happy moments. Sure, I could be happy at points but these points were few and infrequent. It started taking its toll. At 12, I was peer pressuring kids into stealing bikes for us to slowly and very painstakingly melt with stolen lighters, thus making us pyromaniacs also. On hindsight, a 12 year old pyromaniac who steals bikes does sound pretty cool. At 14, if there was a pet in the street I disliked I'd simply make it "disappear". And I wouldn't make it easy for it too. Weapons in my arsenal to aids these disappearances included knives, baseball bats and sometime I even used the very unconventional set of garden shears. Though, whenever the garden shears were put to use, the animal wouldn't actually disappear. I'd lay it out there in the owners garden; half in the front and half in the back. I also figured that if I didn't like you (I'm really not that judgemental a character, and I ask that you judge me not back, for I am now a changed man) then you didn't much deserve to live anyway. At 17, I was gunning down old people my with BB gun. Tiny pellets, implanted quickly and precisely into the derriere of an elder. Actually, why I used this example after I spoke of literally cutting sentient beings in half with garden sheers dumfounds even me. It pales in comparison.
Eventually, they decided it had gone too far. And so, whilst "safe" in my slumber one evening, I was kidnapped, at the tender age of 19. They understood me. They understood that I was merely a depresses teen who chose the wrong outlets for it (yes, cutting animals in half, amongst various other sickening activities, get over it) and felt that my presence could be put to better use elsewhere. How bitter irony it was that they should then, just as I had done to many creatures before, simply just make me disappear. I heard later on they left a decoy; a well constructed model of myself, with my torso upwards in my front garden and my hip downwards in the back. This was a sight the postman would never forget.
The day I arrived here, I came to consciousness in a pitch black room. Confusion gripped my psyche; not one part of me understood this newfound environment, which really should have come to no surprise considering that all I could see was nothing.

"Hello" purred a low, comforting voice. "I hope you are well. You have been unconscious for quite some time, though we did not use violence or poison to take you. You should feel just as well as you did when you went to sleep that night."

"I do" I replied. "Where are you? Where am I?"

"You are here on the planet Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch!"

"Ch-ch-ch-ch?"

"Nope! Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch! Like the noise you'd make to grab the attention of a feline."

"Yes, but that could also be 'Ch-ch-ch-ch' dependent upon how many repetition of Ch you de,,,"

"Silence! There are five Chs, and may you not forget a single one!"

"I shall endeavor to make this the case. Why have you brought me here? And why aren't the lights on?"

"We've witnessed what you're capable of. We know that you do not wish to do the things you do yet you do them anyway. We know that you're not happy with Earth in its current state and you and us alike fear that it's only going to worsen. We brought you here, a planet created by Beauty and Splendor to be the wondrous paradise it is. Here, you will be happy. Here, you will be happy!" remarks the being, audibly grinning.

"Beauty and Splendor? Like the companies? Nice. So even if I don't want to be happy, they'll find drugs and a look that'll make it irresistible?"

"Oh, you can resist. It just won't work."

"That's what irresistible means."

"Oh. Sorry. I am of inferior intelligence. MEAOW!"

"Why did you just scream "meaow"?"

"I didn't. It must've come from elsewhere. The Beauty factory perhaps. Ever wondered what they really put in their face scrub before?"

I figured this was rhetorical.

"O...kay...So. Why have you brought me here? I know you've said you'd seen me and my ways but why me? There are plenty people in the world like me and there are plenty more worse off. Why me?"

"Those other people interest us not. You, my friend, link us all. You brought us to care about the world a great deal better. You forced us to learn of great pain but also of beauty and forgiveness. And it is in these reasons that you must live here. At peace, rest."

"Why do I link you? What links us? I know nothing about you! Please, please! Allow me some light and show me your face!"

"Very well then." replied the benevolent voice.

In that moment, there was lightness within a radius of perhaps fifteen or twenty feet around me, myself at the epicenter. And from the edges of the dark walked in every animal I'd ever made disappear.