I couldn’t understand how I could be so out of the loop, like a joke everyone else could understand and yet I can only stand here baffled by the punchline. It was like in a world of perfection, I was the only outlier trying to get in, to understand what everyone was trying to attain. But if you asked any one of them what their end goal was, they wouldn’t be able to tell you. Perhaps some easy lie that rolled off the tongue, sure but did anyone really believe that perfection as a society was possible? I had to stop letting the massacres get to me after a while, along with everyone’s mild shrug and claiming it was for good reason. I had screamed the first time, witnessing the firing squad close in with the terrible harmonizing of their voices repeating the mantra everyone loved to say. “To achieve the ideal, we must eradicate”. Again and again, the same phrase. It was said by the officers who moved mechanically through the streets to “eradicate” whoever they deemed not ideal. It was said by my family the night I had begged for answers on what was happening. It was said by friends who tried to hold me down and take me with them to paradise the second the guns fired. I tried telling it to myself walking home covered in their blood but it didn’t give me the kind of solace it seemed to provide for everyone else, yet another failed joke I wasn’t allowed in on. I was stuck watching everything from afar. I refused to leave my house except for essentials, dreading seeing any more glassy eyes and hearing that damn phrase again and again. What did perfection even mean to them? Did I dare ask only to be met with dismissive tones and condescending looks of pity? Everyone must’ve gone mad together, blinded by some flight towards the sun while I watched in their shadow. It must catch alight eventually, it had to. Someone had to snap out of it at some point. I couldn’t be the only person who saw the madness and feared what society was striving to become. I couldn’t be the only witness to the burning fall, left alone to stand in the ashes or die by the crossfire. There must be others, there had to be. Or else I was stuck here to watch mankind tear itself apart, hoping to find some semblance of godhood where even the gods feared to walk themselves.