The People Grinder

After a period of intense anticipation the machine was finally completed. The outpouring of public happiness which greeted the announcement was universal and unalloyed. The machine went into service almost immediately, after furious festivities.

The people were all herded into the maw of the great machine as it traveled across the country, flocking in droves to be allowed to plunge into the whirling blades and grinding teeth of the great mechanical savior. Old men and young, mothers with small children, foreigners and nationals alike, all embraced for one last moment as they plunged into their destiny.

After the machine had scoured the countryside, mulching over the barren land with the emaciated remnants of a once proud people, it moved on to all the countries of the world, traversing the distant seas to be greeted with rapturous applause in every country to which it made landfall. The world grew sparse and empty, barren of noise and purpose.

After the last men and women had been herded into the machine, the men who operated the mechanisms of gleeful genocide turned the whips upon themselves. For many days they fought, whipping each other until the skin hung from their shoulders like strawberry smeared ribbon. When the last of them died, the dogs emerged to gnaw on their bones, and their round-faced puppies frolicked across the fields of the dead.