Flashes of Inspiration [Flash Fictions]

The Old Gods Are Dead

Prompt by CeeMTaylor: "The Old Gods Are Dead"

Greed. 
Power.
Hatred.

In the 1950s we chased them across oceans to Patagonia. We rooted them out and exposed the truth. Put them on display without the power their uniforms and medals assigned them. We watched old broken men break still further.

In 2021 we don't need to travel across oceans to foreign lands. They are among us and we are among them, eyes sharp as we watch and catalog the dog whistles, the subtle signs of recruitment. The spangled buffoons are not the dangerous ones, we know. They never were. The ones we hunt are like us. Quiet, watchful, prepared.

We fear, sometimes, it was us who taught them how to be that way. 

Greed, Power, Hatred. New gods that aren't new at all. But it is easier to pretend that they are, that they aren't the oldest of us all. The old gods are dead, but they have been before. We must be vigilant, and learn the new tools to root them out.

They have learned from us, and so it goes. We, in turn, have adopted their tools. Videos that identify faces (but only their own, as they could not consider to train their tools on anyone else), intangible footprints that are impossible to truly erase, the shield of respectability that they have held up for so long that their employers know can cut sharper than any knife. 

We are learning that we cannot rest. Dead gods rarely stay dead. We know this for we are the new gods and we have died in turn.

Justice.
Community.
Love.

The old gods have been dead before, and we will kill them again.