Status Quo

Prologue

It's strange, how life was once so precious. We all cherished the moments we had, felt purpose and satisfaction in the way we lived. Now life just slips through our fingers like soap in a pair of wet hands. It's like none of us view life as a luxury anymore. We're all alive, but none of us live. We just survive. To think, an onlooker would see a land overflowing with empty vessels and each of them are desperately searching for their soul, searching for some kind of purpose.

As the years have passed by, delusion has taken over and fooled us into believing unobtainable fantasies. For that's all we have, a fantasy that convinces us that there's something greater than the misfortune we have been granted and it plagues our every thought. The reality is that the world provides only cracked mirrors that shatter our hopes. Mirrors that reflect a dreaded truth of who we are and where we live and that only paves a path of depression and misery. A dire truth we desperately wish to evade because the squaller that resides in every crevice of this shithole is a reminder that snatches away our hopes and mauls apart our dreams. That's why, as inhabiters, we only have one purpose, get the fuck out.

We run ourselves to the bone as cheap labour and whore ourselves out at any given opportunity. For we are nothing. Worthless and useless unless we're on our knees with their cocks in our mouths or grinding ourselves to nothing. To them, we're only here to serve. That's why we're a country filled with attention seekers that claw at the wealthy and beg the powerful. Each pleading their case whenever such royalty blesses us and steps onto the filth we call home.

Filth that's crowded with people both depressed and miserable, absent of laughter and joy. How could there ever be happiness? We aren't here to be entertained, no, that was never intended for our benefit, it exists only to satisfy the rich. The same bastards who have the power to manipulate our fate and grant us a taste of life on the other side.

You see, our homeland is built on segregation, each island isolated and confined. The poverty that we endure is unknown to those who live only hours over the seas, and equally, their privileged lifestyles never behold to us.

Many years before, this place used to hold such beauty, now that beauty is only reserved for those imposing and renowned. Amidst the climate crisis, humanity refused to reconsider their actions despite the warnings that they received. Instead, they continued to poison their planet until it could no longer fight back. That's when death became imminent and the extinction of humanity was brutal and slow. When the core regenerated, our species were the next corrupt settlers to contaminate its foundations. We became the next toxic inhibitors of the world once known as earth.

Many of us live in survival mode, praying that someone higher up takes mercy on us. Yet, how can we believe in Gods or Goddesses' when we bore witness to mass extinction? I suppose lacking faith would leave a sour taste in the backs of our mouths. It would deliver a home truth that we'd rather remain ignorant too because we'd rather cling to the threads of hope and relish in a bittersweet possibility that may never come to fruition.

After humanity's extinction, our kind, the demons, shifters, bloodsuckers, and sorcerers of the other worlds reaped the benefit of human extinction and swiftly relocated to the planet known as earth. How humorous, that the monsters who tainted the minds of humanity now occupy their lands as though they were always here. Yet, to an onlooker, earth seems the same, for our 'human' forms possess their characteristics, so I suppose, even in death, humanity still resides in each of us. Although, being a demon or shifter doesn't matter here, our race has less significance in our society, it's our rank that determines our superiority.

Many would have you believe that rank starts with the Alphas, although Sigmas would beg to differ. The Alphas, they're the natural leaders, the most affluent in our world. They're confident, dominant, and charismatic, holding a savage demeanour and a captivating charm. The highly successful extroverts that thrive on danger. They're also the brutal narcissists that oppress us and place themselves on a pedestal.