Dear World

Please Kill Me,

The world’s in a pretty weird place right now (…but I didn’t have to tell you that). 

Outside of the hot global conflicts, shifting economies, widespread loss of job opportunities (largely due to AI replacements), trade wars, nationalist/tribalist wars, nose-diving literacy rates, increasing mortality rates, plummeting morality rates, creative regurgitations, mega-corporation dominance, increased pollution, decreased empathy, increasing death rates, decreasing wages, and ever-expanding gap between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’—it’s feeling pretty hopeless out there.

Maybe that’s just me being a sentimental artist (…clutching my pearls at the lack of a non-existent / never existed utopia), but it does ACTUALLY FEEL like there’s a growing void in the world that wasn’t previously as prominent (…I won’t say that it never existed, because truthfully “assholes gonna asshole,” we just didn’t used to be so damn proud of it). 

The big tip-off that something’s amiss is that no one really wants to talk about it. If you even attempt to bring up the ever-prominent superficial attitudes (e.g. “mine NOT yours,” “get them before they get me,” “Money, power, and status over EVERYTHING,” etc…) that’ve taken over, you’ll probably be either exiled from polite company or summarily chided for having a bleeding heart at a time when most have turned theirs into an ice-box (*cue Omarion* (…Christ, I’m old…)). You see it at that minor interpersonal, casual talk-level, as well as in government policy. 

Regardless of where you stand on the immigration situation (…no matter where you are…), you can just sense the dehumanization of and apathy toward faceless groups of *whomever*, whether or not they’ve actually done anything wrong, were lied to, or tried to do things the right way. 

Are some of them assholes worthy of cages? SURE! I’m not defending MONSTERS. 

But there are assholes in every group!!! 

Are we really going to go back to the medieval thinking that every group is a monolith, defined by the worst of the bunch (because if we’re going to do that, no group is innocent and God may as well send the damn flood)? 

Similarly, you see the apathy in American health policies—gutting cuts to Medicaid and Medicare, imminent threats to social security nets, deregulation across the board (that’s led to countless (pants-shitting) health crises) that include the return of measles, aforementioned (pants-shitting) Cyclospora, loss of health coverage (and therefore increased preventable deaths because people can’t afford care), and food recalls on just about everything from pork and beef to rice and fucking lettuce…LETTUCE!!! The most benign and impotent vegetable since late-stage Mitch McConnell.

I’m not even trying to be political (….although, you don’t write as much as I do without spilling through the seams at times)…but rather I’m just acknowledging that no one really gives a fuck anymore…At least, that’s not what the algorithms are allowing us to see. It’s not what the most popular content creators are concerned with. I can’t remember the last time a state or nation’s representative commented on the widespread ‘lack of fucks given’. Everything’s increasingly insular, protected, hypervigilant, overstimulated, rigid, demanding, and DEVOLVING.

Hell, if you walk into what once may have been considered “high-class” or “high-status” rooms, the smug conversation has largely pivoted from solving problems like famine and illness to varied luxuries and Marie Antoinette-style musings about what amounts to incoherent shit—repetitive, pre-loaded, Jerry Springer-style dialogue that goes nowhere and means nothing. Narcissistic babble about empty experiences they couldn’t articulate with every AI and matted photo on their full terabyte-sized memory card. 

There doesn’t seem to be any heart anymore. No soul. No real vision or purpose—just retreads of the same superficialities and vapidities (a word?) that led us to this hell. 

Maybe this was ALWAYS the thing, and I just didn’t see it. 

Maybe those in power used to care more about concealing their apathy. 

Maybe this is just where humanity has landed on the timeline, and I should go sit my happy ass down and accept it—play the game or get off the court. Get winning or stay losing. Choose yourself over everything or settle for imposed misery by default. Participate or disintegrate…etc, etc. (…I could do this all day).

But I don’t think that’s the answer either. Drug use is up. Suicides are up. The cost of living is rising. Wages have stalled. Education is in the toilet. People aren’t having babies. And the happiest unified cultural moments (…of the last two years?) were that sadistic hippo baby, disfigured raccoon, and some monkey named “Punch” and his sex doll…like WHAT ARE WE EVEN DOING ANYMORE?!?!?! Because I honestly DON’T FUCKING KNOW.

But whatever… I’m not here to solve problems. 

—the least I can do is acknowledge them, though.

I’m gonna go dissociate and work on a thing (…either that or become the Joker…IDK).

Until Next Time,

—Antwan Crump

---

Check out my short story Butterflies (and all of my other works) on:

Amazon – B&N – KOBO – Google Play Books

Death came fluttering on an evening breeze…

When bioluminescent insects infect humanity with a novel virus known as the BUG, society quickly crumbles—leading to a world of panic and decay that spreads with unmitigated zeal. As bodies pile up and sickness spreads, the unprepared are left to fend for themselves—awaiting death as chaos reigns and governing bodies fail them.

However, Sam Cooke, a husband, father, and paranoid prepper, has long prepared for this moment. The Cookes flee their cozy California home for a secluded, survivalist compound known as Eden. In exchange for a small fortune and contracted compliance, the Cookes are offered a secure safe haven…but Eden is not quite what it seems.

Now, with nowhere to run and trapped in a brutal and authoritarian community, Sam must navigate unimaginable horrors if he hopes to keep himself and his family alive.

From the author of Veal, Apostate, and The Suicide Pod, Butterflies is a relentless, visceral tale of survival and psychological horror set in a world consumed by the bitter realities of creeping death. For fans of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and immersive apocalyptic thrillers, this latest short story from Antwan Crump is a profound exploration of grief, tragedy, and the cost of survival in a dying world.