by Martin Anton Smith

And finally, after such protracted disarray – the Earth was able to take a new breath. Every nook & cranny of all the streets in all the towns in all the Nations had been at War. Unlike prior world wars no one had been able to sneakily cop out of the combat – the old the infirm they were all at each other. But now it had ‘suddenly’ ended.

The decades long incendiary bombardment fell to a few claps, a single clap, & then pure silence. It was the kind of stark silence that could be felt. Within the hour the ubiquitous dust settled enough so allowing the sun to turn yellow again, rather than its usual dust-cloud-created sack-cloth brown. Most of the World had never seen the Sun’s true yellowness. 

After a while the Earths animals clued onto things. A bird’s chirp was heard, and then another, then hundreds, then they emerged from the holes & flew around happily in reconnaissance missions. The few remaining uneaten cats & dogs could be heard to meow & bark again.

The biggest War the world had known was now over. The War had lasted 83 years & Earth had lost 8 billion souls, leaving only 100,000 victors. This War had decimated 99% of the Population. All other wars in comparison became like two toddlers rolling on the ground playfighting.

Before the war had started, everyone had assumed it could only be a be a nuclear War that would decimate the Earth to that extent – they were wrong. Dead wrong. No one had anticipated it would be a ‘culture war’ that would be the spark that lit the world on fire. And what specifically was this ‘culture war’? It was the mind-virus of ultra extreme pathological feminism.

This mind-virus had flown under the radar for decades – It was joked about for at least 60 years, but eventually the world woke up to a complete reversal of sex roles. Men had become women & women had become men – the controlling kind. Before the war broke out all men in semi-serious relationships & above were stripped entirely of their former freedoms. They could not leave the house unless the lady of the house decided it was in the household’s best interest. They could not work on cars, watch sports, listen to stereos or do any of the former masculine interests. In fact, societies mad leaders had made it illegal to do so.

But you can only suppress the human spirit for so long – eventually good must pop open the shackles of a straitjacketed society. So this being true – sooner or later the end had to happen. What the rebel soldiers & their followers had been known simply as “WifeWars”, was now finally over.

The remaining valiant men & a few ex enemy women who were won over to the rebel’s side, were the last few tens of thousands from the War that were left standing. With it being over they were now keen to have at least some tiny morsels of the taste of victory. Though everyone knew this victory was about as ‘pyric’ a victory as was possible given that humanity was within a hairs breadth of becoming entirely extinct & all infrastructure had been levelled. It was a world of make do fixes, rubble, foxholes, & tonnes of scrap metal.

Even so, this ‘ground zero’ lack-of-everything-world was not talked about openly in the the early post-battlefield days, months & years – how would this help the rebels rebuild?

The mostly male victors were free to arrange the first truly self-managed spontaneous party in more that 8 decades. They wouldn’t need to be putting up their hands anymore to ask for any ‘spousal feminine permission’, to get up off their chairs, to leave their rooms, to call a friend, to leave the house, to buy some beer to have a ‘boys night out’. For the men to have a big ‘Freedom Party’ was seen as a miraculous gift from the heavens above. Tears flowed as the rebels hugged & sobbed in the immediate hours of the end of War – their emotions could be safely emitted.

Yes, it was now a brave new world. It was one hell of a party. So big & so lubricated & so long lasting was the celebration it was told more than a third of the participants had forgotten the War had even happened at all & that they had fought their whole adult lives fighting it. Of course, the next day their memories returned, although the hangovers lasted longer.

Time moved forward & peace again reigned on the depopulated Earth. Eventually as the baby boom played out & economies rebuilt the people of the post-war world would come to never believe that the cataclysm World War called “Wifewars” – was an actual real-world war. People began to mistake its oral history for a fairytale, or if they admitted it was real – it became thought of as a just a regional skirmish. And so with this worldwide collective repression of past memories, the seeds for a return to a similar future devastation were sowed.

So, this dystopian anti-male culture war scenario happened again. Once again both figuratively & in a few cases literally – billions of beta male married & practically married men’s ‘gnarlies’ would again be locked up in hermetically sealed pickle jars & then held under lock & key by their wives or as-good-as-wives. The cycle of terror had indeed returned. History was repeating, thanks to the world’s false memories & willing ignorance.

The last War had been won in indistinct guerilla warfare fashion. It was a War with no heroes, there was no Patton, no Mongomery. There were no distinct villains either – no Napoleon-esses. But this time around the jar had been shaken somewhat differently – after all this era was one that secretly valued a hero – so this time a hero would be needed – but who would save the men this time?

Cometh the hour, cometh the man, cometh 39-year-old, small town shoe salesman named ‘Larry’. The thoughts of being a ‘hero of a new rebellion’ swirled through Larry’s mind. He wa like all the other second-class males – a bedraggled DeFacto married man living in this second epoch of troubles, he was controlled, ordered, belittled & sometimes spat at. But Larry was clever & his secret of mental toughness was that he knew that the oral History of the prior War called “Wifewars” was actually entirely true – he knew that history was repeating.

He had watched silently as the ‘Zombie Wives’ had plied their trade-of-terror on the men, he’d studied their ways in true profiler detective fashion. ‘Zombie Wives’ was his term for them – that’s what he called them to himself, never out loud for fear of reprisal. They’d now dominated the planet again & ruled with their sometimes shapely but mostly solid & square ‘iron’ fists. As he & his kind were casually maligned & mistreated, he had watched & despaired of the lack of a ‘Rebel Leader’ emerging.

“Larry you can do this” he said to himself as he did his pre-sleep ritual – massaging his six-foot wife’s bunions, as she griped about his uselessness & that she should have married Troy her first true love. “Troy was so sexy” she’d say, then she’d continue “Troy could fix anything – not like you…Troy was a real man”. “Yes dear, of course dear” was the most assertive retort he could get away with.

While Larry was massaging Susan’s horribly square feet & trotting out “yes dears” – there was an almighty crash coming from the kitchen – it was Susan’s giant pickled onion Jar falling of the kitchen shelf & on to the floor – through the carnage of broken glass & vinegar the two pickled onions had rolled with such force they had rolled out to the lounge room where they were & lapped against Larrys knees.

Larry wasn’t strictly ‘spiritual’ but to him in that moment the pickles seeking him out was the spiritual sign he had needed. God was telling him to find his deeply buried balls & use them to save men-kind.

He would be the ‘Rebel Leader’ to again save the enslaved mistreated & bedraggled married, semi married & heavily girlfriend-ed males. He let go of those giant sweaty bulbous feet, raised himself up & steadily walked towards the door. He left the house without shutting the door or looking back. Susan his shrieking overbearing wife’s voice was slowly reducing in volume with each step away from her couch:

“Laaarrrrry! What are you doing! Come Back here! I didn’t give you permission to leave! Come & massage my bunions immediately! Laaaarry! Lary! Laaaary! You’re not going to your annual drink with Tom & Bill are you? You can’t do that till Sep 29th -it’s only July 3rd! Laaaaaarrrry!”. She got up to chase him, but her fitness or lack of it was no match for Larry’s purposeful strides…plus she was paralysed by shock, he’d never seen him stand up for himself – ever.

Larry headed to his best friend Bill’s house & then they’d both go to their other mutial best friend Tom. These were the three men that their wives had decided would be best friends in the first place. Under this typical tyranny they had been allowed to meet and drink together once a year, under a surveilled video link; they were also allowed a weekly call to each other – with their wives listening in of course. That ‘prisoners life’ was dcrumbling with every clopping long stride of Larry’s as it hit the pavement to Bills house. The first stage of the rebellion & the start of “WifeWars 2” – another World War – was underway.

And so “WifeWars 2” the world war played out. Again 8 billion were wiped out, with devestation again hitting every square meter of the populated Earth. Again the ‘Ultra Femminist Zombies’ were subdued – Thanks to Larry the Supreme commander, with Bill & Tom being his most trusted General. But this time round the Victory had only taken 37 years. January the 13th 2057 was officially known as V.F.Z day – “Victory Over the Femminazi Zombies”

Well After the War, some seventy years later, this V.F.Z. day would be better known as “P.O.- Day” – Pickled Onion Day – for everyone knew Larry’s moment where he realised his destiny – when the Pickle jar broke & sent two testicular pickles his way.

In all the myriads of small towns that were the norm in this brave new world, the few remaining war vets & a few thousand of their decendants marched past the standardised monument to their glorious, & now long fallen leader – it was a giant 10 Foot statue of Larry, Bill, & Tom. they were all encased inside in what looked like a glass pickle jar.

The monument creator had done a great job. Larry striked a confidant pose & was smiling ear to ear. he had been hoisted by Bill & Tom & was sitting proudly atop their shoulders. The Jar he stood inside was a giant bullet proof glass pickle jar – complete with Susan’s original label “Crunchee Firm Pickles In White Vinigar” . Larry was wearing rebel militia garb of mottled blue & green. On his head was the standard issue rebel soldiers wide brimmed hat with of course the top dogs commander-in-chief’s emblem – a pickle jar with 10 silver pickles in it. Bill & Tom’s were essentially the same – but with 9 & 8 pickles respectively.

On top of that Larry’s likeness was holding a giant slingshot that was cocked & loaded with an oversized pickled onion aiming downwards. The three of them were also standing atop a large pile of defeated enemy ‘Femmi-Nazi Zombie’ soldiers. Their most prescient feature was that they seemed very long & all had giant square shaped feet with some kind of boils on them – & of course very mean frowny downward trending faces.

The artist had even put some embossed-worded, iron sheeted speech bubbles attached to a few of their mouths they read:

“Laaaarrry come back here”…

“Where are you going Laarry?” …

“My feet! My Poor Swollen Feet… Laaaarrry!!!”…….

“Boy you’ll pay for this Larry!”….

“Larry! Where are you going… Larry!”…

“Laaarry……don’t leeeave me alooone with my thoooughts”.

The thousands of statues were just the beginning – Larry, Tom & Bill had made sure that this time this version of the ‘brave new world’ would not forget that this terrible genocidal war against men’s spirits had indeed actually happened. The gender wars were for once & for all over.

Men & Women then got on very well with peace reigning supreme for another ten thousand years, until some teenage fool while walking in the park had asked glibly of his girlfriend ‘but what really is a woman anyway?’…

THE END