Tortured texts™ presents: the tale…
…of the fetid fego
One bleak day in 2022, with Amerika under almost complete totalitarian rule and in shambles, a couple of archaeologists were digging amidst the ruins of Washdeecee, seeking clues to understand why their once great nation lie in tatters. While digging, they came across some ancient scrolls. One was titled the Constion, and the other the Blofights. They had already unearthed several other pieces of parchment, many that appeared to be letters. Taking them back to their lab, they cleaned them up and began the task of attempting to translate and decipher all these wonderful finds, using also as a guide the history books they had on hand.
It seemed that, some 250 years prior, several territories existed in a place called the land of the free and the home of the brave. Each territory had a creature called a Stago that watched over it, maintaining law and order and protecting the peoples’ rights. Some of the citizens, however, were concerned that the Stagos could not protect against a foreign invasion, nor that they would have the resources to maintain inter-territory infrastructure. Several leading thinkers wrote letters back and forth discussing the issue, with some proposing a larger creature to help unify and protect the Stagos and their territories. Many had concerns about creating this beast, but in the end, those lost the debate and the brightest minds among them set about forging the Fego, as detailed in the Constion.
Some of the concerns of those opposed did not, however, go unheeded. In order to maintain control over the Fego and to keep it from getting out of hand, the men created ten other smaller beasts they named “amens”, as detailed in the Blofights. There was the protoamen, the deuteramen, tritamen, tetartoamen, etc. on through the decatamen, which was the most powerful of the amens. While the other amens were primarily concerned with protecting particular prerogatives of the people by exercising some restraint over the Fego, the decatamen was intended to preserve the Stagos and to ensure the Fego did not grow too large or powerful.
It wasn’t long after its creation that the Fego began to foul. The changes were small at first, and they went mostly unnoticed. One day a little over a hundred years after its creation, it got a taste of money and power. Like a dog that has once bitten and tasted blood, it could not be trained to resist biting again. The Fego began to consume more and more cash, occasionally vomiting it back on those closest to it, and defecating all over the Stagos and their denizens. The Fego also started to grow, and as it did so, it festered; boil-like pustules erupted on this festering fetid Fego, and as they did, they spewed small spawn that became known as aybcee-gencies (also known simply as the aybcees).
The fetid Fego started directly battling many of the amens, first going after the deuteramen, then the enatamen. The Fego began enacting laws supposedly intended to protect the populace, but instead they allowed it to grow far beyond the creators’ original intent. Not only did the Fego attack the rights of the people directly, it sent forth the aybcee-gencies to do its bidding, to create rules, battle the other amens, and trample the rights of the people. The Fego created an act that greatly weakened the tetartamen and thereby the hectamen and pemptamen as well.
Soon, about fifty years after the Fego first began breaking out in boils, the pustules proceeded to proliferate at a preposterous pace. Likewise, the aybcee-gencies accumulated as well. The fibbie, the bat-fee, the eye-ress, the eepeaye, the doh-jay, and so many more. They reproduced more rapidly than rabbits. Though never granted authority by the people, the aybcees drew their power from the Fego. The aybcees further attacked the deuteramen and even went after the protoamen. The aybcee-gencies grew so numerous that they soon became together greater and more powerful even than the fetid Fego itself. The amens did all they could to fight back against the Fego and the aybcee-gencies, but they wearied and struggled to sustain. The one amen that was ignored by the Fego and the aybcee-gencies was the decatamen. Even the people had long forgotten the decatamen.
As the archaeologists began to piece together the puzzle, they realized that they needed something to save them from the overreach of the Fego that had consumed everything in its wake along with the aybcee-gencies which feigned fealty to the Fego while actually exerting some degree of control over it. Having scoured the scrolls for a savior, they came to the conclusion that the decatamen could restore their once respected republic. They believed the decatamen could rehabilitate and revitalize the union between the Stagos that was defined by the Constion but had transformed into this fetid Fego. The archaeologists immediately initiated an investigation to discover the displaced decatamen.
The men searched high and low, seeking any hint as to where the decatamen might have last been seen. The hunt was harrowing, and the men verged on abandoning the mission. Suddenly, one of the men found, from pointers in the parchments, the last known location of the decatamen. They hurried to their destination but were disheartened at their discovery. Due to having been forgotten and neglected so long, the decatamen had become emaciated and weak. It had lost all its teeth and no longer had the strength to battle the Fego and its aybcee-gencies, as it was once intended. The toothpaste could not be put back in the tube, so to speak.
Alas, the tale does not end with happily ever after. Actually, the tale has not yet ended. The archaeologists realized that their only choice in lieu of bowing before the Fego and its aybcee-gencies, was to muster enough men with heart and spine, men of true courage and valor, who would take up arms themselves and behead the aybcee-gencies and put to the sword the fetid Fego that they might start anew. As they found written in one of the divine documents, they needed men who would pledge their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to one another as they engaged against this fearsome foe.
©2022 by Chad Uretsky