fiction
all the bibles In the Beginning, in a place too far away, existed the Immortal Toad. And the Immortal Toad decreed that any who misinterpreted the Word would be smited with a mighty nastiness. And verily the Word was soon misappropriated and twisted and employed with great falseness and gusto to sell coffee and people and the very soil that the earth-trodders coveted. And clumsy structures claimed the Immortal Toad and the Word as they traveled to the sky whilst the bowers and the kneelers and the hymnists fenced in the wild children until their prurient hides could be tamed and branded. The colors and substances spat forth by the Immortal Toad were labeled and traded and hoarded and secreted in gold and coal lined vaults until such time as they could be bartered for favors and privileges, both in this day and the long hereafter. Strong bickering ensued and grand victories were measured in the mountains of discarded blood and discarded dignity and the even more mountainous piles of ideas and compassion that were torched in the name of Immortal Toadness. The Immortal Toad reared up to roar disapproval and gathered to full smiting pose with huge anger reflecting the witness of corruption and thought to destroy all. The Immortal eyes wetted instead and the Immortal spotted back turned. “Let them roll in their own dirt.�
tina zmich
literature all the bibles
18