A middle-aged woman’s face in frame.
Read it, somebody says.
My name is Angela and I’m guilty. I have helped in the destruction of the environment. Me and my generation—That should be my generation and I, Andy.
Whatever. Just read it, OK?
OK. Me and my generation have failed to help pass on the Earth—
From off-screen, someone pulls a plastic bag over the woman’s head. Shocked,
she struggles.
Her hands scratching, grabbing at the bag. The plastic going in-and-out, in-and-out with her increasingly heavy, slowing breath.
Until it moves no more.
(Thud.)
Dude, someone says, you just killed your own mother.
—scroll—>
A man crawls along a neatly mowed lawn. Something’s wrong with his legs.
He glances back,
in terror.
A shadow passes over him.
Son…
A sledgehammer blow—
erases his head.
—scroll—>
A glam-filtered girl says into the camera, Well, I’m not, like, an orphan yet, but I’m totally, like, into the idea, ya know? Because parents, they’re like, fascism or something.
—scroll—>
Two teens take turns pissing on an unconscious woman suspended between two trees.
When she opens her eyes,
they set her on fire. Global warming, bitch!
—scroll—>
The Earth does not have the resources to-to-to keep the rodents alive. The y-y-young are the ones working, and our p-p-parents’ generation are useless pension rats.
—scroll—>
A man’s toothless, drooling head forced against the frame of an open car door.
Shoulda driven electric, a kid says.
(Laughter, applause)
(Chanting: Do it. Do it. Do it…)
The car door—
Slams—
(Screaming)
Slams—
(Groan-
ing)
Slams—
Until: Silence.
Dead bits of face stick to the door, ooze down the frame, accumulate on the driveway.
—scroll—>
—fessor of Philosophy, yes, and I don’t have any children, so, no, I’m not personally afraid, and in fact I sympathize with the youth, their spirit, their will to action. You might say I’m youth-adjacent, a Millenial fellow traveller.
—scroll—>
A smartphone showing a photo of a man in his 30s with a little girl. They’re both smiling.
The phone moves away:
revealing the same two people a decade or so later.
He’s pleading, Don’t…
as she slides a knife along his throat, releasing crimson, and as he garglegags she starts hacking at his neck.
Blood—
sprays the lens.
Looked a lot easier on the ISIS vids, she says.
—scroll—>
What is Parent?
Parent is propaganda. Parent is exploitation. Parent is prison. Parent is Enemy.
Parent is Enemy.
—scroll—>
—global mass hysteria, as young people all around the world are killing their parents, seemingly induced by a video on social media…
on social media…
The news anchor slumps to her desk, followed by the camera tilting suddenly to the floor.
Gas obscures the image.
—scroll—>
A shrine devoted to the Menendez Brothers.
—scroll—>
A memeified scene from Heavenly Creatures.
—scroll—>
Teens smoking a joint, sitting on the dead bodies of two adults, as behind them a door opens—
Thought I told you to stay
—and a middle-schooler blows them away with a shotgun.