Anger

Some emotions are very dangerous. There was once a man who hated. This man loathed life and every living thing. He would go out of his way to destroy and humiliate. No creature was undeserving of his spite. On one particular Tuesday morning when the sky was acutely pink and the birds distinctly cheery the man stubbed his toe. His fury welled up inside. Before he could find some poor soul to unleash his wrath upon the man exploded in a fiery mass.

This is just one reason why it is good to mind one’s temper.

A Happy Society

An exorbitantly wealthy scientist once wished to create a perfectly happy society. Genetic engineering would be its key. The first batch of people all died during infancy. The tolerance levels for the poisons that their brains had been programmed to release with negative emotions were simply too low. As soon as an infant began to cry, it would die. After the sixth batch or so, the strategy was perfected. Sadness, anger, and other “negative” emotions would cause severe pain or even death. The scientist created a perfectly happy society.

Every year there are inevitably a few dozen deaths, mostly children and adolescents. If a person can make it twenty years or so without slipping into a fetal depression, they tend to keep the healthy habit of happiness up for life. Those who are not so brave, or so cowardly, die a slow and painful death. Poison secreted from their brains creeps down the veins in their arms and back, chilling the tips of their fingers and toes. They die a lonely death, clenching groin and buttocks. A tear-stained corpse will be found shortly after on a hard street or a soft bed.

Only one murder has been committed since emotional conformity was actualized. The science was killed in cold blood. Nobody stopped the murderer, there were no police because there was no crime. Some expected the assassin to die there next to its maker, but the assassin simply walked away. Apparently the perpetrator not of a crime of passion, but one of simple necessity.

Two generations after the assassination the trait still persists, a cursed cancer of the heart. One can only hope that their descendants will be truly happy.

Necromancer King

There was once a very powerful necromancer, by the name Kevin. Kevin kept to himself mostly. One day, the local townspeople tried to kill him because he was different. They accidentally killed his best friend Samantha instead. Kevin was never the same after this. He stopped brushing his teeth. He stopped bathing. He grew a mad long beard in which swallows nested.

Over the next two years, Kevin amassed the largest army of zombies the world had ever known. He overthrew the entire kingdom and killed everyone who looked at him funny. The reign of King Kevin was a bloody rain indeed. The only thing he enjoyed in life was Cinnamon in his coffee.

In the year 1327, a strange woman busted into King Kevin’s court. She had beady eyes and pointy teeth. She told the King that she came with the gift of knowledge. She told him of a tree of true necromancy, a tree that could bring back a soul as well as a body. resurrection

King Kevin rallied his forces and set forth on the path that the strange woman had laid before him. After 13 years of searching, King Kevin and his army finally discovered the tree of true necromancy. When Kevin finished the ceremony to bring back Samantha, the tree asked for the soul of the sorcerer in exchange for the soul of the deceased.

Now at this point in the tale two accounts are given. In one version of the story, Kevin revives Samantha in exchange for his own life. In the other, Kevin returns to his Kingdom even more derranged and agitated than he was before. I happen to know that neither of these accounts are true.

King Kevin carved an ancient spell into the bark of the tree then split the tree in half. The soul of the old tree lived in the sap. King Kevin collected the sap and used it to finish his necromantic incantations.

He and Samantha are happily alive to this very day. They survive on a healthy diet of magical tree sap. The pencils on their desks are hundreds of years old. Their house in Finland does not have a marked address, but it does have a zombie butler.