Neo-Holocaust

A grim and linear depiction of a society that values property and commerce over Human life..

The ovens burned in the streets, billowing smoke so noxious and acrid that no one dared go near them. That is to say no one went near them unless there was something to put into them and no one did that but the armed guards. That is to say that no one but armed guards went near the ovens and that all they put into them were bodies. There seemed to be a sacred air about these ovens that ensured only bodies were disposed of in their fiery recesses. A sacred air that was reinforced by armed guards.

Before the ovens, the dead littered the streets, akin to any refuse from McDonalds that lent to the trashy decor of the neighbourhood. The foul stench of human bodies, ashen and cold with death, polluted the already putrid air that clung to all who passed through it. The bodies rotted, rats and flies delighting in their feast of carrion.

The government, eager to please the business aristocracy who made their fortunes in the area, had erected the ovens for quick and easy disposal of the human rubbish that peppered half a square mile of city streets. The decision had cost taxpayers half a million dollars and had proved to be a costly and disgusting mistake.

Despite the cost, an overwhelming number of people had voted in favour of the ovens. To clear the streets of the dead was worth so much that few could bring themselves to vote against such a measure. Despite the ensuing outcry following the realization that the ovens produced such a terrible odour and the sickly greasy smoke, the government elected to keep the ovens. Political retraction is a sort of emotional death and no politician wants to die that way.

The bodies belonged to the homeless, street dwellers who belonged nowhere but existed seemingly everywhere. These were the dregs of society, the foam at the bottom of the glass, the suds no one would drink.

Arresting the homeless, putting them in jails, certainly did nothing to quell the issue. It was as if they were multiplying, though few children could be found among the human trash heap that littered the cluttered streets. If one was jailed, ten more popped up like a human hydra monster. This was not even the biggest issue. Jails were publically funded. The same taxpayers who wanted these vermin off the streets balked at the idea of putting rats up in a luxury resort just to let them out to ravage and devalue the downtown once more.

Many street people were junkies: pinpushers, crackheads, puddle jumpers. Many others were mentally ill. The downtown business glitterati had no problems kicking dust at these people who existed only to fulfill their basest desires, their petty indulgences, their vile addictions. At any time of day, rain or shine, there could be found on any downtown street a degenerate, slave to the tiny white pebbles he smoked from a glass tube. Beside him, another degenerate shooting junk heated on bent metal spoons into collapsed veins. These same degenerates could be found late at night selling stolen property or propositioning passersby for sex. These were not humans, they were filthy urchins not capable of the humanity required to reach the upper echelons of genteel society.

It made no sense to treat these people as though they deserved even a shred of the same dignity as cultured people. They had made the choice to use drugs, to turn tricks, to abuse the kindness of strangers for personal gain. It made more sense to lofty citizens to shun the homeless and let them learn the hard lessons they needed to. In this way, prevailing wisdom went, these people could see the folly of their self serving ways and elevate themselves to the levels of real people. The 'real' people felt they were giving their street dwelling counterparts 'humanity'. The real people contributed, the street people just fed on their table scraps.

The first indication of any change had been when a member of government had, on record, spoken of a need to sterilize anyone on the streets or receiving welfare. Of course the bleeding hearts had had a heyday with this. They were summarily ignored and the sterilization bill became law despite a liberal outcry that it was unconstitutional and unconscionable to selectively sterilize or abort the unborn children of poor people. Rather than having to pay for the care of the children born to people who could not possibly provide for them, it was seen as more humane to simply abort them or prevent their lives together. The fewer street people the better.

In time, the bleeding hearts had their day in court and the law, seen to violate the constitution and the bill of rights, was repealed. But there was still no concrete and realistic plan to deal with the poor and destitute street dwellers. That is until they began dying off in record numbers.

Whether it was a true disease epidemic or a ploy to quietly but effectively dispose of undesireables, no one could say for sure. Regardless, the homeless began dropping like flies. Coroners reports simply cited street related illnesses, which became a byword for the epidemic. Soon there were more corpses than beggars in the streets. At first it was not because of the deadly ravages of the disease, but because people were taking refuge from it. Many street people avoided coming out at all for weeks. Some cleaned up, rehabilitated and reintegrated. Others perished, victims of a virulent and invasive plague.

With so much death, the streets were littered with bodies that stank and rotted.City crews were dispatched to dispose of the dead but soon went on strike. Some of their ranks had caught the illness and died. The city workers wanted assurance that they would not catch the disease and above all wanted more pay. They would not work for regular wages without danger pay. Of course taxpayers would be on the hook for such a pay hike. This is what led to the ovens.

It started with just one. On the corner of two streets once popular and abundant with degenerate drug users and w****s, the first oven went up without fanfare and with no indication as to its purpose or instructions for its use. A fire was blazing inside and many homeless thought it was a furnace with which to keep warm. Then the first of the bodies was loaded by the masked and suited city workers, to the horror and shock of the onlooking street poor. They watched as people they had once known were stuffed into the incinerator.

Soon after, ovens began popping up on every downtown street corner. Like Mao's backyard furnaces in Communist China, the ovens looked like iron smelters, cylindrical structure with a pit in the bottom for embers and a flue at the top for smoke and ash. At first, screens were absent from the stacks, causing greasy ash to accumulate on everything in the vicinity. They were only added once the downtown business glitterati began to complain.

Each oven could accomodate five dead bodies. The ovens began to have rules associated with them. No person other than the city crews was allowed near them. There were crews devoted to collecting and disposing of bodies and armed guards dispatched to ensure the rules were followed. Violators were shot on site and fed to the gaping orange mouth of the oven.

Normally, this kind of holocaust would have been protested by decent people, but in this case the only protest came from bleeding hearts and activists. By and large, working people and business people alike had no opinion or they outright lauded the decision. The only outcry, that which asserted that the government had created the disease as a way to control the undesireables in the name of profits and efficiency, was quickly and quietly stifled.

In truth, productivity and profits did increase.With less money diverted to social programming, needle exchanges, food banks and shelters, more could be spent on things that mattered. Roads were repaired, new buildings were erected and corporations reinforced their bottom lines. Suddenly the people who had made their livings helping the poor found themselves in the same position as those they had once helped.

Now they were the poor, the disadvantaged, the homeless. Some were able to transition to other fields. Some kept their jobs but worked in different capacities. The less fortunate of these, those without transferrable skills or lower on the pay gradient, they lost their jobs, found themselves destitute and, in time, on the streets.

The disease that had wiped out much of the transient population still ravaged the streets. The new generation of homeless caught it from the carriers, ones who hadn't died from it but still carried it enough to pass it on. The influx of new hosts caused a resurgence of the virus and an increase in the diet of the flaming ovens.

Until one day the ovens died. No more golden glow from the eerie embers, no more foul odour, no more greasy soot that stained all it touched. No more were the homeless, the w****s, the peddlers and the users. No more were the enablers, the activists and bleeding hearts and aid workers. All that was left was commerce, money and material. So cold and desperately complete the world seemed now. So efficient and calculating and yet there seemed to be something missing. Commerce had pushed compassion out of the picture and something felt curiously amiss. Not just the lives that had been lost but the last fledgling shreds of dignity and humanity of a world who had destroyed them.

Author's Note

Written while homeless, this piece is a reaction to an attitude spreading at the time of writing that painted the homeless as lazy self indulgent urchins who suckle at the teat of compassionate aid. Homeless were, and in many ways still are, seen as taking advantage of the system only to overdose or die of hepatitis in the street. Over and over as I parsed diatribe upon diatribe in the news and in overheard conversations I felt like the general attitude was “let them die”. It seemed ovens would pop up on street corners, that we would start shoveling the most vulnerable in society into these ovens as a last resort, a last rally for property values and commercial apathy.