Warning!

 

(This is the foreword to Book 1)

 

[Dark] humor is a literary device used in novels and plays to discuss taboo subjects while adding an element of comedy. Cambridge Dictionary defines it as a non-serious way of treating or dealing with serious subjects. It is often used to present any serious, gruesome or painful incidents lightly. The writers use it as a tool to explore serious issues, inciting serious thoughts and discomfort in the audience. (Literary Devices*.)

 

Why is a fiction novel beginning with a definition?

 

America has an undeclared, highly contagious airborne virus that causes a disease commonly known as Stupid. That explains a lot, doesn’t it? Sources believe it may have begun in Walmart by shoppers who didn’t wash their hands after using the toilet. Now, the virus has spread to other countries such as the UK, so they need to stop their damn gloating that they are smarter than Americans while they have a growing population of the Stupid.

When the symptoms begin to present, one of the things that disappears is a sense of humor, assuming they had one to begin with. No matter how many times this book is listed and promoted as dark humor, the Stupid afflicted simply cannot grasp that every sentence spoken by characters is not equal to a spell vocalized by Merlin or Gandolf with manifestations in the material world. Combat veteran characters who served together in wars and continue to take pleasure in insulting each other is considered a major offense among the Stupid. It is not banter between characters but the author’s secret opinion about a cultural population. The Stupid tend to believe they are psychic.

 

 

A No-Duh Disclaimer

The characters only represent themselves. The opinions of the characters do not reflect the opinions of the author. They speak for themselves and are not meant to represent any population of people, past, present, or future.

 

 

The Stupid infected need to be quarantined before the virus spreads across Earth and destroys the intelligence of the human species!

Fiction requires suspended disbelief no matter how realistic the story may be. The afflicted proved they could not do this. Fiction suddenly turns into nonfiction. If this was a nonfiction work, even the Stupid would have noticed such a disaster occurring or so one would think.

Unlike bitey zombies, one cannot legally shoot the Stupid afflicted no matter how much it feels like self-defense.

They have proved they dislike reading dialogue since nonfiction usually doesn’t have dialogue. A fiction story done in the modern style confuses the bejesus out of them.

The modern style is influenced by movies and streaming series, and therefore heavily visual and dialogue-heavy as if ‘reading a movie.’ With modern expectations for entertainment, written action scenes must be sped up in momentum. This means there may be intentionally incomplete sentences in those scenes, and the sky shall not fall.

In Extinction Leve Event’s Amazon reviews, the aggressive Stupid created a battle between themselves in the two-stars and combat veterans in the five-stars over the combat vet characters. Even combat vets are not permitted to know anything when faced with the arrogance of the humorless Stupid afflicted.

It turns out the Stupid want the clenched buttock, bravado-spewing, Hollywood fake combat MOSes** military personnel who say trite things and never banter or joke. Who knew that crap had a target audience?

The author reserves the right for some veteran characters to behave like douchebags. This is part of the intimidation doctoral candidate Phebe feels towards them. She comes from a vastly more politically correct world than they do. Maybe their character arcs make them less douche-baggy or perhaps show their bark isn’t as bad as their bite. Maybe she needs to be less PC.

This story is influenced by the zombie drugs known as bath salts and flakka and the outbreak of the “zombie apocalypse” that occurred in 2012. Eerily, the slower, stranger-behaving zombie drugs such as Tranq and Special K appear as well. Using legitimate medical information, you will wonder what is real and what is a cover story in true life.

But this is a fiction work. What is depicted has not actually happened yet. The Stupid afflicted get so confused about that.

For public safety reasons, when the infected are identified, shoot them in the face. There are too many and they need to be promptly rounded up and cordoned off before spreading the disease further. Sadly, much of the US government is infected with Stupid, from federal to state—explains a lot, doesn’t it?

‘Does the Doggie Die?’ The one thing always left out of all the warnings for entertainment is the biggest thing of them all—do animals get killed? The housecat in the story does not die in this book. Secondary character animals are killed but none are shown to be betrayed by their humans. Things are rather Cujo. The story has passed a slew of animal lovers with thumbs up.

 

*https://literarydevices.net/black-humor/

**Military Occupational Specialty