Aneristic Utopia

[P3nT4gR4m]

In the dungeon of contentment a trapdoor slams shut under the weight of apocalyptic irony. The burned out firebrands no longer cast a flickering glow on the chained corpses hanging from the walls, held together by the centuries old cobwebs of extinct spiders. The time for action came and went, unnoticed by all but a tiny minority whose voices were swallowed by the tide of nostalgia, bodies frozen stiff by the winters of uncertainty. As the last vestiges of humanity succumbed to apathetic reasoning and the bureaucracy of fate the hinges creaked and the portal covered, never to be opened again.

Somewhere in the damp, musky depths of this eternal monument to the triumph of order over freewill a faint, rhythmical clicking is heard, a single solitary rodent gnaws the bones of a skeleton in search of marrow, long dried up. Less than an hour from now the delicate silk spun structure will collapse, crushing the last glimmer of life in this solemn tomb but for now, in this place, the rat is king.

It was no revolution or bloody conflict that led us here. Hell did not descend on earth, with a fanfare and a clamouring of steel but rather it crept up slowly, over a period of millennia, it's advance so subtly imperceptible to a race who's attention was forever focussed in the wrong places, vigilantly searching for the wrong things. The world did not end in a blinding explosion of fire and brimstone. It ground to a halt like a clockwork machine that didn't realise it had to wind itself up to keep going, comforted all the while by the realisation that everything was much less hectic as the springs unwound and the cogs and flywheels came to rest.

Order was imposed, systematically and with ever increasing efficiency on the very chaos that would had saved our race from the inevitable stagnation of conformity. The piper played a tune which resonated perfectly within us and we followed in a straight unbroken line down the narrow staircase to this place and it's promises of eternal, blissful rest in exchange for absolutely everything. But by then the tune was in our heads and it seemed such a small price to pay. We welcomed the chains' protection and the comforting embrace of oblivion as everything that moved and turned and pulsed and vibrated came to a perfect, orderly standstill.

[East Coast Hustle]

I really like this, but I think it would have more power if you ended it after the 3rd paragraph.

[Cainad (dec.)]

I agree with ECH.

Frankly, that vision is much more frightening than a fire and brimstone apocalypse.

[Verbal Mike]

3rd'd.
This is actually really awesome.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

4th'd.

And just for the record...ANY utopia is, by definition, aneristic.

[Reginald Ret]

23th'd.

[Murmur]

Agreed.  Verily.

[Honey]

Very powerful imagery & ideas!

[Tempest Virago]

This is awesome. I actually really like the fourth paragraph, though. Maybe it's the pied piper reference.