Introducing The Fifth Horseman of The Apocalypse: Gary, Deliverer of Microplastics

When Gary paraded into town on his donkey with his stupid plastic particles dribbling behind him, my jaw nearly dropped to the floor. Literally. I have to hold it up sometimes, given that it is just a bone on my dead face. But seriously, dad? Another horsemen? WTF.

I tried to argue. To appeal to reason with the old red bastard.

“Are you shitting me? Why? We’re doing fine on our own. Four Horsemen is plenty. War. Conquest. Famine. Death. That’s effective. That’s badass. But Microplastics? I’m sorry, but that’s just not intimidating at all. Plus, ‘four’ and ‘horse’ kinda rhyme, you know? It’s cool when words do that. ‘Five’ and ‘horse’ sound all wrong. Five is a stupid number.”

But he wouldn’t hear me out. Satan could be a real son of a bitch sometimes.

“Trust me. Gary will be an excellent member of the team. There’s no place on Earth he hasn’t poisoned. He’s already worked his way into rainwater. Food systems. Even the bodies of people in the remotest regions of the world are fucked. I think you’ll find him to be a wonderful harbinger of the end times. You all will get along handsomely. Okay? Now give daddy a kiss.”

I did kiss him, of course. But begrudgingly.

So, a few weeks later, there we were. Me atop my bitchin’ pale steed, the others on their various cool mounts, looking all dope as hell. And then Gary rides over like a little soyboy on his jackass. He was ten times worse than I ever could have imagined. First of all, he had a very punchable face. His stupid smug expression made me want to do a lot of murders. Second of all, his name was fucking ‘Gary.’ Jesus F. Christ on a stick, dad… did you really have to name him Gary?

One day, pops was getting antsy and demanded a boost in our quarterly reports. So he sent us on a business trip to decimate some shit. The guys started throwing around some ideas. Famine went for his new fave: a severe climate change induced drought to kill tons of crops and starve millions. I loved that idea. Clean. Simple. Effective. Plus, very on trend. War suggested we go undercover as Antifa again and throw rocks at cops to stir civil unrest and try to undermine democracy in the hopes for a civil war. (TBH, I kinda feel like he’s losing his touch or something compared to what he used to hit us with back in the day.) Meanwhile, Conquest was babbling about getting Andrew Tate out of prison and giving him a presidential platform, but it felt super complicated and we weren’t even in Romania so we told him to shut up. I was about to suggest a killer idea (get it?), but before I could, Gary spoke up.

“We do nothing.”

There was an awkward silence as we all stared at Gary. And then we all burst out laughing.

“Jesus titty fucking Christ, Gary. You are so lame. What do you have down there, a pair of plastic ping pong balls? We’re the Horseman of the Apocalypse. We don’t do nothing. We fuck humanity’s shit up.”

Gary didn’t say anything. He just continued staring cooly into the distance sipping an empty bottle of Aquafina before tossing it over his shoulder. He then began telling us in his obnoxious, nasally voice how like 80% of people now have microplastics inside their bodies and lungs and other science-y, not horseman-y shit and if we sat back and just let them keep doing what they’re doing the rest would take care of itself.

But we got bored before he could finish, and left without him to go burn down some grocery stores. I flipped him the bird as we rode off. It was really funny. We all laughed.

After we lit everything on fire, we broke into this little bar serving microbrews. I killed the bartender by placing a hand on his shoulder and then poured us some Clorox Bleach from underneath the sink to celebrate. It was fucking awesome. And that lil bitch Gary was nowhere to be found. Hail satan.

After a few decades or so of just stirring up some wild shit out around the globe, we decided to head home. When we galloped through the gates of hell, we expected a blow out waiting for us. I mean, talk about a successful business trip. But nobody was there. I rushed inside to give daddy some kisses but to my absolute fucking horror — GARY WAS SITTING ON DADDY’S LAP.

“Hey Death, welcome home.”

“What in the actual hell is this?”

“Oh just bouncing Gary here on my knee. He’s been a very good boy. Tell him, Gary.”

“Well, when you guys took off without me, I came back here and relaxed in my room. I read a lot. Blew some demons. It was nice. Just like I said it would be. Meanwhile, all of the fish died from microplastics. And as you can imagine, that caused a chain reaction, escalating into global chaos. I won’t bore you with the specifics, but, headline is: there are only five humans left.”

I was stunned. I had only been able to whittle the population down to about 600 during the Ice Age. But five. Fuck me.

I wanted to scream. To grab Gary by his stupid face and rip it off. To stomp my feet and gnash my teeth!

But… I couldn’t deny it: I was impressed. Game recognize game, you know?

So I climbed atop daddy’s other knee and shook Gary’s hand.

Maybe five isn’t such a stupid number after all.