It was quiet. Too quiet. Not for many an age had this place seen such tranquility. Yet it was not a tranquility that one would wish for. It was not a tranquility borne out of peace and harmony. For this was a tranquility of death and despair. It was the type of calm that settles upon a battlefield once the carnage had ceased.
So quiet that the footsteps of The Four remaining shadows upon Highbury Hill could seem like a deafening roar.
There had once been such life and vibrancy in this little corner of the world. “The great temple of a cult once lived here” said one of the shadows, as it stepped across charred and scattered corpses. “They say that ten legions of people would all gather to witness weekly events and pray together” said the second, whilst aiming a long and slender arm in the direction of what looked now like a Roman Amphitheatre that had fallen into a thousand years of decay. “Now marvel at how their prayers have transpired. Not by success and glory, but by decay and ruin” said the third. And it was right, for the structure had only recently been of use and brimming with life. “Foolish humans and their illusions” said the final shadow amongst the settling dust and ash. Humans had been wiped from the earth and all that remained was to look upon what they once had before they departed for another existence. For these shadows were not of the world that you and I know, they were from another, so could leave such an eerie place at will. Some referred to them as the ‘Four Horsemen’, although they had never actually rode any horses since they came into being long ago. Others saw them as judges, created to cast their judgement at the end of days. They were all wrong. These were sentient beings that merely sought to tell the final story of any race that had eroded its own existence into nothing.
The shadows spoke in slow and cold tones, barely even a whisper at times, with a calmness that would send shivers down any humans spine. “It is so interesting to see that these creatures feared their own destruction, yet were the very source of its coming” said one shadow to the collective.
“Indeed. And to think they could have avoided all of this reckoning with the actions of one man” said another shadow, and if they could demonstrate a tone of amusement in their voices, you would have thought you had almost heard it when it spoke. “But that is the very nature of humans. They do not understand their own existence and how to live it. They look to their elected leaders to solve their own quarrels and issues, yet their demise came about from a man that nobody had expected.”
“Yes. They knew not of whom the catalyst was.”
“Arsene Wenger” said the shadows in a collective voice, as if to magnify the importance of the man himself.
For the end of days of Man had come about not by nuclear war, or famine, plague or disease, but because one man had failed to react to the collective desires of the church for which he served. This people of this church required feeding. They required nurturing and constant happiness. If this happiness were to be forsaken, the Four Shadows would descend upon the world and wreak a terrible havoc on Mankind.
The Mayan people had predicted a time of great change which many had interpreted as the end of days. The greatest irony of all was that this was not far from the truth. The Mayan people had simply missed a decimal point in their calculations, which had skewed their calendar, resulting in the catalyst for this great change happening on February 1st 2013.
It was not Arsene Wenger’s fault. He was not aware that the entire existence of humanity relied on his actions as the figurehead of the Church of Arsenal. He was simply doing what he believed to be right for his people. Many called him stubborn, many said the Church must move with the times and evolve, but he believed in his teachings and was always insistent that his Church practiced what they preached.
So when the end of days arrived, what was the catalyst? It is still completely unclear, but if there were many scholars in existence to debate such matters, they may have concluded that a lack of ‘new blood’ amongst Arsene Wenger’s disciples – the individuals responsible for seeing his will come to fruition – was the reason. For there could only be certain times in any given year that new disciples could be bought to The Church, and none had arrived during this particular period. This lack of activity had triggered a chain reaction that would lead to the end. First the people of the Church became angry. Then they voiced their anger and littered the ground with black plastic bags – perhaps representing their own morbid predictions of the end. The closest neighbouring Church, with a history of vigilantism, needed no invitation and duly rioted where they prayed. The malcontent spread like wildfire across the valleys and the planes of every land until nothing was left. Everything was laid to waist. And so was the coming of The Four to complete this dark scene that I describe to you now.
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Moral: transfers and signings are not the end of the world people. That’s not why you and I got into this football supporting lark. We can all be angry and we can all want change, but let’s not turn on each other to do it, eh? And let’s not be so turned from excitement to despair depending on when a rumour comes out and when it is subsequently quashed the next day. Lets just keeping on praying that Arsenal see success soon.
Until tomorrow.
