Of Plagues, Ten

Disinfectants, detergents, insecticides, fungicides, herbicides and homicides - everything a human being needs to clear his or her lot and start fresh in life, clean and pure, and it all waits at the press of a finger. Some of us love a good disaster, but we watch from a safe distance and it always happens to someone else... somewhere else... never here. Never us.

Distended bellies and skeletal children are always the misfortune of others. Stop and wonder why. Your preferred answer no doubt leaps easily to mind, but the truth is probably quite different, because pestilence comes in all shapes, forms and fashions.

Scratch a moment, since you itch, and listen to the incessant rasp of a gathering legion. It twitters. Of gnawing incisors and rapacious fangs; of chitinous exoskeletons and cellophane wings; of mutant monstrosities impossible to kill and of ancient evils never to be purged; of alien leviathans and endangered intellects kept in a multitude; of ravenous lunatics, and of raiding swarms; such twisted threads weave life's strange tapestry. Of pests, here find a restive horde, and of plagues, ten.