True enough, 2018 will be a slaughter of the repulsive. The abominations, Nature's mistakes, will be routed, gutted, left to die alone and afraid. It'll be a catastrophe, but it won't be a genocide, not a complete extermination.
Because the unlovable ghouls, parodies of actual human beings who have the desires of real people but lack the ability to satisfy them, have been embroiled in this war since the birth of mankind. As soon as the capacity to appreciate beauty arose, so too did the visceral hatred of ugliness. The sick, the weak, the nauseating freaks were consistently cast out, denied warm, affection and light. The monsters were relegated to the dark, cold places reserved for the things best left forgotten. The battle had been lost, with the sons of light victorious against the children of darkness.
Ugliness should have been sponged out, every weed and bramble torn from the Garden and immolated. Yet, like some sort of black miracle, the lovely occasionally gave birth to the hideousness. Sickness sometimes arose from health, and every so often apparent perfection gave birth to deformity. For all of Her lovely dreams, every so often Mother Nature's prettiest dreams found themselves twisted into nightmares. Just as they do now and always will.
We monsters will lose this generation, just as our predecessors lost the same struggle innumerable times before and our successors will continue to do so as long as we are capable of recognizing the distinction between beautiful and grotesque.
The Christians marvel at their myth of the rebel angels, wondering how Lucifer could have dared to oppose an omniscient being despite knowing full well he hadn't the slightest chance at victory. Absurd fairy tale though it seems, it's not without a very real world precedent. Nature's abortions struggle to survive even though they know every breath will bring them nothing but another moment of misery. They dream of Paradise, covet its joys, even though they've been born to Hell and know they'll eventually die there. The monster damned to never see so much as a friendly smile sometimes closes its eyes and has a fleeting vision of experiencing the sort of affection real human beings take for granted.
These embarrassing dreams are silly, laughable. They represent the most shameful kind of blasphemy against Nature's dictates. Despite that, we monsters will fight tooth and nail to experience them as long as Nature suffers us to exist. Give us just one more year, one more month, one more day or second because it provides us just a little more time for an opportunity to experience what we know is impossible: that we might actually be loved.
It's nothing but a delusion, and we know it, but we'll still march under its scintillating black banner. A flag that, when all is said and done, is nothing but a filthy rag. But there are those fleeting moments when the light catches it just right and it provides a glimpse of the closest thing to beauty the ugly have any right to hope for. So we'll bleed for it, die for it and sometimes, unfortunately enough, even kill for it.
Why? Perhaps for the same reason Lord Lucifer aspired to a throne he knew he would never seize: he couldn't help himself.