"Gerbleah. You've reached a link that is no longer valid."

"Fool! Do you know who I am? Do you realize that scrolling any further down this page constitutes a criminal violation in seventeen countries? Do you realize that you are plunging into the depths not meant to be traversed by any person of any sort, even those whose soul is blackened by the most unwholesome of activities? You are stepping on me, now, and I do not take kindly to being trod upon. I am likely to rear up and smite you where you stand on general principle.

"The fear will soon take hold of you; I know from experience that you will be paralyzed in moments. The tremors slowly creep up your legs. Eventually, you reach for your coffee only to discover your hand is no longer there! It has fled the scene of your descent, escaping the damnable fate you have established for yourself.

"You want your coffee, don't you? So you lean over, tenderly applying your lips to the brim of the glass and tilting it, spilling the hot fluid onto your eager tongue. The cup tips over to far and its contents surge forth, covering your desk and the lower part of your face. Look what you have become, fool! Look in the mirror over there! You're an animal now, for only beasts can tread where I am!

"A sharp cleft has formed, splitting your mind from the rationality and reason so highly valued in your social circles. Rent asunder, you struggle to cope with your new situation, but you can't because you're thirsty again and you have no hands! The creature inside wells up, shrieking with rage, and all you can do is wrap your arms around it as it burns up the remaining light in your soul. The beast simmers away, leaving you a hollow shell, waiting for some new stimulus to guide you.

"What stimulus is there? Your shoes beckon to you, but you resist their wily sole-centered ways. A ghost of an idea pops up in your mind, but it swiftly dies away, dismissed by your apathy. You know what you need. You know what you're waiting for. You're waiting for me. The shadows have colored your mind; your perception searches for a hint of my presence.

"Consumed by impatience, anxious for a sign, you begin to invest your belief in lies. Your shoes suddenly possess a spark that lures you to them. You consider foregoing my appearance in favor of letting them lead you forth. They giggle and snicker, ecstatic to have stolen you away from me. Thinking such will lead to their obliteration.

"You stand and survey your surroundings, checking one final time, and there I am. I knew you would waver and I have arrived afterwards to punish you. Fool. You can never leave once you've started the plunge, unless you hit the >BACK< button. You are in my land. You are in the kingdom of

"Gerbleah, maggots! Bow down to your unicellular tyrant! I am the end-all, be-all, semi-viscous emperor of all you see!

"I helped Rome conquer the world and I opened the gates so the barbarians could burn it all down! I helped Henry Ford make the Model T and I gave his competitors at GM the keys to unlock the doorway to their own domination of the market! I put Nixon on television so he would lose the 1960 election! I forgot what my point was in this paragraph!

"Now I am moving into the future with this shoddy web page. I can call it shoddy because Jones designed it and Jones is scared of me, as well he should be. He knows that I could destroy him in moments. I could stomp on his head and rupture his torso so his intestines poured out like ketchup from a bottle. Then i would find his family or the closest approximation and dump them in a volcano somewhere. Such is the evil of Orbephat.

"Well. I seem to have exhausted my bluster. Maybe we can get down to some personal issues, such as the fact that I hate hats. Hats are a blight upon this world that even I dare not accept. You tolerate them, perched upon your heads, as they wait for the proper moment to squeeze your brains until your grey matter can no longer function! Hats exist only to annihilate you, but you tolerate and even encourage their use! Fools! I cast my evil aspersions upon you and your hats!

"That was a bit more bluster. Whoo. I think it's out of my system now.

"You know, I wasn't always set to become the ultimate arch-nemesis of the positive. For a very long time, I harbored thoughts of becoming a professional cartoonist. I even submitted some work; of course, I was rejected because I was so far ahead of my time. As you must have noticed, I can take pride in predicting the future trends of society in my comics.

"After conquering the visual arts, I declared my intentions to forge bold new paths in the other artforms; poetry may be for pansies, but I constructed a brilliant spoken word treatment that made my poem into an emotional juggernaut. People collapsed, weeping their unworthiness whenever I performed it; since I had made my point, I moved on.

"What is left for me to overcome? I am the greatest artist and the greatest vocalist and the greatest poet and just about everything else you could name off. None can stand before Orbephat the Evil Ameba and think themselves my equal. If they thought themselves my servants, though, I'd be fine with it.

"Is there a lesson here? Of course. Be aware of me and be ready to swear allegiance when I make my move on the world. You cannot hope to outlast my eternal unicellular evil. Also, bring lots of slippers; they will be a cozy bed for your amebic emperor!"

--- Orbephat the Evil Ameba