There is a ringing around me that is deafening. It offers only the hint of a roar and moves with my motions. It is fluid and consuming in its sanctity. Like the beat of a tribal drum it grows steadier and more confident with each pound; in its magnitude I imagine it growing, my personal symphony of one note. It is calling, beckoning me. It is beautiful; I am in love. Every moment that I am not with it is wasted. Perhaps it will kill me. The sound is twisted and contorted in the half moonlight. It echoes down the wasted streets alone, howling for a partner. I beg to stop it.

It is calling the boys from their homes, from their wives, sisters, children. It begs of them, contorts them into wooden toy soldiers, prancing about the alleyways unafraid at night. Its sound possesses their grandeur, shapes it into bravery, into patriotism. Its hypnosis has become overwhelming and all memories of past loves, women, children have fled their minds.

Now they are men.

The hundreds of them line the sidewalks, the gutters, the streets. They are marching, marching, marching blindly, each in love with the soft, steady ringing of the bell. It is taunting them, pleading with them, calling them, manipulating. It lies. Are they in love with its sound or with its pure nobility? Do they believe that it loves them back? All questions have ceased to matter. They are marching.

One. Two. One. Two. One. Two. This is for the greater good. I am one in a thousand now, a thousand men who will better their country. Minds are beginning to shut. Chop off their fingers. Cut out their tongues. Sew shut their mouths. Gouge out their eyes. Let them only hear.

We do not see where we are marching now, but this does not matter. The only thing is that we will march. He is two feet behind me; I am two feet behind the next man. (Have we ceased to be men? We do not think anymore. We only march.)

This is for chivalry. This is for the perfect race. This is for society. We will be better than our fathers, our sons greater than us. We will evolve and reproduce as the bell regulates. We will not speak of our prides. We will not breathe in seduction. We will not touch our love. We are no longer a part of mankind; the bell does not toll for thee. It tolls for us. It screams and writhes and twists within our souls, until they no longer remain to live but remain only to exist.

Our heartbeats have become the bell’s steady ringing.