My Chin Will Bring the Destruction of the World

Photo by Ben Francis, Creative Commons on Flickr.com.

I'm convinced that if I'm buried when i die, that some archaeologist in the distant future will one day crack open my burial vault and consider my skeleton a career-changing find. I don't hold this notion out of vanity. Lord knows I pretty much lack any delusions of physical grandeur, but I think he'll look at the ratio of skull width to shoulder width along with the grotesquely misshapen quality of the skull itself and question just what I had once been. He'll study the structures of my legs and realize that, quite in contrast to the bizarre structures above the waist, my legs must have been quite comely. All of these remarkable physical traits will lead him to come to the perfectly logical conclusion that my remains are those of a creature that isn't exactly human, much like a latter day Neanderthal. I don't mean to say that he'll mistake me for a Neanderthal. My brow is quite petite, thankyouverymuch. I just mean to say that he'll think of me as some species similar to, but not entirely human.

Of course, narrow shoulders and an unfortunately shaped and sized head does not a new species make. No, the clue that will solidify his opinion in the uniqueness of his own discovery will be a very specific abnormality in my skeletal make up. It will be the great shelf of bone protruding from my lower jaw that will shock this man of science and change the world forever.

If you'll examine the photo above, you'll notice that the chin itself is not usually very prominent without the muscle and fat that cause the little bump at the bottom of most people's faces. Not so with mine. My chin is formed by a projection that juts out more than an inch from my jawline.

This bizarre feature of my facial structure will be that final piece of evidence that leads our valiant scientist to publish a paper proclaiming that there were actually two separate species of human cohabiting in our era. Unfortunately for our scientist, this claim will be met with some controversy. Skeptics will claim that the chin is inconsequential and that the large, misshapen head is in fact a sign that my remains are only evidence of a genetic abnormality and that I probably led a sad and painful life, able to live only through the primitive technology of my time and the sheer sexiness of my glorious gams.

The scientist, now scorned by the mainstream science community, will dedicate his life to gaining acknowledgement of what he considers to be the truth behind his discovery. He'll travel the world speaking to interested groups to make his case. The scientist, it will turn out, is quite the charismatic and a cult will form around his claims and the now sacred bones I left behind. The scientist, a man of logic and reason, as well as a devout Zoroastrian, will not lead the new cult. In fact, he will publicly disavow the group while privately encouraging them, thinking that they could somehow aid in achieving his ultimate goal.

Unfortunately, as these sorts of things often do, the cult will get out of hand. Membership in the group will grow exponentially and it will become increasingly radical. Peaceful protests and sit ins will turn into riots. Riots will turn into organized terrorist activity against governments, institutions, and individuals they perceive as unsupportive of The Exquisite Corpse. Within two decades of the discovery of my remains, this cult will have infiltrated several traditionally unstable governments and begin to convert by the sword and levy armies. Access to weapons of mass destruction will follow, building into a violent crescendo where war finally breaks out between those nations believing that my chin was a sign of divinity and those who believe it was a sign of genetic deficiency. The fact that both sides of the conflict agree that my legs were once great things of beauty is not enough to forestall the looming violence. By this point, the scientist will long ago have fallen victim to his own folly, having been sacrificed by the cult he'd encouraged. His own remains will join mine, on a slightly less lofty pedestal, at the cult headquarters in Conakry.

By the end of the war, the human race will be decimated, leaving behind only a few emotionally scarred individuals to rebuild humanity. These people will unfortunately all be quite homely examples of the species, taking away what little value human life once held. Human existance from this point forward will be difficult, short, and brutish.

This is why I hope to be cremated when I die. I just couldn't rest in peace with the knowledge that my death would eventually bring all of this to pass.