The Man
Evil is a man sitting in front of a cage. Inside the cage is a lizard. Attached to the lizard are electrodes in which the man can force electric charge into the animal. By arranging the electrodes just right and delivering shock in just the right order, he can get different sounds and dazzling lights to emit and disgorge themselves out of the lizard. Sounds so peculiar, but they land on his body like pure pleasure.
He experiments and learns to master the placement of the electrodes to create bliss landscapes; the sounds and lights changing and getting even more varied, wild, but what a rush! He covers the cage with a cloth and invites his friends to participate, to see who can get the biggest "score". (Wasn't it just a lizard, who cares about a lizard?)
But, then, one day the device stopped working. He found the door of the cage and opened it. Under the appearance of the lizard, the truth became revealed..... It was not a lizard at all. There before him lay a beautiful bird -- a bird no one had ever seen before, so exquisite as to be untouchable!! But now laying dead, suffocated, its eyes no longer holding the pure light of its life and the song, the many, many songs it was carrying to give to the world.
The man, a state of shock in himself, throws the bird in the incinerator and bolts out of the room, fear of being found.
He became shifty outside, always wondering if he'd be found out and why such a rare bird was there at all. Where was it from? Who had such magic to project a scaley glamour of a lizard over it? They tricked him, he convinced himself slightly.
When a robed official came around one day, he questioned the man, but the man denied everything.
...But he was conflicted: what did that robed official know? (He comforted himself with the thought that he was sure that he was the only one who really knew about it.) He now needed those shots of bliss. [His_body] started to decay as mundane life could no longer stimulate and interest him. He longed for more.
One day he found another man like himself. You've heard of him. This man was from another world and also ran, avoiding death for fear of what Life might bring down upon him. Together they conspired to hide from officials, but by now they had learned to manipulate so well, they could hide forever. How? By manipulating the compassion and consciousness of the masses.
They hide to this day. That other world is your world. You will either have to learn what they did and bring redemption or destroy them. Otherwise their continued fleeing will bring your universe to an entropic end: a heat/heart death. They have nothing to lose and they wouldn't care. Remember that, and [Do_everything_you_can]. God help you.
...While they run, another man, a different man, somewhere, perhaps in your world, lies in bed, suicidal, with a longing as deep as the ocean and a sadness to fill it.
This story is given to the public domain.