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‘Thank You for Your Interest in the Role of Insurrectionist Cult Leader’ by Corey Pajka

Thank You for Your Interest in the Role of ‘Insurrectionist Cult Leader’ – A Post Apocalyptic Community Has a New Job Listing

Welcome to the Careers section of the New New York City website. We appreciate you utilizing your sporadic Internet connection to seek employment in one of the last remaining outposts of human civilization. Please read this post in full before applying. The decision to create this position was controversial within the New New York City City Council. Therefore, allow us to explain why we are hiring for the role of ‘Insurrectionist Cult Leader.’

To rebuild society in the aftermath of the Literal Culture Wars (who would have thought they would go nuclear?), we must unite people of differing races, ethnicities, gender identities, and sexual orientations. Proactively welcoming an Insurrectionist Cult Leader into our fledgling society may seem counterintuitive, idiotic, or even suicidal, but the Council has decided inclusivity must be consistent along lines of religion as well. The right candidate will help find common ground between differing schools of thought on politics and governance. We would prefer they not do this through ritual crucifixion and mass polygamy-enabled impregnations, but in these difficult times, we are open to new ideas.

We are striving to learn from the mistakes of the past, but given the scarcity of remaining historical records, we are admittedly unclear as to what exactly those mistakes were. One thing we do know is that it had something to do with wandering flocks of feral, superintelligent, far-right Evangelical Christian turkeys from Staten Island. The Insurrectionist Cult Leader will play a vital part in maintaining peace with our avian adversaries, acting as chief liaison between New New York City and the sovereign kingdom of Turkestan. Dialogues must be respectful, transparent, and above all, bloodless. It is our hope that we have moved past the practice of human sacrifice for the purposes of appeasement. However, if the Insurrectionist Cult Leader feels an amoral lottery system to select victims of ritual execution by talon razing is the best policy, we’re cool with it. We’ll be there with ropes, a stake, and a selection of eerie hymns sung by a choir of mutants!

Owing to the controversy over this role, several of our former neighbors have established their own settlement in the territory once known as Park Slope, Brooklyn: New New New York City. The Insurrectionist Cult Leader will be joining a divided community, but please refrain from exploiting this for the purposes of a mad power grab. We oppose the practices of guerilla infiltration, kidnapping, or forced conversion through prolonged mental torture. We must respect our former neighbors’ choice to create a secular, democratic government steeped in socialist values and devoid of theocratic authoritarianism. Suicide bombings and IEDs would make things decidedly awkward, but at the risk of repeating ourselves, see our earlier comments on ideological flexibility.

To be considered, please send us your cover letter and resume using the enclosed email address. If this is not possible due to utility outages, handwritten equivalents are acceptable. Please refrain from writing them in pig’s blood or nailing them to our children’s skulls for us to find as they hang from the City Hall clock tower the next morn. We’re looking forward to speaking with you and learning more about what you can contribute to our community. We take inspiration from Stephen King’s The Stand. We only have one copy and one third of its pages are unreadably burned, but we’re sure everything worked out. We hope to hear from you soon and are confident we aren’t in any way opening our doors to the Antichrist!

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Corey Pajka’s work has been featured in Points in Case, The
Weekly Humorist, The Broadway Beat, Funny Times, and others. He
is the founder and editor of the sociopolitical satire site The
Flak . Theatrical work has appeared regionally at Ghost Light
Ensemble Theatre, the University of Houston, and Weathervane
Theatre (book writer for Animaloopidy, based on music and lyrics
by T.O. Sterett). New York appearances include Cherry Lane
Theatre, NuBox Theatre, Gallery Players, The Secret Theater, and
Brooklyn College. Published plays include The Human Room,
Visible Cosmic Entities, Outer Space Beats Hollywood Every Time,
and The Queen of Cocoa Puffs and The Cap’n Crunch King. Radio
plays The Separation, The Stand In, The (Drunk) Call of Cthulhu,
full-length play Everyone is an Astronaut and others are
available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and other forums. He lives
in Brooklyn, New York with his wife playwright D.L. Siegel and
their Pembroke Welsh Corgi Sancho Panza. www.coreypajka.com

www.coreypajka.com

Image generated on Stable Diffusion

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