Operation No Shadows

Those of the animals schooled in the science of personality soon realized, with chilling effect, that they had a psychopath for a leader. Loony displayed all the characteristics of a psycho: he was in constant conflict with others; he was clearly incapable of guilt; he was completely selfish and had no regard for the rights of others; he consistently made promises that he never fulfilled; he showed great indignation whenever his views or positions were challenged or his integrity questioned; he was incapable of accepting blame or learning from previous experience; and he would stop at nothing to satisfy his ego or go ahead with his plans, however ill conceived they were.

So it was that these animals, half scared out of their wits and half amused, watched Loony launch his most absurd project to date – Operation No Shadows, which he said was a new aspect of his new system of powercracy. Wherever he looked, Loony saw the ugly results of his recklessness and brutality. Wherever he looked, he saw images of misery and destitution; he saw hunger and malnutrition and disease; he saw death and damnation; he saw blood and tears; and he saw and smelt the stinking rot of corruption perpetuated by him and those animals closest to him. And he decided he did not want to see any more. Operation No Shadows was launched to eliminate all his ugly shadows in accordance with the dictates of powercracy and his infallible philosophy of Me-Alone.

Starting with his critics, Loony embarked upon a blizzard of arrests and detentions. So many animals were arrested by the Mental Surveillance Unit that after some time, it was impossible to compute the numbers. Political opponents and journalists were routinely hounded and if this failed to break them, the harassment was extended to their families. Many animals, including members of the armed foxes, were forced into exile while many more were thrown into jail or simply disappeared.

Operation No Shadows then turned in full force on Loony’s own inner circle. Hitherto untouchable folks like Bray the wolf suddenly found themselves arrested and detained – publicly humiliated and mercilessly broken. Bray, the head of the notorious Loony is Always Right Movement, was one of Loony’s most ugly shadows. His thugs had committed more atrocities than even the armed foxes themselves and Bray himself displayed a total disregard for the law. He engaged in dubious business activities, hoarded scarce commodities to hike their prices and did just about anything he felt like doing. He had grown fat and wealthy and was almost as powerful as Loony himself, which was why some animals felt that his arrest had to do with the Great Leader’s rising fears that Bray could overthrow him.

Operation No Shadows also hit Mukisa the brown monkey. Mukisa, who like Loony was a naturalized citizen of Smiling Forest, was one of the wealthiest animals in the land. He owned countless stores and properties and was notorious for his perpetuation of bribery and corruption within the Loony administration. Mukisa was known to publicly brag that he could get anything he wanted because money talked louder than noise. It was clear that he had given many a bunch of cash to the Great Leader himself, but he was one of his ugly shadows that Loony could no longer tolerate. Mukisa was thus one morning woken up in his pajamas and hauled off to jail by his former buddies in the Mental Surveillance Unit. He was accused of harboring treasonable thoughts against the Great Leader.

Next to fall was Duru the buzzard, arguably the wealthiest animal in Smiling Forest and one of the closest to the Great Leader. Duru ran a multiplicity of businesses and held shares in a countless number of concerns both at home and abroad. He drove the most expensive car in the land and lived – with the exception of Loony’s castle - in the most expensive mansion in Smiling Forest. But he was one of Loony’s ugly shadows and so had to be chopped down.

Operation No Shadows grew more and more frantic as time passed. Divisional commissioners, district chiefs, local chairmen and petty bureaucrats who hitherto prided themselves in being close to the Great Leader suddenly found themselves under the clutches of the Mental Surveillance Unit. They were arrested at odd hours and publicly humiliated.  They were charged with anything from fraud to sabotage to harboring treasonable thoughts against the Great Leader.

Operation No Shadows did not spare those armed foxes Loony used to do his dirty bloody jobs. Memebers of his killer squads fell in droves as paranoia increasingly plagued the greedy tyrant. Dangers - real and imagined - lurked in every starnge whisper of the winds. Every averted gaze, slip of the tongue, nervous cough, unexplained absence, furtive glance - every unusual gesture was translated as a sign of dark consipiracy to oust Loony from his coveted position. The massive arrests and incarcerations of both armed foxes and ordinary animals were explained by Loony. No one must be allowed to rock the boat! No one must be allowed to even think the idea of Loony outside of power. The greedy and vicious fox, now grown fat on the blood and sweat of the poor animals of Smiling Forest, simply refuse dto imagine the very idea of life after power. He, Loony, was Smiling Forest. Smiling Forest could not exist without him. And so with all the viciousness and ferocity of a caged and prodded wild animal, Loony wrecked bloody vengeance on all his former instruments of torture and cruelty. The once happy Smiling Forest had now become a malignant space of death, haunted by the ghoulish ghosts of the innumerable victims of Loony's killer instinct.. 

Sadly, Loony also saw his shadow among the petty traders of Smiling Forest and so sent the Mental Surveillance Unit after them. Fishmongers, vegetable vendors, bakers and bread sellers, cab drivers and butchers, money lenders and changers, were rounded up and hauled into jail on charges of public extortion and subverting Vision Weeny Weeny. The bewildered animals never realized that their real crime was being an unwilling extension of Loony’s ugly shadow that now ominously loomed across the skies of Smiling Forest.

(Culled and adapted from Angry Laughter, Chapter Sixteen)

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