We live in a time of growing enlightenment. As gay rights movements sweep across the nation and feminism and race relations re-enter the national discourse, the modern era promises new advancements in human rights, new broken barriers. But there will always be one “last bastion” of discrimination to fight against, one group for every generation that must struggle to make its voice heard. Even as we make steady social progress, even as we accept more minorities into the cultural mainstream, we are perennially haunted by the specter of bigotry in one form or another. The paradigm shifts, and a new “other” emerges. Though they think themselves too enlightened, too cosmopolitan to hold onto any kind of bigotry, all the while they fear, they mock, they hate. We are this generation’s boogeyman. We are the skeletons.

The aggressions start out small, petty even, and as with most things these days, they start on the Internet. A YouTube comment reads “2spooky4me.” A Facebook friend links to a video of a dancing skeleton marionette or, worse yet, the “Skull Trumpet” video. Tumblr post upon Tumblr post decries the incoming “skeleton war,” castigating us skeletons as a threat to be driven off the land of the fleshy. We are reduced to comical, mindless goons, the victims of jokes and slapstick. It’s as if my whole kind, my culture, has been reduced to a meme, a catchphrase to be repeated over and over until it loses all meaning.

I may be an old bag of bones, reanimated by eldritch incantations and unholy wrath brewed in a lifetime of untold torment, but I am no stranger to problematic portrayals of my kind. Dating back to the 1929 Merrie Melodies short “Silly Symphony,” we skeletons have been depicted as boneheaded simpletons, content merely to dance about in the moonlight and play on our own ribs like xylophones. Portrayals of skeletons as handservants to witches, as pawns of necromancers, as henchmen and mooks to be beaten down and mocked, have existed for ages. You may think they are harmless jokes. They never are. They feed into a toxic bigotry that surrounds our perceptions of skeletons. They strip us of our agency and reduce us to subhumans.

Worse still are the so-called Meats Rights Activists, whose worldview is so warped that they believe that flesh-humans — even as they hold all the political, economic and social influence in this country — are somehow being oppressed by skeletons who speak out in even the smallest fashion. These are the ones who take the skeleton war jokes too deeply to heart, who honestly believe that “Skeleton Justice Warriors” are out to strip them of their liberties and their succulent, delicious meat. Though a fringe movement, they nonetheless represent a growing threat to skeleton equality in the United States.

For too long, our cries for justice have gone unheard. We are met with dismissal at every turn from the fearful and the ignorant who ask things like “Oh my god you’re a skeleton that can talk, what the hell is going on here?” Yes, this skeleton can talk. This skeleton can put his foot down and tell you straightaway that your jokes and your ignorance are not ok. We are no army. We are no threat to you. We do not belong in the fires of hell. We do not belong in the graveyards at midnight, dancing for your amusement. We will not be shamed. We will not be spooked away. We are skeletons, and we will stand proud.

This story is part of our fictitious coverage in celebration of Halloween 2014. All people and events in the story are fictional.