Aearnur
12-21-2009, 03:31 PM
15th December 2004
It is the year 2050.
Inside the cracked concrete block that is her home the mother tries to ease the suffering of her asthmatic child.
She looks up briefly through the security bars on her window at the grey looming sky. Her heart has NEVER experienced joy, but now it sinks even deeper into a depression from which she will never return.
As her heavy-lidded eyes look out the window the nightly thunderstorm erupts and lightning flares, lighting up the blackened pot-holed town of bunkers.
It looks like a vision from hell - but it's all she's ever known.
It has been longer than her lifetime since there was any hope. When she was a girl some of the people she knew had television. She remembers now how they said it had been confirmed there had been a shift in the worlds weather system. She remembered they said it was men who had done it and that they had no idea how to make it change back. Later there had been terrible things, she was sheltered from most of it by her parents - but she remembered so many scenes of bodies shown on so many nights. These were from the regular tidal waves, the sudden arctic temperatures, the droughts, the floods, the hurricanes...
By the time she was a teenager no one she knew had a television anymore. Everyone wandered looking for anything edible during daylight and at night tossed and turned in agonies of cold; constantly wakened by the deafening thunder overhead.
She shivered as she thought of it. Her hear sank a little lower. What was the point of living like this...? What hope was there...?
The last scrap of printed paper she found had shown what someone had told her were scientists. She couldn't read but their scared expressions and
wide-open mouths had told her everything she'd needed to know...
There WAS no hope.
She looked down at her baby. There were so few babies now. Something seemed to stop them coming. Some people cried in the night about this too. But most were glad not to bring a child into this world. So when her child had come it was a shock - she could hardly look after HERSELF. Yet she loved him with all her heart and soul.
She looked down on him for so long, then at the wreckage and destruction outside... Her heart was a dead stone in her chest. Then she slowly picked
up a dirty grey blanket from her bed and as if in a dream placed it softly over his face, then pressed and pressed until he stopped struggling and was dead.
If there had been someone there as he died to place their ear close to her tortured lips they could just have made out a barely audible sound, a low hissing sound, soft but full of raw, agonized hatred... It was this grey world's most abominable word...
'B-u-s-h......'
It is the year 2050.
Inside the cracked concrete block that is her home the mother tries to ease the suffering of her asthmatic child.
She looks up briefly through the security bars on her window at the grey looming sky. Her heart has NEVER experienced joy, but now it sinks even deeper into a depression from which she will never return.
As her heavy-lidded eyes look out the window the nightly thunderstorm erupts and lightning flares, lighting up the blackened pot-holed town of bunkers.
It looks like a vision from hell - but it's all she's ever known.
It has been longer than her lifetime since there was any hope. When she was a girl some of the people she knew had television. She remembers now how they said it had been confirmed there had been a shift in the worlds weather system. She remembered they said it was men who had done it and that they had no idea how to make it change back. Later there had been terrible things, she was sheltered from most of it by her parents - but she remembered so many scenes of bodies shown on so many nights. These were from the regular tidal waves, the sudden arctic temperatures, the droughts, the floods, the hurricanes...
By the time she was a teenager no one she knew had a television anymore. Everyone wandered looking for anything edible during daylight and at night tossed and turned in agonies of cold; constantly wakened by the deafening thunder overhead.
She shivered as she thought of it. Her hear sank a little lower. What was the point of living like this...? What hope was there...?
The last scrap of printed paper she found had shown what someone had told her were scientists. She couldn't read but their scared expressions and
wide-open mouths had told her everything she'd needed to know...
There WAS no hope.
She looked down at her baby. There were so few babies now. Something seemed to stop them coming. Some people cried in the night about this too. But most were glad not to bring a child into this world. So when her child had come it was a shock - she could hardly look after HERSELF. Yet she loved him with all her heart and soul.
She looked down on him for so long, then at the wreckage and destruction outside... Her heart was a dead stone in her chest. Then she slowly picked
up a dirty grey blanket from her bed and as if in a dream placed it softly over his face, then pressed and pressed until he stopped struggling and was dead.
If there had been someone there as he died to place their ear close to her tortured lips they could just have made out a barely audible sound, a low hissing sound, soft but full of raw, agonized hatred... It was this grey world's most abominable word...
'B-u-s-h......'