Short Story
Do Not Eat the Corn
I remember the view from this spot before it all began. There was a rainbow touching down at the top of the hill, which was covered in green grass and overlooked a creek, long dry by now. On the other side of the creek were fields of corn, green and luscious. Then the rain tapered off to almost nothing. Tornadoes and high winds further dried out the land. The population was a fraction of what it once was.
By Noah Glenn3 years ago in Fiction
The Silver skulls of Aldea
It was a warm summer night on the Street of Aldea. I was taking one of my frequent climbs up my favorite tree, to get away from my parents fighting. This was a very tall redwood, that took a good twenty minutes to climb to the top. Once at the top you could see the entire neighborhood, and I was looking forward to the peace and tranquility. I had almost reached the top when I heard the voice......" Brandon, don't be alarmed ." Someone was already at the top of my favorite thinking tree with me. I was shocked at first , but He said very soothingly ..." Don't fall, I can't catch you if you fall and she would want me to catch you."
By Brandon Cox3 years ago in Fiction
A Wild Sort of Curiosity
The wind glided around the great bird as it’s majestic wings cut through the air. The monstrous dinosaur flew, almost invisible to the naked eye, it’s feathery coat white as snow, blended almost perfectly with the white powder covering the surface of the earth. Over shadowy trees that creaked and wept in the wind, the owl flew towards the city, a very peculiar place in deed for such a bird.
By Mckayla Corder3 years ago in Fiction
Cracks
I have a sick dog smell and my head feels barely attached to my neck stump, so when the tram lurches it swings from side to side. It feels like there’s cellophane over my eyes. Everything is filmy. Milky. But I can still see things. Just yesterday I saw Them beating a small woman with yellow hair, right out the front of Myer on Bourke Street. I saw them in their black vans taking children.
By Erica Williams3 years ago in Fiction
In the Heart of It
This locket represents my oppression. All of the citizens of New Hope had to wear one, each with their own identifying number marking us as underclass peasants. We didn't have the money or the status not to be burdened with the organ made out of copper and painted red. Some say that pre-war was amazing. You could drink and dance and be with friends all day if you wanted to. Food and water were abundant, people weren't trying to rape and kill for pennies. Entertainment was an actual thing. I was too young to remember that world being only 4 at the time. I say that whatever had been before the Heart War of 2045 didn't matter because none of us were getting out of this existence alive. There was no nuclear war, there was no fighting on homeland or on peoples own soil. No, it was the body that raged a war and we as a humanity needed to figure why everyones hearts were stopping with no warning and no justification. Scientists tried to figure out what was happening, top leaders all over the planet desperately trying to find the "cure" before their time was up as well. Sooner or later we were all going to die but it was all from the same thing, the heart failure. Obesity, health issues, complications from childbirth, car crashes, or accidents it didn't matter. Our bodies were in amazing condition with the chance to heal at rapid speed. We were all strong, we were all more than able bodied at top physical condition and that applied to the young and old alike. There was one caveat though, no one lived past 70. People were losing their minds trying to figure out the cause and the solution but to no avail. Half the population died out within the first 3 months. After that, another quarter and when this mystery plague finally took it's last heaving breath, there were only 900,000 souls left. That was 60 years ago and no one is really trying anymore, it's just reality. A day to day fact that we live with and accept. We can still have children but it's difficult to conceive. Even drugs don't work to help with it. Most of us choose not to have children anyway. Why would we bring another being into this crap, miserable pain of an existence? The food and water is heavily rationed for no reason other than greed and power by those higher ups called the Archangels. Bottom feeders who use us as pack mules and slaves disguised by a fake smile and fake kindness. Archangels had one purpose and that was to control us. There was still enough left of the world in which we could all live by ourselves and not be bothered by a neighbor. We could live off our own land and raise our own food but humanity was corralled into a new territory, heavily watched and guarded. The idea came from one man, a lone survivor of his family who became hateful and cruel. Robert Pennington thought if humanity stayed together that we would have a higher chance of survival. Instead of letting us branch out and flourishing, our lives becoming full of meaning and success, community needed to come first. Pennington sold this farce to the rich and powerful and made allies. He was an average man with average dreams and resented the elite, wishing to be them. On paper it seemed genuine and good when in actuality it was a ruse drenched in hell. Only those deemed worthy by himself personally adopted the title and started running the show. Most of us willingly went because we had nothing and nobody. The false hope of community and humanity working hand in hand was too tempting. It was only after years of working the soil and being the Archangels maids, butlers cooks, servants, and slaves did we come to realize what New Hope really was, a jail sentence. They placed heart shaped lockets on us with numbers to keep track. What once was a symbol of love and peace is now another tool of destruction. Those that tried to fight were killed by the Archangels army known as the Followers. We are all equally strong but they have weapons and state of the art technology to bring us down. Our one saving grace through the days is the heavily alcohol laden swill we get. Just like the egyptians, we are lulled into the same drunken calmness each night and woken up by it. It consumes our lives and is a currency for the lower classes. I only have 6 years left before I'm taken down for good. I could go before that but my prayers were never answered of an early death. One day I hope someone sees through the haze to fight and win for a better life. Until then, I'm gonna keep drinking and keep my head down. I have no fight left in my soul, sometimes it's better to accept that which we cannot change and live another day. Really, that's all we have.
By Christine Patterson3 years ago in Fiction
Heart Stowed Against the Chest
A shrill, piercing, echoing cry stops the mother short. She knows it did not come from either of her eighteen-month-old twins, but she glances down at the cover of her sturdy jogger anyway, listening for sounds of their stirring. Their quietness has been a blessing since having to leave the truck behind days earlier. Its engine was too loud and rumbling and had left her feeling exposed, even with her dog Marble, an extremely well-trained, cookies-and-cream coloured pitbull, sitting vigilant in the passenger’s seat beside her as they drove.
By Rooney Morgan3 years ago in Fiction
The Blaze
The first generation after the Blaze had more life skills than a boy scout with all his badges. Their geographical knowledge put Google Maps to shame. They could give you turn by turn directions on how to get from the sunny beaches of Siberia to the tundra of India or from the snow covered Morocco to the prairies in Hong Kong. Everyone living spoke seven languages with perfected fluency, but there was one word they didn't know in any language: drought. The children had no knowledge of the world their parents lived in or of the event that killed ninety-five percent of humanity. They had not a single clue as to what happened during the decade rain didn't come. None of the survivors could ever bring themselves to relive and envision the smell of the burnt terrain or the stench of faceless bodies decomposing on dry land, or about how every single day they learned of another death and another uncontainable fire.
By Megan Weidle3 years ago in Fiction
4 Wars Old
The scariest dystopian aren’t the ones built off imagination, but history. Doomsday isn’t some new idea; Doomsday isn’t something that snuck in on the small family. Doomsday was something they lived with every day. Sometimes they say the oldest child is four wars old, lived through a bombing on their first day of life, a mass murder on their fifth birthday - at that time the child was only minutes from meeting me. The next war defined the child’s future.
By Lex Colwell3 years ago in Fiction
Tin
In '99, we were just kids, fourteen and thereabouts. Like most teenagers where we come from, we was always raising hell, getting into all kinds of shit. Most afternoons we'd spend taking baby sips of whiskey and spinning on the swings until we almost puked. Liquor was never hard to come by. Once the jobs peter out, folks start to drink. Not a dime for rent, but they could scrounge enough for a bottle, and they would get so damn blitzed, it was easy enough to fill a couple coke cans with booze. At least enough to get our scrawny butts toasted. We were stupid little dick-wipes and like stupid little dick-wipes, we didn't know where the train was headed. It had just turned summer, school was done, and we didn't know how we were going to spend all that free time. We certainly didn't expect the summer would end the way it did, with that girl dying.
By Mack Devlin3 years ago in Fiction