Tenebrous

• Cody Mathews, Grade 12
• Short Story
• 2011

Humanity is a soft and lascivious machine, constantly lusting for more. A tumour, a time-bomb. Today no longer exists. Instead, time is counted in a far more basic fashion. Three meals since my last fight. Eights rains since my dog died. Clocks? Electricity? Friends? What decade have you been living in? Tomorrow is a place fathomless to all with sense of sanity or practicality. Yesterday is a distant memory of days without care or fault; innocent and angelic on our little blue planet. The salubrious life we humans once lived, taken in a foul refulgent swoop. Explosion, division, we all fall down. The day the bombs started falling I remember playing in the yard with Jonah and Cassidy. They were hiding, I was seeking; Julia was watching from the porch, leaning ever so lazily against a veranda post, the cool and dry late summer breeze catching the light, almost sheer, fabric of her dress causing it to flit about her ankles. She smiled, a glass of lemonade in her hand. I walked away from the house, into the orchard, following innocent giggles and laughter from my two beautiful children. Hidden between the apples and oranges, safe and secure in their fruity refuge. Come out, come out wherever you are! I teased, trying to coax them out, having no luck, still catching wafts of childish laughter. Enjoying their moment of triumphalism.

In a few moments an aeroplane would fly overhead, putrefying this perfect moment, changing the lives of everyone I knew; of everyone on earth; trouncing memories of happiness and joy into the mud of war, tyranny and treachery. They moved us underground within days of the first attack. Millions died before we knew what was happening. They sent troops, hordes of them, scouring the land, taking anyone they found. Killing them. Reaping the blameless and taking their land. When our shelter was raided, I tried to save my family. I stayed to fight, or more so, run like hell. As I fled into the woods I heard the twisting of metal, the tearing of the shrapnel through my children, my wife. Their screams haunt me to this day. I ran as far as I could. Living off whatever I could ransack from houses around the countryside.

When everything you’ve ever had is taken away, you find yourself realising just how much you had. You find yourself cursing the scum that took it away every single day. Until you come to the realisation that is going to change now. Nothing will bring my family back. Nothing can change what has happened to this world. The war ended years ago, I am now an old and withered man and life on earth will be gone within 50 years. Perhaps, even less. There is no looking back for our people. We were given reason and look what we did. Social de-evolution of the highest order. Tomorrow is dead. My name is Omar Rodriguez-Lopez. Welcome to today.