Man Made

• Caitlin Coulson, Grade 7
• Short Story
• 2019

Oh, how I miss the days of my youth, climbing out my bedroom window, onto the luscious sage grass, then sprinting over to my lilac hammock, to gaze up to the shinning celeste sky. The most gorgeous aura you could imagine, tall trees, birds, and so much more! Alas, those days shan’t last long, for now, all I see when I look outside my rickety door, is a purple-grey cloud, with the smell of various gasses in the air…
Fallen trees laying their old crusted leaves on my porch, and the occasional bird laying helplessly on the rust covered grass, with gas particles spraying from its nose and mouth, oh…how I miss nature, not only was it gorgeous, it was pleasant as well. The calming sensation of stepping outside with bare feet, onto ankle height grass, just like a fluffy carpet would do. But those days are over now, and I can’t imagine they will ever return.
Children won’t grow up the same, no playing outdoors, no sports, no building fairy houses out of sticks and leaves, nothing. All they have now is devices, keeping them inside day to night. As a child, I feared death, but now, after all this, I’m not so afraid anymore. What’s the point of living when all we ever see is walls and stone, and if we were to step outside without some sort of gas mask, we would be at deaths’ door.
The trees have run out now, The oceans are starting to evaporate into the gas infested air, it won’t be long before we run out of oxygen. And will either accept defeat, or make some sort of man-made oxygen that is suitable for our lungs, much like everything else on the planet, no fruits, no vegetables, no water, just lemonades, sugar infested treats, and artificial bread and wheat.
The life span for the average human has shrunk significantly in size, and the average weight of a person has grown unrealistically high.
Although I shan’t have to worry about that now, fore I am an elder, at 40 years of age, I won’t survive much longer.
And at that, the sky became white, and the gasses faded away, as Axton was lifted up into the clouds of Heaven, where he could watch, and help the young grow stronger in this new earth, that has been created, not by God, not by nature, but by People, people who are so focused on new technology, that they don’t notice what it is doing to the planet, so involved in their own lives, that they don’t notice the lives of the other.
Pollution and global warming are becoming large problems, and we must stop it soon, for this story and image in our heads, may become reality, though it seems far-fetched, give it a few centuries, and this is what we will see.