Story I started working on a few days ago - December 4, 2010

This would be my first time ever posting anything to a writer's sharing site. I generally keep my writing to myself because most of the people I know are not at all what one would call avid readers, and as such they aren’t too interested in reading my work (call that a bad friend if you want. I agree wholeheartedly). I write this a few days ago.

Hope you enjoy. I know I enjoyed writing it. And there's more too, but I'm still I'm not done writing it yet.


    “It all really started when the new depression began. After the Iraq war ended, the president simply could not keep the country on her feet. She’s crumbling. Or maybe she’s already fallen. We owe this in part to the influx of immigrants, illegal or not. They outnumbered citizens promptly and without delay. They quickly began taking all of the health benefits and jobs that had once been for American citizens. That doesn’t mean much now.
    The loss of trade from other countries hurt just as much. All this we owe to the foul choices made by our leaders. The passing of the law that legalized marijuana led to the overlooking of other drugs that caused damage to both the users and those around them. After all, if you legalize one, why not the others? That was what many people argued. They won.
    Many more drugs were legalized in order to appease a stupid and ignorant people who craved to drown out their sorrows by any means necessary. Of course this angered the many drug cartels to the point of borderline war. Crime went up. Pollution of city, heart and soul didn’t help the good fight either. People stopped even using their dumpsters; the world became their garbage bin and it’s showing. This is understandable, however, as next to no one could afford to survive, let alone pay for their garbage disposal. Notwithstanding the inflating cost of electricity, water and gas bills, everyone was suffering years before they grew out of control.
    California went first. For every American that you saw, one born and bred here, there will be two illegal immigrant families living next door, housing seven and eight people at once. They bring their friends and family and then they, needless to say, bring all their troubles with them: disease from uncleanly living mostly; now number two on the “cause of death” list behind “gang related murder”.
    The government pulled out all semblance of their forces from California. There were around one hundred murders state-wide a day. That’s about thirty six thousand a year. That’s more lives than the entirety of the Iraq War claimed. Twenty percent of those murdered were police officers or their families. Ten percent were children under the age of twelve. Two point five percent were infants or pregnant women.
    Washington D.C. has become America’s new “army base”. They occasionally send out operatives to infiltrate the cartels and gangs around California and Oregon. They hope to stop them from spreading country wide. They are too little too late. Most of those they send don’t come back. Alive anyway.
    The Declaration of Independence has been all but disregarded. I recall with a terrible clarity, the words spoken by our forefathers: ‘But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.’ Our country has become the very thing that it swore to protect us from. Is it our right to overthrow it? Should we try we will be gunned down in the streets. The Declaration of Independence should have stated that one has the ability to overthrow, but not if they aren’t willing to slaughtered by thousands. Lies. All of it. They created these words to satisfy their own needs, but they did not keep to them as time passed. There is a time for war. Perhaps that time is now. Is this a crime against the nation? To want to change this torrid hatred? To change this nation who has defied every law stated in its own declaration of independence. Is this a crime to do as we were told we should? Told that it is not only our right, but the right thing to do? What does one do when faced with these words?
    I… I started praying on occasion. To God… the Christian God, Allah, even some of the newer gods that were invented in the last five years. New religious order creation has increased by eighty-seven percent in these long five years. They worship anything they can in the hopes that this might be the true god or goddess, the one to help them through their nightmares.
    I pray for help. Sometimes for answers, “why” being chief among them. But then, after too long… after far too long a time with utter and complete silence I realize…:
    If there is a god… he didn’t do this; we did.
    We are the ones who must fix it.
    We will try with our hearts, minds and souls.
    We will hope and pray and die as we always have, fighting for something more.
    Nothing will change.
    Yet everything will be different.”


    Cable was silent. The words sunk deep into his heart, into his very being. These words, like the pillar stones of a new world religion, he had followed them. They were his nourishment and his famine, his savior and his retribution. They fell from his lips as he read them; like a great torrential waterfall of truth they fell, splashing upon the canvas of this life, smearing the lies and painting a brighter picture. Things had never been easy. Now they seemed hopeless. What was once the hope and sustenance of the human race had thus come to be the world’s darkest subjugation.
    Cable powered down his monitor in a stunned state. The clunky computer popped and whirred loudly; the fans were old and covered in dust, barely able to run anymore; mirroring the state of the world. The screen flickered like a bulb in a lightning storm. Finally, the screen ticked and turned blank. The monitor was covered in a blanket thick layer of dust. The letters that Cable had read moments before had been blurry. His eyes had strained as he read the already small letters. His eyes were red and bloodshot and they smarted every time he tried to blink. He looked around the house, in utter disrepair. A complete mess.
    Cable rarely bothered to keep things clean anymore. There was no need. Soon he would die. He knew it to be so. No one was safe anymore. That which they depended upon for protection had become the vanguard of their fears. Man’s greatest nightmares were made of lesser.
    “We did this,” Cable repeated to himself under his breath. Those contagious whispers, sending their false words of deceit mingled with promises of prosperity and peace. All lies. All false. All so obviously untrue. Why had they believed them? Was it because they had been uttered by the last president? Had she been so great in the eyes of those whom she possessed sovereignty over? She had been looked at as a messiah; the first woman president in history, bound to bring mankind to the peak of perfection. Much of the female population stated that men’s thoughts always pertained to violence and sex. Men had been looked down upon to the point of being refused service by women in various areas. As it were, the countries “peaceful” president was silently brewing a war in her cauldron. Ah, but women are not as violent as men, some have said. Those who spoke these words would put the gun in their mouth and pull the trigger if they saw what she did, and still does.
    “Bang!” Cable’s large fist slammed down forcefully on the computer’s desk. A half full bottle of vodka spun around and fell to the floor with a resounding crash. It shattered into thousands of tiny, crystallized pieces. They fell like rain and spread about the room like the water coughed up when a pebble disturbs a lake.
    The man felt his face with shaky, unsure hands. He had grown a thick, stubbly beard and his face had seemed to have aged to the point of elderliness over night. Sacks hung under his exhausted, sunken in eyes.
    “We did.” He pushed in the cheap wooden desk of his wooden computer stand. His eyes now felt the sting of sweat that had poured into them from his hairline. He blinked rapidly and rubbed his eyelids with his long sleeved shirt.
    Was mankind as corrupt and sinful as they are always told they are? Or does one rotten apple simply ruin the bunch, or at least make it appear as if they are all undesirable? This uncertainty tore at Cable’s mind; claws and teeth. Was it improbable that mankind was redeemable? Or impossible? What would have to be done to save humankind from their miserable condition?
    Cable leaned over in his chair, his eyes twitching as he grabbed another dusty bottle of vodka from the floor, not even bothering to clean up the shards that covered the soiled carpet already. He blew the thin layer dust from the top of the bottle and prepared to pop the cap, wishing to drown himself in intoxicated idiocy. He no longer wished to worry about his fears. He wanted to escape. Although he knew it was a temporary diversion, it was better than nothing.
    “Knock, knock, knock,” came the resounding thuds from the door. With a sigh, Cable hid the bottle away behind his outdated computer underneath some scribble filled paper. He did not want his roommate to see him in this despicable, repulsive state. The wooden door opened with a creak and a short, slender woman entered the house, obviously at ease with her surroundings. She looked around the house’s dirty interior with a sigh, wiping her hair from her face.
    The woman had bright brown eyes that spoke of her great intelligence and strength. Her straight, short hair was a light brown color. She had it stylishly swept across one side of her face to almost cover her left eye. A nose ring dominated the right side of her face and stuck out immediately like a landmark. She had soft looking lips and thin curved eyebrows. Cable considered her a sweet, pretty, young woman. A little naïve. But isn’t everyone at that age? She swept her hair from her eye and smiled warmly when she saw Cable looking at her.
    “’Ey there Cable,” she said in her thick Welsh accent. She was holding two large and bulging bags, most likely filled to the brim with groceries. She slowly walked into the house, her sneakers new and cute, Cable noticed. She deserved nice things. She was still young and needed to feel beautiful. Beauty doesn’t last forever. “Are… you okay?” she asked, putting the bags on the chipped and scratched kitchen table. One of them leaned over and some of the contents rolled out. Personal items for her own self, and some meat, neatly packaged in white paper. The blood had seeped through slightly.
    “Yes, Natalie” Cable said firmly, looking away. Natalie put her hands on her hips and rolled her eyes sardonically. She tapped her foot impulsively.
    “Cable… look. I really care about you, ya‘ know? So why do you keep pushin’ yourself away from me? I‘m here for you, whenever you need me,” she said, her voice become diffident and quickening in tempo exponentially, a sign that she was becoming nervous, Cable thought with a silent chuckle. She began blushing deeply after she finished. The girl scrunched up her eyebrows and wiped the hair from her eyes again, a nervous habit. She stood, waiting for an answer, a grin finding its way onto her lips as Cable sputtered and scratched his head, his cheeks reddening as well. Cable couldn’t help but smile and shake his head. He might as well tell her. It wasn’t as if anyone was around to hear what was said in the privacy of their own home.
    “Look… I-” Cable began, but his voice was suddenly silenced by the earsplitting explosion of rapid gunfire from multiple units. Natalie twirled towards the door that she was standing straight in front of with alarm. Her eyes narrowed and her lip curved upwards in dread.
    “Ah, fu-” She felt her body being rocked by the nine millimeter rounds almost before she noticed the holes appearing in the door. She gasped, her expression changed from tender worry to agony. The gunfire continued, blowing holes in the door and the walls, shattering years old china and blowing the flimsy doors to the cabinets off the wall. The sink began spurting water into the air, mixing with the girl’s spouting blood. Natalie’s shredded body fell backwards, her lips curled into a sickening contortion as the blood pooled about her was watered down by the destroyed water pipes.
    Cable roared in defiance and anguish, his eyes refusing to leave the girl’s broken body. Or, at least, what was left of it. Her sneakers quickly turned blood red and her fingers closed up slowly. Her hair was swept sloppily away from her eye, caked against her bloodied brow. She wouldn’t need to keep it out of her eyes anyway. Not anymore. Cable clutched his heart as a lump emerged in his throat and constricted his breathing. A stifled sob tore itself from his throat.
    The door burst open in a great, blinding flash and a house rattling bang. Muffled shouts and orders could be heard from outside.

-Matthew Boyd