What Died in the Past

Mom and Dad never agreed on anything.  Polar opposites.  I never understood how they stayed together.  Or how they got together in the first place.  But they did stay together and they argued constantly about apples and oranges and black and white.  They might have even enjoyed the arguments. 

The way I see it, the world ended when they were kids.  The bombs fell and the government took over and people died.  So they stayed together and that was that.  Ended up having Gabriel and me.  Bring us into this damn world.  Thanks, Mom and Dad.

I think Dad realized that blunder once.  I was a kid, Gabriel a few years older.  We were in the shelter and the bombs fell.  The world ended ages ago, but the bombs still fell back then.  Mom was knitting and Gabriel and I were playing a game.  Every time we heard a bomb go off, Gabriel’d yell, “Bam!” and I’d laugh like a maniac.  Kids are always stupid.  I hate them all.  Anyways, Dad had been napping when Gabriel shouted louder than before.  Dad woke up with a start and watched us for a minute.  In between my laughing fits, he caught my eye.  I saw it then: a look of desperation and beneath that, an apology, only there for a brief second.  I understood that he was apologizing but, in that moment, I did not understand why.

Now I do.  He’s apologizing because outside those doors, the world had ended�"was ending�"and I was sitting there and laughing about it.  I was an ignorant, selfish child.  He was apologizing because I didn’t understand.

I understand now.  ‘Cause I imagine him standing there, right in front of me, apologizing again.  This time, because I understand.

 

One of their biggest arguments was the one that they should never have had.  Dad was a pacifist and an idiot.  An idiot for saying that out loud.  Mom was all for the war.  Arrogant, biased, bull-headed, stupid, stubborn, the both of them. 

But Dad carried the argument.  He disagreed with the war and he voiced his opinion.  Bloody idiot.  Gabriel had gone off to war and Dad was infuriated that his son had to fight this war full of s**t.  I listened to the whole thing. They didn’t even notice that I was there.  Then Mom got flustered so she started shouting.  Someone must have heard.

Not long after, Dad died in a car accident.  It wasn’t actually a car accident, but that’s what I’m going to tell you.  Because it was stupid and meaningless and didn’t have to happen just like a car accident.  So Dad died in a car accident and I cried.  I cried because it was not how he deserved to die.  It was pointless. 

But he died and the world didn’t care.  They paid Mom to put on a state funeral with a gun salute and everything, as if he died a hero.  He wasn’t a hero.  He just died and they were just lying.  And Gabriel was across the ocean and didn’t bother to show up.  I know he got the news.  I was the one who left the message.  But he didn’t come.  He ran away and left me to deal with everything.  The pain, the grief, the questions, the cover-ups, and Mom.  He left me to fight a war.  I had to deal with the destruction on the home front.  Damn him.

That was a year ago.  I’ve been alone for going on six months now.  Mom, well, that’s another story for late at night when Death is lying next to me.  Then I can remember and cry myself to sleep, begging to whatever god I don’t believe in to allow me to die. 

 

I’ve been alone for six months.  That’s not necessarily meant to be an impressive or depressing statement.  It’s just a fact.  I’ve kept up a lie for that long and that’s a fact.  There’s no pride in that, or at least there shouldn’t be.  But there is because I’m a damn good liar.

And if they found out, there’d be hell to pay.  Orphans are not highly regarded.  Unless said orphan happens to be seventeen and able to fight.  Now that orphan became number one on the most wanted list. 

Pay attention, Watson.  Family is the insurance policy of the government.  They can make you do horrible things because they can either threaten to kill your family or use it as a reward for what they deem as good behavior.  Family is insurance.  Liability insurance, specifically.  Because it works both ways.  Family at home expects the safe return of their loved ones fighting in the war.  But if too many sons and daughters return home with volatile tendencies or don’t return at all, families band together in distaste for the war that damaged or killed their loved ones.  That insights protests and protests lead to rebellion and rebellion is not a welcome side effect of war.  Remember Vietnam?  It’s like that.  But it’s not.

Don’t get your hopes up.  Hope is dead.  There’s not going to be a rebellion, unfortunately or fortunately, depending where your loyalties lie.  Because the present government has a distinct advantage.  See, the world ended a long time ago, but the bombs still come occasionally.  Falling bombs mean dead people.  Dead people mean orphans.  Orphans who have no family left.  No liability.  Orphans who are old enough to hoist a gun are sent to war, sometimes as young as seven.  They are slaughtered and no one cares.  And that’s that. 

But if said orphan happens to be a seventeen year old genius, it’s different.  Kids are stupid and listen to grown-ups, yes.  Big general man says fire and they fire.  And they die.  Tragic, sure, but pointless in the long run.  Little kids don’t get far.  No progress.  But say the orphan was strong, smart, and educated.  Tactile advantage.  No one cares if this orphan returns or not.  Then, since she is a genius, they force her to do things beyond the imagination of evil.  Force her to commit genocide and torture whole countries with misery.  If she has a sliver of decency in her and doesn’t want to comply, torture her.  Or leave the threat of death hanging over her head.  Because she might know Death, but she sure as hell doesn’t want to die.  Because she’s a coward and that’s the end of it.  They can make her do anything.  No one cares and everyone breaks in the end. 

She becomes a monster.  Stuff of nightmares if there were such thing as nightmares.  Even nightmares had hope.  Hope in waking up.  Here, there’s no waking up and the monster meets my eyes in the mirror every day.

 

After that incident, long ago, in the bomb shelter, Gabriel took to calling me Bam.  He thought it was cute and it made me his baby sister.  Apparently, he still thinks that.  Bam was ridiculous and optimistic and ignorant and pathetic and patriotic and hopeful.  If he still sees all that s**t in me, then he’s a bloody idiot. 

Bam is dead.

And you know what?  I killed her and became the monster I am now.  And, being a monster, I don’t care.  She’s dead and now I live a life that’s too close to death.  Death is an old acquaintance of mine.  Everything that ever meant anything died in the past.  Now, I’m all that’s left of a life that was supposed to be but now can never be.  That’s what makes me a monster.

Author's Note

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