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City of Ashes |
| Written by Timmy Dee | |
| Monday, 16 June 2008 | |
Sadly, that day was essentially the catalyst to the quite repugnant life everyone had to live today. And that day was the reason the invasion was still ongoing.
My parents were usually involved with these angry mobs. They liked the idea of a "good socialism" and "pure communism", but got furious every time the leaders would mess up. They would come home from work after the tax increases or a cut in food rations, and barge around the house, yelling at me about how I could improve my country; my mom later claimed that they were "teaching." Not that I cared, mind you. In all honesty, I didn't care about much at all. I was young; things like politics and leaders didn't matter to me. The way I saw it, every time the electricity went out, it showed me that we didn't care enough to do something about it. The city, and probably the whole country, could have staged a successful coup and taken the morons leading our nation out of power, and yet we didn't. To me, that showed a lack of interest in improving our lives, and if we weren't willing to fix our own situation, what was the point of arguing? Anyways, back to the morning.
School was always trivial to my day. That was because at school, I was taught. That was it; I didn't learn, I was taught. Many people make that mistake, thinking that being educated is the same as gaining knowledge. It's not. Sure, I was taught many things at school: my country's history, the sacrifices my great-great grandparents made in the 1940's onwards, the system our people embraced through time. None of that mattered when I got home. When I got home, I would do real learning with my parents. I would learn how the idea of communism was blotched by man, how we could only ever live in a socialist society, how, by the end of my generation, our country would most likely be gone. I "learned" until my dad died. He was involved in one of the hunger strikes throughout the city, trying to remove the laws involving reduced rations, when the police showed up. Normally, that wasn't a problem; by law, the police couldn't technically remove rallies in the city unless they turned violent. I wasn't at that particular assembly, so I don't know exactly what happened, but I doubt it was violent until the police started opening fire into the crowd. Still, at that point, it would have been mainly one-sided aggression, innocent blood being shed instead of the blood of the cops.
The fear of air raids was a thing of the past. They were empty threats, loud howling cries from the speakers built into the skyscrapers and other structures that lined the streets. The only thing that was even remotely troublesome was the fact that the MiG-27s and SU-47s were streaking across the sky. That wasn't much of a worry though; the air force scrambled if a bird flew into our airspace. Loveable idiots, huge birds every schoolchild wanted to grow up to be. Being a pilot was part of my dream, mainly because flying a plane was in my blood. My great-great grandfather, the one I was told in school to honor and respect, was an ace in the winter war. His pictures, scattered around my family's apartment, revealed a handsome man, in his early 20s, a devilish flicker in his eye. For the most part, I was a complete reincarnation of him, with the exception that my eyes didn't have the same shine as his. In fact, my eyes were so dull that I could have been mistaken for a blind man.
Mom had just gotten home from work when the air raid sirens started blairing again. I sighed and turned up my music to the point that it lost its rhythm, instead just creating the sound of chaos in my brain. It hurt my ears, but it was better than listening to the howling calls. I was so tuned out of the world that I had failed to notice a parachutist outside the apartment gently falling to the ground. In fact, I was completely oblivious to the fact that an entire airborne operation was happening just beyond the window in the room. Thousands of silky white canvases filled up the sky as what would later be called I-Day. The first time I actually realized what was going on was when the AA guns opened up. The loud banging sound, like trash cans being smashed together, mixed in with my obnoxiously loud music to create a harsh and almost impure sound that ran up and down my spine. Annoyed by the noise, I looked up to see a paratrooper looking right back at me through the glass. I realized that maybe, just maybe, the air raid was something to be worried about. My mom, who had presumably been getting some shuteye, rushing into the living room to be greeted by the same surprise I felt. We both knew that these were hard times, filled with strife and struggle, but we had never expected the war to reach us. Whether you liked it or not, the city was a fortress, never expected to be invaded by these people. And the military, like them or not, had always been there, watching us, protecting. In reality, the only people in the armed forces who actually did anything were the air force and select home front divisions. The rest of the services had run, defending nothing but their own asses. I didn't blame them; I probably would have done the same thing. Then again, it wasn't up to me to protect the city. That was what I was "taught" anyways.
After the fires had sufficiently been put out, we were given permission to go back into what remained of the city. I decided to go back to my apartment, just to see what was left. As it turned out, very little was left. The bombs had managed to almost completely eradicate my complex; only a few walls that seemed to be on the verge of collapse stood in the debris that was left of my former life. The life that existed only before my first smoke. The comfortable life that I long for today.
It took me a few seconds to realize that my foot landed in the charred carcass of some poor soul unable to escape before the bombs came. Their face was distorted with fear; it'slast moments were clearly the most terrifying in its poor, mote likely miserable life. I didn't really know the corpse, but I felt a vast emptiness in my heart, as if all the good in my life culminated with my sneaker coming in contact with the burnt, fragile skin, a victim of fire, of a war they had no part of. It was at that moment that I vomited. I leaned against a wall, keeled over, and threw up what might have been a years worth of rations. The acidic taste crawled through my throat, burning itself in my mouth. I felt like dying. Nothing mattered. After that, I can't remember anything. I might have blacked out, I might have sought some shelter, I might have just sat and cried. I just can't remember. What I do remember was a man lifting me onto my feet and hoisting me onto a burnt and rickety chair that had managed to not be consumed by fire. I recognized the man as a middle-aged recluse from the seventh floor. When I finally regained my head, I noticed that he was offering me a cigarette. My first reaction was to turn it down; he saw the look of rejection on my face and shook his head. "Life's too short, kid. Smoke up." I took a long drag, coughing slightly by the burning taste entering my lungs. It hurt, but also made me relax. For one moment, just one, I thought, "Hell, it could be worse." Because of that, smoking would be a habit I picked up. "What do we do now?" "Good question." The hermit gave me a curt nod, got up, and left. Copyright 2008 Timmy Dee |
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