3Clean Slate
Another explosion rocked the world. I was walking, on my way home, through crowded streets full of packing people. There were people on door steps, crying as they watched their beloved families torn apart. Crying, as they watched the dead being taken off the streets into carts full of already-rotting flesh.
Flies, stench, product of human greed. We had been warned, threatened, instructed to change. Some people had known this would happen for years. They told us; the world is dieing, we are killing it, we must change our ways or loose everything.
Did we listen?
Another explosion catapulted me off my feet.
I stood up again dazedly, people's screams echoing all around me, I was so used to it now, I hardly noticed. My brown hair cascaded down onto my back, my alive hazel eyes, usually bright, had been dull and lifeless for years. I was tall for my age of sixteen years. I was muscled, I was strong, I always held up before my family, little did they know I used to cry myself to sleep. Every night. Nothing ever bothered me, they'd say if you asked. Nothing would ever upset me, according to them. That's what I showed them, little did they know, little did they know...
My bangs were straight, falling into my eyes, my jeans were torn at the knee and I wore a white blouse, now smeared by the mud I had fallen into. It was the year 2999. It was December first, before the new millennium. The new millennium was supposed to advance us, this was the last winter before the new era of human kind. New era indeed, a new era, where we may or may not exist... The world had started for the last couple of months to deteriorate.
Earth had finally had enough, it was imploding. There were bodies on the street. Filth littered all around. There was no new era of human kind for us. We would not survive this. Earthquakes had started, tsunamis every other day. Tornadoes in Nunavut, ice showers in Hawaii, there was no escape from the certainty of death.
I watched a woman cry over her dead husband, because in the middle of all this, the countries had all turned against each other. Bombs, attacks, it didn't matter, we were all going to die anyways. Bombs had struck just recently. So there was the woman, shrieking, shouting the name of the man she loved, the man that was never coming back.
I decided to run, my house wasn't too far away, I needed to get there, to help my little brother. My parent's had died in a bombing some months ago. All that was left for me was my little brother, barely nine years old. He was my responsibility, he was the last thing left to me that meant something, the only thing worth living for. I ran home and skidded to a stop in front of my house. My house. I had inherited it, my parents had made an early will in the midst of all the happenings. I pressed my hand into the digital scanner and my door opened. My brother came crying into my arms. "Caly, Caly!" He screamed. My real name is Catherine, he can't pronounce it yet, or he can and doesn't want to. I don't mind as long as it is just him that calls me that.
"I'm so scared, Caly, help me, it hurts. It hurts..." He whimpered, I widened my eyes, alarmed, something was wrong.
He limped towards me some more, a piece of metal protruding from one of his legs. I screamed, I couldn't help it. I bandaged it so it wouldn't move, I couldn't risk that it had traversed any important vein, if it had and I took it out, he might loose the leg. I pressed a button on the wall and yelled the phone number that first came to my head, phone number acknowledged, the house responded. The wall-phone started ringing on the other end. "Hello?" Danny's voice echoed through the speakers. "Danny! I need you to get here at once on your hover-bike!" I yelled. "Catherine? What's wrong?" I was too scared to really speak, this was the last of my family, I couldn't loose my brother. I pressed another button on the sliding panel and Danny's face appeared on the wall, we were in video mode. He saw Jason's (my brother's) leg and his own eyes widened. "I'll be right there." He stated firmly, the line cut off and I knew he was on his way.
We had rushed Jason to the hospital, there weren't many people in the pediatrics department. Most people went to a different hospital, On second thought, most people died. A motherly-looking nurse ushered us into a room. She shuddered when she saw Jason's leg. "Now where are your parent's love?" She asked me. I looked down; "They're gone, miss." She looked sympathetic. She looked at Danny; "Are you two brother and sister?" She asked us. I almost burst out laughing, must be hysterics. Danny was tall as well, but other than that, my complete opposite. Blond, blue-eyed, gorgeous vs. hazel-haired, hazel-eyed, plain old me.
"No, we're just friends." Danny answered calmly. The best, I added inside my head. Hours after that little conversation Jason was finally operated. Everything went smoothly, we had the technology to perform such simple operation hundreds of years ago, that didn't make me any less worried. Jason was sucking on a lollipop tablet, all food came in tablets now, I held him fast in my arms while sitting on a hover-chair in the waiting area. Danny messed up his hair, we were both jolted out of our thoughts by what I believe is the loudest siren I had ever heard in my life. People rushed, screaming, out of their wards. Danny and I looked around confused, unsure of what was happening. "What's going on?" I screamed, nobody answered. "What is going on?!" I screamed louder, one nurse turned towards us,
"the spaceship is leaving for Venus, this is your last chance to leave, they're evacuating Earth, it's going to explode. Run while you can!" She screamed with a shrill voice before running away, heel's clattering on the steps. "Catherine, come on!" Danny yelled. I swung Jason up onto one hip and took Danny's hand in my own, we ran into the direction everybody else had run in. We ran, towards our future.
The space ship had left, we had been packed as mules for hours. When we finally staggered off, barely half of us had survived. Many had died of starvation, of thirst, of deprivation of movement, of sleep. I shook Jason awake, he wasn't waking. "Jason, Jason!" I shook him harder and harder. "Catherine!" Danny put a hard hand on my shoulder. "He's not coming back." He whispered, not unkindly.
"No, Jason no!" I screamed, dropping to my knees, holding his limp body. Danny got onto his knees beside me. "We were on that spaceship for days Catherine, he was too young to take something like that." I turned around and sobbed into his shoulder as he held me close. "No, not-t Jason." I sobbed, shaking from the tears. Nobody has seen me cry in years, years, and here I was, crying onto Danny's shoulder. I should be stronger than this... "He was all I had." Was all I could say once I had calmed down.
Danny put two fingers under my chin and lifted my tear-blotched face towards his. "You still have me." He said softly. I nodded, I still had my best friend.
Humans had landed onto the watery planet of Venus. It was made of water, high trees, inhabited. There weren't any animals as far as the eye could see. Only miles of jungle and water, lots of water. We said goodbye to Jason, watched as his body burned, the most efficient way of getting rid of the dead on this new planet. The planet seemed abandoned, the trees were still, the only sound was of water dripping, there was a fog that surrounded the ankles of people of all ages. Most were between ours of sixteen and forty. The strongest, the ones who could survive. We started to build on the trees, each helping the other out. In this desolate planet, we either helped each other out, or we were gone. Danny and I fell in love over the weeks. We finally admitted to what we hadn't admitted for years, we finally admitted that we were truly, madly, deeply in love. Finally, after around a month, all the houses were complete, Danny and I moved in. I never stopped missing Jason, he will always be in my heart. I still cried every night for him, cried for all the people that had been lost. I cried, silent tears, black tears that fell into the abyss below.
The turning of the millennium changed things for humanity. We learned that we had to change our ways, else Venus would end up just like Earth did. We learned that we had treated our planet so badly that we had caused its ultimate destruction. We learned that the best comfort we can find is with each other, with our neighbors, with ourselves. That we have to forget about our past and change to change the outcome of our future. We learned that we either stick together or we die. We now had a new chance, a chance to start over, a chance to do what we never managed with Earth. We had a chance for a new beginning. And as our bodies adjusted to the new planet we realized just how important it was for us to change both on the inside and out. As our ape-like bodies took to the trees we realized that humanity would start again.
This was a new era, this was a new life, this was a new world. This was our clean slate.
A black tear escaped my eye, I turned away, life was going to start again.
-The end-
I wrote this in about 20 minutes the day after a contest at our school ended, they accepted it anyways and I won. It won the grade eight creative writing award and gave me a nice shiny plaque.
Hope you liked it.
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xxTunstall Chickxx
25/08/08