Unknown Desires

Crossed Paths

Ring! Ring! Ring! I slam down on my alarm clock to shut down its disturbing reminder of my time to wake up. "Time to get up. Rebecca," my mother said as she dashes into the room and tears off my sheets. Suddenly, I am revealed sleeping in a tank top and shorts, my usual nighttime outfit. "Today, you officially become an adult," my mother screams cheerfully in my ear. She leaves me with my own thoughts and I start getting dressed. I strip my clothes off to take a shower. The cold water flows down my body. "Yes, today I become an adult," I say in my mind. Well, kind of in the course of the next 2 days. Tonight, all of the final years are 16 years old and we all attend prom, the biggest night of our lives. They keep this event to forget the past of a bloody war that swept the nation. The Four Tragedies of War consisted of: nuclear, seasonal, disease, and bloody weaponry. This destroyed the whole world and left many people dying and hurt.

It inflicted terror upon the whole nation and it caused the earth to react so strongly. It first started out as a petty dispute between the states towards the government, chastising the president for making poor decisions that would ruin the world. Then, some idiot in Kansas, found the United States nuclear weapon in the ground and with the help of the rebels, struck the White House, and burned it to the ground. With the White House in shambles, the president started the nuclear war, one of the Four Tragedies of War, against the rebels. With so many toxic supplies being exploded, it weakened the plants and animals, and Mother Nature, as we call it, responded in several seasonal attacks.In Summer and Spring, the temperature rose to about 150 degrees, the highest temperature in history, and ridded the world of water. The states cried out as several families lost loved ones from dehydration. In Fall and Winter, the coldest season began. The temperature was so cold for many months that it froze the food supply and farms were not able to provide food which led to more starvation.

Because of more nurses wanting to stay inside from the overwhelming temperatures of the heat and cold, the states had another battle to fight with disease. Hypothermia and Frost-Bite was common because with the nuclear war, needed supplies were destroyed all around the world and had no way to treat these diseases. So, with Frost-Bite, limbs were commonly chopped and many people died from loss of blood. Hypothermia could rarely be treated because throughout the cold months, doctors rarely had things to keep patients warm. Finally, the rebels got tired of the government not stepping in and launched the final war of bloody weaponry. Mothers and children were stripped from their homes and killed in the biggest massacre of the century. Thousands died. After all of this, the world was lost and the planet was covered in the stench of blood, bodies, and sweat.

The earth's natural supplies of food and water were limited. 4 of our leaders decided to stop the fear and panic of the world and gathered everyone together to build the four golden cities named after each of the leaders: Aurora, Phoenix, Charlotte, and Savannah. They made it their mission to rewrite humanity's mistakes and build a better future for our country. One of the most important problems was how to keep the population low. To do this, all of the final-year girls who are sixteen are assessed throughout all of their years to determine who their match is. On graduation day, they announce one by one who the final-year girls match up with pertaining with guys. After selection, the matched pairs must spend two months together to gain interest in each other and must plan for a wedding ceremony orchestrated by the government. In the course of that year, they must produce a child in which the mother will not survive. This is what they explained to us in War History this year and I did not retain a lot of information from that class. Something about a genetic gene causing all mothers to die but some of them still to live. My mother, Terrah for example, was thick, like me, and had long curly hair and dark brown eyes. She had survived the birthing process with my father, Sam, who was tall and dark with broad shoulders and blue eyes. I looked more like my mother than I did my father.