Man from the moon (UNDER EDITING)

Journal003/A House In Flames

"I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." - Albert Einstein.

You hid a lot of things from me. I didn't mind. I was — and still am — young, and immature, rebellious even more so in the past, when you still walked this world instead of the stars.

Yet, as I was being held in a concrete bunker buried beneath crumbling buildings, and I viewed the world through the television, I knew I didn't know nearly as much about you as I thought; the shadows of broken edifices — of broken civilization — painting terrible murals against rewilded shrubbery.

Every so often, I would be allowed outside; within a courtyard of flourishing flowers, accompanied by women whose names I did not know, for pithy moments.

These moments are only long enough for one crisp deep breath — or to gaze up — or to touch the grass that sat beneath me.

It felt like a prison here. But I wouldn't complain.

I saw the riots, all across the planet, people marching over one enough, scrambling for the droplets of water that were still on the shelves, people leaving babies to cry; people fighting to survive.

War has existed for a long time, but hunger, longer. A news tabloid sucked the joy out of my body as they reported the trampling of a young child, only a few years younger than myself.

I lingered around the living room for a while. Doing nothing, having nothing to say, or do, the library was packed full of books, and more wisdom than I could ever read, but I didn't feel like it — not right now — and probably not for a long time.

All this prepared. It makes me wonder whether you knew — and left knowing — how selfish that would be; I don't want to think about it further.

One of the private culinarians you hired shouted, their voice echoing across the barren hall. "Dinner's ready."

I suppose it's time to go. I'll write sometime soon. Goodbye, Dad, love, Max. From Earth to Superbia.

P.S. I'm not angry anymore. Not much, at least.

OUTSIDE THE CONCRETE PRISON.

At a long table of finely polished wood, men and women, old and young, sat; Sharp cutting eyes and low-hung heads. Sunset blazing through the window, washing the insides of the dreary domicile crimson-- the color of all the blood to be spilt.

Amongst the many people sitting in this sea of government, was Cassandra. The Aunt to Maxine. A callous woman who hadn't yet had the time to sort out the pain that's been left behind by her father.

She didn't know whether she'd ever get that time, and it irked her knowing that her older brother had done the same to his daughter.

She saw her Father's insidious shadow in the bags of Y/N's eyes. Or in how he held a pen or the way he crossed his legs.

It irked her to see how similar they were.

But she had bigger issues. Like how the fulcrum that had carried the scale had broken, and the lever they were desperately holding back to prevent war had gone off carrying with it a payload of extinction to all but the microbes.

Crimson hues shaped her black tresses into a mane.

She'd barely had time to manicure herself. Feeling disgusted by her own skin, she'd often sleep on the floor in her apartment.

The ripe grape of a man — who seemed even thicker than the last time he'd appeared on national television — held his fingers into a triangle. The buttons holding back waves of gravy-filled fat-- a herculean labor.