A God's Last Death

'T' is for Trauma

Memories. Oh, they cut like knives.

I wish I could bury them in the deepest and darkest part of myself and never let them out again, but that's not how memories work. They always come back to hit you harder than the last time, and little by little you break just a bit more.

I was born in 2055, a year after the Big Shutdown.

That was when the world's leaders agreed to immediately shut down all industrial plants, factories, and mass manufacturing in an effort to stop climate change. That meant no electricity, no cars, nor anything that used to remind us of our lives before. All those centuries of human evolution were lost in a flick of time, and we had to restart our lives from point zero.

Of course, for most people it wasn't easy. Crime and abuse raked the largest cities, but things were even worse outside. Everyone who ventured off the city boundaries never returned to tell the things they had seen.

Everyone thought that would be enough to stop a nearing climate catastrophe, but the expected results weren't coming, the planet was still warming up. We had to decrease the human population, they said. We were too many of us and we had to make a sacrifice.

And so, a new law was passed; one that explicitly dictated anyone who wasn't legally married and intended for producing offspring by the age of 29 would have to put the common good first. It was basically a nice way to say: 'If you don't have kids by your early thirties, you are better off dead.'

I am 28, almost 29, and I don't have kids. You can definitely call me a lucky guy.

I was born in New York, a single boy out of the two million living in Bronx. I was only me and my mother, struggling to make it through the day. My mother was a selfless and caring woman, but like most of us she bore her own Hell, and in the end, it killed her. After two days gone missing, I found her dead on the pavement outside our flat, a needle still latched onto her hand.

I was seven.

That's how I ended up alone with a suitcase in hand, kicked out of our flat and left to fend for myself on the streets, until the Social Services found me. I was their new project. Of course, I thought otherwise; I thought they cared about me. Hell, I thought they loved me. Soon enough, I realised what a fool I was and quickly decided that I couldn't simply sit and stare at my wounds forever; I had to leave that place before I completely lost my sanity.

I spent nine years at an orphanage near Third Avenue Street. The caretakers were nasty, and the kids were resigned to waiting for the day they could leave that horrible place, although I doubt that would be any better.

The only thing that kept me from totally losing it was Sophia. She was two years older than me, but at the orphanage time worked differently. It sucked the life out of us, shattered us and glued us back again so that we became something else entirely. Something worse. We never had the chance to be kids. We were all beyond broken.

A tear slides down my cheek, and I furiously wipe it away. What the hell am I doing? Crying over my past like a helpless loser? I am pathetic.

The flickering of the lights suddenly begins, as was expected. We have been using solar panels, and that provides us with electricity for a couple of hours, but those two hours are far gone. It is late, and I know for a fact that no one is stupid enough to stay here more than is necessary.

I wearily stand up and reach for my coat at the hanger. I ignore the unfinished paperwork on my desk; it's a lost cause as it is already. I put my bag over my shoulder and go for the door.

Then, I hear them. Footsteps above me. And instantly I know I'm not alone—someone else is on the floor above.