OBLIVION [Thomesa]

nineteen

________________
Years Ago

A little boy was found last night. People thought he was dead.
And though his heart was still beating,
and his chest still rising with breath,
they were right.

He was the only survivor.
His family's blood had dried on his eyelids.

The News Lady listed the names,
in his safe little room uptown, behind the glass of a camera.

He uttered the emotionless words of remorse
from those perfect lips, stained with scarlet paint.
He pretended as if the grief was his own,
with silks and satins draped across his smooth and perfumed skin.

The ring on his hand was most likely made of gold.
And the man who gave it to him was most likely alive.

He had never known hardships.
He had never known danger.

Not like they did.
Not at all like they did.

Why did anyone still live in this place?

Men and women shuffled along the bloody streets each day like ghosts,
with scraps of clothing tied around their numb icy faces,
and with their fear bleeding through their eyes like dark paint swirling into clear water. People were dead, every night. It didn't matter who you were.

A dark cloud of pollution hung hazily, caused by the black plumes off factory smoke and the explosions of the Gang Wars.

It tainted people's lungs, and somehow,
even blackened their souls.

People became bitter, sorrowful, and hard.
There was corruption in the police -
civilian brutality was common,
and them being paid off to look the other way was even more so.

The good ones died fast,
all mysteriously shot in the back.

Or died because of the Flare.

This murder, in the tiny dilapidated home,
where broken glass had become entombed in the dried blood of the brown tiled floor like insects trapped in the hardened amber,
had happened at least week ago.

No one had noticed the family's death.
No one had cared.

Until, of course, they had smelled it; the thick, ever present, scent of rotting flesh, pressing its palpable velvet into the night, making passing noses wrinkle, and wandering eyes water. Then, they had noticed.

The man, husband, and father had lost his job when one of the companies shut down - rows upon rows of failed establishments, now empty buildings, standing with cranes and wrecking balls parked beneath them.

Rows upon rows,
lined for firing squad,
their towering tips scraping along the silver skin of the sky.
Seeking to break through the blanket of thick blackened cloud,
and into some sort of heaven above
that would save them from the hell of the streets.

Or at least,
just pierce the looming rag of death that hung above the city like an axe,
and allow people to see the stars.

Just to see,
such small pricks of light,
that would mean that there was light.

But there was no heaven above these skies.

A desperate father would have wondered what to do, when the company he worked for shut down, and he lost his job. It wasn't cheap to live here, with a pregnant wife and a son. And it hadn't been a very well-paying job to begin with. It may have taken a while to give in.
But in a place this corrupted -