Tevun-Krus #31 - Dying Earth

Fade - A Short Story by @krazydiamond

Fade

A Series of Dying Earth Drabbles

krazydiamond

I

We once looked to the stars and dreamed of possibilities.

Of faraway worlds to discover and explore. Of other beings to meet and break bread with them. Now the stars taunt us, cold blue observers, mocking our slow decline. Each glimmering light is a great lie, the star long dead, long gone. A voice that has flickered out but continues to shine, hollow and empty, like the thread bare filament of a dying bulb. I cannot criticize them for such a lie, their last hurrah in the vast universe before they disappear into nothing. Our lie is the same.

II

It wasn't a single event that doomed the world.

It wasn't the sudden extinction of honey bees or the growing emptiness of the ocean. There was no one occurrence that spelled the end. It wasn't an inexorable chain of events. At no point was it too much to turn back, to reverse the damage. It was never supposed to be too late. Yet the gaping wounds of the world continued to bleed, given no time to scar, no salve to soothe. We watched the planet bleed out and did nothing to staunch her wounds. To our great shame.

III

The city reserves ran dry.

The rationing proved a temporary stop gap, a band aid covering the hole in the dike. There was no water to leak through, only the dusty air of the dead valley. I can see the riverbed from the kitchen window, the ground like cracked rawhide, littered with sun bleached fish bones. My mother sat at the table, sobbing into her wrinkled hands. She should conserve it. Every precious drop, she is too frail to sustain such a loss. My son cries from the crib. Mother looks up. The young and old. Who will fade first?

IV

The rich are rumored to stockpile water in great tanks beneath their homes.

The poor are left to riot and ruin. They do not march in the swirling dust, not where the heat would leech the moisture from them. Instead they stand outside the gates of the utility plants, silent sentinels, pleading with blood shot eyes for a solution, a miracle. But the dust continues to build and the rain does not come. The reserve is still dry. The plants continue to wither. The animals continue to die. At last, the poor trudge home and wait for the end.

V

The rains came at last. A monsoon that floods the parched riverbed and overflows the collection barrels set out on dusty front lawns. Mother's wrinkled hands squeeze mine tight as we listen to the pounding drops on the roof. The babe sleeps, comforted by a drink at last.

'Don't drink, don't drink," the newscaster sang. We don't understand at first, don't heed the warning. Too thirsty to care. Too desperate to listen.

The rain is filed with poison, like a serpent's lying kiss.

Thousands sicken.

Mother's wrinkled hands no longer hold mine. The babe doesn't cry from his crib anymore.

VI

Rich. Poor. The longer we linger the less those words mean.

The less money means beneath the weight of hunger and thirst. We trade, we barter, for an extra day. Money is paper and good for little else than kindling to start a fire. We have come full circle, relying on fire to hold off the terrors of the night. To warm our bones against the dark. A flickering light as the world continues its slow fade.

Rich. Poor. Death comes for all just the same. Everything has an end. Even the world.

VII

We once looked to the stars and dreamed of possibilities.

Silent watchers, observing the last days of Earth, what could have been? What could we have changed if we reached for the sooner? The world's worst sin was apathy. Not one event was the end. It was a slow decline in which we did nothing. A million glimmering possibilities left unexplored, left to dreams and dust. The fires grow fewer and fewer through each long night. It is only a matter of time until we are nothing more than a memory, a last flicker slowly fading in the dark.