Beth sang.
She had been singing for as long as she could remember. Some had said it was beautiful; others shouted at her: "Oi! You ain't the telly-screen! Shut it!"
Beth didn't ever "shut it", as one of her neighbors had so eloquently put it. She had thought about it once—oh, maybe three years ago; she couldn't remember—for around five minutes. There wasn't any real reason behind her singing. She never sang for anyone specifically. She didn't think her voice was particularly beautiful. Her children were all grown up, and she didn't have any grandchildren yet to sing to. In the end, though, she decided to keep singing. She had been doing it for as long as she could remember, after all, and she saw no reason to stop now, even with her husband gone and her children moved on to their grown-up lives, far away from their mother.
So Beth sang.
"It was only an 'opeless fancy,
It passed like an Ipril dye,
But a look an' a word an' the dreams they stirred
They 'ave stolen my heart awye!"
Beth had forgotten the last time someone had called her by her full name. To tell the truth, some days her surname from before she married was a bit hard to remember. Now, what was it again? Oh, right. Macpherson. That was it. She knew because she could faintly remember her mother yelling at her: "Elizabeth Victoria Macpherson! Get back in here!"
Beth's full name was Comrade Elizabeth Victoria Macpherson Burns. Somewhere in the back of her mind was a hazy memory of her father saying she was named after two queens. Queens, though, had lost importance to Beth, and their significance in history had gone along with her third daughter.
How many children had Beth had? Not counting the dead ones—she didn't, personally—there were four daughters and five sons. The third girl—her name was Katharine—had disappeared as a six-year-old or so. Beth assumed she had been taken to a Reclamation Center, or else she had died on the streets. The oldest—Matthew—had married years ago, and now—finally!—a baby was on the way. The reast of the children—Rachel, Mark, Joann, Luke, Michelle, John and Joshua (twins), and Robert Jr.—had moved only a kilometer away, in a part of town that had had a few openings after another group disappeared.
Beth never thought too much about Katharine, other than her blonde hair that Beth had often marveled at. She had no relatives with blonde hair, and neither had Robert.
"Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St. Clement's
You owe me three farthings, say the bells of St. Martin's
When will you pay me, say the bells of Old Bailey?
When I grow rich, say the bells of Shoreditch
When will that be, say the bells of Stepney
I do not know, say the great bells of Bow..."
Beth sang as she finished with the laundry. She didn't notice the growing amount of people coming closer...
"Here comes a candle to light you to bed
Here comes a chopper to chop off your head
Chip chop chip chop, the last man's—"
All it took was one glance up from her laundry, and terror pumped from her heart along with her blood, making her pulse race, making her scream as a window broke somewhere.
One of the men shouted something, but Beth couldn't hear him. She was busy humming the rhyme under her breath to calm herself down.
The man shouted something again, and once again, Beth didn't hear him.
Well, the man thought, if she can't hear me, then she won't hear the gun go off.
Beth never heard the gun go off, but she did feel a peculiar sensation on the back of her head. A sort of... painful entry.
Later, Beth was written off as a traitor.
Katharine, for some reason, took to humming little tunes wherever she went. No one really had an explanation for it, but it had turned into a habit.
A very similar phenomenon occurred with Rachel. For reasons she couldn't explain, she had almost uncontrollable urges to sing the songs her mother had been forever singing to her as a child.
The proles were singing.
Dead.
{The End}
