The Apocalypse
Amy had fallen asleep and I sat on my cot and watched her sleep. She was a perfect little angel. She didn't know anything about harming people or anything bad. Babies didn't know any of that stuff yet. Why did they have to know? What is so wrong with our world that such innocence that a baby has is ruined and gets replaced by hatred, prejudice and racism? I'm not saying all babies will be racist when they grow up, but they will grow up in a world where it exists. Isn't that bad enough?
I watch my child sleep and my wife comes in. "Darling, isn't she?" she says. "It gives you hope for the world. Maybe this generation will be better." As I kiss my wife gently I know that my daughter's generation, the next generation, will be better. It has to get better. Nothing could be worse than this.
Nothing is worse than what we have now. We have a tyranny. Not just of one country, but the whole world. David Hendbound. It sounds like a normal name, not like the vicious, brutal tyrant who is the reason we are now in World War Four. His father, George Hendbound was the reason for World War Three. George Hendbound decided to take over the world after being laid off from his seventh job in a span of two years. The economy was so terrible in the entire world, due to inflation of Liteens (the currency of all countries). When the first Hendbound came around and got control of all the small countries, he became known and powerful. With his new power, Hendbound was able to take over the world. He began okay, but after his wife died in childbirth with his second son, he turned evil. He told his son stories of how they would rule the world forever. After the revolt came and restored democracy in 2025, David Hendbound at age 12 was put in an orphanage. No foster family would take him. People believe that's when his evil started.
David decided to bring back the world in which he grew up. He wanted to be in charge. He wanted to bring back his world, his father's world. David did what his father did, gaining the power of the smaller countries. David was smart though. He knew if he did this publicly, he would not succeed. He was able to get control secretly. Now, in 2047, we are in the middle of World War Four. Two Hendbounds, two wars, too much gore. Usually the next generation is better than the one that came before it, no matter what your grandparents tell you. This generation seemed to be an exception. One step forward, two steps back. Welcome to the apocalypse, only you can stop it
David Hendbound imprisoned and tortured anybody who got in his way until they did it his way. Unless you were doing it his way, you had to stay in hiding to stay out of jail. That's where I was now with my wife and child. We had two rooms. The bigger room two cots on it and a blanket. One cot for my wife and I and the blanket served as a cradle for our one year old daughter. The room also had a kitchen, or what could be called a kitchen. We had a portable mini stove. The smaller room was our bathroom. One side was the toilet and the other had a barrel in which we bathed. This is my home and has been for the past two months. We have friends who pretend to be on the other side and give us food.
Sometimes, as I get my new food, I feel very World War Two. Sometimes, I feel like breaking out and actually seeing the sun again and feeling its rays on my skin. I feel like going up to David Hendbound and telling him how many people are in misery for his happiness. Sometimes I pity Hendbound. He had no meaning in his life besides this crusade of his. He will eventually be overthrown like his father, and then what will his life be? Assuming that the rebels don't kill him on the spot but keep him in jail or something, what will his life be to him then? Will he consider everything a waste and regret all he had done to harm people? Or will he not regret a thing and try to take over again and again?
Perhaps David Hendbound isn't evil, just hopeful. He hopes that by doing what he is doing he will achieve happiness. He is risking everything, literally everything, to get even an ounce of happiness. Maybe that's just me being a good person and trying to find the good in everyone. Hendbound seems to find happiness and joy in the torturing of other people. There is no good in that man.
"Honey?" my wife Tina said.
"Yes?" I replied.
"I've been thinking. I mean, I want Amy to grow up and have a good life," Tina said, "I just don't think I can give her a good life if we're in hiding."
"Are you saying to want to follow the brutal orders of Hendbound?" I asked.
"I'm saying that coming out saying 'we've seen the light' and if we pretend to do all that then maybe Amy could have friends," Tina said. "She could go to a school, a good school. I want something better than this for my baby."
"I don't want Amy to think she has to change who she is to be accepted," I said. "You were a teacher. We'll be teaching her not only math and English, but how to stand up for her opinions."
"I hardly think when she's 5 years old and lonely she'll think, 'At least I'm standing up for my opinions. Here's a plus, I get to sleep on a blanket.' How hard will it be to pretend?" Tina asked. "We'll still be for the right cause. We'll bring food to other people. I just don't want to be the other people."
"You don't want to be a charity case, is that it?" I asked. "All this talk about you want a better life for Amy. Bull, Tina, that's bull. You always hated people doing things for you. You want to be independent and I love you for it. But you have to realize that in this situation we need other people's help."
"Not if we were out there! We could be free again! Free! No more hiding or taking a bath once a week, if we're lucky. Free, honey, free!" my wife said with such a fire of passion I had never seen before. It was amazing how energized someone could get about something so impossible.
Impossible. People loved to believe in impossible things. When I was younger, I believed that my action figures were real and they were my best friends. After my older brother crushed them, he crushed my dreaming too. Why believe in impossible things? It's pointless, it's impossible! And yet people are mesmerized by impossible things. Is it the excitement of dreaming up a perfect situation? Is it the joy you know it could bring to many people? Or is it the selfishness that we get for thinking, even for only a brief bit of time, that we are getting everything we truly want? David Hendbound wanted the most impossible thing: he wanted the world, the entire world to follow him. He knew if they followed him, they would on some level love him, if not at least appreciate him. After all, that's all he wants, or any of us want. To be loved and appreciated. He wants the dream.
His father wanted the dream; I suppose it's only logical that he would too. So whose fault is it really that we have all this misery? All those people who laid George Hendbound off, pushing him to the edge: is it their fault? Or is it that fact that he wasn't working up to potential at his jobs and with the economy the way it was, the companies couldn't afford to have him aboard: so is it George Hendbound's fault? Or the fact that David Hendbound can't accept reality and that his father's world was corrupt and unsustainable: so is it David Hendbound's fault? Or the fact that David Hendbound has many supporters of once weak countries who wanted to be strong so desperately that they would agree to have a Hendbound as their leader: so is it their fault? Or was everyone too busy blaming everyone else for something or another and didn't stop and realize there was a problem to fix? Does the fault and what happened in the past matter more than how to fix the present? Or are we like little children faced with a big math problem? We don't know how to start, so we simply don't. This is no time to procrastinate.
My wife Tina came over and sat next to me. "It's not that I don't want to be a charity case. It's just that my ancestors left Italy to go to America for freedom. I left America to come to Britain for freedom. Now I can't even have it here? I barely remember what freedom feels like. Can you remember? When you do, don't you miss it? I miss it so much I would give up my stubborn opinions to have freedom. You know how stubborn I am. I can't keep living like this, honey, I need freedom."
"I know you need freedom, Tina, so do I," I told my wife.
"Then come out with me! Let's have freedom!" Tina said excitedly.
"I can't go out there," I said.
"Why not?" Tina asked.
"Because that is not freedom, that is not a democracy," I argued. "That is a tyranny! Do you want to be ruled by a tyrant?"
"If that's what it takes for freedom, then yes," Tina said.
"You would hate it," I said.
"I would love it," Tina said.
"Liar," I snarled.
"I need freedom, don't you see that?" Tina asked.
"Why don't you see that isn't freedom?" I asked, "Are you that desperate you would trade in opinions you've had all your life to get a deformed idea of 'freedom?' I can't believe you would do that, Tina."
"Freedom is beautiful and it cannot be deformed," Tina said stubbornly.
"You're not getting rid of your old stubborn ideas," I said. "You're just trading them in for new ones. Not that I'm surprised you're staying so stubborn, you get it all from your father. Your father! Do you think he would want you to go out there? Do you seriously believe that? Or are you selfish that you don't care that he died in the name of freedom and democracy?" I hit a nerve, I knew it the second I said it. Tina stood perfectly still and silent. After a moment, she got her suitcase, which was always packed in cases of emergency running from Hendbound. Funny how now she was using it to run to him.
"I'm leaving and I'm taking Amy," Tina said. "If you don't come with me, I'll- I'll have to tell them you're here."
"What?" I yelled. "You don't have to do that!"
"You know I do," Tina said. "I can't just go out there alone. I need to hand someone else in. If you come with me, we'll say that we're a transfer family from a different country. They won't need name then."
"It seems like the human population always comes back to this, doesn't it?" I said.
"Comes back to what?" Tina asked.
"The Salem witch trials," I said, "McCarthyism. Everyone wants a list and if that means accepts the old 'traitors' if they hand in new 'traitors.' It's unbearable."
"It's life now, accept it," Tina said.
"Why accept it when you can change it?" I asked. "Is that what you would have told the Jews in the Holocaust? Or the blacks that were enslaved? Or the people hiding during World War III? Is that what you would have told them?"
"Stop asking questions! Stop trying to analyze me!" Tina screamed. "You sit here all day and you think about all you could do but you never do it! What good are your ideas if all they are only ideas? All you do is think! You're not a psychologist anymore; Hendbound took away your degree. It doesn't exist anymore, so stop thinking and do something for once!"
"Just because I don't have a degree framed hanging on a wall in an office with patients doesn't mean I'm not a psychologist!" I screamed at her. "Hendbound can have my degree, it's only a piece of paper. He cannot take everything I learn at college away. He can't take the experience from me. I am still a psychologist."
"Fine, you can keep that nice little experience of your wonder years with you," Tina said, picking up her suitcase. "You can keep them with your experience of living on the run. Soon, you'll experience that you can't stay hidden forever; someone will turn you in. When that happens, you will also experience a painful death because nobody likes traitors. So have fun and remember your 'experiences' while you can." Tina picked up Amy and started to leave.
"You can leave, Tina, but my child will stay," I said forcefully.
"Your child? Who carried Amy for 9 months while she was developing? Who was in labor for 16 hours? Who gave birth in the middle of the night? Who breastfed Amy? Who gave Amy her first bottle? Who changed all her diapers for the first three months?" Tina asked. "And who had all the fun one night and forgot to put on a condom?"
"Are you saying I haven't been active in my child's life so far?" I asked. "I put her to sleep every night. I've done almost all the diaper changing after the first three months. I was there all 16 hours of labor, asleep for only 45 minutes. I was there for the birth. And you know it is anatomically impossible for me for breastfeed."
"Well, you remember those 'experiences' too, because I am taking Amy," my wife told me. "Don't you dare try to stop me unless you want o join me." Tina picked up Amy and her suitcase and started to leave again. Then she stopped. She started again and stopped again.
"What's the matter?" I asked.
"I can' leave," Tina said softly.
"Why not?" I asked.
"I have this sick feeling in my stomach that I actually will hand you in, and then they will actually hurt you, torture you and even kill you," Tina said putting her suitcase down, "And I love you too much to let them do that."
"What are you saying?" I asked.
"I love you more than freedom, goddamnit," Tina said. "I don't know why, but I do. I can't stand you, but I love you."
"Get your suitcase," I said picking up my suitcase.
"What?" Tina said.
"I said pick it up, or do you not want to go out there with me?" I asked.
"Do you mean it? You'll go out there with me?" Tina asked excitedly.
"Yeah," I said. "I love you too much to have you sit around here any longer." We walked around to check if we forgot anything that might lead people to believe we lived here. When we knew it was clear, we walked outside.
The sun! Do you know how amazing the sun feels on your face? And to smell the fresh air! See the grass, nice and green! Tree, flowers, rocks and weeds even, they all looked beautiful! I was outside! Outside in the fresh air with the radiant flower and the green grass. Tina and I just ran around for a while, laughing and enjoying the outdoors. Amy sat and tried to catch a butterfly. It was incredible.
Finally, we found a stream and cleaned up. We couldn't walk into town looking dirty. After we were clean and in our cleaner clothes, we started walking to town, thinking of what we could tell people.
We decided we were Christina and Evan Peldman, with our daughter Chelsea. We came from Britain. We were on a hiking trip and we ran into a bear. We lost most of our belongings, including passport or any kind of identification, for that matter. We've been walking for quite a while and stumbled into this town. We would then ask if they minded if we stayed with someone for a few days, just to get the basic needs. We'd make friends and eventually just live in the town, since we find it so cozy. It was the beginning of a new life.