Fiction

Adults in our mid-western town lost a top secret panacea and left it up to us, the youth, to find it. Without it, they quickly succumbed to a deadly infestation and experienced impossible deaths. They died from a plague that ravished our city and left ghostly visages that existed as fiends of ghastly shadows and ominous portents that haunted dreams. As the plague spread, it spewed a deluge of corruption, greed and hatred.

I am Lot’s wife, a deer lick in the desert, a pillar of salt, a vapor on the Plain, the buoyant sea.  You’ve heard my story. I have no name. His story, I call it–it’s cautionary. As everything was his, including me. Including our daughters, I surmise now, looking back. 

For some, the morning comes with joy and enthusiasm to live life. For some it comes and goes just like a regular phenomena, for some; it comes with grief and melancholia and for some it doesn’t come at all and their day starts with afternoon. But, it’s the point of view for humans and the scenario changes drastically for other human species. Human has become the greatest species on earth, though not because of its greatness, but because of its survival strategies and intelligence applied in making self-profit. There are other species who have survived just as long as humans, if not longer.

The appearance of two black vans racing down the road of a middle-class suburb unsettles all sense of peace and quiet. The engines slow down just enough to heave the heavy metal vehicles onto a dusty residential pavement.   The engines are silenced and Captain Oliver Ribb takes his time to climb out the passenger side of the van. He owns the confidence of a lion, strolling across the Savannah, afraid of nothing, content with being the hunter.