war

.�1:01 pm, President Carl A. Callahan is dead. He was shot in the chest when delivering his second Rebuilding speech. Police are still looking for the man who pulled the trigger but search will not go on much longer for the day. The nation mourns their loss today as the casket is rolled down Pennsylvania Avenue surrounded by the United States guard. This generation and the ones after it will remember him for aiding the French in their 2035 revolution and starting us on a track to rebuild America after the eminent WWIII.� Mom turned off the television after that, but I could still see the casket moving down the street being projected onto the screen by my mind. I could see the first lady Judith and her two sons William and Matthew looking straight at the other side of Pennsylvania Avenue and not being able to look when the casket drove by.
�Irva, turn that TV back on! This is important.� My dad shouted from the couch. I was on the other side of it and opened my eyes with a start.
Mother put her hands on her hips. �Jules, we need not show our children this. They don�t know what�s happening in the world.� My mother so na�ve, kept forgetting I was very coherent.
�I hear mother. I know that Hell is upon us.�
Mother sighed. �You should go check on your wee ones. I heard them this morning under your bed. The blast this morning must have scared them.�
�Poor lads.� I replied. There had been a bomb blast at about eight o�clock that morning. I remembered waking up to it, covering my head and ears. I finally got up from the tan couch and went into their room to find my children.
�Are you both alright?�
Aston stuck his nose out, red and little. �That was a loud one mommy. What happened?�
I got down on my knees and looked under the bed. �Our president died a couple days ago and the bad men thought the funeral was to be held early this morning, so they bombed us again.� Softening the blow wasn�t an option. �Where�s your sister? Did she climb under there with you?�
She popped out before Aston could answer me. �I�m here mommy.� Anique, in her yellow dress crawled out so I could see her, showing her underwear. �Those bad men scared me! They�re bad, bad men!� and she began to cry. I picked her up and put her cheek to mine.
�Shh� yes very bad men.� I swung her in my arms slowly. I wanted to cry with my baby girl in my arms, but I held back. She sobbed softly in my shoulder as she always did. She never screamed when she cried. She only let out soft weeps. Aston grabbed hold of my leg and balled. I put my free hand to his back and patted it gently.
In my opinion, it was the French who started WWIII with their revolution. I remember watching it on the news and hearing the screams of the innocent people each day, watching them get shot and lying in the streets, blood gushing out of their skulls. It changed a person. It either made you stronger in your religion or made you doubt and turn your back on it forever. For me, it was the latter.
I slid Anique carefully out of my arms and set her on the bed. �It�s ok though. We have a roof over our heads. We�ll be fine.� Anique wanted to be picked up again, but I sent her and her brother to get some lunch. They wouldn�t get much. I myself hadn�t eaten yet and didn�t want to, knowing my situation. I sat on the bed alone, looking into the mirror on the other side, looking at what I had become. I was thin, unbearably thin from it. My skin was like chalk, but without the soft comforting grip one could get from it. It matched the bags under my bloodshot eyes. My black shirt was torn at the left sleeve, displaying a red rose tattoo on my shoulder about three inches long and not quite in full bloom. My jeans were worn and full of holes at the knees. I had been wearing those clothes for two weeks now. There was basically nothing left. I had other old clothes but I never had the time or the energy to change. The blue color had faded out of my hair, showing the pale strands of white blond. The black polish had withered from my fingernails and now there were only traces of it left. I had to take my eyebrow and labret rings out, I couldn�t keep up with their maintenance. They left small scars.
I looked around at my parents� bedroom. There was basically nothing there besides a bed, a dresser, and a worn out rug. I remembered lying on it as a child. It was soft then. Now it was prickly and rough against the skin. That was the way the whole apartment was. The living room was small and we guessed it was at first used as an attachment to put a washer and dryer in. There wasn�t actually a kitchen, but a stove and a coffee table we used to eat off of. My room, the one I shared with my children, was at first supposed to be a baby�s room. We shared a small twin bed, squeezing in as best as we could and a dresser. My children had no toys until mother made my Anique a doll out of old scraps and Dad made a toy car for Aston. They are my lifesavers. They let me live back in their home even after a fire got our old apartment. I guess they needed some company after Nathan and Jeff went to war. Jeff was my husband and Nathan my brother. The war showed no mercy and the letters came all too soon. It seemed we hadn�t said goodbye before it happened, just come back. We had a bathroom but had to run a hose through the shower for it to work. There was no hot water, just cold showers. It was horrible when Aston got sick, we had to heat the water with the stove. There was no working sink or toilet either. Everything fell into the sewer. As long as we kept the lid down, we weren�t bothered by it.
We were such a great family. It was mother, dad, Nathan, and I. We had each other, through even the worst times. When I was 16, I had Anique and Aston, Jeff was shocked but agreed to help me take care of our newborn children. He asked me to marry him and apologized to my family for doing such a thing to me. I stared at my golden wedding band still around my finger and I fooled with it, sinning it around my finger. There was never bitterness between my kin and my husband. We all lived close by one another. Nathan loved to come over and see our children and take care of them while Jeff worked at the hospital as a nurse�s aid and I worked as a secretary there. We lived on our own and we never needed any assistance from our parents and then this happened. We were not broken, but we are a cracked family, staying together by cheap glue.
�Mom, Gramma is talking to the wall again.� Anique shouted from the door, looking at me with informant. I smiled at her, a false gesture I had gotten used to putting on and looked in the living room.
There was mother shouting at the far wall. �You know Nathan, you should pay more attention to your sister, and she needs encouragement. Aston�s starting to like you, why don�t you go play with him?� It had been like that for about a year. She would just go to any wall or inanimate object in the house and talk to it as if it were Nathan. I was beyond pitied and I had gotten used to the fact she wouldn�t be the same again, none of us would.
I went back into their room, sat on the bed, and tears came to my eyes. As the past flashed through my mind, it hurt too much too see yet I couldn�t turn my eyes away from it. Like my children, I wanted to hide under a bed until everything was over, but I couldn�t. I had to be strong for my family.
BOOM! I heard it from the North and it was too close to ignore. My children ran into the room and huddled close to me, the weight of their bodies almost pushed me down but it felt comforting to have them with me. �Mommy! Another big boom!� Anique shouted as the sound hit our ears.
�Come here baby, get close to mommy!� I huddled her under me. There was another one and it was even closer.