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�This is insane,� I muttered, peering out of the window. �It�s ridiculous.� Smoke filled the air as piles of rubbish and car parts burned on the street corners. Shop windows were cracked and riddled with bullet holes. A mail truck was overturned in the gutter, also burning, its contents littering the damp pavement.
Ever since the revolt, life hadn�t been the same. Things had only gone from bad to worse. I had wanted no part of it from the start. It was all propaganda. History was destined to repeat itself. No one ever meant what they said, or did what they promised. But I had had no choice. It was a lose-lose scenario. I chose to lose my freedom and sense of safety rather than my life. How I regret that now.
There was an angry shout off in the distance, followed by frightened screams and a shower of machine gun fire. I cringed, shrinking closer to the bare walls of my apartment. I drew back from the window. When they were angry, the last thing you wanted was to be spotted with your nose where it didn�t belong. The window was broken anyway, and the smell of smoke and charred rubber was seeping in. I withdrew still further.
I had lost virtually all of my material possessions in the raids. They destroyed my furniture and everything else that was too large to take, and took everything else. They took my locket, which my husband had given to me before he left to join them. He had thrust it into my hand and, unable to speak, he turned and left me standing, alone. He was gone, and my mind had just drifted�now I had nothing, except for the rickety chair in the corner in which I was sitting.
Underneath my chair I kept a small box, the only other thing I had managed to guard. It was composed of a richly colored cedar wood, with an intricately carved vine pattern on the lid. I treated it as though it was an infant, lifting it gently, cradling and rocking it in my weakened arms. As I clutched it, it seemed to give off a deep, mysterious warmth, providing me very briefly with some semblance of a sense of security. I sighed wistfully, brushing a tear from my right eye. Everything was falling apart.
I opened the box. In it, I kept a journal, my private thoughts that I couldn�t stand to keep bottled up. I wrote very brief entries every few days. There was a need to conserve writing implements, of course. No room for frivolity, not now, not ever. I leafed through the wrinkled, yellowing pages and removed them. There was nothing beneath them, of course, but I had half-heartedly expected to see the gleaming silver of my dear, departed locket, lying there like old times. That was where I had kept it safe, never taking it out except to admire it, to reminisce, to try to reconnect with my obliterated past.
There had been an incident. It was three weeks ago, or more- the days had begun to blur in the face of this adversity. The day of the second raid, the day that it had all hit me at once. Everything I fought to repress beneath the mask of neutrality rushed to the very surface- my loneliness, my feelings of doom, of powerlessness. I had been sitting in my chair as usual, cradling the locket gently, moments from surrendering to the pain. It was then that I heard the muffled shouting. My head snapped up�my emotion-blurred eyes cleared. They were coming. I stood up on unstable legs and backed hopelessly to the rear wall. Blend in, I thought, blend with it�and they burst the door in. The locket clattered to the floor and was spotted, seized, stolen. In a sequence of hastily animated panels, they flooded toward me, weapons raised in bludgeon stance, and I shielded my head, eyes stamped shut. A scream�my own? No, from a distance. I opened my eyes to see them retreating out the busted door and down the stairs. They had left me alive�I feigned a shred of relief.
I replayed the scene�coming to terms. Then my eyes returned to the pages of memories. I hadn�t written in nearly a week, as I was trying to conserve what little unused paper was left. No point in repeating myself�and this existence was repetition. Today, however, had been a bad day. The shooting had been frequent, close by, and the fires were less sporadic. I was feeling miserably contemplative. I removed a pencil from my box and found a paper with empty space. I began to write:
�They have been very active today. Very violent, unrelenting-� I broke off as I heard the explosion outside, not more than two blocks away. I warded off the shudders and fought to pick up where I had left off writing. I shook my head�no point in being nonchalant�
�This is useless. Everything is useless. I feel nothing anymore. Nothing. There is no point. There is no point in living�- my hand paused, trembling violently- �so why should I?�
Numb and shaking, I folded up the paper and put it back in the box. It was the last time that I would write- there was no point anymore.
I placed the box back under the chair. As I did so, the chair gave a great creak as though struggling to remain in one piece. I sat back up quickly. The blank white wall glared at me, taunting me. I glared back. It was like looking into a mirror. I saw myself- pale, empty, lifeless�the portrait of futility.
It was growing dark outside. It was dusk. I loathed the night- the blackness pressing in on all sides, like tar, suffocating, smothering. They were always most active at night, creeping like rats through the cracks in the foundation. It was when most of the raids took place. I could not feel safe, though I knew I had nothing more that they could want. They had already passed up my chair, and my box, and they seemed fine with letting me keep my excuse for a life. Perhaps they pitied me somehow. Drawn, filthy, pathetic, quivering in a corner, eyes bulging at the stringy hair caught in their lids�but they couldn�t feel, couldn�t grasp emotion. No sympathy, no compassion, just blind hate and violence. They were mocking me. They mocked every one of us that remained.
