Glitter and sparkles, the ground looked like a roller rink of silver streamers left over from a high school prom. The snake had developed camouflage genetics decades before but never quite mastered this bright burnt spoon colour. It was anti nature, against anything the snake should have to live in. As it was it morphed its skin into a dull grey. Better then the brown field mouse it was hunting not far away. Mice had not adapted to this fresh hell but they scavenged well and yes there was burnt meat everywhere.
The snake slithered closer, and the mouses heart grew rapid sensing danger but unaware from which direction. He was the last of his clan, most gone to predators, some to radiation remnants, and a few to just giving up the will to live.
The snake slithered closer but the ground changed terrain and it crossed a small twig that snapped. The small brown field mouse bolted in the opposite direction to live another hour, perhaps even a day. And the snake hissed at the twig, out of hunger, and disappointment. Its ancestors looked on it from the celestial plane laughing at this hideous colored thing, that couldn’t even capture a poor brown mouse.

The sound of the wind in her ears spoke of violence. Violence perpretrated by animals just katowing to their normal survivalistic nature. She tried to close out the sounds as she stood on the edge of the ravine, her hair blowing in rhythm with each gust.
Steady she must be now, steady in her resolve. She knew later the small transport would come below. She knew exactly the timing of her shot, and if it was not precise, she knew that it would most likely be her last heist. She took a deep steadying breath. A deer walked across the ravine, it’s ears not picking up her breathing. She looked at the animal, it’s brown hide would be valuable come winter. But in her mind she had bigger fish to fry.
She could hear the engine coming from the distance, a loud obnoxious sound , when surrounded by all this beauty. She took off her large pack, retrieving a long serrated dagger from within. She knelt at the edge of the ravine and waited for the finishing blow. 

She had to be precise.

In a way the language was as blurred as the reconnaissance, a limerick instead of a straight line. She loved him once, this was a fact she wouldnt deny. But she did not love him anymore. It was hard to see how she did the first time, under a maple tree, his hands rubbing the skin on the top of her head as she rested on his chest. Every breath he took was jagged by smoke and a small case of asthma undiagnosed and undisclosed.
The clouds parted into many small shapes, each a dream, a vision of somewhere else. The type of love that only happens with youth, rottened by years of corruptions and small glances.
In a way the language was a thing of the past. A communication style no one ever knew how to speak.
She loved him once, but she did not love him anymore.
And that fact was lost on no one, not even the poor man with the undiagnosed and certainly undisclosed case of asthma.
He smoked his cigarette and watched her be taken away by the morality police. He might have smiled, if she hadn’t just broken his heart.

In a small cabin in the West Virginia mountains Sylvia Mackie painted.
She painted whatever her heart desired that day. Sometimes it was the blue bird that was visiting her feeder.
In the winter it was the large tree in her yard, its branches weighted down by the acid snow laying on top of it.
There were days she painted her memories of other humans from her life before. They looked happy and made her happy for a brief moment in time.

In a small cabin in the West Virginia mountains Javier Mackie watched his wife paint.
Sometimes he watched with joy seeing her pass the days with a hobby that brought respite.
Sometimes he watched her with envy, hating that she could so consume herself with something that would never be seen by anyone then themselves.
In the days he would go out hunting to provide for their subsestance he wondered if she would even notice he was gone. Would she stop painting long enough to eat?

In a small cabin in the West Virginia mountains lived Javier and Sylvia Mackie, two people who had lived a life in the time before. 

Two people who found a way to keep living, to keep creating at times, to remember things of times past, and to preserve in oil and canvas, some memory of the time current, in a small cabin in the West Virginia mountains.

12: 

The beds were lined up six deep, each one with a single white cotton sheet, and a rough but sturdy wool blanket.
Each occupant had one small chest under the bed. It contained a pair of jeans, washed daily, underwear, and a plain white t shirt. No other items were allowed for the occupants own safety. A small speaker was in the left corner of this room. It was quiet now while they slept, but during the day it would play a weird haunting song of piano keys. The same song played all day from wake to sleep.
It was enough to drive anyone insane.
Outside this room was a long hallway, lights fluorescent and humming with electrical madness. And 11 other rooms all exactly the same lined the hallway.
Three attendants were tasked with keeping everyone clean, fed, and alive. Occasionally a fight would break out in a room. The attendants did not intervene. Hopefully everyone would survive and then they would change the rooms of the offenders.
The pay was too low to do otherwise. The attendants ate the same meals as those locked in those twelve rooms. They slept the same hours. 

One would have to ask, were they trapped here? In a grey building on a green hill, with twelve rooms, six occupants each,  watching the days past bye, listening to a piano play.

The world wasn’t flat after all. Despite all the doubters, despite the fact that you could see the curvature from outer space, indeed the world wasn’t flat.
The vaccines weren’t the things murdering people. Despite all the doubters, despite that people with the vaccine lived long and healthy lifes, indeed guns were killing more people. 

But to J. Hilder Baum, none of this mattered. He rose to power on a flat earth platform. In fact his business made its fortune plowing through, over and under what was once known as the Colorado rockies.
And now he arrested scientists, math teachers, and worst of all Atheists. He knew there power rested in knowledge of a world before, of a world of free thought.
And he wasn’t going back.

A man fearful of knowledge, but a man with all the money to buy his own version of the truth. And no one dared ask meaningful questions.

People came and went from the cobblers storefront, none of them carrying shoes with them. People came and went to the florist but all the plants had died long long ago,
Chozen was tired of watching the bun stand at the end of the street, hoping for a rush for one hour a day and the rest spent counting bills from a government that no longer exists. His mother opened the shop and with a lack of a government led to an lack of institutions of higher learning. Chozen remembers the sun hitting his mother’s face as she taught him how to make the buns which now sustained his livelihood. The sun was warm on his skin that day and his mother’s smile added to the fire in his memory.
Chozen long ago forgot his mothers features, her smell, and her voice. But he remembers the sun that day, long long ago,

9.

The neon light sparked and smelled of sulphur. It mixed well with the chicken shack playing old blues tunes out of a loudspeaker above the kitchen. Marcus Samuel Jones had worked next door at the clothing shop for about three years. It would have been an ideal situation except Marcus was a vegetarian. So he smelled the mixture of sulphur and grease every day for three years without earning to buy anything. The owner of the chicken place would smile and wave at him for a while when he first started working there, but over the days, months and years passed, they didn’t even look in each others view anymore. 

Marcus Samuel Jones didn’t look many places anymore. He felt the seam on a velvet pair of trousers, the line perfect in every way. A fine piece of work, most likely done in Idaho or some other third world area. He wondered about the people there, the smoke from the last bombs probably still hovering, the air ripe with lingering death and those who breathed it in most likely shortening their brief, hard life.
The doorbell rang and he looked up into the eyes of the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. 

He ran his hand along the velvet seam on the perfect pair of trousers. 

8.

“Even it hasn’t been that long, shes none of your business anymore”. The way the stranger said it  rang trueer then all the advice he has ever heard. So he took the beer, shotgunned it, threw the can to the ground and went to sleep.

Changing of the guard, a refresh,
Doesn’t matter if its love or hate,
take it in stride, and do the best you can for each other.