Godless

God. It was a town like any other town despite the holy nomenclature. I guess I thought I would always be safe here. The tree lined streets of suburbia. The quiet security of pristine picket fences. The low population and crime rate. It was not until the summer of 2024 when the world was on a brink of change. My son and I watched the news but no one knew what would happen at that time; including myself. Nothing could touch us in our tiny town. We were sleepy and quant and that big city stuff just did not happen here. We watched as the monuments to the errors of the past were destroyed so no one could remember but it was best to forget anyways. Order was becoming obsolete to make way for tolerance of all things. It became everything was okay or nothing was. Society was geared for a shift and thanks to social media, pod casts, and news outlets everything just started to become okay; they were already setting the stage.

The cities began to get out of control with violence. There was no authority, no police presence. Law enforcement was quick to break down. Break downs were encouraged and continued like wildfire. It was alarming. I remember when God decided the town would benefit financially from a lack of police force. It started there. It wasn’t long before the few locale bad boys or transients took advantage of the small town until the lawless ran the show. The richer town folk started to get special treatment and work out their own deals to stay safe. Our local government didn’t even fight the change. It was just too much too fast. They ran to hide in their two story suburban wonderlands thinking they were untouchable and hoping their deep pockets would protect them. They were probably laughing at selling out this once fair town of God. Meanwhile some of us fought and some just gave into it. I was a fighter and consigned that I would do everything in my power to weather this change.

My tenacity for fight and survival didn’t matter. Society continued to scream for change but not understand what change they were initiating. As cities burned, stores were ravaged, and people were dispersed from homes or were rounded up it was clear that the world was not what I remember growing up. A world gone mad. Well, that’s what I thought initially. How could things get this bad this quick? Turns out it does not take long at all for society to dismantle.

Our local government became non-existent. Our rights were becoming non-existent. Everything was being taken away or censored or manipulated. I remembered when they brought down the Catholic church in town. God was now Godless? It was not long before you heard about other religious institutions following in a grand scale and stunning progression that could only be spurred on by the ideologies of society. There just was not a need for those types of restrained beliefs anymore. Before you knew it there were pop up churches and basements and abandoned buildings trying to keep the faith for the faithful. Before you knew it if you did not believe what you were told you would be executed. Without faith or guidance people started to look to those in power for direction and support. No one wanted to be executed naturally.

Yes. I did say executed. It came to that point. People came out of basements and into the streets that were now filling with guards with guns and bad attitudes. Marshall Law but by now we had no idea who was really in charge. I assumed it was New World Order. I laughed at my friends in college when they talked about the conspiracies as they pulled out currency from their wallets to look for Illuminati clues. Guess it wasn’t so funny.

We quickly entered a world were you fell in line or you just did not exist. Before long armed guards took the rest of our rights and we were governed by the rich and influential in society. They did not care about our rights. They had something for us all and to get it meant we had to lose something. More like lose everything. We could not leave our homes freely or even own a home anymore. Rations were delivered to us. There was no employment for us. Technology was shut down so no one knew what was happening. Then the raids started. Doors busting in at 3am to check for contraband. Nothing dear could be kept precious. Everyone had something hidden. Stuck inside a mattress, under a floor board, a body cavity. There was no discrimination for a good hiding spot. Our personal single family residences were now dormitory styled housing for anyone they could cram in there. Children were taken from mothers for indoctrination at gun point. They would be fine if there was compliance. God could not survive this. Not this small town. Not us. We had voices to fight with not guns and we were outnumbered.

It was around 4:15am when the door to my shared room flew open. Me and five other women were thrown from our beds onto the floor while the guards commenced to rip and trash what meager items we had. Small tokens of comfort. Nothing was really ours anymore anyways, so I don’t know why I continued to get upset. The guards continued to take. Some guards would find contraband and were okay about it. Maybe they took it to sell on the black market or give as a gift. They had rights we did not. Sometimes you were beaten when they found something they did not like. Others were escorted out to a fate no one ever came back from to explain. I always wondered what they were hiding but I never did find that information out. There was no expecting anything anymore as I had come to expect.

My bunkie cried in the corner of the room as her hand drawn illustrations were ripped and scattered into pieces. She really did have them hidden well; she had opened the seam to a mattress and carefully rolled and tucked her papers inside. I watched all the time hoping that I was better at hiding items then my bunkie. I knew I was though. I had picked up one tidbit in my observation of how guards conducted their searches. They would never search the bathroom. The bathroom was disgusting; a guard would refuse to urinate in it. Tiles were falling off the wall to reveal water damaged dry wall beneath. I had stuck my hand back there once out of curiosity. Not like anything gets repaired around here. To my surprise there was a plywood beam running the back of the wall. Enough space to carefully put items. Its there were I placed my most precious item of all.

As the guards continued to turn and burn everything in our room they satisfied themselves with a chuckle at the expense of the ladies who had nothing left at this point; including their sanity. Muted sobbing emitted from someone in the corner but I’m not sure what happened to her. I was too focused on making sure my own carefully hidden item was still intact.

I got up and went into the bathroom. I tucked my arm back behind the broken tile and pulled from it a heart shaped locket. It was the only thing I had left. I opened it to see the picture of myself and my son and began to cry. God was dead. What we knew was dead. And all it took was change.