When The Darkness Came

Ten years ago the darkness rolled in unexpected like a deadly wave. It poisoned everything it came in contact with. The trees dried out, they no longer bloom and shed leaves. All they do is rot their trunks turning to charcoal and dying bit by bit.

I was old enough to remember life before it but still young enough to acclimate to our new way of life. Half of the population became sick when the second wave of darkness came through, just a few months after the first.

My mother was one of the victims of the plague the second wave brought. She suffered greatly for months, writhing in agony holding on to every last hope she could cling onto. The medicine had run out long ago. The little bit of technology we had still running were left to major city centers, supermarkets. If you had a home and no generator you were left struggling to get by day by day. On the other hand if you did have a generator you became the target of thieves.

Life became hard, social norms were abandoned once supplies became scarce. A year into the darkness the thin thread that held society together snapped and the world erupted into chaos. Well, my world did at least.

We were forced out of our home when military rolled in at full force. I remember everything moving in slow motion as they marched out in groups of four or five all of them holding rifles in their hands. They didn’t even bother to knock they kicked down the doors and dragged families out of their homes; husbands, wives, children. They dragged them all out kicking, screaming. I remember watching as they separated everyone. Women they loaded into one truck as they screamed and cried desperately trying to reach for their husbands and children.

The men tried to fight back but it was all in vain. Most of them ended up with bloody noses for trying to fight back against the men with the guns. They were loaded into a separate truck from the women. The children just screamed, crying at the top of their lungs as they were hauled into yet another truck.

Families separated and loaded up like cargo, and we would be next.

I vaguely remember my father running to my room saying a jumble of words that were too urgent, too slurred with worry for me to make out.

“Keep it safe.” Was the only thing I remember hearing clearly as he shoved something in my hand and ran.

I don’t know if he told me to run or stay. All I can see is him running away out the back door and not looking back once. I should’ve been sad, or scared but I wasn’t in the slightest.

He left me with the only thing that gave me any comfort at that time. My mother’s locket. A beautiful golden, heart shaped locket that I had never been able to open.

That’s where they found me, sitting on my bed staring at my locket. They lead me out, all of them flanking my sides, I never made a fuss. They lead me to the truck and took me to the facility, trained me, made me into a killing machine made me work for them.

I committed atrocities for these people all because they were trying to hide what the darkness really was. What truly hid under a veil of smoke that claimed so many lives all those years ago. All for the greed of those who would be in power.

That was ten years ago. That was before the locket opened. That was before I knew what I was meant to do.

Now I’m going to watch the whole world burn.