What is this world coming to?
This makes me sad, mad, and more than a little ashamed of where I live:
You can't even tell there's a war on. Back in the world wars, soldiers would be upset that no one seemed to notice what was going on, but people still cared. We still participated in the war effort, collecting scrap metal and anything else we could think of to provide some little bit of assistance.
Now, do you see any of that? There aren't any government made advertisements telling us what we can do to help the war effort. I wouldn't even know what steps I could take if I wanted to help.
Now, I'll admit, America is in a unique position. We haven't fought a war on our own soil for over one hundred years. We've taken strong steps to become isolated until we couldn't avoid contact anymore. We haven't been bombed during wartime, though there have been terrorist attacks. As if anyone can forget that nowadays - it's all we hear about anymore.
And so I present you with a story I wrote:.
It hatched from an egg of strongest steel. The egg was smooth, but not enough for a reflection. Cold. Clinical. Unforgiving. Then the process began. It was only one stray bullet, and it only grazed the surface, but it was enough. Metallic blue images moved just beneath the walls of the prison. Fear coupled with hate formed the chains that bound the pieces of the shell. Pride and jealousy battled for control of the reins. Things were lurking within.
And a tiny hairline crack offered a breath of the outside world. Angry blotches of rust and shame appeared and the scrabbling noise got louder and louder. Some of us heard it in our dreams now.
We knew that as soon as a claw or a tooth punctured the metal, its poison would not be able to be stopped. We had to stop it. Soddering would only rile up the beast more, and we still took pride in its beauty, despite the danger. And no matter how good our rivets were, they would get filed away from the inside. There seemed to be nothing that could keep hold of the beast.
So we took the only option available to us. The monster was appeased with pure gold. Any flaw in the complex structure was covered up with the precious metal. It was beautiful. And it was terrible. We had developed such a fatal fascination with the casing that we forgot about the animal inside of it. We nurtured it for so long that when the time came we went willingly to drink our own poison.
When it finally happened no one was expecting it. No one was alive who remembered what it had been like. A scream shattered the silence, carrying with it things that had not been dreamed of for generations. It was death and horror and blasphemy. It was heartbreak and the grief of widowed brides. It was worse than anything we had prepared ourselves for.
War Broke Out.
ETA: I messed something up with the LJ cut, so sorry that I can't fix it :\
You can't even tell there's a war on. Back in the world wars, soldiers would be upset that no one seemed to notice what was going on, but people still cared. We still participated in the war effort, collecting scrap metal and anything else we could think of to provide some little bit of assistance.
Now, do you see any of that? There aren't any government made advertisements telling us what we can do to help the war effort. I wouldn't even know what steps I could take if I wanted to help.
Now, I'll admit, America is in a unique position. We haven't fought a war on our own soil for over one hundred years. We've taken strong steps to become isolated until we couldn't avoid contact anymore. We haven't been bombed during wartime, though there have been terrorist attacks. As if anyone can forget that nowadays - it's all we hear about anymore.
And so I present you with a story I wrote:.
It hatched from an egg of strongest steel. The egg was smooth, but not enough for a reflection. Cold. Clinical. Unforgiving. Then the process began. It was only one stray bullet, and it only grazed the surface, but it was enough. Metallic blue images moved just beneath the walls of the prison. Fear coupled with hate formed the chains that bound the pieces of the shell. Pride and jealousy battled for control of the reins. Things were lurking within.
And a tiny hairline crack offered a breath of the outside world. Angry blotches of rust and shame appeared and the scrabbling noise got louder and louder. Some of us heard it in our dreams now.
We knew that as soon as a claw or a tooth punctured the metal, its poison would not be able to be stopped. We had to stop it. Soddering would only rile up the beast more, and we still took pride in its beauty, despite the danger. And no matter how good our rivets were, they would get filed away from the inside. There seemed to be nothing that could keep hold of the beast.
So we took the only option available to us. The monster was appeased with pure gold. Any flaw in the complex structure was covered up with the precious metal. It was beautiful. And it was terrible. We had developed such a fatal fascination with the casing that we forgot about the animal inside of it. We nurtured it for so long that when the time came we went willingly to drink our own poison.
When it finally happened no one was expecting it. No one was alive who remembered what it had been like. A scream shattered the silence, carrying with it things that had not been dreamed of for generations. It was death and horror and blasphemy. It was heartbreak and the grief of widowed brides. It was worse than anything we had prepared ourselves for.
War Broke Out.
ETA: I messed something up with the LJ cut, so sorry that I can't fix it :\