Young Writers Society

There are many things that humankind does not know.

Of course, they do not behave as such. People walk around believing they understand everything, but, clearly, that is a very wrong way of thinking.

That thinking has shaken the world’s very foundations, turned friends and family on one another in a desperate vying to stay alive. It has ripped across the Earth like a plague, far worse than anything man has ever encountered. It has made what lies here today.

Dust. Rubble. Echoes of screams in a near-silent land.

In the ruins of a once-magnificent building, at the very heart of what some might have called the greatest nation in the world, three screens flicker. Static flits across them like lightning. Fallen stone litters the ground around them, bleaching the dirt into a sickly grey, but miraculously, strangely, the screens are intact.

On them, figures dance.

One reads 11:59:00 PM, Dec. 31, Yemen. A child writhes amid the static. Ribs stretch through dirt-coated skin. His eyes are small and sunken. Every frantic move he makes appears to be a last beautiful explosion before his death, but somehow he continues to dance. Emaciated arms that are too small for his body reach toward the sky like a call to gods who don’t answer. Maybe in some twisted celebration, or in a desperate plea. A bloated stomach gives the illusion of a sated appetite, but hunger shines in his eyes. Not just for food--for vengeance, young as he is, a bitter hatred for the ones who had too much but gave none.

The next. 11:59:15 PM, Dec. 31, Central African Republic. The young woman’s dress hangs too loose on her figure, her limbs like twigs. A worn, soot-dusted respirator clings to her face. She never stops her frenetic dancing, but every so often she will hack a cough that shakes her thin frame. Red stains the dirt where she spits, and she dances over the crimson without pause. She’s young, barely a woman, but something about her hides it. Perhaps the wrinkles lining her body, or the way she stares into the camera with a gaze far too old. She knows how true suffering feels. Pain is of time immemorial, and although welcoming it takes decades to learn, some master it within the little time they have. There is no saving her now, no tonic or cure--not that she would have received one, anyway.

11:59:30 PM, Dec. 31, Iraq. It is difficult to say which army the torn, blood-spattered uniform belongs to. Under the mask that veils much of the figure’s faces, nothing is given away. Nothing but the figure's manic movements accompanying the same haunting rhythm as the rest. Although the cameras have no sound, one can almost hear the lilting music that crackles out from the screen. No one can tell whether the figure can hear the music. The battered boots they wear sweep up dust clouds that wreath around them as they dance, making them appear wraith-like. With the memories that linger at each battlefield, of home and faces soldiers will never see again, this figure may very well be a ghost of what once was. Nameless, as soldiers are preferred to be. It is easier to drag a nobody off a battlefield.

It is 11:59:45 PM, December 31st. There is one more being that remains, one that stands just beyond the screens.

Their face flashes between young and old, from glass-smooth to carved with deep wrinkles. Their hair, eyes, height, limbs--every physical feature phases from one variation into the next, never pausing, a beautiful, horrifying spectrum. And with each transition, every version of the humans who once ruled this world, they dance. For the food this once-great nation refused to send, for the medicine it refused to deliver, for the bombs and missiles it refused to restrain. Every single one of the people lost flares briefly in this final, grim display.

The four figures all dance in sync. Their movements are wild, but they move together in a frenzied routine that should have been impossible. It has been years, decades since such abysmal chasms have torn throughout the Earth, but they are together again. United under destruction. Connected through blood and hatred and broken promises.

When the clocks on the screen tick to midnight, when the year becomes 3000, the figures stop. They bow.

Their skin begins to peel from their skeletal frames, revealing cracked bones underneath. Even those start thinning into an ivory dust that floats away like dandelion seeds on a gentle wind. Nothing is left except stone and ashes that drift into the same smoke-screened sky. It is what great nations have risen and fallen for, what citizens have fought for, only achieved at the world’s end. An ironic finale. Equality between all.

One by one, the screens gutter into darkness.