[Writing Prompt: We know what’s out there, what happens next?]
Growing up I had always been afraid of what was out there, like the darkness of the night sky might swallow us up and we’d disappear before we knew what had happened. I think I always knew they were there so when they came I almost wasn’t surprised. My mind had played out every eventuality of their coming. They would have technology far superior to ours, of course they would, we can’t travel to other worlds, and that would be it.
It was, for most people. We won and lost over three quarters at the same time. There wasn’t a person unlucky enough to be alive who hadn’t lost someone. Country after country were declared desolate, no survivors. Yet, we just sort of continued. I remember hearing the town radio, put in place by the military or what was left of them, listing the countries whilst I was their sweeping my porch of debris and picking up branches from my yard. Everything was broken and yet we just still continued. The first weeks after we won were sombre but soon we laughed again.
It took months before all the bodies were buried in our town. We just kind of got on with it, there were too many to mourn. You’d go to the people in your family but if you went for every person you knew I think the grief would kill you before the famine had a chance. At some point a global government formed and started trying to enforce law and normality but no one was ready. Everyone just spent their time looking up. Waiting.
No one was particularly violent or angry, we’d lost too much for that. It sort of brought us all together in the worst way possible. At some point people moved on, rebuilt, but it was never the same. The schools had two teachers and sixteen children. The hospitals had more patients than bricks. We coped, we tried, we failed. Every night would bring a new suicide. People could cope with the grief; it was knowing what was out there that killed them.
Jennifer Pickering 