Bad Air

This world isn’t great, but we manage. Somehow, I mean. Manage. Me and my family.

My grandparents like to show me pictures of how the world used to be, so different from what it is now. Blue skies, clouds that came and went, flourishing flora and fauna, breathable air. Can you imagine? But those are all things that used to be. It’s not like that now. The sky is usually a blood red from the fires that burn from the Rebellion that happened all over, but it can be a sickly pale yellow when the fire season is over. That’s when the dust and debris that constantly floats in the air is much easier to see. But with how dirty the air looks all the time, even on good days, I sometimes prefer the blood red sky. At least it lets me pretend. A little. As much as one could, anyway, in this dystopian world.

There are no flora or fauna like there were years ago. None of that stuff exists anymore. Nowadays, trees are marred looking—their trunks black, their leaves shriveled and a sickening grey-green. The animals, once healthy and beautiful, have all mutated from the air. They’re still edible, usually, when you need them to be and hunger won’t let you be picky, but just be sure to steer clear of their lungs, you know. Damned if you don’t.

Where I am, there are huge piles of rubble that the District never bothered to clean up after the Rebellion. Apparently those huge piles of rubble were once tall buildings called factories, and the world failed to stop them from polluting the air, and that’s why the air is so hard to breathe right now.Sometimes I try to think about what that would have been like; breathing actual good air without the aid of any filters or machines. I can’t imagine...I dream of taking a deep breath without my mask, filling my lungs with clean, sweet air without choking...and then I gasp and wake up, in a cold sweat, and choke, because the air sucks. Those dreams always leave me feeling angry when I wake up, and I hate having those dreams because I already wake up fighting. Those of higher class—usually with pale skin—have discreet gas masks to prevent themselves from ever having to breathe the bad air and have oxygen filters installed in every room of their home. They live in the White District, far from where the rest of us live. Not that they really have to go outside to begin with, since they have enough money to pay people to do their errands for them. According to my grandmother, they are the same people who owned or supported those factories. I guess money lasts when you have it and there’s no such thing as “trickle-down economics'' anymore. But really, was there ever? The rich keep their money and only get more as “reparations”—which is actually the money the Black District has to dish out just to keep our shelters. The lower classes who formed the protests are forced to pay this since we are held responsible for their loss of their companies after the Rebellion. This is the penance we pay. I live in the Black District, a step down from the Grey District. Grey District is what used to be called middle class. They have enough to live off of and live semi-comfortable lives. It’s the Black District where things aren’t as great.

We, as a whole, receive little money from the government. We’re deemed irresponsible because we are forced to rob to live because we were already disadvantaged prior for being blamed for the Rebellion. We rarely even have gas masks, and far fewer have oxygen filters. Those things are expensive. And the costs to get better from breathing in all that air from our inadequate protection equipment is so much worse. So, slowly, we just die off, but we’re kept alive long enough so that the White and Grey Districts can really run us dry.

So yeah, it sucks, but we’re here, and there’s not much we can do about it.

I was told that the youngest generation, several years ago, had potential. They were known as Gen Z or something or other, and they were convinced that they’d rule the world one day. And, y’know, they almost did. My great-great grandparents were Gen Z. Sometimes I wonder what they were like. But mostly, I don’t. They died from the pollution years ago, so there’s no telling.

A lot of people have been dying, actually. According to my grandmother, the population of the world is rapidly decreasing. There used to be close to 7 or so billion of us on the planet and now there’s only about 4.8 billion. She won’t tell me why, and says I can figure it out, but I dare say it’s from the bad air. It’s the usual cause of demise. It looks particularly bad today, and suggests debris rain today. Sucks that there’s school, because I’m probably not going. Debris rain is horrible. Sometimes acid comes down with it just to really remind us of the state of the Earth.

Besides, I skip all of my classes anyway and usually follow my friends to the huge piles of rubble and sneak into it to gather old-world trinkets, like weird candy that’s somehow still edible but so sour that your face pinches in. If you dig deep enough, you’ll find the packaging. It says something in Late English, but it reads something like “Sour Patch Kids”.I was barely able to learn to translate that, because the teachers aren’t paid, so they’re not interested in teaching, just as the students aren’t interested in learning. The only reason we move grades at all is because the District wants us to break our bones working as soon as possible. In the Black District, you’ll get hired even with several felonies under your belt because we haven’t got much choice here. Things are especially limited because a lot of children don’t make it past infancy. My brother didn’t. And since funerals are too expensive, and there’s no dirt nearby to bury him in, he’s been buried in the makeshift rubble-cemetery a few blocks down the street. He was only here for so long, but the first thing he did was hold on to my mother’s heart shaped locket once he came out. I remember watching his tiny fists search for something to hold and my mother’s locket was the first thing he found. When I visit his grave sometimes, if I remove a few stones… I’ll be lucky enough to see hints of gold through the rocks and be reminded of how happy we all used to be.

But this world is okay, we manage… Sort of. What can I say? I expect to die by next week anyway.