Bound by Blood

Sweat pooled in my brow as I awoke to excruciating heat; the power outages that had become so common had again caused the air-conditioner to turn off and left me reeling in the stillness of the dry air. We had been assured that the power outages would no longer be an issue with large investments in wind farms and renewable energy. It was strange; the people like my sister Karen had gone from denying climate change to sustainability extraordinaires so quickly that we had to wonder if they knew something they weren’t telling us.

Sleeping was no longer an option due to the piercing heat, but it was all I wanted to do. I reached for my phone on the bedside table and, like an addiction, began scrolling the news knowing that nothing there would bring me anything but pain. Instantaneously, my brain was pummeled with world events that I scrambled to understand. “Sinkhole takes all of Darwin”, “Tornado wipes out Cairns”, “Fresh Hope as Global Environmental Cabinet is launched”. I froze. This was the first headline I'd seen in months that didn’t leave me wanting to crawl into a ball and cry until it was over. I read on; “New powers have been granted to a team of professionals set to target the environmental and social issues stemming from global warming. The team, headed by Brad Pitt-”. I stopped. Fuck them. Another front… Just like the Peace Wards, it’s all for fucking show. “Fuck you, Karen”, i laughed.

I dragged myself out of bed and began making my “goo” breakfast; it was hilarious to think that people used to pay a premium for this stuff as fake meat. All our nutrients conveniently formed in a patty; lab-grown and apocalypse proof meals. Not content with the sucker punch I'd given myself with the Daily Mail earlier, the news blared in the background on my emergency-battery tv while I consumed my delicious, delicious lumps.

I have a bizarre sense of pride when I see her on the tv. My sister; strong, eloquent, funny, charming and drop-dead gorgeous. I know she’s just doing a job, and everything she does is in direct opposition to everything I believe in; but she’s all I have left after our parents passed. Of course, when I say it like that it sounds peaceful and natural; like they’d simply died of old age and not been forcibly conscripted for “peaceful” (but compulsory) deaths for being over the age of 50. Earth was over its capacity, and life was for the young.

Karen came back on the tv and I smiled with pride, momentarily forgetting that this meant that some form of bad news was about to be announced. She reminds me so much of our mother. Confidently, she began reciting her speech and slowly my jaw dropped. The Mars program was coming into effect- they’d given up on Earth and the most important people would be moving to Mars which they’d been quietly fixing up. She told us not to worry, that there would be multiple trips and they were taking applications for future trips now. A tingle down my spine left me stiff as I wondered why my sister hadn’t mentioned this to me last week when we’d been cheerfully splitting a bottle of wine over a three-course meal of Beyond lumps. I could see by her background that she was already on the ship, celebrating.

Rage, betrayal and fear washed over me and before I knew it tears were exploding from my eyes, instantaneously evident by the sting of the salt against the scratches on my face. She hadn’t even said goodbye. Suddenly, my door flung open and my neighbour and her two children came in, demanding to know what was going on. More and more of my neighbourhood began arriving and my home became a summit. You see, these people had become family to each other. We shared supplies between ourselves, and we took care of each other when sick. I watched my neighbours two children for a week when she needed to break down over the state of the world privately, and she trusted me to do so. We collectively lamented as we discussed our applications for the next ships. I’d never mentioned to them that my sister was the face of the people that oppressed us, and I definitely wouldn’t now.

I patted the arms of the children surrounding me comfortingly- there was a time when children would have been protected from the knowledge that would concern them, but that time had long passed. Their childhoods were no longer an exploration of life, and more a harsh lesson in survival. I would protect them from the pain, but I could not protect them from the destruction.

The window behind me shuddered, and I thought it was all over and hunched to cover the people around me. I thought of my life until now and remembered fondly the years until I was 23- beyond that wasn’t worth remembering… But it was not the end, not for me and not for us. A large ship came crashing into the street, an announcement playing loudly for all to hear: “There are no more ships coming to collect you. The genetically superior will build a new society on Mars, and you and your leaders can do as you wish with what’s left of yours. These are the people that knew what was going on and did nothing to stop us”.

There were no sirens, and no ambulances and all evidence of a functioning society had been wiped almost instantaneously. The chaos that ensued around me, enveloping my city and no doubt the entire world, extended beyond the normal looting and pillaging and became primal as I could feel the anger in the people that hit the streets. My neighbours began smashing things and running. This was beyond protesting, beyond hoarding supplies and waiting it out, beyond protecting themselves… It was beyond hope and everyone now knew it. I shuddered, knowing that everything that happened now was no longer about survival.

Chanting “Eat the Rich” echoed around the open emptiness as I saw my sister running towards me from the ship. It resembled a lion amongst deer. I’m not surprised she’d come to me for help; ever since we were small I was her protector- checking under her bed for monsters, protecting her from the real ones when society crashed and teaching her everything I knew about diplomacy that flung her to power.

All the bravado, the superiority that she oozed before was gone and she reeked of fear. She looked at me, with her large blue eyes encouraging me to remember our bond. “Char, i’m so sorry. I didn’t have a choice. I thought… I knew you’d be okay. You’re strong, you’d survive anything. Please, help me?”.

I gave her a look, deep into her eyes and for a moment I flashed back to us sitting on a swing set, our dad taking turns pushing each of us so high. We both beamed right into the corners of our eyes as our mother smiled back at us, watching on from the porch with her blue eyes shining in sync with the blue on her locket. Waking up from my trance, I watched as my brain melded the imagery of her face away to the face of my sister, leaving only that locket delicately around her neck. That necklace that we had fought over. That necklace that we had both wanted as part of our inheritence.

I grabbed the necklace fiercely, and tore it off her, breaking the chain but retrieving the heart-shaped locket. I opened it to view the family portrait my mother had held within it only to see that it had been replaced with a photo of Karen- she’d been holding herself close to her heart, and something about that made me laugh and snapped me out of the intensity of my emotions.

Suddenly feeling free and light, I gave her a final glimpse as I yelled “she’s here!”, grabbed my figurative pitchfork and closed my front door as I dragged her away from safety. This is the end, and i’m sure as fuck not spending it protecting someone out of obligation. I am the lion, and she is the deer and all I'm hungry for is revenge.