History's Impact

Could this really be the place? This rubble of what once had been a set of brownstones, the stones, wiring, and pieces of old furniture was staring back at me as if daring me to move them, with walls still standing here and there but mostly open to the sky. Charlie told me that this would be where I’d find the answers I was looking for. The mystery surrounding who I was and where I had come from. The reason that people looked at me sideways or crossed to the other side of the road when they saw me coming. It was lonely enough living nowadays, but to have only a few people who will even bother to talk to me, let alone be my friend, was a lot to deal with.

I rolled up my sleeves as I got ready to get ready to dive in. What was left of the Washington Monument loomed over me from miles away, now easily visible for miles after DC had been leveled during the war. Incredible to think that this desolate landscape used to be the home of not only the government, but thousands of people simply trying to live their lives. That was all gone now, leaving the rest of us scrambling to survive with what remained.

Well, there was no use delaying it. It was time to get digging.

Whoever lived in this house really liked furniture. Even though most things were flattened or splintered when the building fell, enough of the furniture had survived to tell me that the house had been lavishly decorated; the carved designs on the couch legs, the embroidery on the torn remains of the curtains. I could only imagine how beautiful the house must have been. This person must have enjoyed the finer things in life. Such things had less value now; anything that could be bartered with had already been carried away from these places. Charlie told me that DC used to be a place that showed the wealth disparity in America; some of the richest people lived here, but also people who struggled to get by and had to survive violence from both the government and each other.

I sucked in a sharp breath of air as something sharp sliced through my finger. What was that? A broken mirror, its pieces hidden among the rubble. My fault, really. I should have been paying attention instead of daydreaming about the past. A pair of gloves wouldn’t have been a bad idea either; I had been so excited to get some answers that I didn’t think to find a pair. I stuck my finger in my mouth to stop the bleeding, vaguely aware that I could be exposing myself to all kinds of diseases. But really, would dying be any better than this miserable life that we had been left with?

Getting back to the digging, this time with slightly more care. I may have daydreamed about dying to escape, but I didn’t actually want to die. Something about that seemed even more frightening than where I found myself now, practically alone and seemingly hated by people I’d never even met.

As time passed, I began to doubt if I was really going to find anything. Charlie might have just been trying to get me out of his hair...I was asking him a lot of questions. I couldn’t help it that no one talked about the Before around me. All that I knew I had learned on my own, listening to conversations before people realized I was the one listening. Obviously something must have happened back then to make everyone want to avoid me.

Was that...a jewelry box? Interesting that the looters hadn’t found it yet. Or they’d already seen it and decided that they couldn’t trade it for anything. I crawled over a fallen ceiling beam and carefully reached into the hole that contained the box. As I brushed away the dust and dirt, I realized that there was something familiar about it. It wasn’t nearly as extravagant as the other things I’d been finding in the house, but it had a very antique feel to it. Like something that had been passed down through generations.

Examining it, I saw a tiny lock hanging from the latch. I dug into my pocket and pulled out my toolkit, easily picking the lock with one hand.

There was only one thing inside - a heart-shaped locket. The golden heart seemed to have been well cared for, but it certainly was old. I set down the jewelry box and opened the locket.

My knees seemed to give out and I sank to the ground as I realized that I recognized the tiny face that was staring back at me. It was my mother. Younger than I remembered her, maybe about my age now. But it was definitely her.

What could this mean? Why would her picture be in this house, which clearly had belonged to someone with means?

….whose house was this?

I put the locket back into the jewelry box and carefully put it in my pocket. Then I began searching again, looking for any signs of who the house might have belonged to. It was probably a long shot, but I had to know.

There. It looked like a desk - broken in two with the legs missing - but a desk nonetheless. Reaching it, I unburied it as best I could and began pulling out drawers in the hope of finding any papers that might have the name of the house’s owner.

Most of the papers that I found were useless, ruined by the dirt and rains that had come since DC’s destruction. I was about to give up hope when I found what looked like an official document, typed on official letterhead with a flourishing signature at the bottom. But it was the name at the top that meant the most.

Myra Haftstead.

The woman who had advised the president that going to war was the best option.

The woman who had taken over the government after the president was killed and refused to surrender, not even to save the country.

The woman who had single-handedly been responsible for the destruction of America.

But why did she have a locket with my mother’s face in it?

I’d never been told exactly what happened to my mother. I knew that my father had died during the violence that occurred right after DC fell. Mother had protected me, hidden me away. She’d taught me never to go out alone and to keep my identity hidden. She told me that people would try to hurt me for something I didn’t do. I was only seven at the time; I couldn’t fully understand what was happening, only that the simple life I knew had been suddenly upended by the war.

We survived together until I was twelve; one day she went out to find food and never came back. Charlie found me living in our shelter and took me in. He told me that my mother was gone, and I had to move on without her. He seemed to know all about me and my past, even though I didn’t know much. He watched over me for the next ten years, continuing the lessons she had begun.

But now it all made sense.

The reason that people avoided me. The reason that some people outright tried to kill me. It wasn’t because I was a threatening figure, or because I was competition for shelter and resources in this terrible landscape.

It was because my grandmother had destroyed everyone’s lives.