Hogweed

Bits of debris and gravel crunch under my feet. The sound of scraping, squeaking and dragging fills my ears, and sulfur and decay fill my nostrils, yet it’s eerily quiet. There’s a sprawl of both human and animal bones, mixed in various states of decay, as if only half ground and churned meat—a flesh and bone salad. I hear the clink of my locket, heart shaped, the only remanence of family I have left, and yet bits of humanity are splashed everywhere, reminding me of what once was.

Everything changed so slowly, and then suddenly. The only warning was watching a Blueblood-filled rocket ship blast away before the storms, plagues, tornadoes, earthquakes, and nuclear reactors went off. Then there was the screaming, the anarchists, the cancers, and the looters. Now, if there’s anyone left, I sure don’t know about them. The only reason I survived was because I was already a mutilated freak. Not much else anyone could take from me. I was strangely immune to the radiations and plagues, and I was too hideously disfigured for anyone to look twice. No one wanted me in their cults, so there was no one to swear loyalty to or declare as a mortal enemy.

After all was said and done, and the cults, gangs, and anarchists had killed themselves off, I scavenged. I took the leftovers. A roach. A raccoon. Surviving by any means necessary. I took from putrid corpses, from abandoned homes and stores, trash cans, filth, and it was easier for me because I could go places those others could not go, for fear of radiation levels. I was extremely lonely, but my mother’s locket kept me company. It allowed me to pretend that she loved me. I stole it right off her decaying neck. It was like snatching her heart, in a way. She was so fond of it. She clenched it every time she saw me. Her knuckles would pale around the golden entity, ornamented with jewels. I never opened it. She never saw me open it. She never opened it around me.

It was almost peaceful, the silence. There was no one to stare at me. No one to flinch or run or gag or stare. This should’ve happened sooner. We all were flying to our demise, from the time the teachers taught about the dying Great Barrier Reef. But humans are greedy, and refuse to come together, even in their greatest time of need, so the rich kept pilfering the earth and the poor were too disorganized to do anything about it, thinking they’d save that problem for the next generation. Caught in their own rat race. And so, it continued. Gone were the trees. Gone were fertile soil and icebergs. Bye to the polar bears and ozone layers as the planet fought over credibility and genuine versus pseudo-science. Fertility was lost and people were too busy making money to make healthy babies. Everyone fought over skin, gender, weight, religion, and whatever else they could find. It was all just a way to distract themselves from the truth—we were dying.

But not me. To me, they were as rotten as they are now. Everyone smelt and looked the same as they do now. No more vegans! No sexual orientations or Blacks or Whites or Asians or Indians or Middle Easterners or Christians or Catholics or anything else really. Everyone now physically resembled what they looked like in the inside, just like me!

I smiled, smirked, and grinned wickedly.

Amidst my thoughts and joy, I tripped over something’s rotten leg. I fell face first into it. The stench of it made my eyes water. I struggled to my feet and looked down. The locket had burst open in my clumsiness, and the contents spilled into the dead thing’s entrails. I feared what it was, what my mother had clenched onto in the 23 years she had known my face, but I could not bear to leave it where it lied. After all, it had been within her heart, and I had snatched it from her, therefore it belonged to me! After brief hesitation, I swiped it from the entrails. I smeared the sticky blood the item had gathered onto what was left of my dingy t-shirt, closed my eyes, took a deep breathe, and looked. There, in the palm of my hand, was a tiny vial filled with Giant Hogweed. I laughed, a screeching, horrifying cackle. It was poison! It was poison in her heart!