A monochrome future.

Describe life as you imagine it 200 years in the future.

Credit for photo listed below.

This is where she met him, my Great Great Grandmother.  Standing on those steps.

The picture isn't anything like this, it makes life look so romantic, light streaming through each window.  It looks as though each ray is searching for someone to uncover, an average person to illuminate into something more.  That's how I imagine she saw him.  He probably looked different in that magical spotlight, just like Romeo did at the ball, for how could Juliet know what was to come.  Would she have still loved him, if she had known the consequences? Would Grandmama?  I guess no one can know forshore.  Love is an unstoppable force, or so I have been told.

Now, all that remains of that moment is stone walls crumbling at the knees.  With the only picture I have seen of this place being Grandmama's, the reality probably isn't so different.  The newspaper cutting depicts the train station in monochrome, with black silhouettes hurrying by, today the station is much the same, minus the people of course.  Dust and ash blanket the structure, softening every detail of the architecture, masking the colours.  The cocoon creates a black and white world that I can step into, just like Grandmama. 

A far away siren wrenches me back to reality, heart in mouth.

Normally, life goes on undisturbed, as we all journey through the maze of catastrophe that we call home, every bomb threat, every propaganda campaign, plays in the background of reality like music at a doctors surgery.  But this never happens...

I'm running.

Wailing in the distance, the siren means mass emergency, everyone knows that but it hasn't sounded in 42 years.  In this day and age, there isn't fighting, there isn't conflict, not like there used to be.  The world is a powder keg about to explode, but it never does.  Not really.  Instead, the dictators sit there and try to light the match that will send us all into oblivion but they never can.  

But if they have...

I run faster, oblivious to the debris around me, to the glass scattered like confetti on the floor, to the broken trail of blood I leave behind me as my exposed feet crash into every shard.  This is more important.  I know that I am at least a mile and a half away from the closest barricade shelter and if I don't reach it...   Well, let's just say I won't have to worry about my feet or the future ever again.  Although life is a day to day struggle - as a result of my Great Great Grandfather and some orange haired buffoon, in what was the country of America - I don't want to stop fighting yet.  Not yet. 

I only have myself to blame, I know I shouldn't have been out this far but, well there isn't really an excuse and I would only be lying to myself. 

A low hum seeps from the horizon, the gap between land and sky filled with noise; just visible, the unmistakable shape of three Hornets wing to wing in battle formation.  Yet it's obvious they haven't come to fight, their cargo holds open in anticipation, waiting for the order from above.

I am three streets away now, I think I can make it.  Not that I am sure that matters anymore, three Hornets means three heavy-duty bombs, the kind used to wipe out the train station and city centre 42 years ago. 

I turn the corner and rush towards the shelter, my Great Great Grandfather flashes me a smile from an old campaign poster.  The caption, 'As long as you are left standing we will not be defeated!'

Author's Note

Above image, credit goes to AQA GCSE English Language Paper 1 Explorations in creative reading and writing 8700/1.