PainleyM1213

__Just a disclaimer, this turned out way creepier than I thought it would. It was supposed to be all sentimental but it turned all dark. Anyway, enjoy!__

//** Bombs ** (Don't like the title, kind of unoriginal. Again, whatever) //

Bombs. That’s what I remember the most about the war. For 17 months, 3 days, and 4 hours, my family stayed in shelter, despair flooding over us like the dim, low-hanging light cast shadows on the concrete walls. It was tedious, sitting on the hard floors, waiting for the day when I didn’t hear the pop of gun shots and the most horrid sound, one that would stay with me my entire life. The boom of a heavy, life-threatening bomb. After the war ended, there was shortage of resources. If a town hadn’t been blown to pieces, it had been ransacked by the invaders who skipped town to avoid their violent duties. When we finally were told we could crawl out of the small enclosure that had been prepared for the war years earlier, we found that the entire city was depleted of everything. Homes were gone, stores obliterated, every last thing I could think of, gone. I walked with my family to where our old house had been, just a pile of rubble with only a few things we could make out to be the safe, the door to the refrigerator, and a washer. In the washer was one of the only things we could salvage. My old stuffed rabbit my Dad got for my Mom the day I was born. It was the one thing I could hold to my name. I was 3 at the time. We rebuilt slowly. There were so many people in the city, living in apartments or skyscrapers that couldn’t be rebuilt in a few months. We simply didn’t have enough room. Sure, the death toll was high. But not high enough that we didn’t have to send many elsewhere, and the government issued a new law. “A married man and woman may not have more than 1 child” the president read at a speech in March of 2030. My mom gasped at the small television that was propped on the 2 by 4s we were using to build our new living room. “No couple not holding a marriage license may have any children. Any who has a child before now is not allowed any more. Unmarried couples or those already possessing one or more children having one after today will be punished severely.” My mother burst into tears as my father rubbed her back comfortingly. They had wanted another child for years, delayed by the war. They said they would try again once the house was built and peace was restored in the city. Almost a year later, we had a house. It was beautiful, reminding me of the ones I’d seen in the pictures of years before. Before we were hit, we had a house that did many things for us, like cook our meals and clean the rooms. We had only the money in the safe we recovered, which wasn’t enough to build such a technologically advanced house. We instead had one like the pictures I saw of the 2010s, one that didn’t do every last task for me. It took a while, but I adjusted and learned to love the time I didn’t have to waste that I took to do the tasks of cleaning and making my meals. The house had 2 floors, the first with the living areas and the kitchens, the second with my parent’s and I’s rooms. Above that, we had an attic. That would soon be filled too. 3 months after the house was finished and we had settled in, another bomb dropped. On me. My parent’s sat me down in the living room and told me Mom was pregnant. My ears rang and I felt the stomach clenching impact I got whenever a bomb would drop during the war. My parents were going to jail. I was 5. But I knew that I would lose my parents because of this, because they broke the law that was set by the president only more than a year ago. I stared at them with the harsh reality running through my mind, only realizing that they weren’t done. “You have to lie. You have to lie for the rest of your life with this baby. Daddy and I are not going to jail, we’re staying right here, and we’re going to have a new baby. But you can’t tell one person about it. Us, and this baby, are going to be fine. But you have to lie.” “We hate to do this to you, Autumn.” My father added on. So on June 3rd, 2031, my bother was born. It was in the house, he didn’t get a birth certificate, and he was immediately put in the attic, where he’d spend the rest of his life. My brother was a crime. He was a felony possibly punishable to my parents by death. They had committed a crime and his name was Kennedy. I loved Kennedy with all my heart. Of course, he was socially awkward due to only talking to me and my parents over the years. I gave him all my books from when I was a kid and tried to teach him lessons like math and science. I developed the desire to be a teacher, though most were gone by this time, replaced by computers. I loved the look on his eyes when he understood how to write cursive letters or add 2 plus 4. I loved him so much, from the days when I read him baby books to now, teaching him how to graph functions. He was the reason I came home from school and assured my parents I hadn’t told a soul about him, everyday. Because, everyday, they asked. I came home from a long day of school. As I stepped inside the house and bolted up the stairs for the attic, I stopped to find my mother and father in the living room, crying. My face went pale. “What happened?” My voice echoed off the walls of the front foyer and my parents raised their heads in surprise, they must not have heard me come in. My mother raised a tissue to her flushed pink cheeks, drying up the tears I’d seen very rarely escape her. “Go talk to your brother, Autumn.” I looked at my father, who nodded his head. As I ran even faster up the stairs and to the closet we told everybody was a linen closet but was really the latter to the attic Kennedy resided in. Before entering, I heard Kennedy was too doing something unusual. Moving. “Kennedy?” I peeked my head through the hole that was the entrance of the attic. “Hey Autumn.” Kennedy replied to me as I watched him put things such as his books, his lesson papers, his clothes, in a pile in the middle of the attic floor. “What are you doing?” He picked up the bird cage that used to house his tiny little green bird, Charlie. He said he and Charlie were best friends, both contained in a cage. I assumed he was talking about the attic at the time, but over the years I began to think he meant it in more of mental sense. “I want to talk to you about it. But just let me finish gathering it all up.” I watched as he picked up the last of his things, which wasn’t much at all. The resource shortage was still hovering over the city, and taking resources the government didn’t think you needed wasn’t going to happen. They of course didn’t know about Kennedy and the he needed things. So we were skimpy about what we gave him. But he was grateful for every last thing. I stared at him and tried to think of some reason he would be doing this, but one didn’t come to mind. He crossed the attic and sat on the floor, right next to empty plates of food my parent’s have given him and he hadn’t returned. I followed him a sat, hesitantly. What was happening? “I need you to do me a favor Autumn. It’s a really big one.” I was tried of waiting to hear what he had to say, confused by the pile of possessions and my weeping mother. “Sure, whatever.” Kennedy took a deep breath and I felt the drama of the moment. He looked me straight in the eye and he, for the first time since he was a little kid, started crying as well. “I need you to go to the police…” there was a long pause as no thoughts ran through my mind. I could have never predicted what happened next. “And tell them about me. I need to be locked up, Autumn. I’m tired of being your secret.” I stared blankly at Kennedy as he seemed to let out what he desired most. To not be anyone’s secret anymore. As I sunk it in, I realized just how little Kennedy had thought through this. Surely he realized this wouldn’t work out as he intended. I looked right at him, shaggy blonde hair and dead gray eyes. My 9 year old brother, asking me tot turn him into the police. “Kennedy, if I turn you in, we all get locked up. You, me, and Mom and Dad. We’re harboring a fugitive.” Kennedy looked at me and…smiled. He no longer let out tears, instead giving me this sinister smile that sent chills up my spine. “You’re right. Then maybe you and our parents would know what it would be like to be locked up in a prison. One that you can’t escape. Until today, because as of today, I will no longer stay in this jail you call an attic any longer.” And with that, he jumped from the floor and grabbed seemingly as much as he could from the pile he created, in a matter of seconds running down the attic stairs. I bolted after him, knowing exactly where he was going. I tackled him to the floor as he neared the stairs, causing him to drop all of his things and slam on the ground. Hard. “Get off me! Stop trying to stop me, it won’t work!” My Father ran up the stairs to us and grabbed my brother, pinning him to the ground. “We don’t deserve this, son.” Kennedy looked at my father with the most malicious look I’d ever seen cross a person’s face. “You deserve every last thing thrown at you. You never had to commit a crime, and you never had to lock him up in the attic to waste his days hoping one day his parents will own up to it, go to jail, and let their son be free.” “That’s not going to happen son.” My mother stared at the bottom of the stairs, weeping even more. My father picked up Kennedy and directed him to the attic and shoving him in. He locked the padlock on the outside and we all stood still. Then my mother screamed. She pointed to Kennedy’s possessions, a pile scattered on the stairs. Under the bird cage, a small silver device was ticking. Then that horrid, horrid sound that had not escaped my mind to that day and will not escape it since, came to my ears. A bomb.