Lineage

“I still remember my great-grandfather telling us kids stories about the war.” Fred Montgomery said. “I’m talking about the Civil War, mind you. How an old man like me can still be around to tell you his words is something beyond imagination. Here I am, over a hundred years and still somehow kicking despite the hell I’ve been through is as baffling as it is somehow expected.”

I was in the room to fix the man’s TV, but he never seemed to turn it on. It seemed to me Fred just wanted someone to speak to. He would always just stare out the window, his mind usually elsewhere.

“These storms. They’re gettin’ worse.”

“Yes they are,” was all I could think to say. 

“These days, cherish them,” Fred told me after a long pause, sitting in his rocking chair, his cold, clouded eyes staring off through the window. “We’re approachin’ the time where Mother Nature’s wrath will be unforgiving, the storms will be unpredictable, and soon nightmares banished by these electric lights will crowd over our bedsides to steal our quaking breaths. My great-grandfather told me so, being a witch and all, and that was right when the industrial revolution was catching its tread. Sold our souls for all of this, we did, and it didn’t take us long to fuck everything up. I saw enough in the second world war. Not only the devastation of the natural world but to one another. And you would think…” he turned to me, his face haggard and hollow. A haunted look that filled me with a dread I couldn’t place.

“You would think we’d learn something from it all. But we didn’t. We’ll keep on because we’ve sold our souls and will keep on until there’s nothin’ left of us to sell.”