After
Bloated fly coated bodies swing from power lines. If you drive, you drive fast. Someone might be concealed in a field, to shoot you and take your car if it's still drivable. Roving gangs of young Men. Teen the to mid-twenties. Raiders, adventurers, Murderers. Small towns completely burned out, blackened skeletons reduced to charcoal powder by passing cars and trucks. Seeking shelter from the lashing torrent of cold rain I stepped into a rest stops Men's room. Rotten intestines smeared all over the floor. All the sink mirrors smashed in. I had to leave the door open a little to let breathable air in. Stayed that way, tense as a coil and ready to jump until the rain stopped.
Before
It's my day off. With the economy what it is almost every day is my day off. I gathered up a little plastic basket full of mulberries. Lots of rain this year and the sweetest batch of them in decades. I eat them in small handfuls with each meal that is otherwise a slice of toast and a piece of baloney. I am out of the other sandwich fixings until payday. My dream journal is almost full. I am writing my dreams down in smaller and smaller letters hoping to coast til again, payday. I keep dreaming about society breaking down. Leaving a surplus of food and gadgets and a massive amount of dead bodies. Dreaming about buildings where I used to hang out or live at. Buildings that no longer exist. Everything feels ominous when you don't know if you can ration enough drinkable water til again...Payday. The water from the well, stinks like dead fish liquidity in sulfurous gelatin.
During
President Gerald Ellon was so obviously a corrupt sociopathic ego out of control. A Man not fit to lead but the Man who bought the establishment leaders for decades became President under an anti-establishment act. Soon it was legal and punishment free all over the fifty-one states to kill Mollkins with no punishment, even if they are someone else's property.
After
I lived in this big concrete tunnel that used to belch out water to the outskirts of town, bad water. It was dry and out of use by the time I moved in. You will eat anything if you are hungry enough, long enough. Someone had left some feeble camping supplies behind. Probably whoever it was never made it back.
Before
I quit my job today. Got a full-time job for a government contractor. I'm making Kevlar for bulletproof jackets and cutting it into parts for fighter planes. Sixty hours a week! That is about a month's worth of hours at my old job! I am exhausted and I mostly sleep and work. I have vivid dreams and now I can buy the coolest dream journals to write them down in. All sorts of overtime as world war three seems to be looming on the horizon. We already raided/invaded Mexico. Taking the oil wells and other resources first. Meanwhile, our heroes in uniform raped pillaged and burned, just like good old times. But I admit, it's nice to eat better food and not have to ration it til payday payday payday. I got the AC crankin. Everybody has a full-time job for maybe a couple of them. I work a job that is basically a full and a half times job. Sleep eat work repeat. Off on Sunday. The companies are producing crazy amounts of food contained those new long-term freshness packaging. More new tech toys all the with better and better tech. Work work work. I bought a lot of nice stuff, ate great food during this short and golden age. Tension and excitement in the air. Everything seemed possible the sky the limit.