Prompt Writing: A Collection of Short Stories

Five

Prompt 

"Five are alive."

The world had ended. A long time ago, civilization fell to war and conflict.

They came. The other ones, the humans that weren't. That were more.

They had ravaged the world, turning it into Their personal playground. Fires had sprung to life from nothing more than a whim, tsunamis crashed into the edges of the continents and flooded away with lives and buildings. Storms rained down from the heavens, their anger paid in lives and destruction.

But the world recovered. The people banded together and fought back, taking back the world inch by inch, pushing back the tides They had created.

The problems still persisted, They still walked among us, but we found Them, one by one. We captured Them and locked Them away somewhere far underground. They would no longer end the world, and we could build anew.

But this did not stop the destruction that had been wrought. While They had walked among us, They had procreated with humans, creating a whole new threat that was much harder to find, much harder to detect.

Even this threat, we discovered and worked to eliminate. The children, these evils, were snuffed out as quickly and as painlessly as possible, people encouraged to report strange activity. And for a time it worked. People remembered the carnage They had brought down from the skies and feared its return.

But the general populace was soon outnumbered by a new threat, one that came from our very future.

In the ashes from which the new world was built, a Revolt began. The children we had saved the world for, that we had fought to protect and give back their home, turned against us, led by the remaining children of Them.

The world watched as they broadcast their declaration of a new war, a new age of fighting, led by the children of the enemy we had killed, captured, and locked away. We watched in horror as our own children were turned against us, falling into the thrall of these children who rose as the faces of what they called the Revolution.

We watched as our armies fell, our defenses unprepared for the assault of a onslaught of this magnitude. The hordes of our children came swarming the capitols of our countries, killing our leaders, and leaving thousands of people in complete anarchy.

Everyday, we watched more of the world fall. Everyday, we hunkered down, fearing to listen to the radios, to watch the reports. Our governments cautioned us, advised us as best they could, but they were helpless under the power of the children, the future, coming for us like a new storm on the horizon.

Once, in all of this chaos, we had a sliver of hope. A success against the enemy was reported by our president. We had managed to kill several of their leaders, these children of Them, leaving them wounded and without some of their powerful advantages.

"Five are alive."

Those were the words that gave us hope. Only five of the Revolt's leaders remained, spreading them thin across the world as their forces clashed with ours.

But five was enough.

The world fell, piece by piece. The Revolt grew closer and closer to our homes, our lives, what bare minimum we had managed to scrape together after the world's devastating end. We watched them walk across our screens and into our streets, led by the five. The future walked into our last sanctuary and pointed their weapons at us, giving us a choice: surrender or die.

We would never surrender to the likes of Them.

The final gunshots of the fight rang out through the world.

And the war was over.

Five panted in the office of the president, now dead at his desk.

"It's over."

The Revolution had been done with for years, the children of the New Age being born into a world filled with a hatred for their capabilities, their powers, their birthrights. The Five were no more than the children who lead the charge, the ones to bring their power to the world, to demonstrate for the people what was happening.

And it had been hated. Reviled. The previous war had been waged against the very people who had tried to do that very thing. And they had been chained, thrown away, locked up, and killed. "The world will be different now."

The Five stood in the center of the room that had been their enemy for so long, that had reviled and been the death of their parents, their friends, and so many of their kind, their people.

"Five are alive. Five chose to lead, to suffer, to take the burden and blame so that millions may live free."

And so the story continued, the victors living to tell their truth even as the truth of the previous world died and was forgotten. In the histories, They turned from reviled to revered, from villains who caused the end of the world to the heroes who tried to warn the world of impending disaster, who fought to protect their homes, their lands, their peoples, even as those people turned against them.

And so, the world changed for the better, the story changed to reflect the truth, and the people who refused to accept that change were left behind in the old world as it crumbled to dust, the new world rising from its ashes like the phoenix of legend.

The story changed. As it always can. The world changed. As it had many times before, and certainly not for the last time.

And as the sun set on the New World in the end of the New Age, the Five joined together and sang...

Turn to the light, what does it say? It is a new day, seize this new day.