I knew that America was dying. Everyone knew, actually. Under the insidious, sorry, almighty President Sawk, America was more of a home for the destitute and dying than for the free and the brave. But no one could do anything. America was made up of a few raggedy people, from all over the world, and a bunch of fat pigs with money and food in the government. Mr. Almighty Sawk doesn’t know how to feed the poor when everyone is poor.

“Eric?” My sister walks into the room.

“Hi, Iris.”

“Any food?

“Guess.” She collapses to the couch.

“I haven’t eaten in two days.”

“I haven’t eaten in three.”

“Stupid President. He said he’d feed the poor, and now…” She trailed off, staring at a white spot on the otherwise brown and dirty ceiling.

“Now everyone’s poor, except him and his damned goons. They’re fat and healthy off of the food he promised us.” My anger echoed around the room. Iris wasn’t listening. She had passed out on the armchair. I wish sleep was that easy for me. I haven’t slept in a week, and am living off of dirty snow.

“Who’d of thought he could do this much damage in two years?” I groaned aloud. He was elected in the 2040 election. It is now 2042. I grabbed a pocketknife and hurled it at the wall. It stuck into the drywall (except it should be called wetwall because of all the relentless rain) and quivered. The knife, hurled with all my strength, did nothing to soothe my anger.

I am eighteen now. Not that it makes much of a difference. I’ll be dead before the next election, and I wasn’t old enough to vote in the last one. If I had, anyway, I would probably have, like everyone else, elected Mr. Sawk. If only I could travel back in time, and warn the past.

But time travel isn’t real, so I’m stuck in this Hell for the rest of my life. Luckily, that won’t be much longer. A boom shakes the floor. I pay it no mind, even as I’m shaking. It’s a mere aftershock, one of the many quakes following the quake of 2033. They devastate the whole U.S., even though the big one was in California. The clean patch of ceiling breaks off and falls into a trash can. It is clean no longer. The bang it makes wakes Iris up.

“Brother, what’s going on?”

“Another aftershock.” She groans and turns away from me.

“I miss Mom and Dad,” she whispers.

“They’ll be back soon. You know they’re just trying to help.” My lie sounded pathetic coming from my parched lips. Mom and Dad died a year ago, in a riot. But Iris was thirteen. She didn’t need to know yet. I got up with a grunt and retrieved my knife. When I found out about my parents’ deaths, I vowed that this knife would be the knife to pierce Sawk’s empty, selfish heart. I picked up a rock and slid it along the blade with a grating noise like nails on a chalkboard. Iris stirred, but didn’t complain. Noise was a normal part of life now. When the blade looked sharp enough, I tested it on my wrist. It drew blood with a casual flick. Perfect. I wiped off the red and put the knife in my pocket. There were seventeen scabs on my wrist from sharpening. Iris doesn’t like that I do it, but she can’t stop me, either.

Just like I can’t stop Sawk.

The aftershock of the earthquake continued for two minutes. To me and Iris it seemed liked a lifetime after all we’d been through.The dirty place place we lived in seemed more unstable than it was before. Iris was crying after it all happened.

“Iris it’s ok now, it’s all over, we’re alright, you see?” I console her.

“I know but I’m afraid there’ll be more.”

I got up and looked around the house, and spotted cracks all over the walls. “Iris we gotta get out of here. The house is too unstable.”

Iris was still in shock, so I went over and picked her up, and looked for way out. I found an exit where the door of the house used to be. Suddenly a loud screech went through the walls of the old dirty house.

“Oh no! the house is about to collapse!” I exclaimed.

“Please don’t let me die, Eric...” Iris continued to cry.

I ran to the door, and leaped with Iris. Just afterwards, the whole house collapsed. “Are you ok, Iris?” I asked. Yes, I was fussing a bit, but Iris was my responsibility. I had to keep her safe… for Mom and Dad’s sake, and my own.

“My elbows and legs feel like they’re burning off,” Iris said with a grimace. They were scraped and bleeding, but not too bad.

“You’re ok, Iris, you gotta keep it together, now get up,” I said calmly. He pulled his sister off the ground.

We stood up and saw all the devastation that happened after the earthquake.

Houses collapsed, trees toppled, innocent people injured from the earthquake engineered by President Sawk and his government.

“What do we do now brother?” asked Iris.

“We help out the people injured by this menace, and make President Sawk pay.”

We walked over to the first person I saw, and helped him out.

To my surprise, it was Uncle Roger, grimacing in pain.

“Uncle Roger?” Iris asked in a weak voice. Uncle Roger coughs.

“I-Iris? Eric? I thought you two had died a long time ago.” I gave him a warning look, hoping he wouldn’t say anything about Mom and Dad’s death. It was so not the right time.

“Nope,” I said, “Still here.” Roger smiles weakly, then grimaces.

“Ah, my head,” he groans softly. A bruise the size of a goose egg was blooming like a flower on his head.

“You have a bruise,” Iris noted unhelpfully. Roger swallows hard.

“Some water would be grand right now.” I scoop up a handful of melting snow and hand it to him. He shoves the icy, dripping mess into his mouth. Then I take a handful for Iris and myself. The snow, although dirty and brown, tastes like heaven, and I find myself seeing clearer after - eating? drinking? - consuming it. I look up.

“So what now?” I ask weakly. “We have no house, no food…” My words are left to linger in space for a moment before a mreply comes to mind. We bury our heads in the snow and die. My brain can be very unhelpful sometimes.

“I guess you guys can come hang out with me at my house - that is, if it’s not destroyed."

The wind was bitterly cold as it bit my bare hands. Are they turning blue, or is that just my imagination? How far away is Uncle Roger’s house, anyway? My brain peppers me with questions so fast that my tired, cold, numb body can’t respond fast enough. The best I can come up with is “I don’t know.”

My brain isn’t satisfied. Are you sure this is the right idea? Maybe you and Iris will die before you get there. That would suck. Someone give me classes on how to shut my brain out, please. It’s annoying. The pocketknife in my back pocket digs into my thigh. That’s also annoying. I don’t need holes in my pants on top of everything. Cold, heavy frost makes my feet drag, as if I’m a prisoner, held down by iron balls, and thrown into the ocean to drown. Yeah. Not fun. Me and Iris are walking much slower than Uncle Roger. Iris looks at me.

“My feet hurt like hell,” she comments. I nod in agreement. I can’t even find the energy to speak. If I had actual food, I’d be fat because me and Iris never exercise. We hadn’t gone on a walk since this whole mess started, when Mom and Dad were alive…

“Guys, we here.” Uncle Roger said three magical words, and I couldn’t even make myself care that it wasn’t proper grammar. I had wanted to be a writer before all this happened, but me and my family never had enough money to send me to school. Hey, maybe I should write this all down one day. It would make a great memoir. I mean, earthquakes, horrible government, can’t get much more dystopian bestseller than that.

Uncle Roger’s house was huge, and it made me angry. All these years, me, my sisters, my family, had been living in poverty, and here he was living in a mansion? Ugh. No wonder my parents never invited him to Thanksgiving. It was around Thanksgiving right now, except colder than any year before. Stupid climate change. I stepped into Roger’s house, and all anger was lost in awe.

How did he afford such a good house? As if he could hear my thoughts, he answered.

“I stole this house. From a dead man. I don’t think he minds.” Iris looks sick at his words. She looks at me and her face is pale, like she’s going to puke.

My anger at Uncle Roger had dissipated. He wasn’t cheating us out of money. He was just a thief. And these days, if you weren’t a thief, you were dead.

Me and Iris were the equivalent of dead. We had never stolen anything, except for three years ago when Iris really, really wanted a necklace.

That was before things got bad. Iris still wears that necklace, a reminder of the bad old days that are still better than this.

Huh. Now I sound kind of deep. Maybe I should write poetry. Poems are deep. I ask Uncle Roger for a piece of paper.

Even though

Three years ago was bad,

Now it’s worse,

And there’s nothing I can do.

I crumple it up and throw it in the trash. My writing has gone downhill since Sawk. Everything had. I had the equivalent of an eighth grade education.

Nowhere near enough to get anywhere in life, not that it mattered now anyway. The only useful skill was thievery, a skill that I, sadly, did not have.

So many things I don't have.

If only...