Elle and the Mysterious Beast (One Direction)

Chapter 1 - Life

It’s amazing how fast everything can change. One moment, you’re graphing with your best friend, (what they used to refer to as skyping but with a holograph) and the next moment bombs are exploding all around you. At least, this is how my mother explains it to me, I was young when the war began.

WWIII started 15 years ago in the year 2162, I had just turned seven. There had been rumors in the news postings about a ‘beast’ that lived here somewhere in America but the government wouldn’t let any information out about it. Everyone had just assumed it was some sort of scam.

I was at school when the first bomb struck, Miss Printa was just showing me and Elizabeth how to retract the magnetic system with our phones. We heard a loud boom and it felt like an earth quake. Apparently bombs were being dropped all over the country. Everyone was sent home right away and my mom took me down to the emergency room under our house. My dad was a soldier in the war, I’m not sure when he died in it but, he did.

The war was said to have started because other countries heard about the ‘beast’ and wanted him so they could clone him and turn him into an army but the government wanted to keep him for that exact reason so a few other countries teamed up against America and attacked us. They said they were sick of “America being selfish and thinking they’re stronger and better than anyone else”.

Somehow the beast (if he was real) escaped so our military had to fight and they joined up with England and Mexico’s military to fight off the other countries. Even though Mexico and England were fighting too though, our opposing team didn’t care about them, they only attacked our country. For 12 years they bombed us and sent men in to kill innocent citizens and burned down homes, churches, and any other building they could until we finally surrendered because we barely had anything left. Supposedly the beast remained hidden and the other countries no longer cared about him anymore since they’d just destroyed their main opponent.

Now there are no ‘big cities’ in America. None. Only small villages. This is basically how I’ve been raised though is in a small village ever since I was a little girl before the war began. There is little electricity, our satellites no longer work so we have no internet or cell phones, and there are no longer any such thing as cars or hover rounds, only horseback and for some carriages but those are hard to come by since people are only now starting to make them. We’ve basically gone back in time to before technology ever existed. There are no grocery stores or shopping malls or carnivals, we have to find our own fun.

We’ve also gone back to old tradition in the sense that men are seen as dominant again, they’re the ones who hunt for food and keep our shelter, and women are seen as the one who cooks, cleans, and takes care of the children. Most parents arrange their kids’ marriages by the time they turn 20, but not all do. My mom and her boyfriend Kevin are under the impression that I’m going to allow them to force me into a marriage I don’t agree with. But I won’t.

X

“Shane! Give that back!” I shout, trying to retrieve my stolen diary.

“I’m only going to read one sentence.”

“You’re not going to read any of it!”

“Why? Stuff about me in there?”

“No, ew.”

“Wow, thank you. That’s not a confidence killer or anything.” He opened up my little journal and read some of hit while holding me back. “Really? You write about the war?”

“Well that’s not the only thing, and besides, it interests me.”

“Why? The world is shit now, how does that interest you?”