Radioactive

The End of the World

Elle

They say that when the sirens went off people spent their last 5 minutes crying. They ran, they fought in the streets, they rioted, they killed, but most of all they simply wept. They say that the tears flooded the streets like the sea which carried Noah and his ark. I think that's stupid. In history class they show us countless pictures of the bombs dropping, of the final expressions on peoples faces and I can't help but imagine myself in that scenario. I do that a lot - think about what I would have done if I was at the end of the world. I've concluded that I would have been quite calm, and sensible, and would have walked to the nearest high building and jumped off. That way I would have killed me, not some random dude who hates some other random dude I've never met. I would have been in control. 

I like to be in control. 

People don't tend to like me. Girls are made uncomfortable by me and boys are intimidated by me. It's because I'm brutally honest about the things that most people lie about. And I lie about the things that most people don't care about. I'll tell people if they look ugly or if they are bad at drawing but I'll lie about what I ate for breakfast. I don't know why I do it. It's a compulsion, as natural as my heartbeat. It only bothers me when people catch me out on a lie, because then I'm no longer in control. So I've become very good at lying, I have complex lies which expand out in the thousands like a massive, festering spiderweb, and I have simple lies which spin off my tongue like my breath. Sometimes I lie for fun, it's like a sport, seeing how far I can go before someone is brave enough to question me. Some people tell me that I'm a bad person. Some people say that God chose only the good people to survive, and therefore I must be good. I'm not good or bad. I'm just different from the rest of the people in here. I don't think I was meant to be a vault-resider, I was meant to live upstairs with the rest of the freaks. I think I would prefer them.

"Earth to Elle. Hello? Are you in there?" An irritable voice interrupts my thoughts and I stare blankly at the stern face in front of me, Father Hanslot. "Well then I'll repeat myself. In what passage of the bible does it say 'But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practise magic arts, the idolaters and all liars - they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulphur. This is the second death.'" I rest my head on chin and glance around the classroom. At the front of the room the scripture hangs from a wide sign obnoxiously, complete with its passage, " Revelation 21:8". Hanslot looks to where my glance was directed and sighs, "Well congratulations you can read off a wall. How about you pick up your bible once in a while." I offer a casual shrug, "It's too heavy." His burning glare fixes itself onto me, and he breathes slowly, measured, "Careful now. Else you be punished with the rod." I squint at him, "And saved from death. Proverbs 23:14." He pauses for a few seconds before nodding and turning away, back to the rest of the class.

This is the Vault ever so self-righteously called 'The Vault of God'. It was made by christians, children of God as they say. They believe that the bombs falling were the second coming of Noah's ark, the downfall of mankind because of its sin. Only this vault remained, every other living human died. We are meant to be the untainted, the pure. It was a good thing, we were meant to think, not the end of the world but the start of it. The founders of the vault removed all passages from the bible which were written by sinners, creating the New Bible, our official one. All other forms of the bible are contraband, on penalty of death. I never believed in a God, especially not the God from the bible. I've always simply struggled with 'God made man in His image'. I don't think any God would have made me in their image. I sometimes don't even feel human. But perhaps the quote wasn't referring to me anyway, because I am not a man.