After Gomorrah

We have no name for the people who came before us.

Some call them “The Builders;”  others, “The Destroyers.”

Stories told in ceremony and song, but no definitive history.

There were many, many of them, and everywhere they went they marked the land with roads and bridges.

Many of the elders ponder how they did all this, made these lines straighter than any tree and harder than any stone, but not me.

I see their marks on the land like whipping-scars, their broken houses scattered across every hillside, their still-poison valleys where no man can live and I wonder why.

Friday Fictioneers

32 comments

Add Yours
    • J Hardy Carroll

      Thanks, Rochelle. I was thinking about Neil’s future challenge and Nevil Shute’s On the Beach came to mind, as well as Stephen Vincent Benet’s By the Waters of Babylon. And the song Little Boxes ;-)

  1. gahlearner

    Looks like our thoughts went the same way this week, your protagonist could be a descendant of mine. Great, haunting descriptions, it could well be that future generations see us that way.

  2. michael1148humphris

    A great piece of writing…I often wonder how the future will remove the scars we inflict on planet earth, you have given me on answer.

  3. subroto

    We all talk about global warming, fossil fuels and use of plastics but not much has been said that the world is running out of sand. 50 billion tons of sand mined every year. Twice the amount produced by every river in the world. After air and water, sand is our most used natural resource. We use it even more than oil. The major sand usage is making concrete.
    There is destruction happening around us right now and we are blind to it.

  4. Jade Li

    I like the format of someone from the future looking back at the now and getting their perspective. It’s not much for humankind, which is not surprising. Our taint will be here long after we’re gone.

Leave a Reply to michael1148humphris Cancel reply