The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

The Only Utopia We Will Ever Know Is… Star Trek
by Melissa R. Mendelson 

I was surprised that the television set still played, picking up a random transmission, maybe from a satellite still in space.  The transmission was an old, old tv show.  I recognized his voice, but his face was static.  I hugged the television set as if somehow, I could warp myself back into the past before…. Before it all went wrong.

He was a leader, a man truthful and dedicated.  Those were the leaders that we needed then, but we never had them.  Instead, we had entertainers, corrupters and lunatics.  No wonder the world went to hell the way that it did, and we just marched to their tune.  Now, I don’t remember the sun as it once was.  The sky endlessly blanketed with thick, gray clouds, and it’s not the rain I fear.  It’s the ash, the debris, the dead.

If only I could live in their world.  Instead, this broken, wooden structure was my home with a makeshift door and the windows broken or blackened in.  Anything still living out there was hunting for their next meal, and I’m barely clinging to my skin, bones jutting outward, food pockets of water and grass.  No, not that kind of grass, but the pieces of green still trying to make the dirt their home.

I don’t want to look out at my world.  Right outside was the last grave that I would ever dig, the last loved one that I had, a stranger once, but that was a long time ago.  No one would come to bury me.  Only this structure would remain, and the elements will wash what it can away.  But it will never remove the stain.

We wanted a utopian world.  We wanted our freedom.  We needed to hear what we were told.  Empty words.  Broken promises.  Lies and Lies and more Lies.  Until it was too late.  It’s just too damn late, and the signal is fading.  Soon, I would be alone again, counting down the days to hopefully my last because I can’t take this anymore.

“Beam me up, Scotty.”

“Yes, Scotty,” I said.  “Beam me up, and take me far away to where you live in your utopian world.”

.

Fiction © Copyright Melissa R. Mendelson
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com.

About Author Melissa R. Mendelson:

Melissa R. Mendelson is the author of the Sci-Fi Novella, Waken, and the poetry collection, This Will Remain With Us.  She also has two self-published short story collections, Better Off Here and Stories Written Along COVID Walls.  All the books can be found on Amazon/Amazon Kindle.

If you’d like to learn more about Melissa, you can visit her accounts here: https://linktr.ee/melissarmendelson