Drought

It was the eight hundred and fifty second day of the drought. The bush fires had all exhausted their natural fuel. Water that once stood in vast, deep lakes, now no longer even ran through artesian streams. It was “The drought we had to have,” or so the Prime Minister said. All the coal beds were burning beyond any hope of control in the ground. The hydro-electric systems defunct and monolithically useless. It was just as well we gone nuclear.

Kasimir and the Rogue

The skimmer beat its gossamer thin wings at polka time, as it flitted down the tunnels in search of ‘worm-sign’. Kasimir, brooding at the controls as the General Secretary’s words echoed in his mind, “Mars Colony can ill-afford another terra-forming catastrophy! The rogue worm must go!”

The Monk of St. Clair

In a darkness only broken by the periodic swaying, to and fro, of a head-mounted light, he wrote. He wrote as if demons or madmen were chasing him, as if his very life depended upon it, this monk of St. Clair; or so it seemed in the video surveillance footage that caught his furtive efforts, moments before the quake hit. Destroying everything in its path, except that room.

Water

Water. Flowing forth from fountain faucets. Bringer of life. A medium for sustenance and aesthetics, irrigation and cooling. It flows. Everywhere. It was in water the found her, an earth goddess corpse.

Clover

Clover covered everything like a moss gone mad, but it wasn’t clover like you’d find on the fair green isle, nor like the pastoral “red” and “white” common to the sun burnt land, no! this was “Four-Leaf” clover, big! Leaves like the size of tractor tires. Clover never grew like this, anywhere on that once, blue-green ball of rubble that sat, “third rock from the sun”.

Going Bush

“Lying in the dark is an easy thing to do, especially if you are by yourself,” said the Ranger, “and around here there’s no-one for miles; the only trouble is staying alive, or safe, ‘til dawn.” Someone chuckled in the dark, mirthlessly.

Why?

“It’s colder than Winter…” sang out a voice from a dusty radio, lying in the corner, on its side. Beside it lay knick-knacks and collectables, memorabilia from a forgotten childhood – cars, lead soldiers, half-chewed plastic ones, pictures and newspaper clippings… “Why?” thought Dougal, “Why paper clippings?”