Heads

Anger. Fear. Anger. Fear. Anger. Fear.

Flames licked the sky with its burning tongue as black ash and smoke consume it whole. Amongst the debris scattered along the roads lies many a body buried under mounds of glass. Shouting, stomping and smashing their way through the city march the mob, the rebels, the people.

The uprising wasn't a spontaneous event; it was the culmination of months of increasing tension creeping into society. Jobs were lost, taxes were hiked up in a time of recession and austerity and the country resembled a corrupted police state, a modern day dystopian future. After one too many unwarranted deaths, the sheep took a stand against the pigs. Now we are deep in a civil war between the people and the state and the streets are the battle zones. And by people, I mean everybody. All ages, all faiths and religions, all skin colours, everyone. You can't sit out the revolution, you are either with us or against us. Fighting against the system or supporting it by staying idle.

They tried to stop it, tried to pre-empt it, tried to subdue to the social unrest. At first through television announcements and propaganda trying to manipulate our minds back into a flaccid state. Then, when that failed, by cutting off communications amongst ourselves, shutting down phone lines and blocking the internet completely. Finally, after that did little to stop it, they took drastic measures of oppression - cutting off water and electricity. Many starved and many died as society plunged anarchy. Chaos emerging to stand up against order.

Anger. Fear. Anger. Fear. Anger. Fear.

We cannot stop and return home, for we no longer have a house to call home. Material possessions no longer of importance, looting is just a release, symbolic of our struggle against the establishment. We set the streets a light to illuminate our fight against conviction and we are never silent, for our voices must be heard and we must always spread the word.

Getting devoured by mob mentality is a fear and burden we all share. Both sides are strife with evil men willing to take advantage of the situation for their own immoral activities. We cannot and must not tolerate them, we are campaigners for justice and must be just amongst us lest we become hypocritical caricatures of ourselves.

We march in our thousands, sprawling through the city like insects with a unified brain, all with the same thought processes and all with the same goal. Gunshots ring out, breaking the monotony of shouted curses and insults. Ahead of us stands a wall of authority, hundreds of tightly packed soilders and police, a steady cliff bracing itself from the oncoming assault of the waves. It only takes a single death to ignite that barbaric passion in us all and soon we are charging at the army, swarming towards them like hornets, united in our rage.

Anger. Fear. Anger. Fear. Anger. Fear.

We collide with the enemy and the scene erupts into a bloody frenzy. Bottles, rocks and makeshift homemade grenades fly from our side, denting the immovable opposing forces frontline. They fire their guns, release their dogs and spray their tear gas. Anybody who gets too close to their wall receives a vicious beating and is soon bludgeoned to death.

Our side storms through the buildings that enclose the warzone, the mountains that suffocate the valleys and begin scaling up towards the top. With an aerial advantage, they rain down projectiles on the enemy, flaming cocktails of death and buckets of the vilest produce known to man. Rotating blades, a flying weapon hovers at the peak of the building and answers in retaliation with bullets. The airborne war machine provides an easy target from below and using scavenged weapons, we focus on bringing it down, which with concentrated effort, proves to be shockingly easy.

The spinning hunk of metal starts to make its final descent towards the earth, like a great dragon being slayed by a mythical hero, it plunges with considerable speed towards its destination and explodes into a scaled down supernova. The enemy scuttles away in reluctant defeat through the streets, the sight of their insurance policy in flames routing them entirely.  

Bloodied and burned, the victors bask in their triumph. Absorbing the post-apocalyptic scenes that now confronted us, the causalities and the sacrifices. Almost reluctantly, we gather and reunite, preparing to continue our march, our never-ending protest.

Anger. Fear. Anger. Fear. Anger. Fear.