What Pegman Saw – The End

“What Pegman saw” is a weekly challenge based on Google Streetview. Using the location provided, you must write a piece of flash fiction of no more than 150 words. You can read the rules here. You can find today’s location on this page,  from where you can also get the Inlinkz code. This week’s prompt is Mdina, Malta. The city has been fought over for millenia, which, together with today’s news, prompted this very dark story.

WPS - The End 180414

Mdina, Malta © Steven Tilly, Google Maps

The End

Eve had buried her third child earlier that week.

She trudged through the streets of Mdina, the silent city.

What had gone wrong with the world? Violence had spread like gangrene.

She paused outside St Paul’s Cathedral.

“Where were you, God?” she screamed.

The hot, dusty silence swallowed up the echoes.

One by one, states had crumbled into anarchy.

Women organised against the strife. “There is a better way” they said, but men found the lure of power too intoxicating.

Eve walked on until she stood on the ramparts.

After threats of nuclear strikes, broadcasts ceased. Static crackled from radios.

Resources had been scarce. Women tried to share; men fought.

Finally, there had just been the three of them – until yesterday, when the stranger came and killed her husband.

“You’re mine now,” he had gloated.

Eve grieved for her husband, grieved for her children, and stepped off the ramparts.

26 thoughts on “What Pegman Saw – The End”

    • Dear Karen
      Thank you for reading and commenting. The world seems a more dangerous place currently than it has since my childhood, at the time of the Cuban crisis. I’m glad you liked some of the lines so much.
      With very best wishes
      Penny

      Liked by 1 person

      • Dear anie,
        Thank you for reading and commenting. It’s not an easy story to read because it tells two stories simultaneously – the way conflict and ultimately nuclear war destroys the human race, and Eve’s personal story of the loss of her children, her husband, and eventually her own life by suicide. Very grim, I know, but the human race seems to be careering down the path of self-destruction.
        With best wishes
        Penny

        Liked by 2 people

      • Yes it is very grim, but we tell stories by writing, painting or whatever and we have a need to send a message… so you may have the need to wake up people even if the stories get scaring…I am sure there are people who need this….

        Liked by 1 person

    • Dear Joy
      Thank you for answering anie’s comment. You’re absolutely right. As Eve was (as far as she knew) the last woman left alive in the world, she chose to step off the ramparts rather than try to bear children for the man who had murdered her husband.
      With best wishes
      Penny

      Liked by 1 person

      • What a terrible decision to be faced with. I hope that you are wrong, and that this will not be our inevitable future. Although it seems that there are always people facing horrible tragedies somewhere in the world..

        Liked by 1 person

    • Dear EagleAye
      Thank you for reading and commenting. Like you, I hope matters don’t come to the extreme – but if Armageddon occurs, this is what it will be like. Thank you for the high compliment you pay me of saying that the tale felt uncannily real; I couldn’t ask for higher praise!
      With very best wishes
      Penny

      Liked by 1 person

    • Dear Kelvin
      Thank you for reading and commenting.
      On average I am enormously optimistic about people as individuals; I am pessimistic about society as a whole. However, even there, I don’t despair – I just don’t have high expectations that the human race will survive for very long.
      If humanity is to survive, it is absolutely essential that we learn to co-operate and share. The main obstacle – as I see it – is the lust for power of certain elite groups, almost exclusively male. I don’t despair. I campaign for the Green Party, which is the only UK party that has policies that can enable humanity’s survival. And sometimes I write about the need for change.
      “The End” is as graphic a description of the way it’s likely to be at the end as I can manage in 150 words. It may influence some people. Every tiny increment of improvement in man’s behaviour can help stave off disaster.
      So if my story has shocked you, I’m glad. Take it deadly seriously – because that’s how it’s meant.
      With very best wishes – and great affection
      Penny

      Liked by 2 people

      • Hmm, I wonder how you can believe in the individual persons positive, and in sum of people you can not? That would mean that you know only the “good” people personally. The ones who make the good things? No, I believe every human being is good, but with our consciousness, we unfortunately lost our view of the whole. we became very egoistic.We have lost the nature that governs everything, but it exists without us and will judge us.

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  9. What a grim and terrifically written story. You write with such pain and passion, that it’s impossible not to think of our current political situation, how close we might come to this. If only sense will prevail. Beautiful but tragic. My only comfort is the certainty the Earth will continue very well without us

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