“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.
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.
Autumn Leaves 