america 2016

america 2016

fiction
edward w pritchard

The stairs to the attic are rickety and covered and crowed with bric a brac making the climb tenuous so carrying new material goods up high for storage is fraught with danger. But the real peril starts when one has reached the top and must navigate the tongue in groove flooring that supports the entire structure of the house and nation. Long years of seasonal rains have shrunk the flooring supporting the structure as the roof leaks causing insidious danger to those who reach the top. Still every one wants to be on top though few actually make it.

There's many a dusty bag of broken Christmas lights and bulbs up there wrapped in moldy bags containing trite slogans from the bill of rights and other outdated trivia that no one reads anymore. There used to be cautions and warnings written on the Bills and papers from long dead and silenced ancestors but now everyone is too busy acquiring material things to listen to what the ancient one's had to say.

The cracks in the flooring supporting those up there at the top allow brief glimpses of the simple folk below. With  certain alienated Majesty those who have made it to the top strain to remember what it was like down there. That's when the danger of falling is the greatest. Crashing through the invisible ceilings floor by floor until the entire house topples and falls smashing the old bags of dusty Christmas lights to smithereens and scattering the dust from the old bags the Bill of Rights was wrapped in to gently float about on the winds of Time unceremoniously disappearing into Ancient History as America goes topsy turvy.