Tiger Paw-prints

Tiger Paw-prints
By E. M. Areson
A little girl of four trots down a concrete hallway. Where is she? She’s in a broken world that so much has gone wrong in people don’t even remember what they’re trying to fix. When is she? In the future, we hope never happens or in the past, we never want to repeat. Her name? We'll call her Molly, but she could be any child anywhere. But we’re not anywhere, we’re in the Shadow Realm.

        Molly put another foot in the fake tiger paw prints embedded in the concrete. There were no tigers in the wild anymore. There was nothing in the wild these days. Only germs and grass and icky things. Mommy said concrete was the best ground and Daddy would always agree. Daddy always had to agree with Mommy or people would think he was bad. Molly didn’t know why, but disagreeing was bad.
“I like tigers. I never saw one, but I like them,” Molly said to the empty house. “Tigers are orange. I like my yellow dress though.”
        Molly looked down at her shoes then at the paw prints. She couldn’t make her feet fit in just right. She wiggled them out of her shoes and put her bare feet on the floor. Mommy had always said to keep her shoes on or she might get sick. Daddy always said the floor was icky because people stepped on it. Molly didn’t feel sick though and the floor felt fine.
“No more shoes!” The shoes were kicked against the wall and Molly’s march began, walking around felt better in no shoes.
        The house door opened, and Mommy came in. It had to be Mommy because Daddy was never home before dark. Molly knew she should put on her shoes but didn’t. She turned to go to her room but stopped it sounded like both Mommy and Daddy were home. That had to be bad, Daddy was never home before dark.
“Elena, I can’t do this anymore! I want to live in the real world. You know the place with grass and trees. A place where you can see more than smoke and fog and trash. Nothing is real in the city,” Daddy sounded upset.
“Miles, this is all that’s left. Would you rather move to some undeveloped country were me and Molly would be little better than property? Because according to your standards those are the only places in the real world!” Mommy was angry.
“No! I just want to live. I’m tired of this miserable existence, I want to live life!”
“You’re talking fantasy Miles. Existence is all we really have by those old standards. But we have been happy before and we can be happy again. Our grandparents and our great-grandparents messed the world up. And now all we can do is live like this…” Mommy started crying, Molly didn’t like that.
“The world should be fixed,” Molly whispered, then looked down at the tiger print. “I wish we could live like a fantasy. That sounds better. A fantasy with tigers and sky and people who didn’t have the smog sick. I wish to fix the world.”

        Who is Molly? A child who has realized the world isn’t perfect. Who are her parents? Good people who have known for a long time they live in a miserable world. Were do they live? Hopefully for us in the mind of a writer who wants to give a warning. The warning? For all the benefits of our modern world come drawbacks, and what we do today affects the lives of every generation to come. For now, though, let’s leave them in the Shadow Realm.


Photo by Hugues de BUYER-MIMEURE

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