We’re running away together…it’s become too much. I can’t stick around to watch you all fail miserably. It’s not in my nature. Ronald will be good to me. It won’t be long before I have a child on the way. I will write then, and only then. No longer will I speak of less important matters. I love you. Stay well. –Elaine

 A man read the letter silently, while a woman stood near him. Both of their eyes watered with tears. It wasn’t long before the man’s spilled over. The woman clutched at her round stomach and thanked the Lord she would have another. It would not fill the void of her lost daughter, Elaine, but it would ease the hurt.

 “I…don’t feel well,” the man said at long last, dropping the paper to the floor. He shot out from the office, where the oil lamps were just beginning to burn out. It was a sad thing, once you thought of it. The passing of the days…the knowledge that the end of something tragically beautiful would be upon us.

 Beauty is a tragedy. The woman thought so as she picked up the painful letter, tore it to bits, and fed it to the crackling fire in the library hearth. The paper smelled sweet, like Elaine’s perfume, as it burned. She must have scented it.

 The man would be hurt, deeply hurt, if the woman kept the letter around. So the burning was necessary. She wiped at her eyes with soiled fingers, as she had just been tending to the gardens. Her burden was almost too heavy for her these days. She was glad the end of the pregnancy would soon be upon them.

 Poor Elaine. She was so confused. To marry a man such as Ronald West, well, she must have been desperate for a way out. But who could blame her? The town had long since been overtaken by Dark Reds. That was the slang word the townspeople used to describe the burly, evil men who came in and burned the buildings down. Then a small, skinny, man came, with promises of a better life for them all. Now people were afraid to step outside the front door.

 The men waited, shotguns ready, for those who dared to emerge at the wrong times, to go to the wrong places. Several had been killed in the past months. The woman grew more and more afraid each day it would be her. Or her husband. Or Elaine. But she need not worry about her eldest now. The woman only hoped for a brighter future as she put the fire out, suffocating the colas. Smoke trailed from the chalky, black lumps. They said these things powered trains. The Dark Reds had ordered the town to use them, to preserve the wood.

 Three gunshots suddenly sounded from out the window. The woman pressed her cheek to the glass, letting out a scream as she saw the familiar man on her doorstep. People watched the display with a sigh as she came and gathered him in her arms.

 But no one dared to speak.

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