• She rubbed and rubbed until it felt as if her skin would slide right off of her weary bones; the sight of the old room made her anxious. A gasping sigh escaped her chapped lips as she sunk into the old beaten couch. Her fingers were still giddy with energy and started picking apart the exposed foam of the used-to-be lime green loveseat. However, her skeleton fingers never crossed over the halfway point between the two armrests; she sat still, neatly on the right side of the couch. The room, besides the couch and a broken television, was barren. The fading purple carpet showed signs of wear and had darker spots where old furniture once stood. The morning sun shone through the broken windows, glistening off of shards of glass. But none of this seemed to faze the woman. She continued to rip at the foam cushion, her feet facing forward.
    A rapid drip, drip, drip came from the kitchen. She liked to think her faucet only just started leaking, but it could’ve started months, maybe even years ago. Then, along with the drips, she heard a slight rapping. Turning her head instinctively towards the front door, she waited for it to open while her fingers still fumbled for something to hold on to.

    “Ginny! Ginny!” A young man burst through the front door. He entered a cozy room. The night made it void of all light except for the flickering of a faux fire in the center of the room. A small form sat curled up on the lime green loveseat located by the fire. Bookcases and picture frames adorned the walls and a small wine rack and liquor cabinet sat with its doors open in the far corner of the room. A small television flickered on mute; pictures of fire and riots and screaming citizens graced the screen. Placed in front of the faux fire was a blown glass coffee table with an almost empty bottle of wine and various other half-drunk glasses of unknown substances sitting on top of it. The man immediately approached the loveseat and contemplated how he would rouse the small form. Should he rip the blanket from her curled up body? Should he lovingly kiss her awake? Should poke her until she swatted back at him like a cat? He shook his head and reached out to grasp her shoulder, giving it a firm shake. There was no time for sensitivity. “Ginny!” he repeated again.
    The form jumped and flung the blanket back in his face, almost falling off the loveseat in the process. The girl, now exposed, jumped up and ripped the blanket off of the intruder’s face. Immediately, her eyes welled up with tears and she bit her lip hard to keep them from flowing, almost drawing blood. “Jem!” she cried out in a cracked voice as she flipped the fire pit up onto the loveseat on which he sat in bewilderment, still stunned by the blanket.
    The metal pit hit him square in shoulder and he flinched back in pain. The faux embers didn’t burn him, but fell on the couch, leaving black marks in their path and also on Jem’s shoulder and face, slightly warming him. “Ginny! Stop! Listen to me!”
    The girl, Ginny, hesitated in her search for something else to hurl at the intruder, “What the hell, Jem!? Why aren’t you dead?!” She picked up a half-full glass of vodka.
    Jem grabbed her wrists before she had the chance to launch it at his head. The glass dropped to the purple carpet, splashing out all its contents. “Ginny, you have to get to your father’s place.”
    She struggled fiercely, screaming back, “They destroyed the White House! YOU destroyed it! Burned it to the ground! Don’t you watch the news? He’s dead!”
    Slowly, Jem wrestled her to the couch and oddly enough, she sat still after he released her arms. With caution, afraid she might bolt at any point, he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small case that looked like a ring box, “He has a hideout. Here, we found this HCD.”
    It only took Ginny a few short seconds to grab the box, take out the transportable holographic communication device and plug it into a receiver shaped like a small charging dock with a microscopic camera and projector attached to it. “We don’t have any time!” a voice emitted from the device. Suddenly, a flicker of light nearly blinded Ginny; she was staring directly at the machine. The form of her father appeared off center and slightly skewed on top of the turned over fire pit. “Virginia!” the voice was strained and frantic, “Go with Jem! They want to kill you! It’s the revolution. He’ll keep you safe!” Crashes filled the background and Ginny thought she heard the crackling of fire, “I’m sorry!” His ghostly form crashed to the floor and dissipated into the air, as if a foot came down and stamped him out like the butt of a cigarette. The sounds of wood cracking and stone crumbling filled the room. The HCD went blank.
    “Ginny please, we have to go. I want to protect you,” Jem pulled her up from the couch and wrapped his arms around her. Her own arms hung limp as she stood in shock. “Ginny, I need you.”
    She unsuccessfully tried to wriggle free as a single tear fell down her cheek. She opened her mouth to speak, but the breaking of glass muted her words. A brick flew right by her head and landed directly into the television. Shards like pins and needles spewed all over the pair. Jem threw his body in between the flying shards of glass and Ginny. Protesters like savages stormed into the dark room and tore Jem from Ginny, kicking and shattering the coffee table in the process. Ginny kicked and screamed for Jem as he was thrown against the wall and beaten in the stomach until he began spewing blood. Through tears, she saw her empty wine bottle coming down on her head. Everything went black.

    It had taken years of fighting and revolution and counter-revolution for Ginny to make it back to her small purple room with the lime green loveseat. She didn’t know if Jem survived that night, but someone was leading the counter-revolution and she liked to think it was Jem. He had always had a knack for leadership since working for her father, who at the time was the President of the Unified States.
    The start of the revolution occurred like a slow forest fire. Even before her father’s time in office, her grandfather had led the country to collapse. For ten years, the United States of America had split up into their own countries that would often annex other smaller neighboring countries. At the beginning of her father’s reign, with some violent convincing and help from European allies, he reunited the now enlarged states once more, forming The Unified States. There was a time of peace that lasted until the end of his life.
    Jem had only just graduated law school when Ginny’s father hired him as his right-hand man. Ginny also started advising her father and learning about the position that would be left to her, the only heir. Jem and Ginny hit it off right away, determined to further stabilize the peace in their country.
    However, it only took a spark to ignite the flame once more. Ginny’s father had been working in secret with the Danish government to obtain a new element found deep in the Baltic Sea which the Danes called forfaldium. In its pure form, it could decay human flesh and bones entirely into basic elements, such as oxygen and carbon. But, when combined with sodium it remains as harmless as table salt. The Danish government had been experimenting with the substance for years, but had no use for it, until it caught the attention of the Unified States. The trade was being handled confidentially until a disgruntled former government agent, also Jem’s younger brother, leaked the news to the media. This is when the riots started happening. Why in this time of peace would the President be stocking up on a deathly element? The Christians cried “Anti-Christ” and politicians attacked each other like dogs over the subject. Rumors started to fly around the White House that Jem let the information slip to his brother.
    The anger started to rise. Ginny’s mother was beaten to death in a supermarket and the Vice President was pushed in front of a subway train in capital. The States were in chaos. Determined to keep the States unified, the President refused to leave his place at the White House, but nothing changed. One dark night, the sounds of explosions filled the air and people in the streets, with their personal HCD watches, took videos of the pristine palace being blown to shreds with hundreds, maybe thousands, of people inside, including the President. The revolution took over the government’s forfaldium lab and starting using the substance on all those who opposed them. Unable to adjust the element to its pure form, they created a liquid substance using water that would only produce the intended effects if drunken.
    Ginny’s HCD rung for hours. She’d never pick it up, remaining curled up on her sofa, watching silent news and pictures of despair and rotting flesh flicker on her television. She knew the revolution would find her and she knew they would kill her and she didn’t care.
    After Jem’s failed attempt to save her, she was held hostage of the revolution. And to her horror, they never killed her, but kept her in a guarded cell underground somewhere. Ginny screamed until her throat was raw and bit and scratched anyone who came near her, so eventually they heavily sedated for what seemed like years. However, it seemed as if suddenly, a pair of arms yanked her from her blurry prison.
    “I’ve got her!” A strong voice cried out. His yell reverberated off of the metal walls and scared her. Ginny remembered instinctively scratching his face with her chipped, unkempt nails, but he held on tightly, her body bouncing with each step he took as he ran out into the darkness of night. She had been transferred to another prison, except this one was white and she was chained to a bed instead of to a wall. There were also multiple machines hooked up to her frail body, beeping away. When the years of sedation started to wear off, Ginny noticed faces around her—women and men coming in and out of her room, feeling her forehead, pressing their fingers to her throat. At first it made her anxious; when did they plan to kill her? Soon, she learned through talk that this was the counter-revolution. She had been rescued upon orders of their nameless leader. She liked to think it was Jem.
    Everyone knew who she was which surprised her and everyone seemed glad that she had survived the revolution. She spent hours watching the news on mute in her small white room, until she was well enough to go outside and it was safe enough to go back home. They offered her a place in the counter-revolution capital in the Midwest, but she insisted on seeing her old house, which hadn’t been blown to debris, only looted.
    And so now she sat alone in her empty room with the purple carpet and green loveseat staring at the front door. “It’s the counter-revolution, telling me it’s time to go,” Ginny bet herself as she got up and moved shakily towards the door, starting to rub her arm again. She opened it a crack, “Yes?” The door was then pushed open from the outside.
    A man stood in the door frame. There was dirt smudged across his cheek. “Miss Virginia?” he asked.
    “Yes,” she said again, this time with more conviction. Ginny had stopped rubbing her arm.
    “I still need you.”