Axel
I had a son, I couldn’t believe it. It’s never real until you hold him in your arms and look into his little brown eyes. People always say he’s got your nose, or your eyes, but I could see myself in him. It was indescribable. We decided on the name Jacob, after my grandfather. My father may not have been the figure I needed him to be, but my grandfather was always there for me. Even when the cancer beat him down, he still helped me any way he could.
He gave me a piece of advice before the disease took him, he said: The world’s going to get worse and it’s going to try and drag you down with it, boy. No matter what, you don’t let it change you. You stay true to yourself and those you love. Always remember that.
Jaclyn, or as I called her, Jackie, wasn’t one to follow current events. She always said the news was depressing. She was right, but things were brewing, big things. I barely had time to get her back home from the hospital with our newborn son before it all came crashing down.
I sat on the side of the bed, hunched over my smartphone. Jacob had kept us both up for most of the night so Jackie was finally getting some much needed rest. I was reading the news story that would change my life, forever.
Tensions between the U.S. and the countries that we all owed money to had been growing; when it became clear those debts weren’t going to get repaid anytime soon. We had powerful enemies breathing down our necks, and now they finally cracked. After forming an alliance and pooling their resources, the Eastern Organized Front, or the EOF for short, decided it was time to step over the line. Our navy and their own were at each other’s throats somewhere out in the Pacific, but that day, June 17th, 2025, they opened fire on us without warning.
World War III they called it, the war that would end the United States. It was us against them, and it didn’t take a five-star general to see that we were immensely outnumbered.
The sensible thing to do would be to back down, but our president was just as much of a hothead as I was. So we signed the documents and in his infinite wisdom he decided to reinstate a draft.
All able-bodied men between the ages of eighteen and thirty would be required to enlist. Short of breaking both my legs, I qualified. My hands were trembling as I set the phone down beside me on the bed. I looked back to Jackie and then over to Jacob’s crib. I couldn’t leave them without a husband and father, but I didn’t have much of a choice either. If I enlisted, I would be killed. We all would, this wasn’t a war you could win.
So I had two choices: suicide or fugitive. If I ran, they would hunt me, but if I went quietly, they’d have me serve as fodder on some god-forsaken field for the enemy. I slowly stood up and walked over to Jacob’s crib. He was sleeping soundly, I couldn’t risk waking him up. I grabbed the leather jacket my grandfather gave me, pulled on a pair of blue jeans, and walked out to the kitchen. I took the magnetic tablet off the fridge and set it on our modest table. Paper had been outlawed in 2020 when a bill passed to cease deforestation of the Earth’s major ecosystems.
The damage had been done if you asked me, but the bill forced the government to provide cheap electronic solutions for everything from books, to journals, to sketchbooks and school textbooks. Of course, all of that was going to cost money, money we didn’t have.
I tried to type using the onscreen keyboard but it was too frustrating. I turned on the voice-to-text mode and walked to the opposite side of the kitchen.
“Jackie, by the time you read this I’ll already be gone. I know you don’t keep up with the news, but we’re at war. They’re taking everyone they can to the meat grinder, but I won’t be one of them. I have to disappear for a while, get off the grid, but I promise you I’ll come back. As soon as they lose my scent or this damn war ends, I’ll be back. Wait for me, baby. Love, Axel.”
I looked down at the digitally handwritten note. It would have to do. I had to put as much distance between myself and this place as I could before they showed up to haul off all the men. I placed the tablet back on the surface of the fridge and walked back to the bedroom as quietly as I could.
I stood over Jacob’s crib and gently touched his soft cheek before planting a kiss on his forehead. It could be years before I would be able to safely return. He would grow up without me, without his father. I had no other choice, unlike my deadbeat dad who walked out on us; I was trying to avoid him losing a father entirely.
I turned and walked over to Jackie. She was sleeping peacefully. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever laid eyes upon. I wanted to stay and protect her, protect Jacob, but I couldn’t. They would haul me off like some criminal in a week and I would never see them again. I leaned down and kissed her on the cheeks.
“I love you baby,” I whispered.
She replied with a few soft sounds that barely resembled words. She was fast asleep. I reached over to the picture frame on our nightstand. It was both of us on our first date. I took her to the beach and we posed for that picture with the sun setting in the background. It was my favorite picture of us, I couldn’t leave it behind. I took the picture out delicately and placed it in my pocket.
I fought back tears as I stood up and walked to the entrance of our apartment. I didn’t feel good about any of it. This wasn’t the right thing, but it was the only thing I could do. I walked out and closed the door behind me.
Out in the parking lot was Jackie’s old station wagon. She had gotten it from her parents so the thing was ancient compared to the cars surrounding it from recent years. Parked next to it was my motorcycle. While it was also old and technically illegal because it used a combustion engine, it had class. A small gas can hung from the back of it as gas stations were few and far between.
They didn’t do much to enforce the rules about combustion engines; otherwise Jackie and I would have been out of our vehicles a long time ago. People still drove them, and gas stations, albeit small ones, could still be found in the corners of small towns.
I climbed onto the motorcycle and placed the keys into the ignition. This was it, the first day of the rest of my life. I turned the key and the engine roared. It barked and growled, nothing like the quiet and meek engines we used in modern cars. No, this was a thing of beauty. I slid my helmet on and drove off. I didn’t know where I was going. Anywhere but here I suppose