i didn't like the characters

by nick nelson

i was reading this story. i didn’t want to, but they made me. it was education. reeducation, education, whatever. i guess it was all right. it was supposed to be good. but i didn’t like it. i didn’t like the characters. they weren’t real to me. there was this girl. she lived in a hut with a sheep, or a goat. a sheep, it was a sheep. they were survivors. there was a big war, a nuclear war or something, and they were survivors. that part i could relate to. because i’m a survivor myself. that is what it is all about - being a survivor. anyway, there was also this old man, and he lived in a hut too, not the same hut, a different one, down the road or over the hill or something, and he was a survivor too. and he had a pet wolf, or a wolf dog or whatever. i didn’t like the girl. i didn’t believe in her as a survivor. i thought she was weak. and kind of stuck up, like she knew everything when she didn’t know shit. what i would have done, if i was writing the story, was change the girl to a guy - a real survivor. an ex-special ops or navy seal, who had seen and done it all. who had been in the forefront, in the trenches of the nuclear war that destroyed civilization.. and instead of a sheep, i would give him a specially designed rifle. that is what you need to survive after a nuclear war, not a fucking sheep. the rifle would come equipped with a device that could process the atoms in the air to make new rounds so you would never run out of rounds. that way you could really survive. in the story the girl with the sheep and the old man with the wolf get together and they talk a lot of shit i didn’t really understand. i suspect it was about peace and love and being soft. couldn’t they see that being soft was what got them there in the first place, instead of standing up for their freedoms? fucking? no, there wasn’t any fucking in the story. they didn’t fuck each other and they didn’t fuck the sheep or the wolf either. that was another thing that was wrong with the story, there wasn’t any fucking in it. now if i was writing the story i would change the girl to an ex-special ops guy, like i said, and i would also change the old man, to the last imam, or last prophet of islam, or the last ayatollah, or hillary clinton. and instead of sitting around talking a lot of weak shit, i would have the special ops guy blow the ayatollah away, with his special rifle, maybe from five thousand feet away. or maybe - how is this? - the guy has one last shot, from five thousand feet , but he just wounds the prophet, and he gets wounded himself, and they have a knife fight in the dust and the special ops guy wins. that is how i would have written the story, if it was up to me. but they wrote it, not me, and they made me read it. they got me here for a while. but we will see how it goes. they can’t keep me here forever. i’m a survivor.