A Halloween Fantasy in the Future with ties to the current mayhem in the country and the world, the upcoming Mid Term Elections on November 8th, 2022, the 2024 Presidential Election, the movie "Planet of the Apes" & All Saints Day.
Public Domain Pics: Planet of the Apes / Blue Moon
It's Friday, October 31, 2022 - a Waxing Crescent Phased Moon on Halloween and truly a spooky prelude to the Mid Term Elections on November 8th!
Fast Forward ...
It's Thursday, October 31st in the year 2024 – the US Presidential Election would have been scheduled next week - and life as we knew it has changed drastically forever since World War III destroyed most of the earth.
Who would have thought that the Charlton Heston depiction in the Planet of the Apes movie would really come true as we noticed the Statue of Liberty toppled on the barren shores of the former Manhattan Island that we were walking on and rummaging through in search of other life and food?
I made 65 years of age in March 2024 and now can only dream of what had been my hope to retire then and continue part-time senior outreach work to supplement our income.
We had moved to the Adirondacks from Louisiana in the Fall of 2020 after the miracle COVID-19 Vaccine fully restored us and others to enjoy again some normalcy and the wonderful outdoors - and the climate that I had first been exposed to when I went to Blake's camp for a summer excursion back in 2011.
Not long after arriving to New York State, Maria and I had started a thriving “Prayer-Line” business - a praline bakery that she developed out of our home by Tupper Lake nestled in the beauty and grandeur of the Adirondack Mountains.
No matter how passe' dot.com's had become more than a decade ago, we found a way to capitalize on Yankee people's insatiable appetite for some sweet southern indulgence – especially after COVID-19 had denied so many of us from simple pleasures.
And my social work private practice and geriatric assessment and referral program, Prayer Care, that I had developed full-time in New York had quickly blossomed as the needs of age wave of baby boomers and their caregivers had grown exponentially especially after what COVID-19 taught us.
Here we were in 2024 – a few survivors who happened to find a way to stay alive after hiding out in some caves on our Y-2k-like stockpile of red beans and rice, water and Bergeron pecans for the past 2 years.
Being 'Yat natives from Louisiana and transplants to the Red Stick for many years before our move to the Big Apple area, it actually didn't take us too long to get accustomed to the cooler climate, as we had many more “cuddle alerts” there - as the famous Baton Rouge television weatherman, Mike Graham, used to call them!
Fortunately, our adult kids and grandchildren were with us on the run, but there was no way for us to communicate with anyone else in the area or the world who may have survived the nuclear holocaust as all cell and other communication devices were non-functioning.
After we had waited months for the nuclear fallout to clear, we finally were venturing out on foot after making our way south to “Wall Street” on the Hudson River per a make-shift raft that we had made.
Back in late 2022, who would have ever thought that the growing turmoil from geo-political strains, including the turmoil created in Ukraine by Russia's invasion, China's threatened invasion of Taiwan, N. Korea's test missile firings, havoc in the Middle East, COVID-19 remnants, as well as internal factors such as a plummeting economy, a recession, increased crime and intense civic polarities would have eventually triggered such a tumultuous World War III in December of 2022?
Like remnants of the old 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers, everything was leveled with no skyline to speak of! We did our best in our travels to pay respects to and pray for all who had perished in the terrible cataclysmic events that had taken place. It was so lonely to feel like we were the only survivors maybe in the whole world!
As darkness settled in and everything was pitch dark except for what was illuminating from the beautiful full moon and stars that night, we settled into our shelter – which reminded us of that old ”Survivor Show” from the 1st decade of the century. No sooner had most of us started to snooze after bedtime prayers – I still like to sing the one, “Good Night,” by Ringo and The Beatles from the White LP – than we heard something we had sorely missed since the wars: another voice!
We got up and saw a large UFO nearby with friendly apes coming out and walking towards us with bags in their hands and cheering to have found us. In a beautiful harmonic chorus, we heard them chant, “Trick or Treat! Trick or Treat!” Since we had so many red beans and rice rations left over and as 'Yats that was always a tradition for Mondays, Maria just cooked up some more for our friendly aliens for a feast, including treating them to some of Maria's freshly made pralines.
In a return favor to us from our visitors, we were brought in an instant (like those “beam-me-up Scotty” Star Trek days) to the human colony on Mars in an earth-like enclosed atmosphere and got to see many other displaced friends for the first time since the tragic wars.
What a great day that was and like another New Orleans tradition, the following day we commemorated the lives of many saintly people we had known who no longer were around – All Saints Day!
Keith John Paul Horcasitas, LCSW, MHA
Prayer Care, LLC
khorcasitas.yahoo.com
October 13, 2022
That was about as weird a mishmash of southern New Orleans hospitality and supposedly greatest fears coming true all at once as I have ever read. By 2024? But then, it would make a very good weekly series that I see often on TV that have very little science fiction and a whole lot of corny bull.
The cartoon was interesting. In 1976, the bicentennial year, on the day before Thanksgiving, I took the ferry to the Statue of Liberty and was able to climb to the crown. As I squeezed around the topmost path looking out through the openings under the crown, the thing that struck me was how shiny the brass bars for support were with so many people rubbing the paint off passing so tightly by. Certainly pre-renovation and COVID-19. But probably spread many diseases in the past.
Who would never of thunk that the prez would test positive? ;-)
Public Domain Pics: Planet of the Apes / Blue Moon
