The Great Council of Men - Science Fiction (Young Adult) - The Beginning

Ending many years ago and known as the time of the Stench, the smell of death disappeared after every last female on earth was purged. Every female I know is gone. I am a sixteen-year-old girl, and many years ago my father saved me because he is on the Great Council of Men. I am hidden. My body is covered in the traditional garb of gray pants and loose shirt; my hair is buzzed short; and I am mistaken for a small boy. I bind my chest with bandages to hide my body, so I look just like any other boy walking down the street. I am the only girl left in existence. I might be the only female left on earth.

I have heard rumors that there is a place where women can walk freely, but I don’t know if this exists. My father said, “All women are gone, so please stop thinking about those kinds of ideas. Our race is meant for extinction.” My father has served as a top official to the Great Council of Men and is responsible for the extinction of women. He hid me as a boy, claiming that I was some long-lost son, and my papers state that my name is Jim instead of my real name—Melanie. My father has that much power, and no one defies him.

Melanie is gone, and I answer to Jim. I am a boy. Before her death, my grandmother said to me that there used to be places called beauty parlors where you could color your nails in every color of the rainbow if you chose. She said that women could wear long garments called skirts and dresses, which are pants without legs. Women put color on their cheeks and on their lips, called lipstick. I looked through pictures of women who dressed this way before my father destroyed every piece of evidence, the photos burned in a fire long ago extinguished.

There is little color in our world ruled by men. There are occasional perfectly manicured trees on the street and a sunset in the sky, but everything is gray. The buildings and the billboards with varying shades advertise plain, white cakes and cookies, and the houses are all painted the same color. I notice this sometimes because my father’s garden has flowers with vivid pinks and reds. My father once told me that those colors represent women and don’t belong in our everyday world.

Our cities are filled with tall buildings where men await the Extinction. It is not much longer before all of us will cease to breathe and go into the ground forever. All men look forward to this day, and we have celebrations to honor the dead when they do.

Sometimes, I wonder why females were killed off first. The Sensitive Ones are still angry that women have been destroyed. They are men who wanted to have babies and families and the companionship that women can bring. The Sensitive Ones live poorly and do not walk into the tall buildings where real men work. They live near rank alleyways and are responsible for driving garbage trucks, serving in restaurants, and cleaning up the streets with brooms. They were once seen as part of the Resistance but now are relegated to a place of poverty. My father said that they deserve it and that these men don’t understand that earth has to be purged.

“They don’t understand the Enlightenment,” he said.

“But where do we go?” I once asked him.

“We go to a resting place until we can be reunited on earth. We must purge the earth first so that all the souls come back stronger. There will be no problems, disease, or famine when we come back to earth. This will only happen after every soul is wiped off the earth first. We must all die.”

Extinction in our world means that all will perish from the earth until there is no more. The Great Council of Men decided that this would be done slowly to ensure that all men properly died. There is an art to death, and the Council decided that men would meet their deaths with honor and celebration. Then, after our land’s mass death, we will all come back to an earth without famine and sadness. Women have already been eradicated, and next will slowly be the men. When a man reaches his fortieth birthday, he will be put to death. The deaths will happen until the last man has died. Our souls will be in a holding place after death. The belief is we—including women—will come back to a new earth, and what awaits us is an abundance of food, love, and joy.

I sometimes wonder if the world will be a better place with women. It started with a scientist, Bradley Pomme, who developed a pill that only affected women. He spread his ideas and pills into our drinking water. He is revered as a god, and statues were erected in every part of the city to honor him. The story of Bradley Pomme is written in books in our churches, and he is seen as the savior.

He was in his lab one day, angry because of another fight with his wife. Bradley accidentally discovered that the formula he developed had only killed off the female rats in his laboratory; the male rats continued to thrive. The drug only reacted to the chemistry of females because they were made up of higher levels of estrogen.

One night, Bradley served his wife dinner and put a few drops of this formula into her water—and in his—just to test his theory on humans. Bradley thought he had a pleasant conversation with his wife about their son. He was proud that his only son was doing so well in college. Then broccoli got caught in her throat, and Bradley’s wife started choking. She passed out and died. He described this transition into death as the Peace. No one believed him when he said her death was accidental. They searched his laboratory and found his notes. No one was sympathetic or understood how necessary the Extinction was and hadn’t heard about his theories about the Enlightenment. He was thrown in jail and eventually received the death penalty. That’s when everything began. This piece of information is important in my story. I am the last female on earth because of him.

Because I am sixteen years old, I am seen as a Young One. I am known as one of the very young and a birth that should have never happened. All the mothers who gave birth to the Young Ones—including sisters and grandmothers—have since perished. My mother had me after the war, and I am not considered for extinction. Right now—because I am still young—I must go to school and ensure that every male over the age of forty years old dies peacefully. I also have to make sure that there aren’t any rogue females running around. I must immediately shoot them or bring them in for extinction. I have been taught how to use a gun, and I am going to be trained on a machine that will lead to a peaceful death for those who reach their fortieth birthday. My father is forty-five years old, but because he serves on the Great Council of Men, he will remain on earth longer than most. I don’t know why I am trained to kill women; they aren’t around, or so my father said.

The Great Council of Men carried out the ideas of Bradley Pomme. In his prison cell, Bradley wrote that in order to end the hunger, poverty, and violence, women must die. He wrote that women were the cause of much of the evil on earth and must be eradicated first. Then, in his later writings, he wrote that man must accept death, too. He believed there was something beyond our earth that would take care of the suffering of tortured souls and that there would be a new beginning on earth only after the earth was purged. He called this the Enlightenment. He believed that the rights of women had been taken too far and that they would plague men from experiencing a peaceful death. Bradley proposed that men should carry out their final days alone.

Some people of his time thought that Bradley had been a raving lunatic. It wasn’t until his son, Ashland Pomme, peeked into his father’s laboratory that the idea was actually carried out. Ashland attempted to do everything legally and formed a small group that gave birth to the Great Council of Men. However, the Sensitive Ones and women protested vehemently about the death of the human race when they discovered his sentiment. They held signs that said, “Women Must Live On” and “Death to Ashland Pomme.”

People didn’t actually take things seriously. They thought there was no way that women and men would agree to end their lives. The US government thought of Ashland Pomme as a fringe-group leader, and his supporters were merely flies that must be smashed. However, there was the freedom of speech, and Ashland was allowed to say whatever he wanted—even about the harm of women. But Ashland had more supporters than the government thought.

One night, in every major city from Chicago to Los Angeles that once made up the United States, Ashland carried out his father’s dream. With a group of men, he poured into the drinking water a massive dose of his father’s elixir. It was a secret mission, and many women were reporting that they were sick, but no one knew the reason why. Hospitals overflowed with sick women, and husbands stood by their side in fear because they couldn’t figure out why their beautiful wives were getting sick. Women were dying in massive droves. Soon, it spread throughout the United States.
Ashland and his group remained silent and offered no help. They were not accused until much later. But millions of women were dying. Men, however, were fine. The disease that affected women was called the Women’s Disease, and no amount of medicine or even the finest doctors could prevent what was happening.

Ashland continued to carry out his father’s plans. He went to the smallest cities in the United States—from Louisiana to the back roads of towns that were not ever talked about or even known—to spread the formula into the drinking water. Meanwhile, he was strengthening his movement and a new government. Men joined to passionately support Ashland’s cause. Disillusioned by life, men became entranced with Ashland’s speeches and ideas. In the history I read as a child, I thought it was like World War II and the masses who had been brainwashed during the forties. But no one now believes that this is similar; if they do, they keep quiet about it.

Women were angry with Ashland’s new government. They had fought so hard to have the right to vote—the right to their choices—and some man was trying to take that away from them. As women lay in hospitals and experienced rather quick deaths, bodies were piling up. So many women were dying from the mysterious death so quickly that they couldn’t be buried fast enough. For a decade, the smell of death permeated the air and was known by the Great Council of Men as the Stench.
Soon, Ashland became vocal. “Women must be eradicated,” Ashland screamed from a microphone at rallies across the United States.
The crowd of men inspired by Ashland chanted, “Yes!”

By the time the US government figured out what was happening, it was too late. Millions of women had already died, and soon the women who were left were killed by Ashland’s followers as his government strengthened. His government survived, and with the backing of wealthy male benefactors, a new building was being built to house the government. It was also known that all male descendants of Ashland Pomme would be the ones to enforce the government. Ashland had secret babies to ensure that the males would rule the world.

I am a descendant of Ashland Pomme. I have bits of memories about my mother. My father had been angry that she was pregnant and, even worse, carrying a girl. I was born anyway. When I was a little girl, my mother whispered to me as she put me to bed that I was to carry out the mission to save women. I didn’t know what that meant. I stroked my mother’s dark hair—the color of mine—and stared into her black eyes as she talked. She wasn’t supposed to get pregnant, and against my father’s wishes, she had skipped taking the pill to stop my birth. Meanwhile, my father’s involvement in the Great Council of Men had grown. He soon rose to power and helped erect the statue of Ashland Pomme in the building he worked in. His belief was that women would all die, and soon so would all men. Women were to be removed from the earth first.

One night, when I was five years old, I heard my mother scream. I heard her breaking dishes and crying, “This is all wrong!” I could hear her anger through the walls. Then it was silent—so quiet that the darkness surrounded me. I started crying. I knew I would never see her again.

My father burst into the room. “Get up!” He had a razor and clothes. He sat me in my chair and began to shout, “Don’t move!” I heard the buzz of the clippers. My long beautiful hair fell to the floor. I cried and knew that my life would never be the same. I would never see my mother or grandmother again. I cried for my hair that floated to the floor. My father announced that my name was Jim, and I must act like a man.