Torn (Version 1.2)

Our worn-out couch is a piece of shit, but when it’s between that and the hard floor, I guess I can’t complain. Or I can, but not as hard as I used to when all I had to sleep on was a hard floor.

Roommate comes back from her ‘shopping trip’ as I’m picking out polyester fluff from a cushion (she scolds me, I continue doing it). It feels ingenuine (childish) to call her a roommate. As if we were playing house or still living in a world where paying rent mattered. But I have no other name or phrase for her. Friend, acquaintance, co-inhabitant. What else is there?

“I brought you something!” She tells me as she digs through her many heavy ‘shopping bags’ (a collection of canvas totes, discarded plastic bags, and woven pouches) to bring out a white shirt, the letterings on the front spelling out ‘DKNY’. Amusing. Maybe. If I were twelve. How’d she find a shirt with my initials on them? 

I take it anyways, without thanking her, and cast it aside for later. She smiles rather triumphantly (I usually never give her little ‘gifts’ a second glance) before walking over to the curtain-covered window to let what was left of the sunshine in. All it does is bathe the room in a smoggy orange glow. I rub polyfill between my thumb and index finger.

“Oh look! They’re raising a new flag at Ashby!” Her voice never loses its chipper demeanor. It used to annoy the hell out of me, but now I find that I appreciate it. Admire it, really, that she can stand to pretend for so long. Especially in our situation.

I don’t comment or look towards the window. No matter what color the flag is, it can’t be any better (or worse) than whatever nation says we belong to them. “It won’t be long before they reach us…” she comments and turns to face me, “You think we better start packing?”

I shake my head, looking up at the ceiling. Shit, I need to repair that hole. It’ll leak again next time it sludges.

“Well, maybe you’re right.” She agrees, gazing back at the horizon before continuing, “If we try to run, they will probably catch us sooner or later…” She seems to be talking more to herself rather than to me. Her true feelings slipping though her cheery façade. 

I don’t pay much attention to her statement regardless. The more disattached to the situation I am, the easier it’ll be when things inevitably go wrong (a thought I do not share, because I get told that I’m not in a healthy mindset or positively contributing).

The newspaper on my lap crinkles from the blowing wind entering the apartment through the window. I look down at it.

Apparently, our economy is neither getting better nor worse according to the silly little cartoons on page seven. Honestly, it’s a luxury to even have an economy, considering the state of the world, and most people not born with silver spoons in their mouth rely solely on trading instead of currency to get their goods. Including myself. Roommate, I’ve had suspicions, comes from a better off family, but she ditched them sometime after she turned seventeen. A foolish thing to do, but what do I know. Maybe her parents were high ranking military.

The wind shifts, the newspaper turns to the front page. A nuclear power plant across the sea had an internal error and blew up, causing thousands of fatalities. And all the president of the company had to say was to complain about ‘his legacy’. Huh. Kind of looks like Roommate. 

I decide to head outside for fresh air, setting the newspaper down on the makeshift coffee table.

“Going out?” Roommate asks from the kitchen, but does not wait any sort of reply from me, “Just be back before dark, okay?” I put on my coat as she speaks, her tone hesitant and worried, “I’ve been hearing rumors about the Red Plague, you know? Be careful.”

If she’s afraid of the Red Plague, then she really did come from money. I 'hmm’ in acknowledgment, ignoring the gossip that she picked up from those nosy bitches at Underground, before closing the door, not bothering to lock it. Not like anybody would take anything, what do we have to steal? Soap, maybe, and scrap metal I’ve dug out of different ruins and piles of rubble, but first they’d actually have to know it was there. ‘Sides, if I remember correctly, there’s still a .38 magnum left lying under the floorboards from the last raid. I can’t shoot for shit, but my roommate can. She tried teaching me once, and I almost broke my hand.

The dark corridor is cold and grey, debris and rocks crunching under my boots as I pass the broken elevator and hazardous stairs to the window at the end of the hall. Our little hideaway’s on the fifth and highest floor: you could see all the way to Ashby Park (where some new army had just raised their flag, clamming it as their territory), it was a small apartment, but very cozy and almost free of pests. Pests being another word for squatters, Piglets, and general troublemakers. 

I swing one leg over the open window, and carefully place it and the other one on a sturdy pipe before climbing down next to the fire escape by Floor 4, walking down to Floor 2 on the metal stairway, and jumping out onto the extended branch of a tree. I slip last minute and hit the ground hard. Grunting. Cursing. At least my ass isn’t broken. That’s what I get for trying to be cool.

Dusting dirt and splinters off my jeans, I adjust my jacket on my frame, noticing a new hole forming on the sleeve. Ah, fuck. Time for a new one. Underground might have some to spare, but definitely not in my size. All they have are the clothes off dead soldiers. Maybe one of them will be petite.

What saves the back of my neck from the heat of the sun are the abundant amount of trees shading me with their canopies, overrunning the streets and cracking up through the old asphalt. They’ve apparently been overgrowing (they and every other plant) for the past two hundred years, being left unattended and unleashed–Which is odd, according to Roommate, because the pollution coming from the factories blocked out what was left of the sun. Roommate says it has something to do with adapting and evolution, but I didn’t go to school like she did, so it all went over my head. She tried to teach me all about it one time, pointing to contraband books she had hidden away in her room, but I can’t fucking read anything other than my name. It’s what I was taught, all I was taught, and it’s all I’ll ever need. What use do I have to learn about plants? What do I care that they used to be green? Used to purify the air?

Anyways: most people who had protested the use of the factories were killed or put in jail. It was before my time, but I remember Gran talking about it when she thought I was asleep. Said that after that, nobody asked what the factories were for anymore. 

It’s not so bad, really, all that smoke. Does terrible shit to your lungs, apparently, but when you’re born in it, it strengthens you. I’ve never coughed or hacked in my childhood, but Roommate and other foreigners do it all the time. The factories even made the sky pretty, in my opinion: having a vast orange and gray dome above my head is calming. Sometimes it’s even red, during the early hours of the afternoon. Though, I once heard from a Wanderer that the sky used to be blue most of the time. Sounds fake, but the photos I’ve managed to find from the before times seem to back the claim up. I can’t imagine something so weird.

I think back to what Roommate had said about running away as I walk down the open road (no people out today, it’s a bad sign. Can’t be out in the open. I need cover. I need over). As great as running sounded, it probably won’t make even the slightest difference for me. Her? Maybe. She can find a better spot, trade her contraband luxuries for something safer. Me, though, I’m stuck in a shithole. I’m lucky enough to have even found her to mooch off of.

The walls on the side of the road (built eighty years before I was born to keep refugees out, according to dad) are all painted over. With murals, graffiti, warnings to passersby… A particular one (my favorite) is an old propaganda painting of a man with a beard, looking inspirational. Some leader of a past government that didn’t last very long. It’s my favorite because once that government was overhauled, someone altered the piece to look like the man’s head was blown out with a gun. It’s funny, maybe. Ironic, perhaps, if the world meant what it’s supposed to mean. Maybe if the last government rises again, they’ll fix it, and the man will be revived. Might spice up the area if we got a religious tyrant instead of an atheist one, for once.

The distant sound of marching from both my left and right meet my ears. I turn both ways to see three different armies push their way through the road. Ah. Fuck!  Not wanting to get caught up in battle, I slip into an alleyway, hardly more than two feet wide, and run with all the speed I can muster up at the moment. Past injuries flare up, my breath burns, and just as the end of the alley comes into view, I hear the familiar cry of gunfire, and shouts in languages both familiar and not.

This is everyday life in what’s left of a dying world.

This is my life.

…But what other life is there?