Grey

The world is grey.

Odd to say, trust me I know. But the sky is completely colorless; the sun tucked beneath a lingering blanket of smog. Sometimes I imagined God poking a straw through our world and sucking all the blue from the atmosphere. A cold drink, a welcome respite from this suffocating warmth.

But then I see the factories with their black belch. Our lungs become choked with thick smoke, tongues covered with ash. And I know this isn’t some work from God, but rather centuries of neglect and ignorance.

They give us masks to ward off a virus, but I believe it’s so we don’t inhale the product of greed.

Sewage flowed from overwhelmed storm sewers. It smelled of dung and rancid decay. The hot, nasty liquid filled the cracks in the road. Bare trees lined the road, their bark cracked and dry. My friend, Amanda, once said that if they were to catch on fire, the entire city would burn. Dead trees are hazards. In another lifetime, when people still cared, they would cut down each one and replant. A large, furry rat hissed, raising its hackles before sprinting behind an upturned dumpster. 

My brother runs ahead, inhaler in hand. A dog snarls at him, forgotten in the backyard of a boarded-up house. I saw the outline of ribs beneath its matted golden fur. 

Argen, unbothered by the feral animal, smiles. His mop of black hair is oily after two weeks without a shower. Scratching a spot behind his ear, he pauses, entranced by a sickly green lump barely two inches from his sandaled feet. It was lying in a shallow puddle, next to an old candy wrapper.

“Marko!” He yells, frantically waving me over. I sigh, begrudgingly shuffling to where he stood.

“It’s a frog!” Argen, to my growing horror, picks it up. Cursed fifteen-year-olds and their curiosity. The amphibian was squishy and limp. Its eyes were glassy, mirroring its slimy sallow skin. Its complexion reminds me of the dead grass surrounding us; wherever the plant dared to exist now. Now everything was grey. 

Concrete pavement, metal, buildings. Grey. 

“People used to dissect frogs,” Argen continues, unaware of my obvious disgust. “There were frogs raised and killed just so people in my grade could cut them open and label their body parts. Isn’t that cool?”

My lips curl involuntarily. “No, it is repulsive. One of the few things I’m glad the pandemic stopped.”

While global warming roasted the Earth, a virus swept through each continent and ravaged human bodies. The internal conflict lasted ten years, causing endless lockdowns, shortages of food, water, electricity, and death. Always death.

Billions of lives, ruthlessly taken. Everyone knew someone who died. Our world has been tossed into a cycle of continuous mourning. Even our environment felt the pain of loss.

“You don’t mean that,” he insists. Argen began shaking the carcass. “Maybe we should take the frog back home and open it in the garage.”

Bile crept up my throat. The ash in my mouth was replaced with acid. It burned.

“No. No, Argen don’t you dare ever think like that,” rage simmered beneath any prior disgust. It fueled my sudden need to snatch the dead frog, place it back in its filthy puddle, and run far away from here. 

Instead, I pinch it between my thumb and pointer finger. “Human or not, respect the dead. Alright?”

Argen frowned. “You’re weird.”

I laugh, almost hysterically. I’m the weird one?

He quickly loses interest in me, walking away before I could begin my lecture on living things and human nature. 

“Can we explore one of those houses?” He points to a crumbling home; the ceiling partly caved in. Shattered glass, broken bottles, loose clothing, and untamable weeds littered the front yard. We even saw an oven. “What if we go in and find a dead body covered in spots with bloody eyes? Like what they taught us in school.” 

I shudder at his morbid train of thought, thinking of the packed graveyards. There were too many bodies to bury, and not enough survivors brave enough to lower them six feet under the hardpacked dirt. There was a rising belief that if you went close to a decomposing body, you’d automatically catch the illness and perish on the spot. A stupid stigma with perhaps no scientific basis. However, when catching a glimpse at the oozing, pus-filled blisters marring a cadaver, its bloodshot expression, and puffed dead bodies it seemed all the more believable. 

We’d seen our fair share of bodies in rigor mortis. 

“Then we won’t go inside. I don’t trust that house’s structural integrity, and Momma’s been expecting us for supper.”

“‘Structural integrity’,” Argen mocked in a high-pitched voice. Then he snickered at my scowl.

Momma isn’t our birth mother. She’s an old, wrinkled black woman who wore sparkly sweaters throughout the year and baggy sweatpants. She was our neighbor before our parent’s died post-pandemic in a car crash while we were toddlers. Argen said that they must have smashed their skulls open when the windshield blew, but I didn’t want to think about that.

Sometimes, when people summoned enough humanity to care, they’d ask us. Where our parents were, and if they knew we wandered the streets at ungodly hours during the night. Argen would simply tell them they were dead. 

Naturally, they automatically assume their deaths resulted from the virus. 

That kindness disappears only two breaths later. I timed it once. 

They clap their hands over their noses and mouths and stumble back in shock. Sometimes they would be angry; curse at us for infecting them, for walking in public, for breathing the same air. However, most of the time they are scared. Plain fearful. 

So we stopped telling people our parents are dead. 

“Momma has, like, fifty other kids to worry about.”

Sixty-four, I think sullenly. It’s hard to make Argen care about the other children in the school, all younger than we are. Each orphaned, alone, hungry, and illiterate. I tried to help out whenever I could, but between our food runs, death-defying escapes from the clutches of gangs, and my desire to crawl into the library at night, I seem to never have time.

“Which is more reason to get back. I don’t want her to agonize.”

Argen rolls his eyes, but I catch him speeding up. We rounded a corner onto Deathland Yard; a long strip of road where the homeless group up. It reeked of sickness and garbage.

“It always stinks of desperation here,” Argen mutters, scrunching his nose. 

A few homeless in rags and ripped clothing leer at him. They’re dirty-faced, missing fingers and teeth. One even has a stump for a leg.

I grab Argen’s elbow, pushing him faster. The people of Deathland Yard truly are desperate. Enough so to attack teenagers in the street if they knew we carried medications, instant noodles, and writing utensils.

Momma said that most of them were once ferocious warriors, marching off to war in the name of their country. Soldiers trained to bleed. After the pandemic, jobs shut down. People were left homeless, and whatever work remained was only available to the able-bodied. Taxes continued and governmental aid was rare if at all given. They lost their homes. Left to roam the streets as beggars. Their reward for fighting wars.

In their place, I would be bitter. I would curse the world and everyone around me simply for existing. 

We round the bend to our home, affectionately named Old Nelly after our favorite deceased janitor. Her grave rested underneath the only living tree within our city. It was a towering willow, with long draping branches and soft leaves that gently brushed the ground. 

Argen once asked why the tree had remained if everything else turned grey. Momma smiled, brushed my hair that was splayed across her lap. 

“Hope.”

I didn’t understand. Hope? Why would hope care about a tree? Hope deserted us when we needed her most. She wouldn’t linger in a tree. 

Even if she did, why choose a tree over complex beings able to solve nearly every question thrown at them?

I dismissed Momma’s words just as Argen had.

Perhaps that is why Hope left.

Amanda greets us at Old Nelly’s entrance with her signature lopsided grin. An angry scar rippled down her cheek and carved a gentle path to her neck. Momma made mashed potatoes,” she whispers excitedly, looping an arm through mine. Ignoring Argen’s stupid flirtatious wink, she leads me inside. He scrambled to catch up. “And vegs! Can you believe we got cans of corn? It was from Mike.”

Mike is the garbage dude who stops by the school for trash. He says that digging through someone’s leftovers can tell you a lot about a person. Recently he began sifting through a few rich peoples’ rubbish. I mentioned some law that going through garbage is considered trespassing but Mike brushed it off. 

“Garbage is garbage,” he pointed out. “They’re throwing it out for a reason; they don’t care for it. I’m still doing my job, except I’m benefitting from it.”

Despite the twisted logic that made some sense, it still gave me a bad feeling. Humans are petty. Especially the wealthy. I’d bet my right pinkie that if they catch Mike, they’d call the cops on him.

Or whatever system of law enforcement is currently in place. 

“Amanda,” Argen held up a tiny, eroded quarter. “I found this for you.”

Amanda’s baby blue eyes widen. Anything shiny instantly caught her intention. She guarded jewelry, coins, and any knick knacks within her custody with a ferocity that rivals a dragon.

“Argen, this is beautiful! What time is it from?” 

“Two thousand four.” He declares proudly, fisting his hands on his hips. I’m faintly reminded of an over-achieving Golden Retriever fetching his owner items to make them happy.

I snicker at the thought, earning a glare.

Amanda gingerly holds the quarter. “Pretty, very pretty.” Not bothering to say goodbye, she hunches her shoulders and scurries to her room. 

Argen slumps.

“I’m not sure why you keep giving her stuff,” I muse, starting to walk down the long hallway again. “You know she’s going to ignore you and run off to stash it in her room.”

“I like seeing her happy.”

“She’s Amanda. Amanda is always happy.”

“Still,” Argen persists, tugging on my shirt sleeve. “Everyone is usually so pissy and agitated.”

“Hey! Watch your language.”

“Mike says pissy all the time!”

I give him a ‘use your brain’ look. “Mike is an adult. After seventeen, you can use curse words too.”

Argen pouts, but doesn’t argue further. 

We walk into the cafeteria. Children sat on tabletops, chattering animatedly to one another while pushing forks topped with creamy potato in their mouths. Each person was four feet apart, a lingering habit from ten years of social distancing. Some have completely shorn hair; cut close to their scalps. Momma says it’s to prevent lice outbursts, which tend to happen once a year or so.

Now, Momma stood by a massive cauldron filled with mashed taters. Whenever one of us tottered up to the bowel, she refilled out plates with a toothy smile. Her warm gaze met mine.

I wave, pushing Argen towards the table stacked with water, plates, utensils, and corn. 

Once he leaves, I stretch and walk outside. I’d eaten this morning, but most did not. I can last a while longer if it means another child would have a meal.

I sit down next to the willow tree, studying Old Nelly’s tombstone. I was there for her death, and the three painful days before. She’d thrown up blood, lost her voice. Her skin crackled with painful bumps. Leprosy was a painful symptom.

Watching Old Nelly, I wondered how life could ever be normal again. Hell, I could barely remember normal. It was a foreign prospect, something that clearly used to exist but only in the memories of anyone older than I am. It was frustrating. 

Propaganda now told us to continue our daily lives and develop a sense of normalcy. But is normal the homeless of Deathland Yard? Is normal living in a school with sixty-four other children and sleeping in a classroom during the night? What defines normalcy, and how could we ever regain what we used to have?

I sniffle, brushing away snot with my wrist before it could run down my face. 

Looking back at the school, I catch my brother sitting next to a bunch of tweens a bit younger than he is through the window. He laughs at something one says. Somewhere else, Momma stood next to Mike, who was giving a small girl an item too small for me to discern. 

They are all bright. Colorful. Less grey than outside.

It looks like Hope.

It wasn’t bad here. But it wasn’t normal either. Perhaps that could be okay with time.

Time.