It gets harder every day to remember a time of colors, with the ground green and the sky blue and the white-yellow of the sun; there’s no sun now, no sky, nothing living to be green. He remembers her hair, red-gold, the colors dancing in the light; everyone’s hair is the same muddy brown-gray now, covered in ash and dirt and cloth. He remembers her eyes, green-gold, glittering like jewels; everyone’s eyes are the same muddy brown-gray now, reflecting the flat angry sky and earth and the death and sadness, just bleak. He tries to look for that in her, the color, the meaning of life, he rubs his thumb along an eyebrow, trying to find one ruddy hair through the grime and she smiles at him, knowing what he’s searching for and hoping he finds it. She’s still very beautiful, even if only in his memory.
The Survivors, that’s what they call themselves, shuffle along in packs, clinging together for support to keep from falling over dead with hopelessness and hunger; they travel together yet they are each alone in their misery. He holds her hand in its fingerless wool glove too large and caresses her cold fingertips with his own and is grateful that they at least are not alone. To her only, he calls them Leftovers, like the scraps of a Thanksgiving meal; he says the war was the feast and we’re the Leftovers. He says you’re the gravy to my turkey and it makes her laugh, a welcome brittle sound. They have traveled together, these nine people and one dog, for a while now, many days and nights, how long he can never be sure. There were more of them once, moving from one night to the next, but they had died or wandered off, everyone always seeming to leave somehow. He likes hearing their voices, the sounds of them sleeping and coughing and eating, and laughing every now and then, and sometimes he can pretend they are just camping. Not that she isn’t enough, she is more than enough, just to have her alive and with him is enough, and their dog, but he likes the company too; it is easier to pretend.
Their dog barks at his side because it’s hungry or curious or just reminding him it’s there. There’s little left for a dog to scrounge, squirrels and pigeons charred and dust, all the other dogs seem to be long gone. He scratches behind its ears and it quivers in pleasure. He feels the hard bones of its skull and it makes his heart ache; there has always been more love for dogs in him than he could give to most people. He coughs, he hopes discreetly. She feels the tremors of his body and squeezes him, as if she could squeeze the coughs right out of him. Their dog whimpers, expressing the worry that sticks to them like the ash in the air, the worry that binds the Leftovers together with emaciated cords.
He knows there might be a time sooner than later when the food runs out and all the abandoned buildings have already been pillaged or the ash strangles them in their sleep — and he would have to bury their dog and hold her while she took her last wheezy breath shortly before God-willing he took his own last wheezy breath. He knows she knows this and has probably spent just as many hours thinking about it as he has; they stopped talking about it, the possibilities, and the certainties.
They just go day-by-day, not guessing at the future, not even questioning how the past led to this present, and they gradually stopped remembering their own little personal histories; the pain of memories was too much to bear.
He kisses her that day when they rest while their dog chews the dusty remains of a bird, sucking the petrified marrow. He kisses her with some of the old hunger and she leans into it and he feels so lucky; they will make love that night when the fire dies, seeking warmth from each other, and forgetting momentarily. They don’t do it often now, afraid of the great mistake that would be a baby. As much as they always wanted a child together, a child with his dark hair and her light eyes, his long straight nose and perfect ears and her pale freckled skin and wide flower-petal mouth, it wouldn’t be right.
She says when she was younger she read a story about Isis, does he know about her?
He says, an Egyptian goddess, right, the goddess of…
…life, she says, the goddess of life and magic and wisdom and her husband was the lord of the underworld. She tells him, Isis brought her husband back from the dead and pieced him back together just to have a child, for love.
He says, she sounds like a helluva woman.
She was the mother of the god of sun, of sky, of light, of the heavens, she says, tremulous. She was his mother; she brought her husband back so that she could be his mother. She says, it must have been something wonderful — motherhood.
He considers her words sadly and decides, fascinating and wonderful — and weird.
She giggles, a faraway girlish echoing from the past. Yeah, she agrees. They walk on.
Lia Molly Deromedi grew up in Chico, Northern California. She graduated with a degree in Literature/Writing from the University of California, San Diego. Lia is currently in the process of completing her Master’s in English from Brooklyn College. She lives and writes in New York.
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13 Responses to “LEFTOVERS • by Lia Molly Deromedi”
Comments
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July 15th, 2009 at 5:46 am
This story held my attention, but I found the sentences and paragraphs overly long.
July 15th, 2009 at 5:53 am
Agree with Paul, the writing was a little dense.
The entire work suffers by the immediate, obvious comparison to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Unfortunately, this piece doesn’t explore any new avenues or offer any new insights into the milieu, making it seem more an exercise than a stand-alone tale in its own right.
July 15th, 2009 at 6:47 am
Bleak story, generally well done, but with some individual lines that dragged it down and could use some work. Examples:
“Their dog barks at his side because it’s hungry or curious or just reminding him it’s there.” (I was wondering why the dog was either barking at its ribs or the MC’s until I got to the end of the line. Thought it was some hunger pang thing. “Beside him, their dog barks” might work better).
That said, I haven’t (to my shame) read The Road, so don’t have McCarthy’s story as a comparison. I thought this was decent and did enjoy it, although after all the description of the desolation and grime, I did wonder how these two had any desire for physical intimacy.
Stands on its own as a slice of life story or could be the beginning of a longer work.
–John
July 15th, 2009 at 7:02 am
A well-written descriptive sketch, but where’s the story? This could serve well as a Prologue to a novel, or a flashback scene, or something like that, but it does not do well standing by itself. Nothing happens.
Re comment #1, I didn’t notice that sentences or paragraphs were overly long. But then, I like reading Dickens, and my writer’s group is always dumping on me to break up some of my sentences …
July 15th, 2009 at 7:20 am
Really enjoyed this one. Nice glimpse into a post-apocalyptic world that kept me hooked all the way to the end. Nice work.
July 15th, 2009 at 7:24 am
I think this is a good beginning effort at a description of suffering within a waning world.
But:
The color paragraph at the beginning does not tie into anything in the story and it does not continue its theme. Its as if the writer was given an assignment to “do” color and it was tacked on.
The phrase “God-willing” in the fourth paragraph seems out of character.
I think the Isis passage works as a hint of their hope for revival of their world and of themselves at the end of their trek, but the stress on motherhood and babies is another theme that does not tie in well with the desperation of their situation.
Yes, I do think that love and desire continues through despair and dirt and I think more emphasis might be given to other of their worries and feelings on this road of despair.
J.C. Towler –
Your suggestion might be misread as
“Beside(s) him their dog barks.” This doesn’t fit the story too well either.
July 15th, 2009 at 7:25 am
Well written. Sad. I think this should be the start of a longer story.
It showed awful despair and desperation. I too can’t see how anyone in that situation would have the energy or take the risk of making love.
On saying that it was very visual but perhaps too much for me.
July 15th, 2009 at 7:40 am
There is a tangible bitter sweetness about this story.
July 15th, 2009 at 8:29 am
At first I found this story a little too dark and depressing but I found the last little bit definitly saved the story. It was nice to see the young couple dreaming about a child even if it’s not possible.
July 15th, 2009 at 9:08 am
I gave this story five stars.
It is poignant and complete as a flash fiction story.
Even with the dark setting, there is hope, there is a reason to put one foot in front of the other, so I do not mind the journey.
(Stephen King in The Stand made us go miles AND MILES and made us even feel sick along with the characters before he gave us any hope -although, LOL,
I am doubtful that he would be an ace at flash fiction. And, here, again, I could be wrong on that.)
The characters were developed.I start to feel them as entities beyond what you have written so that what you did write are like doors to them for me, the reader, to imagine them further.
For such a “seemingly” somber piece, I feel the power of love and mythology and archetypal continuity pulling this story and its characters towards a peace and a world worth struggling to get to (even though it is mostly beyond the horizon at the end, it is in their hands, still tracing an eyebrow for beauty, etc.).
Very compassionate and compelling writing.
July 15th, 2009 at 9:09 am
Not really a story, and grammatically, it is a nightmare. Too many commas and semi-colons. There should be actual sentences. This really distracts from the writing, but again, there really is no story here. Just yet another view of the potentially desolate post-final-war future. Nothing new or clever here.
July 15th, 2009 at 11:10 am
Since this is an overly familiar subject to me, I was hoping for a point or twist, but found none. It reads more like a setup for a screenplay. The Isis angle seemed forced. People in such hopeless straits aren’t going to be thinking about family planning, especially with those other seven equally desperate characters around to fight for the last morsels. And The Last Dog on Earth? It would’ve been BBQ days before things got to this point, even if the nameless MC objected.
The random commas and strung on sentences also got to me. Needs a good editor.
July 15th, 2009 at 11:33 am
The long sentences don’t bother me because they are melodic. I find the rhythm int eh story and the senses evoke the music–the underlying melody in writing.
It has become all very trendy to knock longer sentences, and often such comments stem from strong editorial-sharpened experience.
And yet, there are sentence structures that force the reader to let go of their clippity-cloppity gaits and get caught up in the rapids of the music. And that is sheer magic.