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Night of Broken Cars
Sleep sounded good right about now. She wanted to rest her head on a pillow, close her eyes, maybe go down a dark hole for an hour, but eventually sleep. She wanted to be under her blankets curled up next to Elena in her small twin bed in a room that was way too cold to actually sleep comfortably. She thought maybe she would dream some epic tale that she could tell Elena and Nita all about in the morning before the slipped into their lives and duties for the day. She wanted rest above all, a respite from the smell of her rotting black hand, from the ache where her robotic legs met the upper part of her quads, and from the unbearable squeaking of her metal knees. That squeaking noise drove her insane. Sometimes she wished she could rip her stupid metal legs off and it scared her how often she got close to doing so.
Elena, however had different plans, and as much as Jo wanted sleep she knew Elena was not going to let that happen anytime soon. As Jo stood in the doorway of her sad little hut of a home she looked out to the walkway leading up to the door and saw the familiar figure of Elena dancing, or trying to anyways. Jo had to re-attach her robotic limbs and stuff what was left of her brown curls under a tee-shirt and was currently buckling her purple glitter helmet.
“Elena!”, She called out desperately, “Come back. Let’s go to sleep”.
She was scared to leave her hut, she was scared to leave her little sister in the hut alone. She worried about people robbing them, kidnapping her baby sister, selling her cyborg parts for scraps and food, or just taking what little food and water they did have. Jo couldn’t even remember what it felt like to not be worried. In actuality, she couldn’t even miss the feeling of being calm because it had been so long. The war took that from her, from most people really. And now everyone in the Outlands was dying. They were all dying.
“Come on, Jo! Live a little!”, Elena’s voice bounced happily off the dead soil, the rotting wood of the hut, and hit Jo’s ears a little too harshly. “Jo, come dance with me”, her figure outstretched her arms, welcoming her out back into the toxic world that was slowly poisoning her and making them all rot alive.
“Elena, we need to rest, there’s going to be Cornucopia tomorrow morning and we can scavenge for new piece for your hand and maybe get some bolts for Nita’s leg. Oh god, and we need oil, so much oil! We need to be there early”, Jo raised her eyebrows, hoping that reason would penetrate her girlfriend’s stubbornness and lead her back to their bed. Jo should have known better.
Elena leaned over and picked up a bottle. Jo’s eyes went wide for a second as she realized that Elena had opened a bottle of gin that Nita had gotten her hands on a few months ago. Elena waved the bottle and with her human human legs she bolted away from Jo. She felt her chest tighten because she missed how it felt to run. She was never one to exercise before the war but now there’s not much she wouldn’t give to be able to whole and just run.
“Elena!”, Jo’s voice cracked a little, betraying just how much she was feeling, she liked to blame it on her lack of sleep. Elena, however was gone, and Jo needed to go after that girl, and so she went inside for a minute and closed the door to Nita’s room and made sure it was locked before trudging back outside and chasing after the green eyed girl.
She moved her legs with great difficulty and if she was being honest it hurt to move, after all, even though they had gotten rid of most of the rotting flesh by amputating and replacing with robot limbs, the rot still continued. Elena was one of the lucky ones, the toxic air was impacting her at much slower rate than most leaving her more human and less cyborg. Still, despite the pain and the rot, she could move relatively quickly once she got her legs in motion. She looked out for the short red puffs of hair and kept an ear out for Elena’s voice. Jo moved down the little pathway and once she got momentum she moved into a run down the street towards the hill south of their little home. All of the huts were lined up on either side of the dirt street, resembling some haunted ghost town of a neighborhood.
“Boo!”, arms came around her from behind stopping her jog, her laugh filling her laugh. It was almost impossible not to laugh with Elena, to melt into her arms and just pretend that it was all fine. Jo turned around to look at Elena, desperate to find some reason for this crazy in her face. Her green eyes were full of something she couldn’t quite place, and her grin was wide took up most of her face, the dimple on the left side of her cheek even deeper than normal. Elena was shorter than Jo and made no effort to take care of her hair so all that was left of her red curls and waves was puffs of red patches that were stringy and brittle. Jo wanted to hold on to her hair for as long as possible. It was getting thinner but it was still somewhat long and somewhat soft.
“What are we doing here?”
“We are having fun”, Her voice was so sure that it made Jo feel safe, even if for a moment, “Come on Jo. You never do anything for yourself anymore. All you do is worry. Let’s just go somewhere”. The girl in front of her was basically was jumping up and down. “Here”, she pushed the liquor bottle inter her left hand. Jo looked into her manic green eyes and she shook her head, confused where this zeal for life had come from. Elena was usually calm and reasonable. Jo took the bottle and figured that Elena was going to do something the least she could do was stick around and make sure she was okay. She took a three huge gulps of the liquor and it burned as it trailed down her insides. Elena’s hand found hers and they started walking together towards the hill.
“We should leave people notes” She said suddenly. She ripped her hand away from Jo’s and ran towards a little hut.
“Jo!”, She sighed and closed her eyes trying not to get upset at this newly happy person in running towards someone’s little plot of property. There was no stopping her, just following and minimizing damage. Once she caught up the red head girl, Jo took her hand. “What are you going to do?”, Jo turned her head over to look at her. Her crazed smile grew on her face and then she turned to meet Jo’s confused gaze. A laugh erupted from her lips, the sound too alive.
She grabbed a stick and started to carve the words into the dirt. Jo felt anxious, worry tightening the noose around her neck, her skin prickling with all the possible ways this could end badly.
You’re going to be okay
“Good right?”, Elena leaned over and pressed her cold lips to Jo’s cheek. The words etched into the Earth seemed more like a cruel joke than anything. Nothing was going to be okay. Everyone out here was dying a slow death because of the toxic air from all the nuclear warfare. The air was slowly eroding everyone’s bodies and the only way to slow it down was to replace your body parts with robot and metal limbs. Nothing was going to be okay. Jo nodded slowly, her jaw clenched. Her girlfriend leaned into Jo before grabbing her and running down to a new hut. This one was built next to a red car. There were car’s littered here and there and if you went beyond the hill there was a stretch of just cars.
“Did you learn how to drive?” Elena asked, not even looking at her. She examined the car, her eyes narrowing on details of this old beast. She walked around it, looking for something that even Jo knew she wasn’t going to find, at least not here.
“I did. I had to. My father worked crazy hours, someone needed to drive my siblings around” Jo recalled all of the ballet classes for Nita and the art workshops for Alex, her little brother.
“I never did. I always planned on it happening at some point but before I knew it I was 23 and without my license” Elena chuckled, her attention solely on the red car in front of her. She reached out with her human fingertips and left a trail on the dust exterior of the car. She smiled.
“You know, I don’t think that thing is going to start”
“I know. But we can write a note here too. With our fingers!”
“Elena, why?”
“Because” Her focused then shifted to her, her eyebrows were scrunched up and her dimple was gone. “We need to do something”
“Is this really what they need, Elena?” Jo said.
“It’s something. Jo we can do this something. Just do it with me”. Jo shifted her weight from on robotic leg to the other. She looked down at her right hand, most of her fingers save her pointer finger and part of her thumb had turned black and started to shrivel. There was still some skin on her hand but she could see the bones poke out here and there and even the bones were starting to decay. She knew she needed a new hand, but they didn’t have enough money, and if they didn’t stop the rot soon it would probably end her. If the people here were facing what Jo was facing she didn’t see how some stupid note written on a dirty car would make a difference. But it made Elena happy for whatever reason and maybe it wasn’t going to hurt going along with this, even if it made her stomach turn and turn.
“Elena, I don’t underst-“
“You don’t have to. You just have to focus on the moment and leave them something, give them something” Elena’s voice was fast and pleading. Jo nodded and reached out with her left hand, her human skin touching the dirty metal of the car.
“I have more in common with this car than I do with you” Jo’s voice was soft, bitter, and broke into shards as they hit the air.
“That’s not true” Elena’s voice was fierce. “You are a human”. She grabbed Jo and made her face Elena’s gaze. Jo refused to look at her. Elena grabbed her chin and turned her face toward hers
“A cyborg. That’s what we all are.” Jo said, her voice even softer. There was a lot that Jo wanted to say but nothing that was worth the fight right now. So she took Elena’s cheesy words and wrote them on the dirty car’s window. It made her happy. She was beaming and leaning closer to Jo, her forehead meeting hers. It was intimate but weird. Like someone had turned everything Jo found familiar about Elena upside down.
All of a sudden they heard the thuds of metal hitting the ground. Jo cursed under her breath, anger bubbling in her lungs, making it hard to breath, as worry kicked her heart into an irregular rhythm. The Patrols were out.
She pulled Elena behind the car and made her crouch down next to her. The patrols were not to be messed with. When they were first created they were supposed to stop crime but now they function more like thugs taking what they want, doing as they pleased. They were scary. Her father got into it with them because they took Alex’s action figure, it was the one thing he had saved from before the war. The Patrol took it from him and her father fought back. He ended up with a broken twisted up metal hand and a loose metal joints. Somehow, he got that action figure back.
“Shh”, Jo’s brown eyes met Elena’s green ones. She nodded and they waited for them to pass before they moved back on their way. She clutched Elena’s hand, afraid to let it go.
“I think we’re clear”, Elena’s voice was soft and so comforting. Jo closed her eyes and nodded, her voice failing her. She then led Jo back out into the main pathway towards the hill. She wrapped her arm around her waist while the other held the liquor bottle.
They walked silence for the next few moments. Jo noticed how the dirt clouded around their feet, the way the makeshift houses and huts looked in the moonlight, the way everything looked black and gray. She noticed the way the shadows moved and danced and she paid attention to the slight rustling noises. It was never quiet, even here in the dying Outlands, and Jo found that strangely comforting. She loved how there was always something, a rustle of dead leaves on the ground, a cricket that just wouldn’t give up on it’s song, the trudging of metal feet hitting the soil, the wind howling and fighting to fit into every nook and cranny.
If she tried really hard right now she could try to remember want it felt like to have human feet. She could try and remember what solid felt like underneath the soles of her feet. Mostly she missed the feeling of cool grass tickling her feet, trying to spring up between her toes. There was no grass anymore however, and she didn’t have skin anymore.
“You know at least now going uphill doesn’t make my legs feel like jelly” Jo finally said, hoping she could make Elena forget about what she said earlier. Elena didn’t reply but her smile was gone. Jo didn’t know what do with her practically dead hand so she let it awkwardly swing with each step. She became acutely aware of the way she walked as silence settled between them. Finally they made it up the hill, and Elena sat down on the dirt and dead grass and looked over towards the Dome. Elena dug her hands into the dirt and closed her eyes as she let her head lean back. Jo liked to imagine what she would like if she had her red curls still but it made her sad more often than not. Elena was beautiful, even without her curls. The curve of her nose was cute and her pink lips felt like home amongst the constellation of freckles all over her face.
She remembered the first time she saw Elena, walking down the pathway between all of the huts, wearing jeans and a button up too big for her, with eyes taking everything in as if everything was art. And to her, having come from the outermost part of the Outlands, where it was basically a desert, seeing semblance of human life seemed almost like a miracle.
“Elena?” Jo asked softly, her hand moving underneath the dirt to find Elena’s fingers.
“Do you remember what you were going to be before the war?”, she asked suddenly, her eyes still closed.
“I wanted to be a writer”, Jo answered, “I was getting an English degree, maybe become a high school teacher while I wrote my master piece of a novel”.
Jo closed her eyes as well but not before finding Elena’s hand. “I wanted to write stories and create narratives that would make a difference somehow. I wanted to be someone who could make a difference. And my dad, he always wanted to be a writer but never got the chance to, so I really really wanted it” Silence fell, but this time it felt more like blanket than some awkward metal cold thing prodding at them.
“Do you think we would have met?”, She asked opening her eyes to look at her, “Do you think we would have been together if we had met before”
“I’d like to think so”, Jo answered quickly without even thinking.
“I mean I was a mechanic. I fixed cars for a living. I didn’t go to college, I barely graduated high school. And you were this star student actually going places. Do you really think our paths would have crossed?”
“Why does this matter?” Jo asked moving closer to her girlfriend, wanting to give her something to ease whatever was going on in her mind, but she didn’t know what to give her.
She took a deep breath, “We would have. I would have taken my old ass Honda to you after it started making weird noises. You would have flirted because that’s what you Libras do, and I would have flirted back.” Elena let a small, dainty smile play on her lips and rested her head on shoulders. Jo closed her eyes for a second before returning her attention to the dome. The Dome was built during the war to protect people from the radiation and whatever else people threw into the atmosphere but the rich, well they took it over and left everyone else out in the Outlands to die.
“And if we were in there?” Elena asked,
“We would be living it up.” Jo laughed, “We would walk through that metal city, and you would love the way the copper bits reflected the sun, oh and Nita would be able to run around without worrying about anything, and the air would be so clean. We would be so happy.”
“You think they have coffee shops in there? Maybe we could find one, I’m sure somewhere in that metal city there has to be something. Rumor is they even have chocolate there” Elena smiled, her eyes eager for this to be more than a conversation.
It was in that city, that shinning beautiful obnoxious city where they shopped for shoes instead of new hands, they built things for fun not because they needed to figure out a way to bury their little brother with their new robot legs, they lived because they could and didn’t think twice about the cyborg scum that lived outside. For Elena the city was a goal, something like a dream, for Jo it was this bright sign saying “fuck you” to everyone in the Outlands.
“Rumor is that they have a cure to stop the rot”, Jo said, her voice sharp, cutting down the dream life that Elena was clearly creating. “They could save all of us. They could have for years. But they’re too scared to come out here. So they stay in there, and they get to be whole people” Jo’s anger seeped into the atmosphere they created.
“You know, my dad was so badly beaten up by the Patrol that we couldn’t replace his robot parts on our own, they were all twisted up and we couldn’t remove them and add to them. So the rot spread. It spread and it got to his heart a lot quicker than most.” Jo began, taking a swig of alcohol. “He was the first person I had to bury. But not the hardest. Burying my little brother after not being able to afford a liver transplant that, now that was hard.” Jo’s eyes narrowed and her grip on the bottle tightened. “They’re supposed to have the cure”, her voice pierced the oxygen around her so much so that it was hard for Jo to breath. She felt her chest rising faster and faster, not being able to get enough air. Her lungs burned and her heart ached and all she wanted to do was scream. She closed her eyes and she could still hear Alex crying because he was in so much pain, she could smell her father’s rotting body as he tried to move around their little hut, she could still feel Nita’s tears seep through her shirt and leave a wet spot on her chest. She could never really stop seeing it.
Then the bottle shattered and grounded back into the present. She could feel the weight of Elena’s eyes on her, following her every movement, ready to jump in and do something. She looked at the shattered glass and she felt her blood boil.
Elena moved closer to her, wary of the broken glass, and put her arm around her, “I’m sorry”. Jo nodded. There wasn’t any more to be said about the matter.
“I used to go down there and look at the people in there” Elena admitted, Jo looked at her shocked.
“They have it pretty good in there. I saw people laughing, Jo, laughing, and drinking clean water, and dancing.” Elena’s voice was full of desire.
“I wish we had that”
“We could start. You could dance with me right now. We could be humans just having a good night right now. We don’t have to be worried all of the time” Elena pleaded. Jo looked at her and shook her head. That’s what this whole night was about. Jo laughed and nodded her head.
“Help me up then. These legs are actually starting to rust” Elena’s dimple remerged and Jo felt warmth fill her chest. “Now I never said I could actually dance”
“Just follow my lead” Elena placed Jo’s arms on her waist and they began to sway. As awkward as the dancing was and as terrible as Jo was at actually falling whatever it was Elena was doing, Jo actually found herself feeling something other than worry.
“I don’t think this is going as well as you wanted”
“Well I had to at least try to get my cute movie moment at some point” Elena joked as they stopped dancing and just held each other.
“We’re going to be just fine” She said, “The Cornucopia is going to be set up right there, we just have to wait here and we’ll get first pick”
Jo didn’t say anything, just held her hand tighter. They just sat there, the sun slowly rising above the shinning city. The wind picked up and filled all the spaces that could exist between Jo and Elena.
It was beautiful, even Jo could admit that. It was like a giant beacon, telling everyone that life was still here, that there was beauty here, that things could still be good, just not for Jo, not for her dead father, not for her dead brother, not for her little sister who struggles to put on her shirt, and not for Elena. There was nothing else to say, there was nothing really they could change right now, but Jo could sit here with the girl of her dreams and hold her hand.