The City of Rot

by Nichole Duncan | Dec 22, 2018 | 0 comments

Through dense clouds of smog that clung listlessly to the dilapidated buildings looming over the crumbling roads, Ivy Paterson navigated a path through the trash choked sidewalks. She covered her nose with a swath of filthy fabric to filter the toxic air as she made her way to work. She stopped at the run-down newsstand, as she did every morning, and quickly read the front page of the day’s paper since she couldn’t afford to buy a copy to keep. Reading the first page became a habit for her that began when she was a girl and her mother would collect old newspapers to teach Ivy how to read, since they couldn’t afford to send her to school. Five years ago, when Ivy turned ten and was eligible for working papers, she made sure to walk by the stand every day on her way to Mrs. O’Leary’s Bakery and read the front page. Mike, the owner of the stand, tolerated her loitering and even let her keep some of the old papers that didn’t sell. Although Ivy did not know, for she was just a girl and did not yet understand the extend of her destitution, Mike pitied her.

She skipped past the familiar stories: fossil fuels have almost entirely run out and the remaining supply has risen to even more astronomical prices than the day before, the death rate and unemployment rate has dramatically increased since the week prior, and the economy is still in shambles. Nothing new. One story on the front page caught her eye in particular. The boldfaced headline jumped out at her with, “Citizens traveling to the Mar’s colony landed safely.” Normally, Ivy didn’t care for news about the terraforming efforts on Mars, since she didn’t entirely understand what terraforming was. She also learned from her father that Mars was an empty planet with a toxic atmosphere, so she didn’t see how it was too different from Earth or why people wanted to go there so badly. This time was different, though, since the most recent Mar’s expedition included volunteer citizens to test out the new colony, and Ivy’s friend Tsukiko happened to be one of them. Tsukiko worked at the bakery with Ivy until she left with her family several months ago for the Mar’s expedition. Ivy’s family had applied to go as well, but so did countless other families and only fifty people were accepted due to resource limitations, or that’s at least what Ivy read in the paper.

People were desperate for a chance to escape the poverty on Earth, and a chance at a new life on a freshly terraformed planet seemed like a second chance to many. Plus, NASA paid the colonists a large sum of money to participate in the first test colony. For poor families like Tsukiko’s, this sum was ten times more than their yearly income. Ivy was secretly jealous of Tsukiko for getting to be apart of the first colony, especially with how exciting her parents made the expedition sound, but more than her jealousy, she missed her friend. There weren’t many young girls around Ivy’s age for her to talk to, and those that were in her district were often working on the street corners, offering their services in exchange for food or sometimes money. The special ones worked at Madame Celeste’s Parlor. Ivy heard rumors of what these girls did – what they were forced to do – but she didn’t know, not really. Her parents protected her from such things.

Even though the sun had just begun to rise, the temperature was already suffocating, and Ivy fanned herself with a scrap of paper she found on the sidewalk as a reprieve from the December heat. By the time she reached the bakery, Mrs. O’Leary had already opened the cracked windows for ventilation and started the fire in the oven. The small kitchen in the back was windowless and dark, and Ivy took the liberty of lighting the candles, so the room would be well-lit when the bakers arrived.

“We’re out of wood today,” Mrs. O’Leary said tiredly as she stoked the small oven fire with a blackened poker. “Would you be a dear and collect scrap for the oven?”

“Of course.”

Ivy quickly grabbed the trashcan with two rusty wheels that they kept for this reason and a spare fire poker. She made her way back outside and spent her morning collecting anything that would burn in the streets and retuned in time to add fuel to the dying fire. Ivy worked through her duties of the day by kneading dough and stoking the fire in the already stiflingly hot room. Customers came and went as they always did, and always fewer than the day before: they were running out of money and the bakery was running out of supplies to make bread. After the economy collapsed when fossil fuels began to run out decades ago, food shortages brought waves of famine to the poorer populations, which were becoming the majority of people. Now, with fossil fuels almost entirely gone, things were worse than ever.

♦

At the end of the night, long after the sun had set, and the city had closed its eyes to sleep, Ivy made her way home through the dark. The smell at night was unbearable: the oppressive sun had scorched the world and the city was full of rot and ruin. The heat awakened decay and the putrid garbage and festering raw sewage overwhelmed the streets and alleyways. With the absence of garbage collection services or functional indoor plumbing, the city was a nightmarish pit of death and disease. Ivy did her best to avoid stepping in questionable reeking piles, but it was hard with so little light. The moon and stars were but a fable to Ivy, for she had never seen it behind the thick layers of sickly smog. Her parents would tell her about this brilliant white orb that would glow at night and how the sky would glisten with sparks of fire scattered across the darkness, and she would look at them with wonder for remembering such lovely things of a dead world. Ivy thought of this hidden moon and wondered if Tsukiko could see it from Mars, and if it was as beautiful as her parents promised. She hoped she could.

As she was lost in thought about the worlds outside of hers, Ivy became careless and stepped on something soft. She looked down and although she could only see a murky outline, her nose rather than her eyes told her what she stepped on: the body of an emaciated child. She covered her mouth to keep from gagging and hurried through the street, making sure to pay better attention to her surroundings. She felt sad for the starved boy, but the stench told her that he had been dead for a while and there was nothing she could’ve done. Besides, she saw the remains of the dead rotting in the street every day. It was the living sleeping in the streets that she had to worry about. Girls in her neighborhood would sometimes come home with unfocused eyes and blood between their legs, and some wouldn’t come home at all. Still, she was one of the lucky ones who never had to find out what happened to girls like that. The only figures that disturbed her on her walks home were beggars asking for food, and nothing more.

In the distance, she focused on the single source of light that beckoned for her to come near like a beacon full of promises. She buried her fears and worries in the deepest part of her mind and decided to stray from her usual path to follow the light. Tonight would be special, she decided. When she neared the base of the sky scraper, she gazed up at the light coming from the top. The building was in disrepair like the rest, but this one was different: it was cleaner, and someone had taken care to keep it from collapsing, but most of all, it was magic. On the top floor, light flooded the rooms and pierced the darkness for miles. As she peered into the room, she was captivated by what she saw. There were countless people inside, all were well dressed and without a speck of dirt on them. They were laughing and dancing and drinking something out of clear glasses. One man had something in his mouth that looked like it was on fire and a woman was leaning in close to whisper in his ear. Against one wall was a table full of food and Ivy knew that none of these spectacular people had ever gone hungry. She realized that she had been starring for too long and that it was well past the time she was usually home, so she hurried into the bleak and empty darkness with the last vestige of the past clinging to life behind her.

She felt warm inside for the rest of her walk and pushed the image of the dead boy out of her mind and replaced it with the spectacle of prosperity she witnessed through the light in the building. Her parents told her stories about this light that they called electricity, and even said they had possessed it when they were children. Even so, Ivy thought of electricity as an enchanted mystery that brought safety and opulence to those who possessed it. She mourned the inevitable loss of this light, for she knew that it too would wink out when its keepers run out of fuel, and then the darkness of her city will be complete.

♦

When she got home, Ivy climbed the rickety stairs of her dilapidated apartment building and navigated her way through the complete darkness of this interior space. She opened the door to the bedroom and found her parents already sleep. She was about to undress for bed when her mother stirred and lit the candle beside her bundle of blankets on the floor. Her face became visible in the dim light of the candle and Ivy could make out the layers of wrinkles that became her mother’s face where beauty and health one lived.

“Ivy, is that you?” her mother whispered so as to not wake her father.

“Yes mama, I’m sorry I’m late. I took the long way home.”

“Looking at the light again,” her mother said, her tone weighed down with sadness that Ivy didn’t understand.

Ivy just nodded and apologized for waking her when her mother asked her to come closer. Ivy knelt down beside the tattered blankets and her mother took her hand before speaking.

“Your friend arrived at the colony today,” she began slowly.

“I know, I read it in the paper.”

Her mother smiled grimly and kissed Ivy’s hand.

“You are a good girl for reading when I’m not here,” she squeezed Ivy’s hand tighter and continued. “The paper did not tell the full story. Sometimes powerful people pay the writers to publish things that aren’t true.”

“What do you mean?”

“Those on the expedition didn’t survive.”

“What?” Ivy asked as her stomach dropped. This couldn’t be, she read that they were safe just this morning.

“The environment wasn’t stable enough to support life. They all suffocated,” her mother said carefully, watching Ivy’s face for her reaction.

“But how? I read that NASA made it safe,” Ivy said, close to tears now.

“They tried, but even their technology isn’t advanced enough to terraform a planet. They can’t fight nature.”

“What about Tsukiko?” Ivy asked in disbelief.

Her friend couldn’t possibly be dead. The government officials in charge of funding the program said the expedition would be the beginning of a new era, a new world. They were supposed to leave their rotting planet for a better one.

Ivy’s mother said nothing and just held her as she cried. Her father awoke from the sound and wrapped his arms around his wife and daughter, already knowing what happened since he learned the truth about the expedition when his wife did. There, the three of them sat huddled together on the dusty floor, clinging to each other as the flame clung to the wick before burning out, and leaving the family in the dark in their dead city.