The Red Sweater
We lived in the grey. Perpetual rain and the sky a leaden cover over the world. Life is a struggle now, it is hard to imagine the world before the eclipse and mountains erupting huge gouts of fire and ash darkening the sky. The volcanoes in the ring of fire erupted one after the other and continued to erupt spewing magma from the guts of our world. For months and months the ash filled the sky until our world was encompassed in the dark night of day. When the ash stopped the sky wept cocooning us in damp, dank dark.
I am a scavenger; I search for the useful remnants of what once was commonplace. Old metal, glass, china little luxuries that have withstood the rot and the mould that blooms everywhere, bartering these little treasures, along with my mushroom growing give me a tiny living. As soon as the dark began to lighten I got ready to go out scavenging. I had to go much further to find anything worthwhile. The area around my home had been picked clean. I wanted to get an early start so I could avoid the gangs. Early morning was the best time as they were sleeping off their nightly fix of sex, drugs and alcohol.
Covered in an old grey blanket cloak, with staff, knife and back pack I set off. With the perpetual rain the towns were being overtaken with primordial rainforests. The way the land had been eons before civilisation. It didn’t take long for Mother Nature to claim back the wilderness. I moved quickly through the back streets heading out to the edge of what was once a small provincial city. I hadn’t been to the suburbs for a long time; it was safer to stay close to home. I needed stock to trade so I took the long walk.
After a several hours walking I started checking out the houses. People left the suburbs early when the buses stopped running and there was no petrol to run their cars. They either moved out of town looking for another place while their cars were still running or they moved into the centre for safety in numbers. Many of the houses were falling down, windows broken, doors smashed in, mould climbing the walls. It looked as if these houses had been stripped. I went into a house that appeared marginally safe, old couch fabric rotting, paint peeling off the ceiling and walls. In the kitchen drawers and cupboards emptied; nothing worth scavenging.
I kept walking, checking out houses, I found some undamaged pottery, a tarnished brass pot, a wonderful old silver serving spoon embossed with fruit. No much for half a day walking and I still had to get back before dark. I moved into a cul de sac, overgrown with ferns and wild rambling roses with wickedly hooked thorns. At the end of the cul de sac an old stone wall smothered in ivy crumbling under the rampant growth. My mind sparked with the old sleeping beauty story and I couldn’t resist taking a peak.
Clambering over the old wall I gazed in delight at the beautiful decay of this old mansion. It called to me. I entered into a surprisingly full space, it hadn’t been stripped bare. It was full of decaying old furniture and mould speckled art all still in its original place. In the dining room the sideboard held a full china dinner set and beautiful embossed glasses, these alone would be months of barter for me. I decided to check out the rest of the house. Upstairs bedrooms full of rotting mattresses, decaying fabric and warped wooden furniture. One room had the door shut and locked. I looked around for something the open the door, a metal lamp pole nearby worked well to break the corroding lock.
The door swung open and I saw the skeleton laying on the bed. Whoever it was had had gone quietly into their death, alone, nothing in the room was out of place. I moved over to the dresser and saw the photographs all showing the same woman from bride beaming at her husband, children from babies to grown and then an elder alone. I felt sadness that she had died alone. She had had a good life if these decaying photos where the true story. My eyes surveyed the room. At the end of the bed was an old carved glory box. Something she would have filled with items to start her home as a new bride. I moved to the box, it was beautifully carved from a hardwood. It had withstood the dampness well.
I got down on my knees to open the lid. It required some force as it had adhered to the box below. It opened with a puff of cedar scented air. I gazed inside in pure delight; the most wonderful colour filled my gaze a deep, rich, warm ruby red. My hand reached toward this warm depth of colour. I lifted up a red sweater amazingly undamaged, smelling of cedarwood. I hadn’t seen this colour since my childhood. I was entranced. This was my treasure, something I would not trade, red a counterbalance to the grey of my everyday world. This was my little luxury.
