One Leaf
From a short story challenge that I posted on Tik Tok. The rules were: leave the title of a story and the genre. And whichever one got the most likes wins. The winner was "One Leaf, scifi/dystopian."
For Rachel, who said: “Compassion is the greatest form of love humans have to offer. I have this theory that if one person can go out of their way to show compassion, then it will start a chain reaction of the same. People will never know how far a little kindness can go.”
Above is AI generated art off of the title. I really dig it.
One Leaf
By Mike DeFrench
The Voices played as soon as he woke up. There was no way to turn it off. It had always been like that, the voices in his head always going, but he imagined a time when it wasn't. When you could turn the voices off. The talking heads.
As he showered, they told him about a tragic shooting. A freak car accident that killed a family. Those happened close to home. And then someone else told him about a new pizza that he should buy. And then the Voices were back. It told him about a suicide bombing. This happened somewhere far away. But it was still tragic.
Can't turn them off. Can't tune them out. Can't think about anything else. So he had become numb.
He turned the shower as hot as it would go. The steam filled the small bathroom in his one-bedroom apartment. He took the bar of soap and slid it across his body. Rinsed the bubbles from his arm and saw the tattoo of the tree there. His Tree.
Kit had no emotion looking at his Tree. All the branches were bare except one. One branch with three leaves.
That was all he had left.
He'd have thought that he would feel something at this. But he had felt nothing for years now. Even here: so close to the end of it all, it stirred no emotion.
Society has done this.
And not just to him. To everyone. Everyone is turned numb by this, but they all keep doing it. They all participate in it. They all co-create it. It is a downward spiral that cannot be stopped. The cycle is endless. Until it consumes itself.
And it would do that soon.
Whether soon meant years or decades or centuries, he had no idea. But he did not see the course changing. And if the course was stayed, it would end in disaster.
At least he wouldn't have to see it.
Three leaves left. That wouldn't take long. He'd lost three leaves in less than an hour before. Many times.
Kit stayed under the water until the heat started to wane. As he toweled himself dry, his finger touched the spot just behind his ear. The bump was there. It had always been there. There was never a time when it wasn't there. The same bump that everyone else had too. There was no way to know for sure that it wasn't just a part of the human anatomy.
It may as well have been a part of the human anatomy. There are only about ten minutes of your existence where it isn't there. They put it in as soon as your born. Unless you're one of the Pods. Then you get it before you have your first breath.
Kit wasn't a Pod. He always felt good about it, even though it made him an outcast growing up. Only about 5% of the US population from his generation were born naturally. The old-fashioned way, as his Dad used to say.
He liked the fact that he was born the old-fashioned way. Kit always thought that when he had kids of his own, that he would have them the old-fashioned way too. But these days? The kids from this generation...it's less than 1%. Less than 0.01%.
Didn't matter what everyone else was doing though. Kit never cared about that shit. He would always be himself. Used to, anyway.
But they don't let people with so few leaves on their Trees have kids. Not Pods, and definitely not the old-fashioned way.
They turned that function off for Kit a loooong time ago.
The Voices kept talking. Kit kept going through the routine. Every morning.
They told him that the death toll from a bombing on a city bus had grown by four. Making the new total sixteen innocent people. They said it was "tragic." A senseless act of horrific violence and unnecessary loss of life.
Kit got dressed. Having only three leaves, he had only one set of clothes. A pair of jeans that were dark with dirt. A a red t-shirt with a logo that meant nothing to him. And a pair of boots that had been repaired with adhesives more times than he could count. He didn't have enough Credit to get new shoelaces, so whenever the ones on his boots tore, he would tie them back together.
There were many knots in those laces.
The temperature was cold outside. And Kit didn't have enough Credit to feel warm. So before he left, he put on an old jacket. Normally people with so few Leaves couldn't afford any like a jacket (a piece of clothes that you wear over your clothes?!), but this was his Dad's jacket.
Kit had had the damn thing since he was too small for it, to the point when he was too big for it, and now again too small for it.
But the numbness was pervasive. It was all encompassing. And he felt nothing about the jacket now. It meant nothing. Because nothing meant anything. And it was nothing more than a utility to keep the cold from being so bad.
(Cold, apparently one of the few things he still could feel.)
And he braced himself for it.
As he opened the door to leave the apartment, he got an internal alert, notifying him that his hygiene score for the day was not sufficient. And that he'd left the house without flossing or shaving. And that he had lost a leaf because of it.
He closed his door and left it unlocked. Kit didn't feel a thing from losing that leaf. And most people would've been horror-struck at the idea of even trying to live at three leaves. Losing one now? They would go catatonic.
He got another notification as he walked down the street. Poorly securing the home after leaving, that would cost him another leaf.
Good.
Two down, one to go.
It would be done by the end of the day.
That's what he wanted anyway, right? For it to be done. That's what he thought he wanted. But the numbness. The emptiness he felt in his soul. It made it impossible to know what he wanted. Because he didn't want anything. Not even to die. Not even to live. Maybe to have never been born?
Not even the old-fashioned way.
But really there was nothing for him.
What can life offer (either good or bad) to one who is not capable of feeling?
Kit walked down the street. He was simultaneously tying not to notice anyone else who passed him by, and also trying not to be noticed by anyone.
More by reflex than anything else.
He walked to the bus stop. Five blocks down from his apartment.
The noise of the city nothing to his ears. Because the voices inside of him were all that he could hear.
They used to make him feel afraid of the world out there. Now they were just the endless droll that played before the curtains fell later today.
He was a One Leaf now.
The walking dead.
But did they die?
Where did they go?
Kit supposed that he would soon find out. Nobody who was a One Leaf lasted for very long.
As he walked to the bus stop, he saw so many people, going about their days.
Despite the chill to the air outside, they all wore summer clothes. They didn't know that the air in this city got cold this time of year. They didn't know that there were different feelings to the air in each of the seasons. They didn't know anything.
They were allowed to feel good all of the time.
They walked around in short sleeves, in shirts, their skin was healthy and vibrant and full of life. Kit's was pale. Sickly.
They wore no sleeves and so showed their Trees to everyone. Full of many branches. Many Leaves.
They didn't know it was a cycle.
His stop was not far now. But he didn't know why he bothered. Why he went. What was the point?
Play hooky: lose a leaf. There was only one left to fall now. It would fall today. What was the point? He didn't know. Routines, man. They're strong. Even here: at the end of it all. Still he went to work.
Fuck.
These people. They didn't understand! It's all a cycle. You're supposed to lose your leaves. Didn't they look at the world around them? Couldn't they see the fucking trees?!
The ones here in the city! Fuck!
Don't they lose their leaves? Do you see them just grow leaves once when they are born, and then never lose a single one? Or, if they do lose them, do they never grow back?
Look at the way the world works! You are meant to lose your leaves, and then grow new ones in the spring. Just like the trees do in the real world.
But this was not the real world anymore. There wasn't any "real world."
Not for Kit.
It was this lie. A lie that he lived. A lie that he helped to create (and his parents, before him). It was everyone's fault. And they all had to suffer it now.
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