Casket

A Story by Kecolv

Written as a part f a larger project in which sci fi flash fiction is written around a randomly generated word. This story centres around a little girl in the early stages of an isolated mars colony

Alice wandered into her mother’s workshop one cold evening, drawing in hand, hoping that her mother would like her crayon scrawl enough to pin it to the board in the corner. The welding was loud, and even at six years old Alice knew to stand well back and wait for mother to stop and lift her visor way from her face. She always did that, lifted the visor, turned, and smiled, the same every time. Alice liked that, the same every time. Alice waited patiently, then the sparks settled and the noise dimmed but mother didn’t turn, mother didn’t smile, the visor covered her face and muffled her voice, echoing it down to the floor as if she wasn’t talking to Alice at all.

“What do you need sweetheart?” The words were the same, but Alice didn’t feel them right, they didn’t float towards her and melt gently into her skin, they skidded across the concrete floor and cut into her legs. Alice took a step backward.

“I made you a drawing mother” Alice almost whispered. Mother sniffed, and took a long, slow breath before lifting her visor. Better. But she didn’t smile. Not better. Her eyes were rimmed with hot, pink skin and the whites of her eyes were streaked with red. Alice had never seen mother like this. Mother stood and walked towards Alice, bending down to meet her eye

“Is the drawing beautiful today?” Mother almost smiled, turning her lips inward and furrowing her brow, it was a wrong smile. Alice nodded. “I like beautiful. Can I see?” mother tilted her head slightly, Alice hesitated before turning her drawing towards mother. She had used only green and yellow today. Green was like grass, like the playfields just outside their compound, where the soil was treated and things grew like in the storybooks, green was the opposite of red like the red soil that dried and turned to dust on the dirt tracks she walked to school. Green was fresh and crisp and new, and red was dirt and broken things, red was making mother’s eyes wrong. Yellow was good, yellow was the colour of the sun in the old stories, yellow sun in blue sky. The old world had this smooth buttercup sun, light gliding down to warm the ground, nothing between the people and the sky. Yellow meant freedom, unlike their white-hot sun, burning so hard that they needed domes and tinted glass to protect them, so white and so hot against the black sky that they were forever trapped, never free. Mother had told Alice that they were the same sun, but the calm yellow sun of the old world could never have been the same as this angry, dangerous ball of fire that threatened Alice every time she left her home.

“I drew the old world mother, isn’t it beautiful?” Alice looked at mother, who seemed to look through her.

“It is” Mother paused “Alice, do you know why we all left the old world?”

“At school they said it got too hot” Alice said as mother sat on the bench beside them and lifted Alice onto her lap “But it’s so hot here that we can’t leave the domes”

“The people before us broke the old world Alice, they made it too hot and dirty for us to live there anymore. Do you remember when you learned about the old world animals at school?”

“Yes” Alice wiggled in her mother’s lap “I used the blue crayons until they were almost gone. I like blue, its cool and smooth and wet. And there were those little black and yellow birds”

“Penguins, yes”

“Little black bodies and yellow beaks and yellow feet and they waddle and slide and �"“

“Yes, penguins. Now they used to live where there was lots of ice, but when the world got too hot”

“The ice melted into water”

“That’s right. And when there was too much water, it made some of the land go away, land that people lived on”

“Because they had above ground water, but we have to drill for our water”

“That’s right, well done. Now you remember how I told you the story of great grandma, how she took her family and left the old world”

“Yeah, she took grandad and his sister and all the money they had and landed here” Alice recited the story she had heard so many times “With only a handful of other families, because she was a scientist”

“Yes, and scientists were important then. Well when grandad went to heaven just after you were born, he was the last person in our family to walk on the old world. There used to be a lady two compounds over who had come here on the rockets, and I think she’s the last person here who walked on the old world. She’s going to heaven tomorrow, that’s who the casket is for” Mother looked over at the casket she had been working on. Alice thought that it must be a special casket to make mother so different, but it looked like every other, a small, bullet shaped tube of metal, hinged on one side. Mother was almost done making it, once it was finished it would be engraved and prepared to be sent to heaven.

Alice had seen their neighbour go to heaven last year. Mother let her go to the ceremony because she had started to take an interest in the workshop, it was a family business after all. They placed his ring finger into the small box, sized perfectly, said a prayer, and sent it out of the dome so fast that it disappeared out into the black. Mother explained that they needed the rest of him to help make the soil better, so we could have food to eat. Mother explained that the ring finger leads straight to your heart, and when you die, your soul stays there for a little while, so they were sending his soul to heaven, out there. Mother explained that heaven was nice, but only a place for people after they die, there is work to be done and people to help here first. Father had held her hand.

“So everyone from the old world is in heaven now?” Alice asked mother, looking up at her still bloodshot eyes

“I don’t know Alice” mother’s voice sounded like it tripped over something in her throat “there’s nobody left here who’s ever walked on earth, but I don’t know what happened to earth after grandad left, if there are still people down there, people related to us, family” mother trailed off, she looked sheepish like she’d done something wrong. The front door opened then closed again.

“Girls, I’m back” father called out from the entryway. Mother lifted Alice down from her knee, but before Alice could leave she crouched down beside her and held her arms gently.

“Don’t mention this chat to your dad ok?” mother looked wrong in a different way now, eyes wider, and less looking through her as digging into her. Alice nodded.

Alice wandered through to the entryway and waited patiently for father to take off his red dust covered work boots and stained overalls, he turned to her, took off his hat, and smiled. Better.

“father, I drew you a picture”