NO DEPOSIT : NO RETURN

This is a short story I wrote back in January of 2024. For the sake of filling out this site a bit I've decided to put it here since I presently don't have much else writing/book reviews to supplement it. It's decent enough---it got some compliments from strangers who read it upon their own accord. So, enjoy!

The clock stopped.
The artificial dunes were disturbed for the first time in a while.  

Dust had been dumped atop the world, blown over by the wind, slowly making its passage across the barren Earth.  Eventually, it began to wane away at a pace not dissimilar to the draining of the lithium battery that had powered the small plastic clock of which Rob had banked his mental perseverance on.  
Rob began his migration to the surface, ridding his dust-covered possessions of their filth and making the inconvenient journey up his bunker’s ladder only to place them down onto the endless dust expanse he once knew as his home.  

Days passed.

Rob sat behind the pile of his possessions, sat on the belonging that was his folding chair, and stared out into the yellow-gray expanse.  When the sun rose, his chair faced North, when it sat atop the sky, East, when it had almost set, West.  At midnight, Rob decided, it would face South.  Then he would sleep and wait for the sun to rise on his left.  Even if he did not sleep, only when the sun rose could he wake.  
As Rob rotated, his belongings slowly followed him and as the days piled up the original pile was picked apart, each thing eventually displaced, dispersed in a halo around his rickety wooden chair.  
Sometimes he would stand, sometimes he would pick at the chair’s varnish, then the black paint below.  Sometimes he was visited by a woman whom he could identify neither as foe or friend.  He didn’t take notice of her as she slunk nude across the dust, a rich brown body against the gray sky and the nearly indistinguishable yellow-gray desert below.  When the day came that Rob finally did notice her, she stood at the outer edge of the circle of inanimate infantry that unwittingly guarded him.  In front of his unattentive eyes she had bent down and begun to observe his scattered brigade.  When Rob eyed her, she had the plastic clock in her hand.  He watched as she removed the small battery cover from the clock’s back with little care.  
She then looked at Rob.  She had a stern gaze, her almond eyes a striking hazel, dark freckles peppering her deep skin, her wide lips appearing glossy from far away.  Her long and perfect curls seemed to breathe with the light breeze, the top layer of her hair singed a deep orange in contrast to the rest of her dark head.  
Rob’s sunglasses could not hide his stare. 
“Whatchya doin’ out here, darlin’?” He eventually said.  
The battery burst, she replied.  Her eyes were on Rob but her words seemed to be directed elsewhere.    
“Yeah, it hasn’t worked for a while...  Put it down,” said Rob.
She obliged, then began to direct her attention to other items that occupied the outer edge.  Rob watched her rummage through a pile of empty cans, then a pile of miscellaneous appliances.
After a while, he welcomed her in.  

The two sat now like they had on the day they first met—Rob in his underpants on his weathered and creaking throne, staring up at the white sun, the hot metal of the gilded cross he wore round his neck burning into his pink-seared flesh like it had each day before.  Eve sat to his right, her knees bent, the bottom legs away from the chair.  Most days she let her head rest against Rob’s thigh, his hand on that side usually finding itself loosely draped on her shoulder, some days he would stroke her hair with his other.  
Rob stopped turning his chair once Eve came along.  
The two would sit in silence, looking out into the abyss.  There was not much to see.  Originally, Eve had taken it upon herself to give every item in Rob’s protective circle a last chance to be admired.  However, much like Rob, she soon gave up, staying stationary at his side from that point on.  Every so often she thought about music, songs she had once loved.  Rob had no instruments, or, no instruments that could function.  One day she identified the smashed remains of a well-loved acoustic guitar amongst the further out items that were, by that point, beginning to be obscured by the dust that blew around Rob’s feet in the gentle and ever-persistent breeze that found itself perfectly on-theme with the monotonous land.  

She found herself most often thinking to her name.  
Rob had asked her one day what it was.  
She told him he already knew.  
He gave no reply but from that point on took to calling her Eve.  

Rob almost never moved, almost never did anything, but sometimes in the night Eve could hear him mutter.  In these mutterings, he painted a world where the pair would prosper;  When the food finally ran out, they would venture into the wasteless expanse, skipping, happy.  Eventually they would settle.  Amongst the rubble of what once stood they would sit together and talk for days on end.  
“Maybe we’ll come across the old home,” he said one night .  “We’d find my parents… a bloated and shriveled mess, I’m sure.  Probably sat right on that damn sofa where I left ‘em, where they vowed they’d spend their last days, insisted so harshly.  Maybe there’ll still be fresh food left.  Seeds, we could start a farm and once we got food we’ll have a kid and humanity will be back on track.”
He paused for a moment.  Then he turned his head away from the sky and down to look at Eve.  
“Do you think we’re alone, you and I?” He said.
Eve didn’t grace him with the catharsis of an answer. 
He sighed and turned his head back up to the dark night above.  
Eve stared down at her bare legs, by this point her skin had become so dry it began to crack, her face getting more stiff day by day.  She looked at Rob’s hand that was seated on his lap, his knuckles crusted a deep brown with blood, the rest of his hands red, rough, and cracked.  She was often surprised he could still move them.
That night he moved his hand from her shoulder and rested it on her head.  He moved his other hand to a similar spot, then, slowly, he bent down until his torso gently rested atop her head, then dropped his own; letting it hang, the top of his head now parallel to the ground.  
Eve stayed stationary, letting Rob hang where he had situated himself.  
Enveloped in this cocoon that took in ragged breaths, she thought of Rob like a threadbare blanket.  Not unlike the ones you would love with all your heart until the last woven string eventually unraveled, but she ultimately decided that comparison would not be apt.  Rob was like the blanket that sat buried in the dust next to them.  Neglected and left to fend for itself in an unwelcoming place, able to do nothing against the dust that soiled it or the wind that would occasionally flip up one of its corners, or the occasional hand that reached out to throw it to a new location.  Though Rob had the advantages of being a human, Eve realized that he, nor her, were in a position where they could do much of anything against the persistent nothingness of the world that existed for people and things that were not them.  Correcting herself, she pointed out that this version of the world didn’t manifest itself for people at all.  Rob might as well have been inanimate like the rest of the things around him.  
Slowly, she brought her hands up from her sides, raising her head and gently pushing Rob off from on top of her.  He fell back into the chair in an almost guilty manner and was surprised when he found Eve’s hands cradling his face—just like he had imagined before.  She stood up from her knees and spread her legs, sitting down on top of Rob, straddling him as he sat in his chair—just like he had imagined before.  She leaned in and kissed him, a sweet kiss from her lips that had stayed succulent.    
Without hesitation he delivered back some of the emotion she had given to him, introducing a new passion to the connected gesture, parting his chapped lips as he shuddered and groped for the rest of her body.  When one of his hands found its way to her bare back, he let himself fall into her, his rough cheek leaning into her hand, his body lurching forward, pushing her upright as their kiss continued—just like he had imagined before.