#SFF #AtoZChallenge Assured Survival

A speculative fiction short story from a dreamer

A continuous #sff story during April. May Rose is the main character (🧑🏽 they/them pronouns).

May Rose was grateful to live and work at Budding Manor. It had a bewildering amount of bedrooms. They wondered who designed and built such a structure, and how much of it was a result of renovation for the current purpose. Was there ever another time someone would have needed such a vast residence? 

Nearly everyone they knew lived in filthy shacks made of broken pallets. The residential structures were just large enough for scraps of bedding and a small oval box (which was both storage and a pillow). Budding Manor had bathrooms, powder rooms, and a washroom so large it echoed. May knew most people were lucky if they found a water stream or even a tool for digging a hole. The world beyond Budding Manor was a toxic wasteland of travesty, a failing fight for survival, and soon would be only a memory. 

The overlords set the extinction countdown clock. May's career assured survival, as long as the assigned task was performed to satisfaction. Better, May thrived, having a  real bed, clean clothing, food on the table, clean water to spare, and access to more toilets than anyone could use in a week. May was blessed and knew it, and silently gave thanks each morning, noon, and night.

May brushed their waist-length, wavy hair while staring out the window. Their grandfather once told them that their hair looked like coffee without cream or sugar, just as their grandmother's had. They didn't know what he meant at the time. Coffee, cream, and sugar were all things they learned about while at Budding Manor. 

The students being brought today might know of such things. Students who were not from now. May doubted they had families who were sold. Or a grandfather who died in a dirty pallet residence and was hauled away within an hour. May did not get to say goodbye and had barely managed to gather the contents of his oval box pillow. It contained a drawing of mother and grandmother, before the devastation time. Drawn on the back of a ribbed scrap of paper, the other side of which had colorful information about canned peaches. Where the peaches were grown, what nutrition they had, that they came packed in a heavy syrup, all of this was displayed on the paper scrap. 

In the marked-off area of the front lawn, daylight vanished. May put their brush away and headed out the front door. Swirls of darkness extended in the marked-off area. A group of naked young ladies landed on a pile, clutching each other, crying and wailing. 

"Hush now. The worst part is over. Here, each of you take a bowl of applesauce."

The girls let go of each other. It was the same every time. The darkness vanished, daylight returned, and the virgins tried to hide their nakedness.

"I'm the only one here. There's no point in modesty. Eat your applesauce, then we'll get everyone cleaned and clothed. I am May Rose." Wormhole time travel wreaked havoc until people were calmed and fed.

Question: How would you describe your own hair (or lack thereof)?  

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