What Was Left

Contains multiple sensitive themes: References to childhood abuse and neglect, animal abuse and neglect, and substance abuse.

Holt sits on a railroad tie, head in his hands. This spot holds the memory of his last visit; he felt too grown to be seven, too worn out, much as he did right now. He often returns to this old piece of timber that sits at the edge of an abandoned basketball court. An aged, rusty hoop is missing its net. The surrounding concrete is split and broken. He recognizes something of himself in it. Time always brings him back. He breathes deeply and sighs out, wondering uneasily where he went wrong. Regret seizes him. He thinks back on all the ways he taught himself to stay numb—reaching for another drink, another forgettable TV show, shutting the door on people one by one. What if he can’t do better? Squeezing his eyes shut and breathing deeply, he wearily drags his hands down his stubbly face to his thighs, resting his forearms there.

Behind him is the busy trailer park he grew up in, simultaneously loud with life, and, for some, a knowing, quiet death. It’s dinner time as dusk begins to settle in. He smells different meals being prepared; someone is grilling. Off to his right, his own three-bedroom, single-wide, yellow trailer sits on concrete blocks; laid before him is the forest. He’s been here before because of others' mistakes and choices; this time, he has only himself and his own poor choices to blame; he knows it. He feels a restless ache, a wish to prove to himself that he can be more. Still, the weight remains, settling deep, and he lets himself sit with it, just for a moment, while the warm, colored sky shifts into its evening blues.

He returned to this place because he lost his job and nearly died from these bad decisions. He’d ended up on a chilly metal table, bright lights glaring, gagging on rubber tubes. An ER doctor told him he had alcohol poisoning and his kidneys were failing. Holt remembered watching, horrified, as green and yellow bile ran up the tube, pumping out his guts. Afterward, he knew he needed a change. Now, sitting on this weathered log, he reckons with his darker parts. He thinks of who he was, how he let himself degrade, and, more importantly, who he wants to be. In his younger years, this forgotten stretch of the trailer park was where he’d land when his life was wildly out of his control. This was his spot. The spot he could sit, no matter the weather, except for lightning, of course, contemplating what needed contemplation and feeling what needed to be felt. When his mom or her boyfriends abused him, he’d run here. If he felt neglected, he’d run here. When he was desperate and alone, this was his refuge.

Once, he sat here after his mom, drunk and high with her boyfriend, sent him away with no food or water, telling him not to return until bedtime. He obeyed—he knew the consequences if he didn’t. Holt, totally alone, sought refuge on this railroad tie. He stared into the woods, tried to be tough, shedding only a single tear from each eye. Later, he grew proud of his ability to control his tears in his teen and early adult years. In adulthood, as he was praised for his work, he was equally regarded as a robot. Coworkers noted his lack of expression, saying he hyperfocused on work and lacked emotion. He felt proud for a long time because he didn’t show weakness, but things changed. People changed. Eventually, he was called a robot so often that he stopped correcting anyone. Easier that way.

He sighs and hangs his head further. Slowly, he reaches out with his right hand to run his fingertips through the grass. He loves the texture; it comforts him when he’s down. He probably shouldn’t be here now. Yet here he is—same patch of dirt, same railroad tie, thirty-two years old, no further than when he was a child sitting here, pulling grass. What if he’ll always be a lonely mess? Hoping to find answers or turn things around, instead, he only finds the tension between who he is and what he wants to be. Holt chews his lip as his younger and older selves meet, tugging grass, rolling blades between their fingers, tossing them into the breeze, and watching them sail back to their origins.

This pattern continues for some time. He’s here and not here. It’s a way of being that most wouldn’t understand. He reckons most would fall to pieces, given the same amount of difficulty he’s faced. He’s perfected the skills of being here and not here, simultaneously, through the years, having been down on his luck more often than not. It’s calming to feel the cool, rapier-shaped pieces between his fingers and his palm. Each piece sheds moisture as it pulls apart. He feels the wind on the back of his neck. He smells the grass, which reminds him of the way your hand smells after holding a lightning bug in a balled-up fist to show your favorite person. In a way, Holt supposes it smells like hope. The pulling and shredding of the grass grounds him in a way almost nothing else ever has. His starving spirit is satiated by it. It isn’t that he relishes being destructive; he just needs to feel something. Anything. This is the gift of Mother Earth, more than his own mother or father ever offered.

He keeps pulling and tearing until his fingers skim against something unfamiliar—soft fur, the rough pad of a tiny paw. Holt stiffens, shock flooding him. Carefully, he turns his hand. Held in his palm: a miniature hand, thumb curled gently—an opossum? He inches closer, holding his breath, nervousness and curiosity clashing.

He’s never been this close to a wild opossum. He’s seen them in his trash before and had to tip it over before leaving for work, but he never touched one. As he leans in, Holt ponders this. Despite his fear, he finally sees the opossum’s body. What he notices amazes him.

The opossum has something unusual: armor, or maybe a mechanical interface. Noting that it's inscribed with something, Holt pokes it. The creature doesn't move. He can barely see the stamped letters—an R, an O. With his thumb, he rubs at the dirty surface, scrubbing until the words "Rove" and then "21" appear. Rove21. It doesn’t make sense. This creature has real hands, tiny opposable thumbs, a real face with scary, real teeth, a true snout, and real eyes. Holt's gaze traces its body, trying to make sense of its existence. At the base of its skull and neck, the mechanics begin. It isn't just curiosity that stirs in him; something in the patchwork of metal and fur feels deeply familiar. He feels the weight of his own survival, pieced together over the years, and wonders if he, too, has become a mix of wounded flesh and makeshift armor against a world that didn't care for gentleness. Should he be fascinated? Anxious? Terrified? He wonders how long this outlier has been here, in this state.

A memory rolls in, unbidden—a day at age twelve, after a fight at school. A purple bruise was blossoming under his eye. He’d hoped no one would see him cry. He wished, with everything in him, that he could armor himself, remake his failing parts into something that wouldn't hurt or break so easily. That wish felt childish then, but as he looks down at Rove now, patched-up and misfit, he recognizes the echo. Something stirs. He doesn’t fully understand, but the feeling vibrates in his chest. He only knows what he sees—alone and forgotten, just like this stretch of forsaken park, a mirror of himself.

Holt presses his lips together and lets out a grunt—a muted acknowledgment.

One scoop, and Holt has the little science experiment in his arms. A calculated curiosity guides him home. The wind picks up. A bit of trash blows by. His trailer isn’t far—the last house on the right, catty-corner from his spot of refuge. This is by design because he wants solitude, to go to work, and come home. He’s always been good with mechanics and liked to tinker. In high school, he won science awards and fixed things around the park, partly to learn and partly to stay busy. Once, he even built a robot stick figure for fun. He had big plans then, to use his skill. But life got away from him, as it often does for the neglected and abused. He has spent most of his past surviving, unable to manage his emotions. Eventually, he lost his ambition for more. He has slowly disappeared, unable to even remember the last time he had dreams beyond waking up, working, and sleeping.

Arriving at his front porch, Holt climbs the stairs, grasping the freshly stained banister with his left hand. The smell of the stain is strong, a mix of chemicals and something sickly sweet. Once on the deck, Holt has to switch the neglected opossum into his other arm to get to his keys in his right pocket. He slides his hand into the pocket and feels the metal at his fingertips, hears a jingle. This mildly irritates him. Always has. His hands are large, and it feels like sticking his hand into something that never wants to let go. The angle always strains his shoulder, too, though that pain is on him. He hasn’t treated his body kindly through the years. He shrugs a little while pulling the keys up and out, then unlocks the door and steps inside. Home sweet home. Pause. Holt looks around for a place to lay the opossum.

His home is tidy. Spotless. Unexceptional, like him. He decides the tabletop will work out just fine. He walks about ten wide steps across the living room to the threshold of the kitchen, where his dining table is up against a window. He lays the small Frankenstein-ish creature down and wanders around the wall behind the table to a small laundry area and grabs a few of those throw-away towels, a small microfiber blanket, and returns to the work laid before him.

Holt studies the marsupial, which appears to be female, and decides to call it by its corporate name, Rove, for now. Unsure what to do next, he sits at the table and opens up his laptop. First, he wants to know what this, what others would consider an abomination, is, and he wants to know how to fix it. He relaxes his position and deep dives into the research. Hours pass, and he’s only been able to find maybe 3 articles, but what he’s learned so far is that, five years earlier, a local company had experimented with and designed cyborg-like animals using roadkill. Their goal was to create a series of exploratory animals that could help humanity in a myriad of ways, from finding children lost in the woods or stuck in a hole to detecting danger, mapping areas unsafe for humans, or helping you locate your latest kill while hunting.

It appeared the program was shut down within 3 years for committing several outrageous abuses, which didn’t surprise Holt. People can be horrifically creative in the ways of abuse, he knows from experience. What had gone wrong with this little gal, though? Why is she stuck in “passed out mode”, but still able to move one hand? He wants to understand. He wants to solve this problem, to prove that he can. So, with his guard up as always, curiosity in gear, and his affinity for fixing things, he jumps all in.

Night one is tough. Working on a tabletop isn’t the greatest. He takes a serious clinical approach to this type of work. He spends much of the evening researching and learning, running his hands across Rove to feel for any breaks in the design, poking, prodding, inspecting the wiring, and recording anything he finds out of the ordinary - fully aware that no part of this situation can be considered ordinary. After hours and hours of this repetitive, calculated work, Holt thinks he finds a problem. Maybe THE problem, maybe not. No way to know. There’s a thin panel with some wiring that, if you weren’t closely inspecting inch by inch, a person wouldn’t even be able to tell it exists.

Inside the panel is a godawful mess. Some wires are bare and touching; others are covered in filth. Holt diligently works on them until dawn, separating and taping them to prevent them from touching or transferring mixed signals. Once he’s satisfied, he yawns and closes the panel, barely able to keep his eyes open. He wraps Rove in the warm, fluffy blanket and sets her on the floor, not wanting her to fall off the table if his handiwork is successful and she wakes up. Another yawn and a few steps later, he crosses back over the threshold to his living room and crashes on the couch.

When Holt wakes up, he’s dizzy, his mouth is dry, and he realizes he hasn’t eaten in over 24 hours and doesn’t remember the last time he had a drink. He glances at the floor for Rove, saying the cyborg's name out loud as his eyes search for her. Not seeing the small animal at first gives him a little hope that he may have fixed it - her. Fixed her. Before jumping back in, he makes it a point to eat, drink, and drink more. Quietly finishing his meal, he sees Rove begin to stumble out of the blanket. Her whiskery nose and round eyes pop out first, giving her the appearance of a possum nun. Get thee to a nunnery! - runs through his mind, and he smirks a little at his own mental joke. Hopeful and in awe, not only of himself because he may have fixed her, but because it’s a cyborg opossum. Feels like an alternate reality. She's a little cute, too, once he looks past the fangs. He had an egg for her on the tabletop. Carefully - so, so, carefully - he lowers the egg to the animal on the floor, trying not to spook her. Doesn’t matter. She hisses and falls dead.

Rove awakens within a few hours to Holt’s relief. He keeps his eyes on her for a bit, thinking he may have solved the problem. He talks to her a little, “Look at you all fixed up. The other cyborg possums are gonna’ be so jealous.” Boy, was he wrong. Within an hour, she drops again. This time, a moth. A freakin’ moth. It flew by and BAM! Rove down. Same deal this time. A few hours later, she's snuffling for the opening and waddling in circles to find her way out of the blanket. He picks her up and looks directly into her face, into her nocturnal, dark eyes. “What is your deal, little ghost?” And the unthinkable happens. Holt sneezes, and right there in his hands, Rove faints. Unable to help himself, he half smirks, feeling the haunt of a laugh begin to surface.

So, Holt spends another long evening Googling and inspecting, taking breaks here and there to hand-feed her and talk to her. The next night is the same, and the night after that as well. Eventually, Holt recognizes that at least she isn’t passing out over the eggs anymore. Over the course of several days, to his dismay, despite his best efforts, he can’t figure it out. If it weren’t so perplexing, it might almost be funny. On the fifth night, several hours in, he observes that she hasn’t passed out at all. Considering this, he begins to wonder if it’s a trust/nervous system issue. He begins to talk to her more casually. You’re beginning to trust me, aren’t you? Not so scared or alone, huh?

Testing his nervous system theory, he sets an 8x10 mirror on the floor, curious about her reaction. She’s wandering around, sniffing the air. As she waddles past it, Rove catches a glimpse of another wild creature in the mirror, “HHHH!!!” “HHHH!” Holt hears her aspirated hissing and crouches to be level with her; he sees her gaping (baring her teeth) at the mirror, and not in a pretty way. Then she’s down for the count again. This time Holt can’t help himself. He begins to crack open. First, a grin; then, tardily, a laugh escapes his lips, like it doesn’t want to, but has a gun to it, so surreal Holt can’t even believe it. For the first time in a long time, he’s happy.

A memory rises- a night when he was maybe ten, huddled cold out on the old log, wishing desperately for someone to notice his absence. No one did. He remembers deciding there and then that he would never need anyone.

She deserves a real name and a real place to belong.

She awakens again in about 3 hours. Holt picks her up, brings her to his chest, just over his heart, and says to her out loud, “How about Rue?”