No 5: OLIVA ABBEY’S PURPLE HAIR

PHOTO BY LUCIA AUERBACH

LUCIA AUERBACH

(Submitted originally to her Literature and Oil course taught by Professor Jennifer Wenzel)

When Olivia Abbey woke up Wednesday morning, the sky was covered in clouds. These days were Olivia's favorites; she did not have to wake up and wait for some morning energy so she could manage to drag herself out of bed and reach for the nearest gas mask.

"Sunny days used to be fun," she would think in the mornings when the sky was clear. "And now it just means respiratory failure." And then she would put on a mask and glare at the world for the rest of the day.

Olivia Abbey was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. It used to be famous for its predictably sunny days. She grew up in a family that was resentful at what the world was becoming—a purple dust storm with rapidly depleting oxygen supplies. Olivia had no choice but to care; she was born into a family that had gained notoriety by begging the people of America to finally quit their fossil fuel usage. Their world screamed for any environmental help, but the world didn’t listen.

The Abbeys would not leave Los Angeles, so neither would Olivia. Olivia's family expected her to carry on an environmental legacy. The world outside frightened her; she hated the suffocating masks she had to wear whenever she wanted to play outside on sunny days. Tears would well up in her goggles, and she couldn’t even see her hands in front of her. She painted her fingernails red to remind herself that her hands belonged to her. In the library, her red fingernails would glide over the stacks of books, and she would pull one or two gingerly and lay down on the cool floor to read them all in one sitting. Her favorite books were those about art. 

The art that Olivia read about had been exported and housed in a secret city named Marfa, Texas. What had once been a global cultural staple had been hidden away in a dark warehouse, never to be seen again. Olivia dreamt about the paintings and sculptures that were held in their dingy prison and what they must have looked like when they were displayed in their full glory. She would sit for hours in front of candles and tell her mother and father about the once beautiful pastel creations slathered over canvases and held up to the light in expansive marble buildings. Her love of description led her to the only career that still bordered on creativity: writing.

Now, Olivia was in her twenties and working at a small publication that prides itself on reporting "The News That Makes You Smile." TNT-MYS was one of the few publications remaining. She did not believe that what she was reporting was accurate. It is mostly about how to use oil more efficiently while still keeping the oil companies in operation.

When she arrived at work on Wednesday, she opened her inbox to find a message from her boss flashing across the screen like a bad pop-up advertisement. It was a page. She needed to go speak to her boss.

"Olivia! Just the writer I need today. How are you?" Her boss said.

"The clouds are out, so I’ve never been better. Is everything alright?" Olivia said as she sat down in the chair across from her boss and crossed her legs, putting her red fingernails on her lap.

"Well, readership is down. Big time. It doesn’t seem like very many people are all that excited about the purple sky. We need something that is going to spread hope and tell the readers what they can do personally with their next oil delivery. I’m not tasking you with the impossible, Olivia. But we need some hope that it’s still possible to reverse these purple skies."

"Happy to do so." Olivia said, and without any hesitation, she stood up and turned out of the room.

Olivia walked into the bathroom and stopped to stare at her reflection. Her face looked older; she had never noticed that before. Her skin no longer looked fresh, but damaged and blemished. She stared into her eyes. They were the exact same curious eyes that had introduced her to the world of art and entertainment. She still had it in her. She did not have to submit to write the words consumers wanted to hear—she just had to pull it back out again.

Now, with determination to write the next big story that would change the way that consumers used oil, Olivia dashed out of TNT-MYS. If art had provided her hope when she was little, maybe it could do the same for people. She was going to see the art and report on it without using any oil to get there. She was insistent on sharing the hope that art held by finding where the art was held, in Marfa, Texas. If she could show everyone that the world used to be beautiful and natural, maybe it could give them motivation to restore the earth to its original state.

Despite it being a cloudy day, the sky’s color still bled through. A dark purple started to reflect onto the surfaces around her. Purple typically requires quarantine. Olivia stood on the street as she watched the caravans load up with people who left their homes that day—but she did not step into one. The stream full of caravans flowed around her like a rock in a stream. The people inside stared at her, puzzled. She did not look back and strode home, determined, in the purple shadows.

Once inside her home, Olivia hastily slung her gas mask over her face and threw miscellaneous socks and shirts into a brown canvas bag. She put an old digital camera on top of the bag and tightened the straps to close it. Then she stumbled out onto the street. She had already forgotten where she was going, but she was going to run—right through the thick purple mist.

Her lungs felt like ice as she took sharp inhales through her nose and her feet slammed on the Los Angeles concrete. Each breath screamed for more air, demanding that she take off the mask and breathe. Her heartbeat synchronized with her loud footsteps. She could only hear the thuds; she could only see purple. Her blonde hair jumped up and down as she continued to run east. The ends of her hair had already started to turn purple.

When Olivia’s lungs could not take the frozen air any longer, she came to a jagged stop in the middle of a freeway. She had already forgotten how she got there. The freeway, once named Route 66, was entirely immobile. There were abandoned cars scattered like confetti on the streets after a float drove by. She walked down the road with little to no direction about where she wanted to go. The roads had never been this deserted. Everyone else had gone into quarantine already, but Olivia did not dare go back. Her feet pounded, and she could not go one more step without them screaming for her to stop. She floundered over to a row of cars with condensation tinting the windows. As she leaned in, she saw passengers still in them, but they were no longer there. Their heads tilted back onto the seat’s headrest, and their mouths gaped open—their souls had been stolen by the purple haze. Olivia didn’t notice the tears streaming down her face as she stared at the stiff, dead bodies.

She stumbled back into the street and wanted to run again, but the tears had turned into sobs, and she could think of nothing else but to lay down. Olivia tugged on the door of an abandoned car. The doors opened wide. It was an old forest green car, an electric one (back when people tried to save their oil usage). She decided it was a Volkswagen based on the initials she saw on the steering wheel. Her foot found the gas pedal, and she pressed on it as she held down the black start button on the right. No luck. The car didn’t even blink. She tried again. Then one more time. Nothing. Her eyes were blinking slowly, and Olivia wanted to give in to the forever sleep that called to her. As she opened the car door, she heard a voice come from the radio.

“Hey!” the voice said.

“Hello?” Olivia replied. 

“Hi! I’m Buggy,” 

Olivia sprung out of the car. She turned around, but she could see no one. She slammed the car’s door shut and started to run. She knew the purple haze had gotten to her memory; every step felt like a walking Ambien dream, but she didn’t think it would have made her hallucinate. Olivia had forgotten that this was for a story and that she needed to maintain her memory to report on the dead bodies in cars later. Yet her only thoughts were focused on running. Her brain only knew how to pick up her feet and pound them onto the bitter, dying earth. 

She slowly returned to a state of semi-consciousness when she was in the desert. Olivia recognized the swollen, stumpy trees as the Yucca brevifolia that had migrated to Arizona nearly twenty years ago. They maintained their green bodies, but their arms had turned purple, and the spikes were no longer sharp but curved upward. Olivia continued to stare at the trees when she was interrupted by the voice again.

"Hello! You stopped running! It’s me, Buggy," the voice said.

Oliva spun around and stared at the car with confused doe eyes. The forest-green car had followed her to Arizona. She was no longer in Los Angeles but had somehow run to the desert beyond California’s state lines.

"Hi Buggy. I’m Olivia."

"Where are you going?" Buggy inquired directly.

Olivia did not know where she was headed. She did not even remember what had frantically pushed her to escape California. She blinked once more at Buggy.

“Marfa,” she said curtly. 

“Texas?” Buggy asked.

“Texas,” Olivia replied, “I want to see art.”

“Can I come with you?” 

“You already came with me to Arizona. Why not the rest of the way?”

Olivia spun on her heels again and started walking, this time down the middle of the road. She picked her feet up with effort one after the other and tried to keep them centered on the white lines dashed across the middle of the road. Her legs would swing out in a circular motion before she placed them back down. Buggy followed behind her. She could hear his wheels thudding rhythmically on the tar road, but they never synchronized with her own foot steps. Olivia could hazily recall bits and pieces of the desert floating past on either side of her. Her feet continued to move even though her body felt entirely asleep. The sky had remained a light shade of lilac, and she never dared to look up. The further she walked away from California, the lighter the sky turned. She couldn’t turn back now. What lay ahead of her was all she had ever dreamed of. If a world full of art existed, why couldn’t she bring it back? Why can’t the art of the past inspire people to take care of the future? If they still had a future? After they had walked for what felt like over a day, Olivia turned around again.

“Why are you still here?” Olivia asked.

“For precisely the same reason you are,” Buggy said, “to leave.”

Olivia didn't quite know what to say to Buggy in response. But she decided she wouldn’t ask questions anymore. She couldn't remember why she'd left, why her hair had turned from blonde to a light lavender color, where her gas mask had vanished, what was in the heavy bag that weighed on her back, or why her lungs and feet felt like ice. She didn’t want to try to think about what she couldn’t remember anymore. But if she and Buggy were leaving, she would continue down the straight road in this desert until something signaled they had left.

The road beneath them began to rumble and become hot. The heat stung through the soles of her shoes and Buggy’s tires, so Olivia stopped walking, and Buggy caught up to her and stood by her side. Olivia turned to make eye contact with Buggy, but the ground began to rumble with more force. She quickly looked down and saw the concrete splitting apart.

The ground hissed and cracked apart, and sparks began to flash out of the cracks. Olivia jumped onto Buggy’s roof, and he rolled his tires away as fast as he could. Olivia looked behind them and saw the earth tearing itself apart. The sparks clung together like magnets and formed an electric dollop that climbed out of the ground and pulled itself to the surface, melting away the concrete around it. Flares started to fly into the air, carrying bits of the concrete road with them. They hit the ground like bowling balls in a silent bowling alley and created sparks brighter than staring directly at a lightning bolt. The wind started to pick up, and the sparks started to run east, towards Olivia and Buggy.

“Faster!” Olivia shouted.

Olivia watched the explosions grow tall in the air and reach out left and right, burning whatever vegetation dared to stay near the road as Buggy picked up the pace. Olivia shut her eyes, and the purple haze invaded her brain once again.

When she opened her eyes, Buggy had placed her on the side of the road. Her brown canvas bag slung onto the front of her chest, propping her head up, as he toyed with a long metal rod coated in a large blue sheet. Buggy tossed it over to Olivia.

“What is it?” Buggy asked.

"I’m not too sure," Olivia said as she passed the rod back and forth between her hands. There was a black plastic handle on one end with a button. She pressed it. The rod elongated, and the plastic flung open into a bowl-like shape. The rods branched out into thinner ones and extended in a perfectly round formation, connecting to the end of the plastic cloth. Buggy jumped back as Olivia continued to twirl the rod around in fascination. She sat the plastic tip on top of the round plastic sculpture on the ground and held the thicker rod at the handle. It spun around. She held on as she walked around it, spinning the rod faster and faster until she hoisted it above her head and continued to swing in a circle.

“Rain!” Buggy shouted.

“What?” Olivia replied, shouting from her circle.

“Rain! They used that for rain!” Buggy said, “I remember seeing those! Everyone would put them over their heads when the rain came down. It works like my roof.”

Olivia stared up at the rain contraption. She pictured a painting she had once read about in a book—there was a whole street lined with people holding these rain protectors as the little lines blurred and dashed over the canvas. Olivia had never seen rain before, let alone the things that protected people from it. California hadn’t seen rain since before she was born. It seemed like everyone just forgot about the precipitation from the sky and became more focused on the clouds covering their heads. She’d seen dried-up rivers on school field trips, but never something like this. She put the device into her brown bag and threw it behind her shoulders once again.

“Let’s go, Olivia!” Buggy shouted. She didn’t realize he had continued walking. 

Olivia ran to Buggy, her feet slammed on the ground. It started to sound like her heartbeat was everywhere. 

She looked up at the sky and realized she had forgotten again. The silence of her footsteps woke her up. Buggy sat by the side of the road, staring out at the white sand hills. New Mexico. They made it to New Mexico.

Sitting next to Buggy now, Olivia turned her bag toward the front of her body and opened up the strings. On top of her digital camera, it had somehow been protected by the heaps of socks and shirts she had packed. She took off the socks she had been wearing and almost replaced them with a new pair, but she decided to strap in her bare feet instead and put her sandals back on. Olivia held the camera out and rested it atop her knees. She held down on the silver button; it looked the same as the one Buggy had in his interior. The camera refused to budge. She clicked the button repeatedly. Nothing, yet again. She turned toward Buggy.

“Do you have a charger?” Olivia asked.

“Nope” Buggy responded, “I tried charging my lantern a day ago. I’ll blame it on the sky, but no chargers out here are working.”

Olivia sighed. Her tears streamed down her face again. She wanted to remember just this. If nothing else, she wanted to make photographical art from this moment. The sand hills were so peaceful. They remained white, unlike the sky around them—everything was a dark purple. The wind blew from behind them, and it sent her hair forward, blinding her. The strands were dyed entirely purple now; not even a highlight of blonde could be seen. She started to sob, like when she saw the dead bodies in their cars. Her tears hit the camera’s face, and she imagined that maybe they could be rain drops. She was terrified of forgetting more. Los Angeles never came to mind; her idea of home was now at her feet. The gas mask seemed to have actually had a purpose after all, Olivia thought to herself. Her lungs felt like they had frozen, and she did not dare look at the condition of her feet. In between her sobs, she leaned on Buggy’s forest-green exterior. They stared out at the sands in front of them; Olivia closed her eyes again.

“Olivia. Hey,” Buggy whispered. She opened her eyes and found that she was laying atop of Buggy’s roof. Her limbs were splayed out like a washed-up starfish. She quickly jumped off and looked around. A parking lot full of rusted cars stood before them.

“Are those…cars?” Olivia asked, clearing her throat from the purple dust that accumulated during her slumber. 

“If you could even call them that,” Buggy replied, “They’re old oil powered ones, from before I even existed. They are the reason you can’t remember, you know that, Olivia? They started all this purple haze. They gave the people a promise of freedom without a price, and then stole all the oil from below the ground, and gave the people the resulting consequences. Now they laugh and sit around and watch the world burn. They aren’t cars, Olivia. They don’t deserve that title. They’re barbarians.”

Olivia looked out at the parking lot and saw that all the cars were different. Some cars had four doors, some had only two, some had a long exterior trunk, and some didn’t have a trunk at all. They all had the same faint rust color, but beyond that, one could see the blues, grays, and reds still shining through.

“They can’t all be barbaric, Buggy.” Olivia said.

“They are all barbarians to me, but if you are so sure of their differences, why don’t we go and ask them!”

Buggy rolled away with an enthusiastic zeal to interrogate every last car that sat idly in the parking lot. Olivia stayed behind. She stared out at the cars and couldn’t make out what Buggy could possibly be saying to them. She stared until her vision went blurry, then she blinked her eyes three times. She turned back to the road and recognized the signs.

WELCOME TO MARFA

"Buggy!" Olivia shouted, "We’re in Texas! We’re in Marfa!" She started to run down the road to what appeared to be an abandoned strip mall. She looked behind her, and Buggy was still standing there, arguing with the cars. She didn’t have time to question him. Olivia had finally made it to Marfa. The strip mall in front of her could be the warehouse. It was small and looked like a doll house, but she reasoned that it was just the distance. If she kept running, pounding her feet on the ground, maybe the warehouse would assume a larger, grander shape. It had to be the one. She was in Marfa. She kept repeating herself. She heard the heartbeat and footsteps come back to her.

“No!” Olivia shouted, “No! No! No! I made it here, I’m going to see the art…” 

Her voice trailed off in pain. She kept trying to scream.

“No! No! I’m going! I’m in Marfa!” 

She started to scream various unintelligible syllables to keep the hypnotic thudding out of her head. The ground started to feel warm. No, her feet started to feel warm. The icy sensation had left. Olivia reached down and tore off her sandals, now beating her bare feet into the concrete on the road. Her soles started to burn, searing with heat. It felt like running on microwaved sand. She looked down at her ever-moving feet. They were not their usual pale shade, covered in a hue of purple, or dotted with her signature red nail polish, but they had started to turn a deep black. The color morphed from the bottoms of her soles to the tops of her arches. She stopped running.

The black on her feet was tar.

Tar comes from oil.

Olivia had been running in oil.

She laughed to herself. Her throat burned like it had never burned before. 

“Buggy! Oil!” Olivia screamed.

She turned around and could no longer see the car park, but the warehouse still laid quaintly in the distance. 

“Buggy?” Olivia whispered into the air, “Buggy?! Buggy!”

She tried to pick up her feet to continue running, but when she looked down, the tar had swallowed her up to her knees. Olivia tried jumping to get up and out of the oil. But it held onto her like glue. She started laughing to herself and looked up at the purple sky. She noticed there were no clouds today. Olivia was never fond of sunny days; no one was. But today, she looked at the cloudless sky with joy. She even marveled at it. Little black flecks start spilling from above. She squinted as they started to land on her. It looked like little moles decorated her skin. She started to laugh even harder. This was her first encounter with rain, and it wasn't even water. 

The tar was up to her chest now. The rain started falling harder. Olivia closed her eyes and sighed. She held her arms up to her chest and tried to catapult herself into the oil. 

Olivia once learned that oil came from fossils.

The least she could do was become a fossil and add herself to the supply. There was no fighting it, she had succumbed, death was her only relief.