This dystopian micro first appeared in Ghost Parachute. I love dystopian literature, and have plans for a longer dystopian work in future. What especially fascinates me is what remains—how we try to hold onto culture and stories and how we might incorporate some of the best of our past into a grim, new future. In this story, makeup has taken on a deeper significance. It might be war paint. It certainly is a distinguishing part of the narrator’s life and her people’s. I refer to Van Gogh, O’Keefe, and other works of art and painting techniques. I see them as surviving the unnamed, undefined apocalyptic event, and being incorporated in a personal way in the lives of the survivors who wear the makeup. The story hints at some sort of computer or digital cataclysm, caused by other survivors who continue to live in the cities while our narrator and her people skulk around the edges.

It’s an atmospheric story, and I hope you find it unsettling. My first draft was actually meant to be lighthearted! I got the initial breath of the story while walking to a nearby creek. I was wearing a t-shirt I didn’t particularly like. I was thinking to myself, “Wouldn’t that just figure if something cataclysmic occurred and here I am wearing a shirt I don’t even like when I have a closetful of t-shirts I do like?” I wrote a first draft of this story about a character who really was bothered by the fact she was wearing an ugly shirt and couldn’t easily find something else to wear. This character was extra annoyed at the preppers, as she called them (they weren’t, necessarily) who “thought they were so cool in their camo.” It’s an okay draft, but it wasn’t getting where I wanted to go.

So I decided to try makeup. Would someone care about wearing makeup post-apocalypse? If so, why? And what would it mean?

As I worked on the story and found its voice, I tapped into the uneasiness so many of us are feeling as we see how much of our lives are dependent on technology most of us barely understand. Though the story doesn’t state this explicitly, I was thinking, too, of how easy our digital world has made surveillance and censorship, and how the algorithm contributes to a particularly virulent tribalism of us-against-them.

I filmed at the Kaskaskia River Spillway Recreation Area. In Southern Illinois, where I live, lake spillways are often more natural. I mean, of course they have a dam. But the water flows into a small river or a creek that is often rocky and forested. When the water is flowing, it’s whitewater beauty. I expected something similar here. I forgot how much bigger the Kaskaskia River is than the little rivers our smaller lakes empty into. At first I was disappointed by how much more industrial it all looked. Then I realized it was perfect for this story of liminal areas, between civilization and wilderness.

I should note that the story refers to water pollution. The scene that goes with it in this video isn’t an example of pollution, really. It’s an overflow from a creek that flows under a sidewalk through a culvert into the river. Just water.

I hope you enjoy!