A Drop in the Ocean

It's a rare night that she can see the stars.

Once a month or so she'll get a glimpse of one shimmering up in the sky. But before it can even offer an answer, the city smog closes back up, and she's left staring at the blackened, charcoal sky.

One night, she'd driven as far as her car would let her go - out past the city limits. As far away from the smoldering skies and the shimmering lights of downtown as she could. Down by the docks, where the beach once swayed. She'd walked past the warning signs that littered the dirt, past where the water once would have floated her away. Where the sea once held life, but now only held garbage and brittle remnants of what once was.

And then she'd let herself fall onto the ground. She closed her eyes and imagined the water swallowing her up, as it would have fifty years earlier. Tried to see a school of fish brushing against her ankles rather than Tuesday's crumpled garbage. She lay there for a while, allowing herself to get lost in a world that she never knew.

And then she'd opened her eyes, and there, in a break in the smog, she could see a cluttering of stars staring down at her in wonder.

Perhaps they longed for the sea, as well.

But just as quickly as they'd appeared, the atmosphere swallowed them whole and left her in a sea of darkness.

Darkness and trash, she bitterly reminded herself.

Tonight, though, is different. The small smattering of stars she saw that night were but a drop in the ocean she now stood in.

Tonight the moon is full and the stars are bright. The sky is clear, and she's floating on actual water. Ten thousand miles from home, and she finally feels the brush of a fin against her toes.

The corners of her lips edge up as she let her muscles relax against the gentle swaying of the water. Slowly, she lets let her back rest against the water as she brings her feet up with her so she’s floating on the oceans surface.

She closes her eyes for just a moment to let herself be enveloped by her surroundings. The gentle breeze brushing across her nose and cheek bones, urging the water to take her away. She can feel goose bumps forming on the tops her arms as she drifts with the ocean. Her breathing slows as she opens her eyes again and stares up at the stars. They’re smiling down at her, whispering words of encouragement – let go, you’re free.

Suddenly, something brushes up against her foot, and she gasps. Eyes wide, she grins as the creature brushes passed her again. So excited at the prospect of an actual sea creature instead of a crumpled, slimy Cheetos bag, she closes her eyes again and lets her senses consume her.

She’s never felt as free as she does in this moment, floating in the ocean without a care in the world. The stars are gazing down on her, the water has accepted her, is carrying her weight on it’s back, and the fish are swimming as if half the world hadn’t been destroyed by the drought. She can feel the light of the stars on her face, and the touch of the water on her skin. The creature brushes against her again, this time letting her hand trail along it’s back.

It’s larger than she’d expected. Its back seems to go on for ages as her hand slides along its skin; the texture coarse, and similar to the sand on the empty beaches back home. She wants to pull her hand away, but the water urges her to let the fish pass, and she listens to it’s thunderous whispers.

In her peace, she doesn’t realize that’s she’s drifted far from the sanctity of the beach. The ocean floor is hundreds of feet below her now, and there’s nowhere for her to go if the tide changes. She doesn’t seem to mind, though, as she opens her eyes once again and marvels up at the sky.

She wonders how humanity had had it in them to let everything beautiful in the world fade away into near extinction. How people born fifty years ago could look up at the sky and not miss seeing the stars. How so many people who had spent their days on the beach had so willingly let them fill with trash, and let oil spill into the water. How they let millions of creatures die without remorse.

She was born into this life, but those before her had created it despite having everything she’s ever dreamt of. It baffles her, how they live as if it had never been any different.

So lost in her thoughts, she doesn’t see the fin swim past her for the third time, circling around her swaying body. Even if she’d caught sight of it breezing through the water, she wouldn’t have thought twice – she doesn’t know what a shark is. She’s heard stories, of course, but none that let her think the ocean could actually be a dangerous place. None that warn her when it grazes past her leg that she’s made a mistake that she can not go back on.

Oblivious to her danger, she smiles softly to herself, delighted. She thinks she’s made a friend in the fish circling her. It draws ever closer, so much so that it brushes up against her waist. Then her shoulders. Her feet. Her head.

She starts to laugh, but it catches in her throat as the shark butts its head against her side; effectively tipping her over, and causing her to inhale a mouthful of water. The water rejects her as she sinks below it’s surface, coughing and spluttering, and inhaling even more water. She searches for the surface, for the stars to guide her way back up, but all she see’s is darkness.

She can’t breathe. Her lungs are filled with water, and she’s choking on it. The salt burns at her eyes in ways not even the city smoke did. She tries to scream for help, but all that comes out are the bubbles of the last of her air. She closes her mouth, grips at her chest as she continues sinking down, down, down into the water. Her nails grip and claw at the skin of chest, rip at her shirt, struggling for some semblance of air, of control.

Her legs kick wildly, propelling her in every which direction, spinning her. She’s dancing with the water but it’s a betrayal she hadn’t considered in all her dreams of the ocean.

And then, suddenly, she stops.

Her legs go still, and her arms are lax at her sides.

Just before her eyes slide closed, she catches sight of her sea creature friend. Just above her, in the abyss she’d fallen through, an even darker blackness moves ever closer. A wide pit surrounded by sharp, glinting white.

Her last thought before a blinding pain so bright it’d put the stars to shame is of home. Of those luminescent city lights, and the city smog. Of beaches crowded with garbage and anger. The moon she so seldom saw. The people wearing their masks. She sees a picture so clear of everything her life had been made up of, and wonders;

Why hadn’t anyone warned her about giant fish with a taste for human flesh?