The Drowning #1
In the living room, Eddie was gathering the last of the food supplies and throwing them into a big fabric bag slumping next to the front door. His lean figure was obscured to a gray swatch in the shades with his faded Levi’s, dust-tinted sneakers, and ill-fitting stone-colored jacket that squeaked to his movements. In the bedroom, Eddie had earlier sprawled everything all over the bed — he always packed by stuffing everything into whatever luggage he was taking. It was quite a feat to be proud of.
At the other end of the bedroom, there was Sara. She was quickly swiping fresh tears away from her face as she tucked the last shirt neatly in the corner of the suitcase.
Outside, although it was in the chilly October, students on their lunch breaks were still running down the street in short sleeves screaming in excitement. The leaves had piled up high enough for those kids to go hunker down during hide-and-seek. No adults were on the streets. Everyone was at work. To the other side of the house, the ocean was still and edgeless. Located in what was once Wind Point, WI with a lively view of Lake Michigan, Eddie and Sara’s house is one of the few left standing in the vicinity. They felt lucky that Wind Point retained its name after the mass-dissolution of nations around the world.
Eddie always said he preferred leaving in the middle of the day because no one would bat an eye — because no one would be there. “My line of work is about drawing as little attention as possible,” Eddie always said as he walked towards the door, swinging the fabric bag over his shoulders, awkwardly tugging the suitcase behind him. Sara walked him to the door but quickly turned away before her tears started streaming again. Voice quivering, she pretended nothing happened, “I’m worried, you know that.”
A thud, then she was in the air. Sara screamed.
Eddie dropped everything and scooped her up from behind. “You bet your ass I’ll be home before you know it!” He joked, squeezing her tight. He was tense, but still smiling. Looking at Eddie’s slightly crooked teeth and waning deep-set eyes, Sara laughed, quickly wiping away tears yet again before jumping off and giving Eddie a shove towards the door.
“Get out of here and get back soon!”
“Okay, okay,” Eddie laughed again, “Love you, see ya later!”
Sara turned around, gaze misty with a forced steadiness. “Love you too.” She whispered as Eddie headed out, clenching every muscle in her body not to let her emotions overflow.
Back on the couch, facing the ocean and the skyline cleanly split outside the floor-to-ceiling window, Sara wrote down Eddie’s supposed return date. From today on, it would be 128 days before his return. In 128 days, the dam monitoring teams would swap shifts, and Eddie would be back. She sighed, fixating her attention on the pearls of dust flying away from the windowsill, not knowing what to think.
A ring pierced the stillness. Elaine, Sara’s boss, called to see if everything was okay. “It’s all good,” Sara straightened up herself, “he just left, so I’m gonna make myself some lunch and come back at 2.”
“You got it, go easy on yourself.” Elaine’s voice was blankly pleasant, although Sara picked up a hint of sympathy. The same day as today had happened every 128 days since the collapse of the Earth’s ecosystem 5 years ago. Humans have failed to prevent global warming from taking over the globe. They lost all but two continents to the rising sea level and unlivable climate conditions. And the two remaining continents, Asia and North America, overpopulated and terrified, are slowly drifting towards each other and dangerously close to colliding.
On both continents, all that was left between species extinction and pyrrhic survival was the Great-Wall Dam, better known as just “the dam,” put up around the continental coastlines by the United Nations before its eventual dissolution and rebranding into “the United Human Association.” The UN dissolved because there was no border left to geographically distinct countries; they put up the dam as its last costly yet collective effort because without it, there would be no human left either.
The UHA kept most of the former UN procedures and personnel without the formality of country placards but with an aggravated sense of unity. Teams of dam monitoring teams were assembled by location and assigned to around-the-clock monitoring and research: how to delay the inevitable, if and how we can escape to another planet, and how to prolong our existence for as long as we can. Eddie was enlisted as a member of the Mid-America dam monitoring team, covering all coastlines from former southern Texas and midwestern Ohio all the way up to former Ontario and Manitoba, Canada. During the 128 days on shift, he and his teammates would split their time among the segments of oceanfront up and down the continent, tracking sea level and taking samples for scientists back at the base located in Havenmead, formerly Chicago. After 128 days of traveling, Eddie and co. would return home, and two other teams would rotate before it was their turn again.
Sara worked as a research scientist at the only lab center in Wind Point. That lab was a part of the continental contractor network for the pharmaceutical industry, or what was left of it. Work had been scarce, so Sara had been moonlighting as a hospital pharmacist with the little knowledge she had about drugs from her clinical pharmacology degree. It was illegal, but who was checking?
The starch foam from the boiling pasta in the pot overflowed onto the counter. Sara was in a total trance of blank thought, so when the hot foam scorched her hand, she sprung back to life and howled for pain. Quickly recuperated, Sara cleaned up and fixed up a bowl of pasta with random vegetables she found wilting in the fridge.
On her laptop, Sara watched for news about the dam. The ocean level today was concerning, the frontline dam monitoring team reported, and Sara clenched her bowl. Please behave while Eddie’s on shift, you Goddamn dam, Sara thought to herself. Then, she chuckled at the saying of “that Goddamn dam.”
Closing her laptop, Sara nestled herself at the corner of the couch, started picking at her pasta bowl, and thought about the day Eddie would come home.
The Drowning, a fictional exercise:
The Drowning #1
The Drowning #2
The Drowning #3
