The Last Call

A creative writing piece about the environment. Written for the school newspaper.

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“Please,” she sobbed, a small tear stinging its way down her cheek. Deaf to her words, the sea of strangers rushed out as quickly as they had flooded the scene, the way they had done so many times before. The few that noticed the huddled mass on the floor convinced themselves they were too busy, while most simply did not care.

But everyone ignored her.

They all knew her, remembered her to be the sea, something similar of little importance to them. Over time, anyway, she had merged into the gray background, and soon they could not be bothered. . . to them, she had always been there that way—just a grimy, faceless figure without a name on the streets. They didn’t even know she could breathe.

But she could feel herself suffocating, drowning beneath her own waves. It’d only been a few decades, yet she was nothing like she had been before. Her hair was murky and her skin adorned with bloody plastic shards, a twisted sort of jewelry.

She stood there hunched alone, watching the tide of humans pass by. Unseeing. Unfeeling. Amidst the din, she was lifeless except for her eyes that desperately scanned the crowd.

“Help,” she whispered. Her hands trembled as she reached out for the human next to her, only to be carelessly swatted away. She cowered as another net flung itself up in the air—almost tantalizing as it shimmered—but came crashing down on her, and she felt the fishhooks dig in, devouring her flesh. Frantic, she tried to tear off the cuffs that had entangled itself round her wrists, but a flurry of waste battered her down. Another cigarette butt, another washed out wrapper, another clouded glass bottle.

She couldn’t see, but she knew they could. She tried to reach out again, groping around blindly, but there was no one. Where were they? Surely they would help her, surely they wouldn’t ignore her . . . but as the clack of their shoes faded in the distance, she felt her heart sink.

She collapsed onto her hands, feeling the acrid burn of the black sludge on her skin, staining it as dark as ink. She caught her reflection in the darkness, only to see nothing but nets and dull plastic where turquoise had once blossomed. Echoing radars paralyzed her in her tracks as the ringing in her ears grew louder and louder, leaving her in a daze.

It had never been like this. Never this bad. She’d always been able to muster enough strength to take another breath.

Surely they didn’t know what they were doing to her, what they were doing to themselves. That was what she whispered to herself, but each time the black sludge stung her, each time another bag gripped at her neck, she questioned herself. The tide of trash was overwhelming, battering her with jagged shards again and again. She was helpless, trapped, as she watched herself unwillingly break down the pieces of plastic into deadlier shards, spelling her own demise.

Then one day, when the final ship tipped over, coating her mouth and innards with the sludge she’d learned was called oil, she was gone.

This time, she didn’t bother trying to brush back the slivers piercing her eyes. Her eyelids fluttered, her posture hunching as her will to live slowly ebbed away.

She closed her eyes. There was nothing left now, nothing she could do to stop her dirty waves from crashing on the dirtied sands of the once-pristine beaches.

The humans soon began to take notice of her absence. They wailed, pleading for her to return.

But they were too late.

**

Halfway across the world, a curious toddler held a dull conch up to her ear before dropping it half-heartedly on the sand. Her mother was wrong; the sea didn’t call.

She didn’t hear or see those cerulean seas, the crystal clear waters that her mother had claimed swept the beach clean in a whoosh. There was no swaying dance with the silver moon—only the rustling of a thousand tin cans, the tinkling of metal scraps.

Tentatively, she prodded the shell with her foot, before picking it up again. The delicate shell had managed to survive the fall, and she held her breath as she tried again, pressing it up against her ear.

There was only silence.