short story: amy petzoldt
The Island
I read in the newspaper this morning that you are dead. All of you are. That you died slowly, twitching in the yellowy haze, your lungs scrapping at the inside of your chest. I can’t picture it at all.
The Island is so removed from my new life here, on the Mainland, it’s like it only exists only inside my head. So it, and you, all stay exactly as I left you. The thatched cottages scattered along the cliffs, which cut up to the sky, and fall down to the pebbled beach. Baking bread smells and children scurrying around before the afternoon chores. Mud under my nails, preparing the vegetables. The salty air and the soft pink of the sky at dusk. But the newspaper says it is arid and covered in corpses.
On clear days, I buy some chips and I sit right at the end of the pier, picking them out from the paper, sharing them with the seagulls. I squint into the distance and tell myself I can see the faint, jagged line of the cliffs. But I can’t. I can’t see the Island, can’t see the cliffs that I once lived upon, or the beaches I would run along everyday. Just the sea, stretched out and chopping, and a faint wisp of the smog, resting on the long horizon. I used to tell myself that a boat could appear at any minute, with you on it, right at this exact second. Or this one. But I am not sure I can even pretend to believe that anymore.
People talk about the smog here, they talk about it a lot. It dominates the news broadcasts, scientists appear on the glowing screen and use lots of long words. People shake their heads and sigh as they drink their tea. It is a threat that they know about in their heads, but don’t feel inside of themselves. They like to talk about what they will do to stop the smog growing, they wont buy this anymore, or go to that place, and they seem pleased with themselves. As if these imagined actions fit in with a version of themselves like to believe in.
I am not sure we really noticed it when we were growing up, did we? I suppose we did, but thinking it was everywhere, like the sky, or the grass. Something everyone saw. That murky yellowness skimming across the sea, swirling gently towards us. Remember when we were little, we would swim out, way out into the sea and tread water with one hand in the air, feeling our fingertips tingling. Giggling and splashing. When we got back to the beach, our breath rattled in our heavy chests and we didn't think anything of it, just ran back up the cliffs, coughing softly. That was before the news came. It seemed like the ground was getting harder, and the hens were dying a little younger. But these were shrugged off as small problems on a string of poor fortune. People sighed, forced a smile and went just a little hungry, saying surely next year will be better. After the news hit our problems became heavy with permanence, and a realisation that things would only be getting more difficult.
My parents hosted the last meeting before I left. I made sandwiches all morning, then walked around with a blank face and a huge pot of tea. Everyone talked of the smog and the bastards who would not stop experimenting with things that should be left alone. Why should we have to pay for their carelessness, their greed? There was very little talk of leaving, if it was mentioned it was only as an obvious impossibility. This is where we belonged, all we’d ever known. How could our community be built anywhere else? People don’t understand us on the Mainland. You and I were too young to join the conversation. Too young to vote on community policy or even sit down in the room where it was being discussed. I just shuffled around with the plate of biscuits, building up a fractured picture of our future.
I don’t think I ever really decided to leave, Lou. It was just something that happened that night. Like when you put on the kettle without having realised you wanted a cup of tea. I was thinking, while I brushed my teeth about what I would do the next day. I’d go to collect the eggs, and make the breakfast, the same as I did yesterday and the same as I’d do the day after. Then one day I’d move out of my parents’ house and marry Rex, as everyone said I would. Then I’d make omelette for him instead. One day our children would collect the eggs and make the tea instead of me. But, I thought, if the hens kept dying like this, there would be no eggs to collect anymore.
I padded into to my bedroom, thinking of the smog and if it would close in on us completely. What would that feel like? Then, instead of changing into my nightdress, I walked out the door and onto the landing. I went down the stairs and put on my boots, laced them up tight. I walked down to the shore in the dark. The air was crisp. There weren't many stars. Then I was in the boat and rowing out to sea, into the smog. And Lou, that stuff is foul. I’m not surprised you’re all dead. It tore at my throat and I spluttered up blood. It burned my eyes and it scraped at my skin. I pulled my jumper over my head and slouched as far down into the boat as I could. I kept on rowing. I’m not sure how long it took, I just kept rowing and kept thinking about the Island, trapped in the middle of this toxic storm. I couldn’t go back. So I guess I just kept rowing.
Eventually I felt the sand rub the bottom of the boat, I rested my arms and I closed my eyes and thought that might be the end. I woke up in a hospital covered in blisters, my lungs felt like hot lead in my chest. In the days that followed, people asked me all sorts of questions about the Island and you and the smog. They took pictures of me and called me a hero. But I’m not. Not even a little bit. You’re the real hero, you all are. You’re still there, on the Island, standing by our community and the land that was ours. I’m just a coward who ran. I’m sorry I never said good-bye. I’m sorry I did’t ask you to run with me.
Nobody asks me any questions anymore. There are so many people here Lou, and all of them in such a hurry. I was given a lot of different pieces of paper and told to keep them “safe” but not what that meant. I had to get a job, because “that’s what you have to do.” That’s what they all say, all the time. I work in a big building near the beach, lots of different people come and stay here, in these long corridors of identical rooms. The long corridor right at the top of the building is where I stay, seven floors up above the ground. So do lots of other people who all do the same jobs as me. We make the beds and put little bottles in the bathrooms. In the mornings I get up before the sun and I stand in a big room behind a table with a white cloth and a big basket of eggs. People come in and I boil the eggs for them. Some people smile, some don’t. They ask me where I’m from and I don't know what to say. The eggs here don’t taste the same.
I look out from the pier and the smog swirls away from me now.
about the author: amy petzoldt
Amy is a social scientist currently working towards her PhD in Educational Studies. She is interested in identities, resistance, and manifestations of joy; themes she also explores in her stories. Geeking out at the library, cycling the back streets of London, drinking really cold white wine and cooking really hot curry rank in her top ways to distract herself from the patriarchal heteronormative neoliberal white supremacy.
Twitter: @amypetzoldt
Insta: @amy_petz
