CHIMAERA-LIKE PHANTASMAGORIA

By Alisiya Ermolenko '24

We lived in a bizarre world. Where humans were no longer humans and lions were more than lions. Where mountains were nothing but grains of salt and the oceans were deserts.

I used to live by the ocean Every day I was met by the sounds of the resounding waves that eroded the piece of rock my house was perched upon and the screeches of the dumb seagulls as they came in hoards to eat the bread I left out for them I remember gazing out my window in wonder and seeing a blue, enveloping blanket that stretched out as far as the eye could see.

At times, when I got lonely I would sit on the tor, or as I called it, el sabio, and look for monsters of the depths. I was already past the age at which one could be called young and my hearing wasn't so great but when I listened, really listened, it seemed like I could hear lonely bellows coming from far out. It brought me peace, even hope, that I was not the only desolate one on the planet Then, after I got tired of ruminating, I would return to my cot and fall into restless sleep But one day I woke up and the colossal body of water, I mean all of it, vanished. Disappeared off the face of the Earth Instead, there was useless sand and countless of wriggling fish corpses uniformly dispersed across miles of naked land previously hidden under the mass of the ocean. And no monster in sight.

At first, I truly thought it was some sort of wicked joke on the part of the military. Since World War IV was avoided one hundred years ago and all the other conflicts were then stopped altogether, they probably got really bored It was so peaceful that for a time I think they actually thought of getting rid of the armed forces. I giggled. Entertaining this train of thought showed just how far my mind had deteriorated

"You can stop now!" I shouted out my window, my voice echoing into the sky. Any minute now I was sure a uniformed soldier would jump out of a helicopter and say this was an alpha test for some sort of new vaporizer they were developing in their underground labs. Somewhere down there a mammoth might just as well be running around But no, nothing happened One minute went by. Two. Three. Seven. Eighty-five. And nothing had changed.

The bizarreness of it all started to finally seep into my brain until an idea appeared in my head as clear as day: the ocean was gone indefinitely. My heart rate went up and I started to sweat. Then, it got even stranger I looked at the little droplets of sweat on my arm They were trickling not down like they are supposed to by the laws of gravity. No. They were going up my arm and suddenly they started to float upwards towards the sky. Indeed, I was really going mad.

I shouted. Louder. And louder. And louder. And still my voice seemed to be the only sound that was left of life I was going to die soon too, then, I thought I didn't know what to do I looked at the desert and saw the whales, the sharks, the dolphins, the barracudas, and the eels. Most were dead but some still flapped their fins and moved their jaws. Even though it was hopeless, I popped open a couple of my bottled waters and poured them into a large container on wheels and raced down the slope to gather whatever life form I could find. The sun rays were harsh. After walking for what felt like kilometres, I was only able to collect a handful of sardines and a jellyfish that I barely managed to pick up, and only after it stung me twice. I looked desperately for fish that were small enough to put into my container and cried at the sight of the beautiful mammals that I had to leave behind to get devoured by vultures. Their dispirited eyes looked up at me and seemed to say that they were so exhausted of it all, that they didn't even care to be saved. There was one beluga whose faint wails slowly, but surely kept fainting away. The further I went, the more bodies there were along with remains of sunken ships with their loose, rusted anchors.

I don't know what had gotten into me One of the only things I remember distinctly was bawling while clutching the skeleton of a chimaera. What had become of the ocean?

By sunset nearly all of the water in my container had evaporated and only the jellyfish was left, the little devil had eaten all the fish below its trophic level. I had to retreat, defeated by something I couldn't quite comprehend My exhaustion overpowered me and by the time I got back to my shack I could barely stand. The horrors of the day kept replaying in my head and so to finish the night off I poured myself and the chimaera, my newfound dead friend, a rather generous glass of nightcap. After that, everything got very blurry but finally, after many years, I was able to get a good night's sleep In the morning, wrapped in the arms of the sea creature, I heard the sound of thunder.