THE IRON SEA

TK-Sorainu

what was beinG called a ‘mass human extinction event’ was happening on our coast. As if the planet itself was angry, thousands of watercrafts were swallowed up by the sea, and massive raging creatures we had never seen before surfaced and fought over their human prey.

Something in me felt this was a reckoning we had coming for centuries, what with everything we kept taking from the Earth and never giving back. The world was shocked, and I just stood atop the dunes wondering, why are you so shocked? The planet is alive, and one day it was bound to make itself known.

The news said there were no survivors, so I knew my older brother had well and truly been lost to the Event. He had been out there that day, and, in the days since, he hadn’t returned.

A grim emotionless mask fell over my family as we waited out the Event. No one talked about him.

As things eased up, the tide that had taken the lives of thousands suddenly left in one fell swoop, and the ocean vomited years and years of debris onto the shore, a history of human disaster and war on display. We waited for the all-clear from the armed forces and scientists scrambling to figure out how this phenomenon occurred. Once we had it, we began the search for my brother’s body, though no one spoke of it aloud.

After the first week, it became clear to everyone searching, and to all the scientists, that there were no bodies to be found. Not even a bone was spotted; all signs of blood and flesh had washed away.

Not even clothing was left, only other objects, so we resigned ourselves to look for anything identifiably my brother’s instead.

The grief hasn’t hit me yet; I haven’t let it.

Instead I will myself to be fascinated by the sheer age of the objects thrown onto the shore, to be entranced by the horrific beauty that was the mile wide strip of ocean-now-sand being quickly given the moniker of ‘The Iron Sea.’ A fitting name with how the thrashed up and exposed sand coagulated with extremely high concentrations of oxidized iron sediment, crystalizing it together.

Collectors and greedy history mongers scour the sea of deteriorating metal waste, unwilling to see the message for what it was, and instead treating it as a ‘great discovery.’ I feel sick watching them crawl in the debris, ignoring the fact that they are walking right through thousands of people’s last moments on this Earth.

Eventually we stop searching, but what I can’t understand is why my mum seems so calm about it all. She’s lost a child, and from the way she worries over all of us on a daily basis, she should be a right mess. She’s not happy per se, but not really unhappy either. I wonder if it’s maybe a kind of shock which hasn’t worn away yet, and care for her the best I can as I watch quietly and wait for her to fall apart.

Instead, of all things, the unthinkable happens.

I walk into the kitchen one night, thinking of getting something small to eat, and there standing across from Mum at the counter, is my brother.

They’re speaking quietly, neither very grimly nor animatedly, and he hasn’t noticed me standing there. Then he turns his head and spots me, and just casually smiles a bit, saying “hey,” as if we hadn’t just seen each other for the first time in the month since the Event.

He turns back to Mum for a few seconds, then seems to realize I haven’t moved or spoken at all, and walks over to me.

I can’t bring myself to look away from his face, and I can feel tears welling up in my eyes, but no words will form around the massive lump in my throat.

Some sort of realization dawns on his face, and he turns his head back to say something to Mum, but I can’t make myself understand anything past the fact that he’s standing right there in front of me, alive.

Standing there like the war we unwittingly waged against our planet wasn’t righteously spitting in the faces of our arrogance just then.