by Kim Bogren Owen
The soft sand curled under her toes, folding its way into each groove of her feet. The long beach stretched in front of her, punctuated by rocky outcrops in and out of the water. The sun was just rising. Warm oranges and yellows spread across the sky and reflected in the wet sand. A sense of peace hung over the place, but her body shook. How had she gotten here? Where were the kids?
Behind her, white clouds filled the sky as the sun broke above the horizon. The air shimmered with the unease of a coming storm, belying the gentleness of the clouds. As she stood surveying the beach, the gentle wind quivered with a vibration. She turned to look across the sea. Nothing was there except the clouds. Clouds now rimmed in black. Her body shook harder.
Turning to face the sand, she noticed for the first time that there were others on the beach. They shimmered in the morning light as if they were obscured by fog. The vibration echoed now throughout her body. It turned into a gentle breeze, compelling her to walk forward. The shimmering people seemed to all be bending down. It reminded her of flamingos bowing to scoop up food. She raised her hand to wave, but no one looked toward her. Their focus remained on the sand in front of them.
An empty cardboard cup landed at her feet. She recognized it from her favorite coffee place. The remembered taste of lattes she’d enjoyed lingered for a moment on her tongue before turning bitter and a distant scream filled her memory. Unable to fully recollect why she remembered screaming, she leaned over to pick up the cup, instinctively putting it into a small grass bag hanging over her shoulder. Where had the bag come from? It held the cup perfectly. Another cup landed just where the first one had been. She reached to grab it as a plastic bottle landed in the sand just in front of the second cup. Moving forward, more cups joined by water bottles blew in front of her, covering the sand at her feet. The vibrating air twisted her arm and body, obliging her to retrieve each one. The bag stretched to fit every additional item.
The sun reached its zenith as the vibration amplified its frequency, and in tandem the breeze became wind. A broken kite dropped in the sand. She bent over and remembered one she’d lost at the beach last summer. It had blown away and landed in logs tumbled into a high pile by the waves. They decided the logs were too hard to climb over, so the kite stayed. The kids cried, but they bought a new one exactly the same. The problem left behind. Now it returned, and there was no choice but to take care of it. Thinking of her kids brought tears to her eyes. Their screaming echoed in her ears. The why behind their screams hid in the folds of her brain, just out of reach. Where were they?
More cups and plastic bottles landed, forming what seemed to her like railroad tracks. They were joined by a laundry jug and a glass beer bottle. A bottle like the ones she’d drunk while partying with friends in the forest as a teen. They’d left them in a crevice in a tree. Laughing and telling stories about who would find them.
The vibration increased again, and with it the wind, forcing her to almost run. More trash landed at her feet, demanding to be put in the bag. No, she realized, bags. Her shoulder strained from the weight.
The wind turned to a roar as the rubble bounced off her back and landed at her feet. Pieces of broken glass glistened in the sand. None of the smooth ones she collected with the kids on the beach. These pieces were jagged. She picked up one and felt it burrow into her skin, drawing blood. Blood dripped down onto the shard and left a trail behind that matched the red sunset reflecting off the pieces surrounding her. She remembered now the sound of metal crashing, windows breaking, and rolling. Then, nothing until she stood on this silent beach. Another bag appeared around her neck.
The wind whipped, moving to the rhythm of the now frantic vibration. Trash swirled around her. The force of the wind broke each item into small pieces. She remembered now. A crash, people standing over her broken body, her kids wrapped in blankets looking on, stunned and calling for her, while paramedics stood in front of them trying to block their view.
A herbicide bottle landed at her feet. The kind her company sold. The one she’d defended in dozens of legal cases brought by people who said they’d been harmed. The ones she’d found experts to say were perfectly safe, no matter the data. The realization stunned her, and for a split second the wind and vibration stalled as if acknowledging the truth.
The wind shrieked back to life, knocking her to her knees as she desperately tried to collect each small piece of trash. Scooping up handfuls of green, blue, and white jagged plastic nurdles. Each scoop she put in the bag was replaced by three. Small balls of polystyrene clung to her hands, refusing to join the rest of the waste as if they didn’t believe the bags could stretch to hold them.
Seeming to prove the polystyrene right, another bag appeared across her shoulders. The weight pulled her to her stomach. The heaviness of it pushed her nose into the waste as tears fell and mixed with the blood still dripping from her hand. Looking at the now dark shadows of the others fighting to move forward against the wind, she knew their fate was hers.
Screams of regret now mixed with her blood and tears, but all were swallowed by the vibration, wind, and trash. Micro-sized bits of the detritus, of what once had been everyday things formed a hill over her body leaving only a heaving hump as out the corner of her eye she saw the sky darken to a starless black.
She felt her feet slide into soft sand. The sunrise reflected on the tips of the waves as a cup landed at her feet. Tears streamed from her eyes as she bent to pick up the cup and the realization that this was her eternity. Her due.
Kim Bogren (she/her), as a child, became inspired by The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy to write. Armed with a BA in Anthropology, she started her career out of college as a preschool teacher, where she began to tell stories again, but it was years before she would think of publishing her stories and years more before she would begin that process. Currently, she works teaching Early Childhood educators and writes in her free time. In addition to short stories, she’s working on her first novel and has published two children’s picture books.