The Pole Shift

Janet and Mnem

They were smashed by the wash for days. Janet felt her body go limp through emotional loss. She let her head whip, let stray objects strike her, and let the cuts they left trickle blood. She did not feel fear when the cabin plunged or got wedged, her mind was still on One Tree Hill.

She relived the moment the waters came, scouring the hill clean and sending them off on a spinning madness, not even a glimpse of her brothers, her people. What a joke their boats were, it was if they had hoped to survive an enormous lava flow in ceramic baths, no chance! So violent and pyroclastic was the flood. It seemed they would be crushed in the cabin too, but eventually it broke free and they rode the thick waves away from the last memory of the the Old World. 

As the waters became calmer, days later, it was as she suspected. She would look at Mnem through the corner of her eye, attending cuts, eating from a tube of pale paste and drinking from a tap above the cabins small sink. Mnem had said:

“I wonder where the water comes from?” Janet had to suppress the urge to mimic the question as a high pitched special needs caricature, instead she said:

“Dunno.” Mnem humphed, as if the availability of water would remain a mystery. She went to touch an angry wound on Janet’s brow, the broken skin was purple, a lump oozing. “Don’t!” snapped Janet and Mnem looked hurt.

“What’s wrong?”

“What the fuck? What do you think’s wrong, go on, you tell me!” Mnem went to say a few things, but sat back down and looked out the small tough window. She watched the mess pass, they were floating amongst wreckage, soupy with vegetation.

“There’s bodies out there.’ She finally said.

“Yes, that is something that is wrong Mnem, a lot of people have died.”

“But we haven’t that’s good isn’t it? I mean, that is good isn’t it?” She had a pleading look in her big eyes.

“Your family will be dead, crushed or drowned or broken open.” Mnem tried to think of her mother and father in Adelaide, she supposed they would be dead but the thought flew off, instead she thought of her childhood with them and said:

“I remember living in a cave looking for opals with them, it was hot and the bus was broken, they wanted to go home, then we found a fire opal, it paid for the bus to get fixed.”

“Great story Mnem. We live in a sea of rubbish now. Stuck here until we die.”

“We could find something like a fire opal that can get us home?” Janet didn’t answer but thought home? She put her head to the other window and watched the dead world pass by.

“How long?” she whispered.

“Months.”Said the voice in her ear. Outside a grey hull passed, spinning with random currents. Seagulls sat upon the metal curve of the upturned boat, they were watching everything pass too.