Oil Slick

Legend regales us with the story of how the ice burgs melted and flooded into the ocean. Reeking the world with dormant diseases and seeping into the mines, draining out all the oil. Bringing it to the surface to cover the earth in a sticky black skin caused by the greed and hate of humans, physically embodying their sinful
black hearts.

Raising the waves higher and higher until all that remained were the tips of mountains and islands peeking out of the poisonous cloak engulfing the earth, and the only soil left fertile buried deep in the heart of Africa.

If there’s one thing the apocalypse had taught me; it’s that if you want to survive you have to be strong enough to survive the treacherous land and appear unthreatening enough to evade the “government”.

They control all the food and fuel supplies.

Because as convenient as being surrounded by an ocean of oil may seem, to try and burn it would result in the equivalent of igniting an atomic bomb, due to all the radiation leaked into it from the drowned nuclear plants.

By some miracle the oil also
appeared to have contained the “dormant radiation”, but if someone did try to burn it, the radiation would be released and condemn the remainder of the population to death. The government has tried to be subtle, but our adults know they are
considering cutting off the supply ships to our community.

Our little island becoming
more and more submerged each day has deemed us “a liability”, and therefore, a waste of resources.

Rumours of escape brought the “Rebel Café” into existence, utilizing and abandoned coffee shop as our headquarters. Our dwindling population has the pro of being able
to fit the entire community onto one supply ship. We know the government won’t abandon the remaining teachers and dock-workers, and are planning to take them back with them. They are hard to come by, and their skills highly valued. It would be
unthinkable to sentence on to death by abandonment.

And so our plan was born. Wait for the next ship, over-throw the crew, and escape to the motherland. I still have doubts though- not about the failure of the plan, but rather
of its success.

For as long as I can remember everything has been surrounded by
death. And so much oil…who’s to say it’s any different somewhere else?

Thick, black oil squelches beneath my feet as I run down the decaying streets. It soaks through my canvas shoes and cargo pants as I slide on the crumbling bricks. It sits heavy on
my tongue as I breathe the “filtered” air in my classroom.

Yet despite my best efforts, I can’t help but hope that there is someplace free of this poison. But I’ll never know if the plan fails.

So for now we prepare, and blend into the back ground; becoming just
more potential victims of the Flood.

For me, blending in means being a good student; mild-mannered and soft-spoken. Which entails writing an essay on what we would
tell the people who lived before the Flood.

Some of my classmates have written
paragraphs about taking time to swim in the “sea”, or spending time outside without worrying about being caught in an acid rain.

But me? I only have just two
sentences…”You still have a chance to save our planet. Don’t fuck it up”.