A Bottled Letter from Y. Found on Silent Shores of X

I stared at the crowd and told the biggest lie of my life. Yes, we were sinking. Yes, science had no answers yet. Yes once more, we had nowhere to flee, now that the airport had been claimed by the ocean, and the harbour was resting only an insurmountable inch or two under the water’s surface. No way off our island remained, I repeated. A grumpy growl rose in the crowd like a threatened animal, and under the weight of that murmur, I drifted off script. Despite everything, we would be alright, I reassured them from the podium – those who attended in person in anguished legions, and those in front of their TVs, glued to my ghostly reflection. Nobody cheered, but the collective beast seemed appeased. When I stepped down, my mouth tasted salty.

It was curious how the ocean had kidnapped us overnight, gargling onto the shores, and then slowed down again. I dug into the history of the airport to understand why on blue earth was it built on the picturesque shore rather than inland. I wanted to be angry at tourists wanting their azure descents, capitalism, stores full of orange sunscreen bottles. But instead, I read where landscape flattens and calms in the face of big water, runways are easier to lay down. So, I could only rebel against our tropical woods, mountains, and winding rivers scarring the island with no consideration to our plight.

I entertained the idea of building a boat like Noah, bundling families and pets and awaiting the ever-creeping tide on board. I called on governments to send rescue vessels. They told me not to worry. Their navies were sleepless searching for solutions, their accountants were typing restlessly, and their actors were fundraising so ferociously some even lost weight.

Here was my island, the home of watercolour memories and world-famous stews, being pulled into the sea by an unexplained force, godlessly gorging on our sands, moving grain by grain closer towards our doorsteps. A concerned citizen came by my office and cried that it felt like we were in a full bathtub without a cork, gravitating towards the black hole of a drain.

When the beaches were about quarter gone, the population stopping sleeping. One could step out in the small, hopeless hours, and smell cortisol in the air like previous night’s dinner. Some ballooned from the constant unease, some had headaches. Brains fogged up so much I was advised to publicly discourage driving during peak times. We learned an awful lot about diabetes. My people had never fought diabetes before; we butchered our meat with love and compassion, and then ate with gratitude.

I would wander in the darkness from one window to another. I saw TVs, worn sofas, furious sex, heavy books with hard backs and embossed titles frantically consulted, food abandoned halfway through, plates licked clean. I saw beauty, discontent, wrath, indifference, and I housed it inside me.

The night walks would leave me exhausted. Before I declared with erring confidence that we would be alright, whatever that meant — a politician can always claim a misunderstanding, so maybe I was saying we were all going to die, who knows — before that, I had told us the truth. Our port was withering away to the bottom of the ocean. Our runway was now a shallow man-primed, nature-filled pond. Our coveted honeymoon beaches were being overrun by turquoise, so sparkling and innocent I found it almost beautiful.

Headlines over the world read like excerpts from bad science fiction. ‘Island sinking into the sea at astounding rate.’ ‘Scientist summit to be held over mystery of Y’s doom.’ ‘Will legendary lamb stew recipe be all that remains of Y’s legacy?’ This last one struck me as terrible journalism, inefficient and clumsy. Collecting and critiquing headlines, more than reading the articles, became a hobby of mine. My favourite one was ‘Y’s sparkling beaches on your bucket list? Now would be the time’, and the first line read ‘There is only one left.’ Of course, the article ignored the transport conundrum until the last humorous, cruel line that told the prospective traveller they’d need to be dropped on a parachute to reach their likely final destination.

The scientific summit, which was held somewhere in the mountains, so insensitive, we thought collectively, so safe, like a middle finger to our exposed position, brought no insights we could turn into action. I read the reports and transcripts extensively, having been sent them not long before we lost connectivity. I read lectures, heated debates, brainstorming sessions. They finally came to a half-hearted conclusion that the pillar of land our isle was the pinhead of must be crumbling in the aggressive currents of global warming. Anxious submarines were sent down off wealthier coasts to test their waters and earth but found no evidence of subaquatic damage. We stood, or limped, alone.

I knew this marine biologist, though I can’t remember his name. It’s underwater already. Correction: I know this marine biologist. He should be alive, still. Funny how effortless I find thinking about others in the past tense. People struggle to absorb a loss, catching themselves talking about their dead’s dislikes, favourite colours, and pets as if they’re still barbecuing in the garden. When they realise the error, grief breaks through like a tsunami, wrecking the precarious, delicate order inside them. This feeling I have now isn’t entirely dissimilar – I think of us in weres and hads until panic suddenly bubbles down my throat and I can barely breathe. The dying part, whether by drowning or some other secondary disaster science hasn’t anticipated, is yet to be done.

Of all living creatures, rats attempted abandoning ship soon after the summit. They faced their end head-on, skittering into death on light feet. Almost, just almost able to run on the wrinkleless surface. That day, the ocean looked so solid the rodents could have been convinced they would just patter into the sunrise. But instead, they soon lost steam, squeaked, and bubbled under. It happened quickly and in thousands. The water put a furry coat on, then spat its vicious offerings on the very shrunken shore.

It started to smell something awful almost immediately. Volunteers gathered and went around the beach picking up the swollen carcasses. The bags were dumped in the forests we’d taken so much pride in, deep in the bowels of our land. We were surprised to see how many of those rats were no bigger than the palm of a hand, washed up in entire litters. The next morning, the newspaper printed a story with pictures: a group of cute pups, and an old photo of the shore, clean and still. The headline read ‘Help Litter Picking: Beach Day Edition.’

The crowds turned up with long rubber gloves, rubble bags, and scarves across their mouths and noses. Lidded buckets appeared for those who needed to give up their breakfast. I turned up to commend the volunteers on what was later reported to be the hottest day of the last year in Y’s history. The image was so otherworldly I could easily have told myself I was having a 35-degree-Celsius fever dream. Later that night, I dreamt of rats building rafts and sailing through city sewers down to the sea.

I thought the world may have found it morbidly amusing to see in their morning news the remaining slivers of our beaches covered in dead rats. I imagined the theoretical statistics of meat consumption dropping afterwards, cities passing laws on rat ethnic cleansing, suddenly disgusted with the underlife in their metros and bins. I imagined the sudden pollution this extermination would produce, rubbish and scraps fermenting and decomposing in streets; I imagined the rising costs of property taxes. I spent a couple of dedicated evenings pondering imaginary futures of faraway places instead of working out how to die in my own.

I wasn’t the only one whiling my time away. Many started considering unlikely scenarios, outlandish ideas, unlived lives. Wives left husbands. Accountants attended dwindling improv classes. Alzheimer patients escaped facilities and travelled on night buses to inexplicable locations. Bin men quit collecting rubbish in the name of ‘living’, according to an interview which appeared in the paper, at the same time hailing those who doubled their efforts to make our streets so clean we could kid ourselves into an apocalypse not happening.

One rainy morning, I woke up at an angle. At first, I thought I was hallucinating a crooked dream, but the commotion in the street got me up and sweaty like a bucket of saltwater. Though many stayed home to despair in stillness, some came out. I heard cries of god’s wrath, I heard sobs and consolations, but mostly I registered numbness. My pen had rolled off the desk and up against a wall. The angle wasn’t enough to destroy much. But it marked every step; what was once uphill was now even harder to climb. We jammed cardboard patches under the legs of our beds so we could continue sleeping in an illusion of flatness. And because it wasn’t easy to doze off without feeling like one was going to roll off the edge of the world.

Then, the suicides started. I really don’t want to talk about those.

The water creeps at a steady pace. The beaches are gone altogether, and now our woods are turning into bogs. Most of those living close to the shores have moved to the city. Some stayed and let themselves be consumed together with their abodes. The farther water gorges itself on us, the darker the turquoise becomes, until it’s black and impenetrable inland, like hungry eyes.

And here am I, finally ready to give myself up. Ready to walk onto the submerged beach one last time, as far as my feet can reach, and then some. That’s my favourite method of all I have witnessed.

It’s raining today. It scares people soulless, as if they are now being flooded from every direction. As if it’s never going to stop. Hell, who knows.

There is much more to say. History to record. Legacy to memorise. But I feel so very tired. The water will decide what’s to remain of us.

With azure regards, the Mayor of Y, Joh-remaining handwriting blotched by a droplet of water, still wet