The Susquehanna from the Isle of Que
Photo by Sylvia Kniss
The Film
by: Jennifer Martin
You stare at the dark film that lies above the surface. The film that has cast shadows on the reef and cast your home into perpetual darkness. The film that has been there ever since you were a sleeping babe wrapped in dying kelp.
Your grandmother used to tell you stories of the world before. Of the time when rays of sunlight made the reef come alive, fish swam leisurely through the coral, and starfish basked lazily in the sun. She told you that the coral used to be a whole range of colors. But your grandmother has been gone for a while now. You have never seen the sun and the coral is now gray and breaking.
Now, you stare up at the dark film, your friends’ words jumbled around you into unintelligible noise. Rules were put in place when the film appeared. The main one being: do not breach the surface. You have not seen what happens to those that break the rule, but the ones that dare to breach don’t come back.
Toward the end of her sickness, your grandmother would whisper stories of when the film appeared. That was another rule–no talking of how the film came to be. Though, when you would take your grandmother’s hand at night, she would start to ramble. She spoke of large metal vessels that used to cleave through the reef’s waters. She would start to shake when she recalled the noise they made. Low creaking sounds that reverberated throughout the water. Then, one day, a mightier sound took over the reef. One that left many deaf from its screech. And that’s where your grandmother would start crying and her words turned incomprehensible.
Some people believe in the stories and the rules. Others–like your friends that are arguing around you–believe that the film isn’t real. They believe that beyond the surface is fresh air and a warm sun. They believe the king to be a tyrant and the film an attempt to control. You don’t know what you believe, but you remember your grandmother’s fear on those sickly nights.
That was real fear. It is what keeps you away from the surface.
A quick movement to your left pulls you out of your thoughts and your eyes away from the film. A tail swishes and one of your friends screams. He is going to breach. A scream escapes your own throat, but it is no use. One minute his dark green tail is in front of you, the next he is flying above the surface.
For a second, there is silence. You don’t breathe. Your friends don’t breathe. The water stills, as if it too is holding its breath.
Then, with a splash, something comes back into the water, screaming and covered in black. A pungent smell wafts through the current, filling your nose and attacking your eyes. Your friends reach out, trying to wipe the film off him, but their hands stick to the black.
Screams fill your ears, and you swim—not toward the mass of bodies and hands, but to where you know is safe. You don’t think about the consequences. That you’ll have to tell your friends’ parents that their children suffocated because of a stupid suspicion. Because they breached. Because they believed that there is something more to your world than dark, brittle cold.
Your grandmother died from the sickness the film secreted into the water, but in this moment, you envy her. That, even though it was short lived, she got to live in a world of color and vibrancy. All you get is a world of darkness and death.