This story originally appeared on Wattpad as an entry to the #PlanetorPlastic writing contest. I went the horror route because why not?
Cover illustration by Erica Anderson, digitization by Jesse Lubera.
In John’s dreams, seals thrashed, their necks throttled in plastic twine; birds lay on moonlit sand dunes, knickknacks bursting their guts. He’d stand in that isolated cove, watching, while a ring of shadows — an army of seahorses — converged around the tortured creature. When it died, they’d turn, a looming circle, their eyes glowing yellow in the dark sea.
It had started that day the guys took him to the cove. Ninety-seven degrees, and the place was so isolated you couldn’t get water for miles. So they’d brought a cooler of bottles and six-packs. As they’d trekked over the sand, John had spotted someone’s trash — multicolored cotton swabs, of all things — floating on the waves. So he’d diligently collected his buddies’ cans, six-pack rings, and bottles and tossed them into a grocery bag stuffed in his pack. Look at old Greenpeace over there, one of them said.
They’d laughed.
They’d ragged on him so much that he’d finally let it pile up, itching inside but doing nothing. Just smiling like a jackass, laughing along when someone kicked the bag. Keeping his trap shut and his smile pasted on when a guy said, “Ain’t carrying this back,” and dumped it in the rising waves.
When he turned, those waves pounded and roared behind him.
The nightmares had started that night, as he lay in their rented beach house. They were glimpses, at first: a turtle squeezed like a toothpaste tube in a six-pack ring, a whale sinking to the depths, belly full of bottles. The next night, the ring of shadows appeared; by the third night, the shadows had formed eyes.
Tonight John gasped awake, threw back the sheets, and snatched his phone. 1:42.
The seahorses had circled a thrashing dolphin, their glowing eyes on John. In their tails they clutched cotton swabs like spears.
He got himself a glass of water, threw a pillow over his head to muffle the sea, and fell asleep.
The eyes were red this time, crimson lines gleaming on the swab spears. John gasped again. 2:30. Another drink, something stiffer.
The red-eyed seahorses closed into ranks and marched forward, a bristling line.
John leaped out of bed and paced the room, rubbing his arms, heart in his throat. 3:51.
In the kitchen he poured himself a quiet drink, then another. The seahorses drew nearer. And the ocean…
Can’t they hear it?
John snatched a paring knife from a drawer and fled the house. Bare feet down the stairs, through sandy grass, over the dunes. The ocean met him, churning and dark. He waded to his knees and bent double, sweeping the waves for the cans, bottles, and rings they’d left behind, slashing his knife at lithe shadows with red eyes and spears.
When his buddies found him the next morning, he was sitting on the shoreline, arms draped over his knees, muttering over and over, “Bottles. Rings. Bottles. Bags.”
Dried seahorses lay strewn over the sand, and blood-crusted cotton swabs stuck out from his legs like plastic needles.
