We don’t know where the water came from, some say the ice caps melted. It doesn’t matter anymore how it happened or how I ended up in this place. The counting of the waves is all we do now on this dark horizon.
The first wave claimed the shores. It claimed the docks and ports, it crept up over a few months, and then on a high tide it surged. Regardless of where you lived the sky was black, it was a night the world witnessed together for the first time. This storm rolled in everywhere. This everywhere was all nations, all shorelines saw a gray cloud lit by some unknown light and thunderous murmur of a tall wave. It swept away all the waterfront property, all the cranes in all the ports. There was no salvage, no garbage floating like Fukushima had. The edges of the world were swallowed.
The second wave came a few years later, it claimed the cities. The fear of the rising water made people flee the major cities which for the most part bordered on water to begin with. This wave of fear disintegrated New York, Dubai, Shanghai, and Tokyo. The disorder of this mass migration heralded the coming wave like a slow-motion panic. Again, the shared night of gray clouds rolled in, a nervous display for fearful human beings. It swallowed the remaining towns and cities that lay unpopulated on the water’s edge. Very few died from the wave, and the water mark continued to rise.
The third wave claimed the forests. It turned the great ancient green into swamps. They rotted and slumped over in decay. The water continued to rise without a pause. The trees left no corpses, they left no sign, and even those that thrived on high enough land seemed to rot as though some underground connection linked their hearts all together, as though they were pulled down into the new ocean. The last gasp of the woods happened on a clear day, the gray clouds rolled in and the night came as expected. The wave towered above the bridges and the small hills. Those of us that survived started to build towers, we started to build shelters as high as we could live.
The fourth wave claimed the skies. Now the gray clouds were everywhere. It seemed to rain all the time. All the airplanes and satellites and stars were gone, nothing could fly in those churning clouds. The sun was a pale light desperately trying to break through. Night began to grow longer. When the fourth wave came, it came only months after the third wave, our structures survived but the panic returned. The wave washed very little away, but the curl of that monstrous force could be seen silhouetted against a gray cloud glowing with a soft light.
The fifth wave claimed the governments. More precisely it claimed the crown of human authority. The leaders were helpless, no solutions could be implemented fast enough. No ideas communicated quickly enough. I was lucky, I found the Red Tower. A tall five-story factory that was looted or emptied at some point. This place felt old and unused. The Red Tower welcomed all that found it, sheltered us from the increasingly frequent rains. It became a type of hidden ally, as though being near or inside it was enough to survive the rising tides. The wave came one full night after I found the Red Tower, I saw the outline of the wave on the horizon. Soon after more people showed up to the Red Tower with loss seen in their eyes.
The sixth wave was worse. It claimed a part of us, it claimed the hope that the waves would stop. As if the loss was a way of announcing the coming wave. When we saw the ship on the horizon, we knew it. There was a sinking feeling of the ocean telling us the waves would never stop.
The ship was just an outline, the tide hadn’t reached the red tower yet. Seeing the ship sail was something of a premonition, an imagination we had been running from. There would be no going back. The sixth wave took our hearts, it took a part of us that had been running to hills. On the night when the thunderous murmur came and the curl of the wave was seen from sitting on top of the red tower, the weeping few bled out their last tears.
The seventh wave claimed the last shreds of the old world. The color seemed to fade, the sun wasn’t seen anymore, and the sky was only illuminated by the unholy gray clouds. We fed ourselves on what seemed to be leftover canned foods that at some point were made in the red tower. The machinery and operations had been removed so long ago that decaying dust lines were a type of archeology of the world now deep beneath the waves.
The night when the seventh wave came was fireless, we had managed to burn our belongings for a few nights when retreating to this altar of brick five stories tall. It was the first time I couldn’t see the wave, I FELT it. I felt the rising water well up and take a little more, it took a few memories, and it took a few ideas. After the wave came and went, the water was seen at the base of the red tower.
The eighth wave didn’t take everything. It signaled the new world emerging from sunless sky. The black ship was seen again, its black mast like a banner telling us the wave was coming. Curiosity was all we had before the black wave, a few memories, and a few tattered pictures of loved ones or keepsakes to remind us who we were. When the eighth wave came, we forgot who we were, we were washed clean, and we FELT a deep bottomless ocean rising up to reclaim us with its black heart, all the little things that our lives had built.
The ninth wave claimed everything except the black ship and the roof of the red tower. We were there huddled on the roof when the ship docked. No one was on board, no one refused, no one cared. The black ship wasn’t anything and never went anywhere. That ship named Despair keeps us now. We walk to the edge and look over into the black ocean underneath. The gray clouds creeping overhead. We stare into the sea, and the sea gives us pieces of that world back, pieces of memories, broken hearts and swampy keepsakes. The tears fall from our hidden eyes and with a silent motion our sorrow is added to the greater blackness. These tears have fallen from our eyes in such a great volume, tears from our hearts. This great volume of sorrow has become the wave that claimed us. The Ninth wave claimed us, as though we had always belonged to it. Our sorrow is a song for the world that lay in black ruins beneath.
So I recount for an endless day, the nine great waves, and the great night which is only filled with that one deep sorrow that washes our hearts in endless tears.
Picture by Delia Wang:
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