Water and Plastic
Flash Fiction
After leaving its parental elements behind, Water wandered the far reaches of the universe before it fell for Rock and settled down into Earth's nocks and crannies. But as time went by, water became drained by Rock's rigid inflexibility and longed for more. So Water left Rock and went with the flow, trickling between the crevices of Glass, Wood and even Aluminium! But the ripples soon subsided and Water longed for something more malleable, something with more plasticity! It was therefore polymer chemistry at first sight when water was first scooped off its river bed into multicoloured PVC paradise. Plastic might fragment but it would never biodegrade, they could lap the shores of islands, give birth to new ones and flow through the bodies of life itself until there was nothing but their union.
Plastic was fresh, flexible and fictile, and while it had been fun at first, water was just too deep and entrenched in its ways. It was always plastic that had to mould itself around Water's ebbs and flows, Plastic was tired of bending this way and that for this dim heaving mass of blue sadness. It took a while for Water to see through Plastic's high density polyethylene personality, but it was too late when the truth finally soaked in. Plastic had been taking water for a ride all this time, travelling the globe and exploring the depths of the ocean but it had no intention of sticking it out. As soon as it could, Plastic left Water, Rock and Earth behind to suffocate in their own waste, and set off for the stars in silicon chips. Water tried to follow by evaporating into clouds but could only simmer and dissipate into nothingness as Plastic blasted off with Aluminium to the Moon, Mars and beyond.
References
Wave image: http://12160.info/page/-the-great-pacific-garbage-patch-a-k-a-plastic-island-hopestudios?xg_source=shorten_status
Mars image: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/hedgehog-robots-hop-tumble-in-microgravity
Love this John! Very well explored concepts, and brilliantly done making Plastic the ambitious, adaptable, indestructible villain of the piece. How is this one of your first pieces of fiction writing?? You have good style and word control. I look forward to reading more from you :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for the encouragement! Having the restrictions on the characters and the type of story really helped me but I'm finding it really difficult to get going on a longer story without a starting point.
ReplyDeleteI liked the twist alright. All the plastic in the the waves of that pic made me feel a bit uneasy though :D
ReplyDeleteHi John, like the idea of the elements, (found myself on a similar road), there are lots of unexpected turns and i like the overall rhythm and "flow" of the story (no pun intended) but it reads well. The vocabulary is fun and witty..."high density ...etc". Nifty use of sound, but I found myself readjusting the volume, and I've never read something with a soundtrack although i've heard audiobooks with atmosphere sounds- it's quite different when you read it yourself...so, I'm not sure what the overall effect is..seems positive but also kinda distracting.....but I guess that's what we are trying to find out in this course! What works and what doesn't. Thanks for the story
ReplyDeleteThanks for your thoughts! Yeah I thought the sound might be a bit distracting.. It's supposed to be the sea but it sounds more like an out of tune TV! I've changed the setting now so that you have to click play to hear the sound.
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