The Weight of a Thousand Oceans

by Jillian Webster

  Bode holds Maia’s arms so tightly she fears they may break. She cries out as he gasps and spits in her ear. He releases his grip and hurls her into the wall.

  Maia scrambles to her feet and runs up the steps on all fours. She briefly looks back to see Lucas lying under Bode, who is still pulling at Lucas’s arm around his neck.

  “Fuck you,” Bode spits through a clenched jaw. The veins pop from his deeply reddened face.

  Lucas releases his arm and shoves him off. Bode sputters on all fours.

  “We don’t have to do this,” Lucas gasps.

  Bode climbs to his feet and yells as he charges towards Maia. She runs up the stairs to the back deck where she had once enjoyed a few moments in the sun. A few drops of rain splat against her face.

  Nowhere to go.

  There’s nowhere to go.

  She turns just as Bode lunges for her and she ducks his embrace. Tripping over her feet, she stumbles to the other side of the deck. He slams into the railing and laughs as he grips the metal, half his body now hanging over the edge. He sneers at her with beads of sweat across his scarlet forehead. “I like ’em spicy!” He smiles as he stands to face her.

  Maia backs up to the railing.

  “Bode!” Lucas trips up the steps. “Please, let’s go back downstairs and talk about this.”

  “What the actual fuck, Lucas! You selfish piece of shit. We’re out here on this ocean for months and you hide this hot little bird away for yourself? ’Member what happen to the last fucker who did that?”

  “Bode! Keep your voice down!”

  “Man overboard!” Bode tips his head back and throws his hands into the air.

  “Fight!” A man leans against the railing above, pointing down at them. Another man runs up. And another. And another.

  “And the wee lady…” Bode leers at her with a feral look in his eye. “Well, she barely survived two nights.”

  Bode reaches for Maia and Lucas reaches for Bode. Bode swings around and lands a punch across Lucas’s jaw. Blood splatters across his face.

  “Stop! Please!” Maia screams.

  “I said, FUCK OFF!” Bode screams at Lucas.

  “Hey, there’s a woman down there!” A dozen men have gathered on the upper deck, leaning over the railing with mesmerized looks upon their faces.

  “Punch him back, Lucas!”

  Maia turns to see Lucas pummel Bode in the eye, and then Bode jumps on top of Lucas, punching him again in the face, then into his ribs. Bode climbs to his feet, leaving Lucas curling into a ball and gasping for air.

  Panting, Bode wipes the blood from his cheek, smearing it across his face. He turns towards Maia, licking his lips. She pushes against the railing as he steps forward, a smile spreading across his face. “Now, like I was saying…” He reaches for her.

  Lucas screams and charges. Bode flips around and grabs Lucas by the shoulders, running with him towards the rails of the ship. He uses their momentum to shove Lucas up and over the railing.

  Maia screams as Lucas falls towards the water and collides into a mound of rubbish. She and Bode look over the railing as Lucas comes up for air, flailing about the pieces of garbage with blood streaming from his lip.

  The men above deck are yelling, Lucas is thrashing in the water below, and Bode is laughing uncontrollably, but suddenly Maia can’t hear a thing. Life creeps into a muted slow motion as her shortened future flashes before her.

  I’d rather shoot you dead and put you out of your misery before letting them find you.

  Bode continues to gawk over the railing, his face as shocked as it is delighted, while the boat of men above eye Maia like a fawn to be devoured. She turns to face the ocean and the endless rubbish disappears. Her mother stands in the middle with her white dress flowing in the breeze, calling to her.

  Bode’s bloody hand reaches for Maia. Without thinking, she takes a deep breath and hurls herself over the railing.

  Lucas screams from the water. “Maia! No!”

  It’s the last thing she hears before slamming into the ocean.

  Thirty-Three

  Maia’s body claps hard against the almost impenetrable soup of debris and the garbage closes in on her like quicksand. Pain sears through her leg, and then her back, as she plunges deeper through the thick layers of muck. She kicks with all her might as she fights to swim back to the top.

  Breaking through the dense surface, she gasps wildly and pulls at the netting covering her face. Her fingers interlace the weave as she wrangles against it, inadvertently pulling it down over her head. The netting is everywhere. It wraps around her foot. She kicks harder, her screaming half-muffled by water.

  “Maia! Stop pan—”

  The netting pulls her beneath. She seesaws her body, thrashing against it. Objects bang into her as her hands graze through the mound of garbage. Something wraps around her other foot. Panic-stricken, she tries kicking it off. Her head shoots above the water and she sucks in another breath of air, pushing away the stinking rot.

  “Stop panicking, Ma—”

  She disappears below the surface as the sludge sucks her in.

  Sinking deeper, she struggles to untangle the netting around her foot. The clouds open and sunlight pierces through the water above. The mass of debris slowly fills in after her and the water begins to darken. She can’t separate her legs; the netting has wrapped itself around her like a boa constrictor. The water continues to darken.

  So tired. She stops flailing. A rubber slipper grazes against her cheek and she swipes it away. Her mother’s face flashes through the garbage. A few air bubbles escape Maia’s mouth. Her mother flashes before her again, yelling, then disappears. Maia looks up through the dregs as she sinks deeper. Air bubbles stream from her open mouth and float upwards in succession.

  Her grandfather appears from above and swims towards her. “No, child.” He reaches out his hands. “Not yet. Fight. Fight!”

  Maia strains to reach him, shocked by the physical force when his hands latch on to hers. He pulls her up next to him and grabs her face. They lock eyes—it’s Lucas. He dives farther down to untangle her legs and they kick back to the surface.

  Breaking through the waste, Maia desperately sucks in air. Lucas fights through the heaps of trash and grabs a large plastic board.

  The sludge coats her face. “Ah!” She pulls at a slimy bag covering her eyes. “I can’t breathe!”

  Lucas swims over, pushing a large slab of plastic towards her. “Grab hold! Stop panicking, Maia!”

  She wraps her arms across it as she heaves and coughs up seawater. The boat in the distance travels farther away from them. A dark figure stands at the back deck. Maia wipes the scum from her eyes, focusing on him. Davies watches them with his arms crossed over his belly, shaking his head. He almost looks sad. She stares back, breathing hard with a shredded bag wrapped around the top of her head.

  Seagulls call from their circles above. The sun peeks out from the high cloud and a breeze travels over the stagnant waste, filling Maia’s nose with a sour stench that can only come from death. She watches as her one and only hope to get to The Old Arctic Circle sails farther and farther away. Her pack and supplies … all gone. Every last bit of hope is floating away from her. She’s escaped death, only to be left in the wake of it. Davies turns from the back deck and disappears from sight.

  Maia surveys the trash-filled ocean. Lucas treads water just a few feet away, holding onto his own plastic bin. His face is horrified, dazed, his eyes unblinking. His swollen and bloodstained mouth is half-open as if silently screaming. He slowly meets her gaze and they stare at each other in a state of shock.

  She reaches across the rubbish, inspecting individual pieces of floating trash. An old toothbrush missing most of its bristles. A doll head with only one eye. Handfuls of plastic bags, utensils, and straws. Bottles and lighters and bins. A broken sandal coated with green slime. Half a comb with only half its prongs.

  “Maia.”

  She looks up at Lucas. He sh
akes his head slowly, a stunned look still frozen across his face. “What just happened?”

  She looks around her new fate in disbelief. “I…” She loses her grip and sinks to her chin. Wrapping her other arm around the floating slab of plastic, she hoists her upper body on top. Trembling, she looks back to Lucas, his face unresponsive. “I don’t know,” she answers.

  His face softens, overcome with sadness. “Did you jump?” His voice barely escapes a whisper.

  Her eyes fill with tears. She looks back to the boat, now a distant spot on the horizon.

  She can’t answer that.

  She can’t answer that.

  What just happened, what she just did. What did she do? She can’t answer that.

  After all that time. All those terrifying nights huddling in the dark like an animal. So close. She was so close. Maybe if she stayed on that ship, she could have survived what they would have put her through. She’s strong. She could have made it through. She could. Women from the beginning of time have survived the worst of it and have come out stronger. Then she could have still made it to The Old Arctic Circle. And she wouldn’t have just lost everything … for nothing. For death. For more wasteful, meaningless death. Left to rot with the rest of the meager life left in this squalid ocean, tangled in the dredge of an expired and decaying world.

  “Oh GOD!” Maia cries out. A fury of tears coats her cheeks as her drawn-out cry wrings out every last drop of air from her lungs. When she finally breathes in, she unleashes a desperate, grief-stricken wail.

  Lucas only closes his mouth, watching her passively with glossy, lifeless eyes.

  Thirty-Four

  “You are my sunshine…” Maia lies draped across her board, half-submerged from the brimming, clunky water. Her eyes glazed over, she’s secured her place on her board with one outstretched hand—white-knuckled and clutching the top ledge. “My only sun … shine.”

  Neither Maia nor Lucas have spoken a word to each other in hours. After emptying herself of her grief, and Lucas unresponsive in some sort of paralyzed stupor, she has laid her head on her board in defeat. She’s passed the time in a daze, observing shattered bits of debris slowly gathering and swirling around her body, singing so softly to herself she barely recognizes her own voice. Far away … like someone else whispering into her ear.

  It doesn’t seem that long since she’s given her other hand a rest but the throbbing ache within her joints tells her otherwise. She lifts her arm out of the water, too tired to remove the black cord hanging from her wrist, and grabs the top of the board. She winces, then rests her head on top of her wet arm and drops the fatigued one beneath the surface. She stretches it among the rubbish.

  She’s not sure how much longer she can keep doing this routine, but it can’t be long. At this point, she has no other option. Hold on until she can’t any longer, then switch arms. Repeat. She’s tried climbing on top of the plastic slab but only seems to capsize the board. So, she’s managed to rest her upper body on top and if she stays completely still, it remains relatively easy to stay afloat.

  She dips the tips of her fingers in the thick amalgam of bits, twirling them in mini whirlpools. Her eyes glaze over once again. “You … make…”

  Something is wrapped around her ankle, another cord or netting of some sort. She swirls her foot in one direction and then another, wrapping and unwrapping the rope. “…me hap—py…”

  She looks up. Squinting towards the horizon, her head wobbles like a newborn. Fragments of plastic goo drip down the side of her face and she absently wipes her brow.

  It’s becoming one of those stunning sunsets that paint the sky in bright watercolor hues of coral and deep blue, illuminating the expanse of wreckage into a kaleidoscope of colors. Although the landscape isn’t pretty, Maia can at the very least be grateful that it’s calm. And warm. A few seagulls hover in the sky above, scanning the muck for food. She lays her head back down and switches sides, slowly unlatching her aching fingers and letting her hand sink below the surface.

  So, this is how I die.

  Swirl. Twirl. Swirl. Twirl.

  “Please don’t take…”

  With the sun hovering just along the horizon, the grave threat of darkness now looms. A tear travels across the bridge of Maia’s nose and drips onto her arm. “…my sunshine…”

  “There.” Lucas’s voice startles her from her trance. “Maia.”

  Maia searches the rubbish until she finds him, still wrapped around his own floatation device. She hasn’t looked in Lucas’s direction for hours. A deluge of guilt crashes into her as she remembers Bode, his blows to Lucas’s face—and his ribs. Lucas gasping and curling into a ball, fighting for this woman he barely knows.

  And now look at him.

  His left eye now suffocates beneath a swollen mass of red and purple. A deep rift above his eye is cracked open with dried blood collected along his brow and down the side of his face. His lower lip has doubled in size. Seems the tables have turned. Now it is Maia looking down at him with pity.

  “Does it hurt?”

  He looks confused at first, then softly grazes his eye. He winces. “A swollen face is the least of my worries,” he says quietly. He checks his fingers for blood, then licks his swollen lip. “There,” he says again and points to a large mountain of rubbish with a flock of seagulls resting on top. “I wonder if that island is thick enough to climb onto?”

  Maia glances to the mound. It seems bigger than before—taller. Wider even? Possibly the currents have pushed more rubbish against it. Either way, it’s large and dense and if it’s good enough for the birds, it’s good enough for her.

  The seagulls eye them suspiciously.

  “I’m going to check it out. Stay here.” Lucas lets go of his board.

  “No—take it. In case you get tangled. That stuff is like quicksand.”

  Lucas holds the large plastic bin across this chest and lies on his back, kicking his feet to propel himself backward.

  It takes much longer than Maia would have imagined for Lucas to cross the relatively small section of garbage to the island. A few times he runs into small mounds so thick he can’t seem to move them, so he has to go around. Maia grabs a long stick and levers it under a dead jellyfish floating too close for comfort, pushing it in the opposite direction.

  Eventually, Lucas’s head disappears within the peaks and valleys of debris. Maia strains in the dusk to locate him. She would normally be petrified of being stuck in an ocean teeming with jellyfish, especially not being able to scan the open water for them to keep her distance. But her curse is also her blessing. So far, the only jellyfish in this mess are dead ones.

  A loud whistle travels across the water. Maia looks up to see a dark figure standing on the mound, waving his hands. Seagulls and birds lift in flight with a great deal of fuss.

  “Maia! Here!” Lucas falls forward, circling his arms for balance. “It’s not completely solid, but solid enough.”

  Maia levels as much of her body on top of her slab as she can and uses it like a paddleboard, making her way through the thick waste towards him. Something heavy slides down her leg towards her ankle. She panics, then relief showers over her. She grabs it just as the fabric begins to unravel and lifts the dripping blade before her in disbelief. She had forgotten. After weeks of quiet back on the ship and the imminent threat of the men diminished, she forgot she had put her knife back in its sheath and secured it under the leg of her pants.

  “Maia! Grab any netting you come across!”

  She kisses the knife. Thank God.

  “Maia?”

  “Yes! Got it!”

  She clenches her encased knife between her teeth as she paddles through the mire, stopping every so often to untangle some netting. She leaves behind a few segments filled with rotting birds. She finds an old cord with red and yellow copper wires hanging out and threads it through the nets to keep them together, then slowly weaves her way towards the island.

  “What do you have? Is th
at a knife?”

  “It was tied around my leg.”

  “Clever girl,” he responds quietly.

  The junk condenses as Maia approaches the mound, which has grown drastically in size as she’s approached. The feeling of pushing through the chunky mess makes her stomach churn. So many empty bottles … What she wouldn’t give in this moment for some water. There seems to be a lot more seaweed and murk within this section of the patch, mixed in with the tiny bits of debris—like a mountain of plastic has been shoved through a wood chipper.

  “Almost there, Maia. Here, hand me the nets.” Lucas leans out to her, a pile of netting already layered beneath his knees. His hand sinks beneath the mound.

  “This looks dangerous,” Maia says with concern.

  “That’s why we are going to use this netting to build a better foundation. Grab my hand. It gets thicker towards the middle.”

  Maia reaches out and Lucas pulls her towards him. His knees drop through the mound and he sinks to his waist.

  “Lucas!” Maia holds his hand, helping him climb back out of the sludge. “This is too thick,” she says. “I don’t like it. It’s going to suck us under.”

  “No, it’s okay. We just have to get out of this part and get to the thicker stuff.” He keeps hold of his board and reaches his other hand below, slapping the mounds of netting on top. “Just don’t let go of your slab. We’ll inch our way through together.”

  Placing their boards before them, they lean forward and displace their weight across the plastic. Only their knees sink into the muck and they quickly learn that the faster they crawl, the less chance they have of falling through.

  By the time they reach a part so dense it feels like land, darkness has fallen over them. They each feel out a spot among the softer bits of rubbish and lay out their netting.

  “We should probably still put most of our weight on these boards. I’m not really sure what this is … I don’t trust it,” Lucas says from beside her.

  Lying side by side on their backs and catching their breath, exhaustion sets in. Maia stares up at the glittering sky as a shooting star burns across the expanse. This is the first time she’s looked up at the open night sky in months. She sighs, relieved to be out of the water and on this island of debris.