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The Heat

A Coastal Wasteland

By Duncan CatellierPublished 3 years ago Updated 3 years ago 10 min read
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The waves keep rolling in, higher and higher, inch by inch, each passing day. Long gone are the white sandy beaches. Their shorelines have crept and morphed into an erosion of the city. The sunbathers have since receded back into the shade indoors or, if brave enough, under the canopies of balconies, all of them on the edges of their seats. From out there, toward the horizon, a gull might have seen such a magnificent sight if there were any left, any wings yet scorched out of the air. The sight: a hundred or more reflections of longing eyes guarded by mirrored shades in the windows of the high-rises, all of them glaring at the sky. They wait and they watch as the moon pushes close against the sun’s gruesome gaze upon the Earth. A darkness that they haven’t seen during the Hot Hours, that hasn’t eclipsed them in over a hundred years approaches with an audible anticipation brewing in the audience.

Just when the cosmic spheres first touch, there is a movement at Ocean Floor. Not the floor of the ocean, no, the lowest floor of the apartment complex, at which there are boats docked along the tower’s base. At first the movement is slow, a tip toeing, a hedging. Peeking up and out at that ubiquitous looming terror. Then, all at once, a whistle pierces through the air and bounces off the incoming waves up toward the audience. That begins the screaming, the cheering, the clanging metal. In the matter of seconds, because there are few to spare, a bustle of people, all cloaked head to toe in sun-bleached cottons, herd themselves into the boats. With them they carry their boards.

Their engines rev and they’re off, weaving their way out past the roaring white claws, which try so desperately to seize them. For as long as the surfers have craved and waited for the touch of the waves again, the ocean has waited longer to feel their weight again, because out here in this new world heat, caught in the slow burn of time, everything lasts so much longer. Now the moon realizes its task, feels the gravity of it. Like a mother protecting her children, she begins her sacrificial leap as she steps out into the sun’s scope.

A lull in the excitement gives way to a silence undermined by the purr of the boat engines now wading way out past the wave breaks. All that’s left to do is wait for the moon’s shade to overcast the sky, to set them free. Little by little, the surfers attempt to undress, flashing a shoulder or a leg out and, just as fast, enveloping themselves back into their cloaks. Weathering the mean heat, their fabrics soaking up their sweat. It is so hot. They can hardly cope, breathing in, synchronizing, swaying, breathing out.

The rhythm persists, their patience wains. The minutes grow heavier, denser, pouring away slowly but definitely. And each second, as excruciating as it is now, starts to remove itself from the present. Each second becomes more and more timeless, splintering into little slivers of something so much greater than the surfers can grasp in the moment. This, they begin to realize, is what the making of history feels like. The heat of the century. Perhaps the last surf heat there will ever be.

Just then—just now—something shifts in the light. The atmosphere, withered thin in its old age, burns in a hue the surfers have not seen in their lifetimes, the difference between a blue flame and a yellow. The horizon brightens at the edge and a deep maroon bleeds into the piercing blue above. The surfers, nearly stunned by this strangeness, realize their distraction in its beauty and kick themselves off the boats, hollering as they dive bare chest first onto their boards. At this, the audience comes to life again, and horns blare from the city. Like a floundering school of fish, which the sea is still in mourning of, the surfers squirm shoulder to shoulder.

The first man to break free from the school wears a silver mane of hair with pride. Despite the sagging wrinkles, his body moves with purpose, paddling forward into the line of the first wave. The others watch, studying his movement, his confidence, his control. As the wave rolls beneath them and in, chasing the silver-haired man, they lose sight of him, they hold their breath. The man shoots out from the crest of the wave’s barrel. Everyone goes wild. Hyped up, the next surfer takes her chances into the next wave, and as close as she comes to finding her balance as she drops in, this is her first real try at surfing a wave in her life. She is not ready for how it violently throws her into its mouth. She comes up gasping, gets back on her board, and follows the man, who paddles as far away from the crowd as he can get.

They are hardly in ear shot of one another as the young woman ceases her stride and comes to a floating seat on her board. They do not try to speak to each other, other than the odd glance of communication. Are you going for this one? No, that’s all you, a look might say. But the current in the water draws them nearer to one another, makes it harder for them not to talk, wants them to converge. They have wound up close enough that girl catches a glint of light hanging from the man’s neck. A silver locket, dangling and dripping.

Finally, the girl says, “Where did you learn to surf?”

The man hears this, but he doesn’t show it. A wave rolls beneath them and as the wave crashes, he looks at the girl.

“Before the migration?” she asks.

“I learned in California,” he says, touching the locket, touching his neck. "Yes, before we had to leave. Move North. How did you learn?”

“From the online archives. I’ve watched it all.”

“You can’t learn from watching. Otherwise, everyone inside would be out here.”

“I surf in my dreams. Every night, every day,” she says. “I always have.” She looks at the man. His eyes squint at the halo glow on the horizon and the sky nearing black now. She looks up, reminded of what’s happening up there, what little time they have, and sees the eclipse in totality. And the sight of it makes her feel a strange kind of emptiness she hasn’t felt before, a lack of something she has always had.

What it is, though she cannot pinpoint it herself, is the cold in the absence of the sun. She loves how it feels, and sits in it for a moment before urgency takes over, again. “Aren’t you going to catch another? We don’t have much time left.”

“That’s not what I’m here for.”

“What do you mean? That’s what this is about. We’ll probably never get this chance again.”

The man is holding his locket, playing with it, smoothing his fingers over its curves, which the girl now recognizes as the curves of a heart. Then, he presses his hands down against his board, spreads them as wide as he can, and he smiles at the girl. “The waiting was always what I loved most. Sitting here, not knowing when but knowing for sure that your next wave will come. That it will belong to you and you only for its entire fleeting lifetime. How, naturally, when it crashes and burns it will try to take you down with it. I can understand why you can’t understand that. For you, right now must feel very short. Like it’s running out. But right now, I’m here forever. I can wait.”

What’s being said rolls over and through her. Beneath her, another beautiful wave rolls by, and above, the sun peeks out from the moon again. A diamond ring in the sky. She says, “If it is so personal. If the waves have feelings, and I imagine you believe the wave chooses you, too. If that is the truth, how do you know which one is yours?”

“Have you ever been in love?”

“I am. I have a fiancé.”

“Where is he?”

“Indoors.”

“What makes you know he is yours? Can you describe it? Or do you just know?”

“We just know, I suppose.”

“You will know.” The man points himself out into the ocean, his eyes fixed. “Now watch. You can’t miss it.”

As they wait, it gets warmer, again, and hotter. The moon cannot contain the sun’s rage much longer. It has gone by so much quicker than she could have prepared herself for, her whole life, watching legends fall into their waves, doing push ups every day to be ready. But what she never could have learned indoors, waiting every day for this moment when all she knew was time, was patience in the wake of dwindling minutes.

Its momentum is sudden. She feels it pull her unlike any of the other waves when she first sees it building. She looks at the man for assurance, but he is busy looking for his own. She turns herself around and readies herself on her board. At this, the man turns to watch. She wants his guidance, wants to hear him tell her when to start paddling, to tell her to give it everything she has. But he just watches her as she takes her first stride herself, then her next, and another, and another. Fear rushes into her. She has no idea what she is doing but she is doing it. The fear of missing this, afraid she will never feel like this again. And it is this fear that somehow pushes her onto her feet, carving down the wave’s slope. The wave chases after her into its own tunnel. It chases her all the way to its end.

She curls into a ball under water, motionless, until she remembers she has to breathe. When she surfaces, she feels the salt water already evaporating off of her face and sees one of the boats approaching her, fast. They pull her onboard and wrap her in a sun-cloak. They tell her not to look up. But she does, and it hurts. She sees the man out there, still waiting, abandoning himself. As his figure gets smaller as they drive her back into the city, into her apartment she might never escape, she knows the silver-haired man will get his chance, too.

His fingers, still caressing the silver heart around his neck, finally open the locket. He stares at the treasure inside: a picture of a woman standing on the beach, her arm reaching around a surfboard. Then, he turns his board around, points himself into the shoreline, and he starts up.

The locket dangles, tapping, tapping, tapping at his sternum, drawing a rhythm out from his chest as its organs pump and pull. Air to breathe, blood to push, pushing his arms into a frenzied pulse—one, two, one, two—and pulling his back up to bare the locket shining in the sight of that full furious sun. For a moment, as the surfer lunges forward and grasps onto a steady stance, the silver seers his chest. The ocean takes the surfer in its arms, curling its fingers around him as his fingers carve streaks in the water. And, at last, the locket plunges itself down into the water to relieve itself of the horrid heat and drags the surfer diving into the hot sea.

Sci Fi
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About the Creator

Duncan Catellier

Queer artist and writer. Sharing my visions and passions.

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