Many Children Walk.

• Mimi Mangan, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2021

Many children walk. Walk to the fiery calls of the eagles, bearing mighty chests in the upside down sky. Glimmering like the moon, the water waves to the children. “Come, come!” it shrieks out, “come enjoy my silky smoothness, splash in my regrets, swim in my sorrow, and dive deep into my guilt.” Ears blocked with juvenility, the children entered the scheming cloth of “paradise”. They splashed with the whales, swam with the fish and dived with the dolphins. All was convivial until the moon rested. The eagles were carried to the skies and when the sunlight arose from its doona, revealed what truly endeavored. What lay the night before as a kingdom of solidarity was now a dry, lumpy, sticky pool of tenebrosity. Much to the children’s fright, the heat started to dry their skin. Shriveled dates, the children tried to run but found their path blocked with mounds of plastic and rubbish. They tried to scream but hot and smelly gases terrorizing the air stole their breath. The oil carried up their ankles like a vacuum seal, further and further to the very tips of their hairs. Old plastic bags slithered around their throats.
If you would come to this place you would see nothing but a modern-day beach. But if you saw suffocating children drowning in oil would you help?
Don’t you think they deserve your help?
Don’t you think they deserved a future?
Are you helping?
…
And so their bodies shall sink further and further down the bottomless ocean, empty graves buried with flowers and innocence.