Skydekkerix

It always stormed. Sitting at the top of a high-rise, more than three quarters submerged into the deep city below, all I could see was dark sheets of rain, dark clouds and dark, turbulent ocean. The rain knocked against my layers of raincoats like the cops with a warrant, and the wind swayed me around the rooftop, with its busted air-conditioner vents and bolted-on ashtrays that hadn’t been used since the waves came. I emptied the makeshift water purifier into an empty, plastic gin bottle, waved to another yellow raincoat in a building across the water. I’d never spoken to them, never seen them closer than a yellow blur with a dot for a face. I pushed my way through the propped open fire door and the wind slammed it behind me.

I grabbed a battery lantern from the top of the stairs and tapped it into life. The fire stairs stank of mould and stagnant water. Deep below in the black, I could hear water lapping against the concrete, slowly rising with the ocean, counting down my life level by level. I descended several flights, to just where the waterline was encroaching on the lowest dry level. I’d been working my way upwards methodically, scrounging whatever supplies I could and picking each level clean before moving as the water rose. I was severely malnourished from surviving on stale biscuits and packets of chips, but I’d managed to piece together a makeshift still, so at least I was boozed for it.

I moved the where the still was set up in some office break room, on the counter next to the kettle, hooked up to a small generator I’d found in a janitor’s closet lower down. The water purifier had drained all minerals and pollutants from the water, if I drank it now it would just make me thirstier, but I wasn’t planning on drinking anything non-alcoholic for the rest of my life.

I emptied a teabag, put lemon and ginger tea, honey, and cinnamon powder into it, put it into the still with some pure alcohol I’d found in first aid supplies, and waited for the drips. Turfed the initial runoff, didn’t want to be blind for the rest of my short miserable existence, then diluted the rest with pure water. It was not too bad this time. I scribbled amounts into a notepad, then filled a plastic watercooler cup and made my way to a window.

The whitewash frothed against the bottom of the windowsill, giving me brief glances of the dark blue world below. Fifty stories of shadows and suffocation. Of reversed gravity and disintegration. Of sharp teeth and shadowed hulks.

I always knew it would be the sharks that got me in the end. When I was a kid, most nights I’d dream of shark attacks, black rolling water, dead eyes and fountaining blood. I avoided the ocean because a deep part of me knew what the end was. As I lived and filled my life with mundane tasks and pleasures, the violence lurked beneath the surface. It was waiting in the water where my feet couldn’t touch the bottom. Waiting for me to decide when to dip my toes in. And now that choice was rising to meet me, metre by metre, until there were no other choices to make.

I saw fins between the high-rises. The shark population had exploded when the waves came. There were seven billion meals suddenly entering their domain. Now that resource was all but depleted, the biggest ones had eaten all the smaller and they were starving.

I tried to think of something else. If this was to be the last of humanity, then more thoughts should be had. Things that needed to be worked out, questions to be answered. But now my brain was empty. Civilisation had trailed off mid sentence and left silence. I blamed the booze and the noise of the crashing ocean.

I looked at the plastic bottle in my hand. It was a damn good bottle of vodka. The taste had mellowed out with my drunkenness. Now, with droopy, unfocused eyes, the flavour was filled with culture and civilisation. With purpose and drive and collaboration. It tasted as if there was something before and something now and something after. I nodded to the empty dark room. This was the time to go, with one perfect bottle of booze to my name. I downed my cup and swayed my way to the fire escape, vodka firmly grasped in my hand.

On the roof, the wind whipped my raincoat and stung my cheeks. I placed the plastic bottle down on the sodden concrete and stripped down to my skin, water drenching me until I felt the world was one liquid. I climbed onto the ledge of the building, gazing down at the dark water, vodka numbing my dread. Glancing at the opposite rooftop, I saw the yellow raincoat jumping and waving with both hands. I jumped.

Pain filled my nostrils like a crack in cold glass. I was tossed and thrown, then scrambled to the surface, the bottle of vodka swallowed by the ocean in one gulp. I floated amongst the waves, gasping and spitting saltwater. A hulk bumped my leg, and I glanced around at the fins dipping and rising between the waves. Panic squeezed and wrenched me, but I closed my eyes and emptied my head. I waited for the final, violent end.

I heard shattering glass and then a voice between the roar of the waves. Opening my eyes, I saw the raincoat in a broken window. Clearer now, panic and despair in a woman’s face framed by yellow plastic. I felt another bump on my leg and my drunkenness drained from me instantly, water from a spun bottle.

I swam desperately, coughing and spluttering, the waves tossing me up and down and over. I was getting closer the the broken window, panic now bursting through my veins like trains through subway tunnels. If the right wave came, I could reach it. The yellow raincoat was reaching over shards of glass, ready to grasp me.

My ankle tugged downwards, sharp pain quickly replaced by adrenaline. I went under. Foam and shadows and teeth and red swirled in my vision, and then I hung suspended, looking down at the deep. Shadows squirmed, maggots in a bowl, devouring and writhing. I clawed my way to the surface. A wave rose me, and fingers curled into my hair. I was wrenched out of the water, and I scrambled onto a ledge, glass slicing my fingers. I rolled onto sodden office carpet.

“Please be alive. Please be alive,” a woman’s voice said, hovering above my face. Blurred yellow filled my vision. I coughed a fountain of salt.

“I’m alright,

You got me.”