The Oil Slick

We didn’t cause the largest oil spill ever, but it will be the worst. We didn’t know how it happened.  We didn’t know what we hit, but something had managed to pierce through the double hull of our tanker. Hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil poured into the ocean from a single damaged compartment. 

We all knew an oil spill was possible, and we generally knew what to expect.  The oil that day didn’t do what it was supposed to do.  It didn’t spread; it pooled. Its sickly rainbow hue grew darker as it amassed beside the tanker, reaching no farther than a couple hundred yards.  A few of us watched from the deck as it coagulated.  It was all we could do.

The oil had become a physical mass on the water’s surface.  It seemed to float, rising and falling with the ocean’s swells.  A crew member threw a boot from the deck.  It landed on top of the oil with a squelch and stayed in place.

I was among the team selected to venture on the new “island” we had inadvertently created.  Our captain led twenty of us as we descended from the tanker and took our first ginger steps onto the slick.  We spread out along the entire area, moving slowly to test the ground.  We had no explicit purpose.  We were there more out of curiosity than need.

The ground depressed under my feet, squishing like a wet sponge.  Purple, green, yellow, and red waved along the surface, licking up along my boots.  The ground had taken the texture of the ocean when it had hardened, freezing the small ripples and crests in place.  Its pungent odor was overwhelming, even through my bandana.

The groan of steel against steel sent a shudder through the oil spill.  I looked back toward the tanker, seeing my coworkers do the same.  The bow of the ship had caved in on itself.  The outer hull peeled inward and sank toward the oil spill. On the deck, the workers screamed for the captain, their cries deafened by the metal screeching.  Some clung to the railings while others held various tools in their hands, too confused to know how to react. 

Our captain was quick and decisive.  He yelled for us to support our crew, however we could, no matter if we didn’t know how to.  He launched himself forward into a sprint, and his next step went through the oil.  The rest of his body followed, as if he had leapt off a cliff.  He didn’t have time to react.  Only ripples in the oil remained where he had disappeared.

Whatever composure we had left had fallen in with the captain, and the men both on and off the tanker panicked. The tanker continued to fold in on itself, its shrieking acting as the call for our ruin.  Those on the slick fled for the water.  Some landed a few steps before the oil liquified around them and sucked them underneath.  They clung to each other, doing little more than to pull each other down together.  Rainbows spiraled across the slick.

Men rained down upon the water from the tanker.  Water erupted from the ocean as they fell in, but the people didn’t resurface.  It didn’t matter from where they had jumped.  One head made it above water, stained black.  I could see a film sealing his open mouth.  Then he was gone.

Within minutes, everything was gone.  The entire tanker had crumpled into nothing. No scraps of metal, no additional oil, no blood. Everyone had fallen into the ocean except for me and one other. He cried at the edge of the oil slick, begging God for help.

I remained silent, trembling.  Neither he nor I had moved since the chaos had started.  Our cowardice had saved us, leaving us the sole witnesses.  My vision faded in and out.  Oil, sweat, and ocean invaded my senses.  I recognized I had wet myself.

The hours crawled past.  My legs started to burn, and pain raked across my back.  I dared only to shift slightly to redistribute my weight.  I didn’t speak to the other man, and he didn’t call out to me.  He stood with his back toward me, staring off into the ocean as he whimpered unintelligibly.  I knew he was looking where he imagined was the closest shore, some several hundred miles away.  Protocol dictated that someone aboard the tanker had to have contacted coastal authorities. We didn’t know if the person had finished the job.

As the sun seeped into the horizon, my fear bled into fatigue.  I had been baked to a dark red, and my clothes were damp with my sweat.  My tongue lay shriveled in my mouth, my lips cracking as I inhaled.  I convinced myself death was better than this.  I was never a strong man.

I shook as I eased onto my knees.  The ground sunk a few inches around me but ultimately held.  Hy heart pounded in my ears, and air struggled to reach my lungs.  The world spun as I rotated onto my back and laid against the oil.  I could feel it soak into my clothes.  It was cold, but it hadn’t eaten me.

My breathing was ragged as I watched the sky.  The stars gradually blinked into existence as the orange hues faded.  I tried to focus on their light as my muscles relaxed.  I tried to count them.  I tried to ignore my hallucinations, the dirtied rainbows which snaked between the stars.  When I closed my eyes, the colors remained.  They would follow me into my dreams.  

I awoke the next morning to the moans of the man.  The clear sky offered a reprieve, and I could feel the sun dry my clothes.  In this position, I pretended that I was sunbathing on a beach.  Given the forlorn cries of my companion, I could not fully transport myself to that calming scene, and the wetness along my body kept me grounded on the oil slick.

I held a hand over my face, saw how the black had traced the lines in my palm, had wrinkled my fingertips.  I rested it back on my stomach.  Sleep had done little to relieve my fatigue.  I was still thirsty, still hungry.  The stench of the island nauseated me, and I could now smell rotting fish.

I closed my eyes.  Rescue had not arrived yet, so there was no point of getting up. I spent the day slipping between consciousness and unconsciousness.  The events of yesterday repeated under my eyelids as the man grieved every hour or so.  Hunger clawed within my gut, growing fiercer over the hours.

Another night passed, and when dawn came, my companion resumed his crying, cursing the oil slick.  I loathed his whiney voice.  My muscles ached; I was starving and dehydrated; and I was sick of the smell.  His presence just reminded me of my circumstances.  I stirred from the imprint I had developed in the oil.      

When I sat up, I felt the ocean air against my back and head as my shirt fell off my torso.  My hands instinctively reached for my back and head, finding bare skin.  I shifted and looked where I had lain.  Remnants of my clothing sunk into the oil, and above them was a mat of my hair.  Bile stirred in my stomach, but my surroundings diverted my focus.

The man sat hunched in the same spot where he had been two days ago, rocking back and forth. He had buried his face in his hands, covering his eyes.  His voice droned through his palms, wordless but conveying his despair.  Although insufferable, he was a semblance of normalcy. The oil island, conversely, had become more alien.

The spill had attracted marine life. Fish had punctured the ground from underneath, their heads sticking out like grotesque garden ornaments. The oil colors glistened across their dead eyes and scales.  The carcass of a blue whale made a mountain range along one side of the spill.  Several sharks had gathered to gnaw at the body, unaware of the oil creeping along their snouts and into their gills.

The tanker was also in the process of returning. The bow had emerged from the oil, its steel replaced by elongated femurs, rib cages, and skulls.  Black tendrils slithered in between, acting as a connective tissue. 

Among the fish heads, a singular tree had sprouted, the oil swirls streaming along its black bark. It resembled something like a maple, and its branches had borne fruit: identical copies of the captain’s head, expressionless, dripping with oil. I assumed the tree had grown where he had fallen.

My anger slipped away.  My brain couldn’t make sense of any of it and had given up trying to.  My peripheral vision had dulled, and my forehead pulsed.  My own sense of hopelessness overcame logical thought, allowing only hunger and thirst to remain. 

I crawled along the ground, the rest of my clothing falling from my body. I came close to a fish head and tugged at it, but only its scales sloughed off into my hand.  I lowered my body and chewed on its head.  What I could rip off liquified in my mouth, spilling through my teeth and down my chin.  What I could swallow stuck to my throat.  I retched, tears coming to my eyes. 

Desperation drove me forward to the tree.  Whether the ground would hold no longer registered in my consciousness.  Greater men would last longer than I could, but I needed less than 48 hours to break.  I grasped at the trunk of the tree, pulling myself back to my feet.  My knees buckled, but I dug my fingers into the trunk and held.  When I was steady, I climbed up into the branches, my body darkening as the bark spilled open into more oil.

I plucked a head from the branch, gripping it by its hair.  It was tender but maintained some consistency. I peeled away the scalp, and the skull crumbled when I pressed against it. It was like eating an overripe peach.

I don’t care to describe the taste. I ate with the eyes turned away from me.  I ate from the fruits until I vomited.  The man started screaming when I had begun and continued long after I had stopped.

I remained in the tree, cradled in its branches, allowing the sun to warm the oil on me.  The sharks had stopped moving, having become a single mass of fins and teeth.  The bones on the tanker no longer looked human.  

The sun has started to set again.  The man calls out to his god once more. He begs for rescue, even as the oil eats away at his legs.

My stomach has become distended, and my teeth have fallen out. I do not pray to a god.  I do not ask for rescue anymore. I hope that whoever finds us incinerates the entire island, and I hope it is soon.  It’ll be better for the environment.