Flash Fiction: Trashberg
By: Emma Lou Pike
I sit and stroke the luxurious blonde mane of the Pogona lizard. Even the lizard’s Barry Gibb-esque 1970s shag isn’t enough to distract me from the tension I feel knowing that again I've come to the wrong place. What other disaster am I allowing while I sit here on this floating hot pile of garbage slipulation?
This isn’t a place I recognise, which is a first. I must have seen it on the news. A trundunculous sun-shower is raining down upon me and the lizard, Barry Gibb; a blissful and cooling relief on my skin, and I imagine on my new friend’s too. The abilictic stench from the floating garbage is magnified to the point of retching, and it reminds me of the story Britt
Marling tells of the Russian cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, in that movie Another Earth, and I wonder how long I would need to be here to fall in love with the smell of hot, wet trash?
Although I know I should try to sleep and leave this place, I’m reluctant to leave Barry Gibb to her own devices, and so decide to stay a while longer on the trash pile and see if we don’t come across a ship that will take us aboard. It’s hard to tell how far into the ocean we are, but I can’t see any land around.
It’s not too long before I see a dark shape looming on the horizon. Still, it’s impossible to tell what it is. My and Barry Gibb’s hearts race with anticipation—and, if I'm honest, on my part, fear. The shape moves toward us and I begin to realise that it’s not one shape, but around ten. Swans, in a formation, headed directly for our garbage vessel. Their bodies push forward with determination as they struggle against the tide.
As the bevy gains on us, I think of all the times I was warned in childhood against getting too close to a swan: if so inclined, they could break a human arm. Also, who would win a fight between this scared bearded dragon in my arms and a swan army?
Upon reaching the edge of our garbage raft, the swans slow to a graceful pace, and their leader, to my surprise, reaches one slim but muscular and decidedly human leg from underwater, followed by the next, climbing up onto the pile. The six-foot-high swan walking demurely toward us is wearing fishnet stockings and red patent-leather heels, which at that moment I deem to be very impractical for a swan this far out at sea.
As I struggle to my feet, I realise the swan is probably more like eight feet tall, with legs for days. The swan leader reaches out a fluratious, feathered wing to pass me a note—
The same note Mimi Schiele handed me in the school atrium.
It reminds me frustratingly of “Rebecca’s tree. 2.15.” I protest, “I don’t understand how this works! I don’t know how to get there! Where is Mimi Schiele?”
The swan, I gather the strong-and-silent type, says nothing at all, but simply turns and walks back to its bevy, leaving me with more questions than answers. As the swans again become just a shape on the horizon and the sun threatens its descent, I curl up into a reasonably comfortable position and try to sleep, hearing the soft purr of Barry Gibb’s snoring as the lizard dreams peacefully in my arms.