Magenta Monster

Wave upon wave hit the lonely shore. It was a dark perilous shore and the sea was a barren green, swimming in noxious chemicals and thick black oil. The sea was young, so very very young; it lapped at the shore, leaving a rainbow scum behind. Above it, sickly coloured clouds rolled, the sulphur fumes thick in the air. This first shore was volcanic and so was the sky, lightning purple, blue, green and white. An after image of pink was silhouetted if anyone had been there to look. It scorched the sea. The waves continued to lap.

In its depths the seabed moved, wrenched and buckled. The seabed was nothing more than a giant conveyor belt moving away from the split, the jagged gash that lay at the centre. Molten rock first – an organic plume, then black char oozed forth like toothpaste from a tube that is squeezed every few minutes.

These black wiggly tubes littered the area, then great chimneys rose, mineral-rich and toxic. The columns spewed great underwater clouds of black or white: hot enough to melt glass. Methane and thick oil came forth, escaping the rocky interior of the Earth, straight into the new sea.

The sea was happy; it lapped at the new shore – a new friend. No longer alone would it be.

The shore was thick now in oil and the shore was craggy and pitted, full of cavities and holes where the seawater could cling in thin films. More lightning sizzled and crackled at the water’s boiling surface and the air was a thick chemical soup of its own. The chemicals change and fused – imbued with the energy of the sky.

On the new land, steeped in minerals and oily seawater, the cavities and holes crackled with an energy of their own. Blue sparks flew, forming little batteries; the sizzle of frying oil and the reek of tin were there. There the chemicals changed and grew chains and rings; they formed within their own little bubbles of stone.

The sea swished, it was a hot warm sea, it was a rich sea. It kissed and hugged the shore. Some bits of the shore came away when the sea hugged too vigorously, especially when the big bright young moon beckoned the green sea towards it.

A sand, alien and new formed, began to layer the part of the land where it touched and was part of the sea. This was a beautiful sand – a metal sand, a reactive sand. The rainbow of oil floating on the top of the sea found it could cling to this special sand and thousands of oil chains and rings could form on every grain snuggled close to each other, some of them merging and splitting into new forms. The sea continued to lap at the shore.

The sea sat beneath the broiling sky, a sky of fire and of ice, ice rocks and fire rocks, rocks that fall from the above to the below, into the sea, releasing soap bubbles and oils cooked by the burning energy of far off stars. Some even formed in a distant sun’s death throws. These chemical treasures imparted by the fire and ice of the sky would be swallowed by the sea, but now the sea had a new friend. The sea had the land.

Some of the fire and ice fell onto the land, some at the shore where the sea caressed the land – here the soap bubbles found deep pools to languish in, pools lovingly carved by the sea and filled with its water. Here the soup of oils began to thicken; here they seeped into the rocks and into the bubbles of rock, where they mixed. Chemicals, minerals, oils inside soap bubbles, all floating, swaying gently with the sea.

The sea and land continued their dance but now some of the sand was finer and some was just a gooey mess, making thick gloopy clay. The clay was fine; it had layers, lots of thin layers sticking together like Velcro. The clay was like a magnet with positives and negatives. The positives attracted new negatives and negatives attracted new positives and so the clay grew but it only allowed new pieces of clay that are an exact fit to join. It seemed as if it was actively seeking out these new partners and its knack for fitting them so easily, its tendency to mould molecules meant the new clay made by the land and the sea grew. But more than that it replicated, there on the first shore lapped by the happy sea with its oil and electrified soap bubbles.

Occasionally the oil stuck to the clay and when the clay then tried to grow to replicate the oil underwent changes. It was then squashed, crushed and bent – catalysed to new shapes and functions that would never have been seen otherwise.

The sea loved the new oily chemicals that now swam in its depth but the shore had another surprise for it, something the shore itself and the new incandescent white moon had been making. As the new moon pulled the sea up towards it and then released it again in its twice daily dance, these new chemicals were left in the rock pools along the shore. The rock pools began to dry out and the water evaporated, departing to the turbid sky above. Salts and minerals rich in the sea became concentrated as the water they bathed in departed and then the next tide rushed back in, flushing the rock pools with more of the sea’s strange waters, again diluting those little pools, those little crucibles.

These strange new creations lurked in these pools fed by the sea twice daily, odd ladders of molecules were they, and as the tide ebbed and flowed the ladders continuously split and reformed. But new rainbow scum poured in every time making more of the curious little ladders from those that remained split, so more and more appeared with each tide. They also replicated, like the clay before them.

The sea swirled; the sea loved the shore and all the beautiful things both they and the new moon had made. Together they mixed them and swished them and swirled them. Sometimes they concentrated them so that somehow through their myriad of complicated dances some of the ladders ended up inside the soap bubbles, blue lighting from the sky and from the little bubbles of stone, and special energy formed the fire. Ice rocks changed the soap bubbles and the chemicals – now a change within.

Production lines and great circles of reaction all relying on one another arose. The soap bubbles were beautiful – the sea and land watched them; they did more then than just bobbing on the waves. The soap bubbles could then make new soap bubbles; the sea and first land watched as the first one split in two. The sea was glad and so was the land. They knew they would never be alone ever again; the moon though watched with trepidation as one soap bubble consumed another.

Even now, the sea continues to love the shore and moon calls to them but it is too far away for them to hear its sad warning.

Posted: Thursday, June 28th, 2018 @ 11:25 am
Categories: Short Stories.
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