Rolling Graves by William J Ritchotte II

When a mother no longer has control of her children she must act. The shoe comes off, the time outs begin, the removal of doors, phones, and money happens.

Mother Earth is the same way with her vast numbers of unruly children. He laws must be followed or there can be no balance.

Greedy companies and politicians think words are all that are needed and continue their rape and pillage for their own pockets. They forget the world turns on decisions made far above their station.

The scientists said it would be less than ten years but it was less than a spring and a summer when the Ross Ice shelf disappeared.

The first year it broke off the Antarctic continent and the Earth began to wobble. Anything you put into the water displaces the water around it but the world is like a wheel on a car that needs weights to keep it from vibrating and snapping the lug nuts.

The waves began and the sea rose and it was here I woke in the spring of 2024.

I loved even a dull day at Hampton Beach. It was a place with a long boardwalk lined with shops, then the boulevard, then a wide sidewalk, a wide sandy beach where it was fifty yards at high tide and one hundred at low, and then the water whose horizon went far out and looked like it went on forever.

After what had been a normal day in 2020 I woke against a building that ran along Ocean Boulevard. It was strange since I lived 35 miles away. I felt the warmth against my skin and beneath my bum. I was in shorts and a tee shirt laying against the sand that was in front of every building. There should have been a clean sidewalk with fresh white painted buildings but everything was a dull salt and pepper from wind and seaweed.

I was in front of the hotel to the south of the Casino. There were people all over but nothing was open. There were no cars travelling north. From where I sat I would never have seen all the people entering the water but across the street the waves broke right up to the handrails of the sidewalk and I could see hundreds of people floating in the waves. I got excited because I loved floating on my board while the waves drove me up and down the troughs. I could hear them yelling and having fun.

I went inside of what looked like a changing tent but was guided to the Casino where a bathhouse was. I entered and went to a set of locked cages like the ones you would see at a public pool in the 1970’s and 80’s. Mine was locked but I knew the combination and pulled it out. Inside was a pile of precious metals that crumbled in my hands.

I began to change and something was dragging me down.

I want to swim, I said. I want to feel free. I want to be free.

Finally an old friend came in. He said I had to hurry.

“Shaun, what are you doing here?”

He didn’t answer. The look on his face was serious. I didn’t understand why. He couldn’t wait, yelled to me and ran out. The others were like zombies until they weren’t there any more. I kept looking to see how I could lock my stuff but I threw the clothes into the basket and went out.

The sun had gone down but there was still some light. I looked around and the ocean was breaking over the boulevard and running down F street. When I stepped into it, the warm water was up to my knees. I looked out and saw the people riding up and down the waves but were now fifty feet closer. Their arms were in the air then their legs but they weren’t moving and no one made a sound except the ocean and the birds. The gulls were feasting everywhere I looked and the people rolled exposing flesh and bone.

I heard some yelling and saw a few people running to find cover.

I felt the same need to move and took a single step. The black wall of water, dead, and screaming birds broke over my head and I woke.