A Scratch

At first, it was just a scratch. It barely grazed the surface of my skin, leaving no traces of blood. Small and easy to ignore, it was such a trivial thing. Walking through streets of tall buildings, brightly coloured billboards and lush bundles of foliage sprouted from almost everywhere. It was as if the billboards had learnt to grow with the foliage, creeping out of every crack in the wall and every corner of each block. Advanced digital inventions mixed with raw, dark oak trunks and lavender blossoms. I breathed in. Fresh, crisp air filled my lungs. It was heaven, almost seeming too good to be true.

But it was too good to be true.

The scratch turned into a cut, reaching just under the surface of my skin. It left a few droplets of bright scarlet, which soon turned dark red. Soon enough, I managed to staunch the blood. But some things do get worse over time. Especially if you don’t give them enough attention. A more sullen tone engulfed the city landscape. There was less green and more grey. Traditional billboards were replaced with LED billboards, making my eyes water if I looked at them too long. Almost every building was larger, taller and more suited to the office worker. The dark oaks that were once strong and healthy had thin branches and wilting, grey leaves. I breathed in once more. The cold air had undertones of petrol that made me wince as it entered through my nose. I breathed out. A cloudy mist left my mouth. Within seconds it blended with the heavy fog around me, which was caused not by the breaths of other people, or the gloomy weather. It was created by something far worse. The looming feeling deep inside me felt like an iron bar around my stomach. I knew it would only grow stronger as the years passed.

But I found it easier to ignore it.

The deep cut dug into my skin. This time the bleeding wouldn’t stop. I looked around. LED advertisements glared from every building’s windows. Some advertised superficial brands, but most had blared meaningless platitudes like ‘THERE IS NO PLANET B’ in lurid, capital letters. I’d seen so many of them that they didn’t matter to me. Or to anyone else anymore. The people behind these ads refused to realise that powering those billboards would damage the world even more. In the same way, these people refused to accept the world was changing. They refused to cave in to reality. Or rather, they acknowledged that this reality had existed, and chose to ignore it to abuse their short-term gain. Fully aware that it would have serious effects in the future. Other ads read clichés like ‘SYSTEMIC CHANGE NOT CLIMATE CHANGE!’. They prayed that someone would have the power to somehow overthrow the government, then somehow solve the world’s problem. But it wasn’t something you could just solve. It wasn’t like a maths problem. It wasn’t a simple equation that would always have a solution.

I felt as if someone had stabbed a knife through my arm. The deep wound left a gash that would never stop bleeding. A scorching sensation flared through my lungs. I coughed blood, wiping it away on my pants. I was frustrated at the fact that I knew what was wrong, but I couldn’t do anything about it. I was helpless.

We were all helpless.

We had warnings that once we reached the tipping point, there was no going back.

But we were well past the tipping point.

Scarlet stained my clothes — someone splashed paint, I thought to myself. Hoping it would be true. But I knew it wasn’t true — as there I was, looking at my red hands, white shirt drenched in red, with red on my face and bare feet. I must’ve dipped my hands and feet and shirt in a paint bucket, I thought hysterically, silently laughing to myself. Then I froze, with the realisation that this wasn’t paint, but a much thicker, more solid, more real liquid. One that had a pungent odour. It was the smell of death.

Our only fate was to watch the world slowly burn, while petrol and processed air clouded our lungs.