'Earth' by Abigail Mansfield
Abigail’s short story ‘Earth’ was inspired by a prompt she received from an art group she met during lockdown. She was sent prompts in the mail to help inspire her to create in the form of stories, poetry, drawing pictures, writing and performing songs.
When my lover told me, within the remaining minutes of their life, to not believe the world was round, I had laughed and cried. Laughed and cried simultaneously as their eyes closed and their breath left creases of dust in the air. I sang religious songs into their ear as the sun went down and I wondered if that was it, the earth was flat. They were dead. And the earth was flat.
I remember holding onto those words, with tears streaming down my face. I imagined that. The world. Flat. I imagined the ocean suddenly dripping, pouring off of an edge into an endless black pit of nothingness. The water waste almost painful. No one even able to dangle safely from the edge of the world to witness it with a fancy camera to snap the evidence like a unique epic waterfall to worship. I imagined the little creatures all clinging onto rocks and the ground, their claws, their snuggling survival instinct completely wasted as they toppled off the edge into nowhere. It was like I thought the world suddenly became like a conveyable platform slowly and remarkably removing the items of the planet without anyone apparently noticing. I mean… surely we would notice wouldn’t we? All the things that were born here, lived here, spent years leaving footprints in the snow, or scratches on the sofa, wouldn’t we notice if everything was slowly disappearing? I’m not so sure anymore.
I thought about the remnant of each tree being tossed through the wind into the abyss. I thought about the the tiniest fish swimming awkwardly and obliviously into the absence of any fear. I thought about children swimming out of their depth excitedly without the presence of a parent watching them, drifting into the place that meant they were unable to fight a tide that simply threw them away.
When she told me to believe that the world was flat, I laughed, I laughed because I imagined the whole of its content sliding to its doom. Ruthlessly wailing into the blackness of whatever lay beneath. And then when I stopped laughing I just felt sick.
What really was at the end of the world? Was I right about the darkness? Was the end of the world a devastating maelstrom of bleakness and blackness that cascaded beneath our feet like a dead army of stars?
I remember when I was a child and had a geography book. In there I used to read and memorise all the states of America. And then I would test myself. If I got all of them right I would then try and learn each of the Capitols of each state. Ironically I never learnt the counties in the United Kingdom, which is where I was born. I knew Somerset, where the Mendips rippled with gorges and rivers. I knew Devon, where I could have cream on jam or was it jam on cream? I knew Cornwall, where the Peter Pan syndrome ideal thrived and I can swim next to shimmering jelly fish seemingly like they were a sparkling gift from the gods. Embarrassingly I knew no more. The book I had as a kid also had a page in it that had always made me afraid. There was an image. An image of something mythological, angry… a reptile puffed up with aggression, possession taking hold of the page. It was green, and grey with teeth like gate posts, it seemed to look directly at me as I accidentally stumbled upon the image. I really tried to be careful with every turn of the page but when it appeared I ached with fear and closed the book, dramatically throwing it under the book shelf. I’d sit on the edge of my bed for minutes shaking with the itch of its image in my memory. It’s funny how I remember that feeling so strongly. Spiked with fear I would leave it a couple of weeks and repeat the process, just so that I could keep learning.
A flat earth could hold these secrets right? We are still learning from the version where it’s round and thick and deep. The maelstrom of the fiery core spluttering questions at the most fascinated explorer to fathom.
If the earth was flat it might still have a core but it might be a big rock, or something piled together to hold it all in place like the spine of a book.
The belly of the centre of the world seemed to me a mystery, where that puffed up reptile thrived. A hungry belly begging for the grief to rise from us all so that it could feed.
The day I buried my love, who had told me to not believe the earth was round, I stood still at their graveside. I stayed silent as each person threw soil onto their coffin from above, staining their hands, scattering the soil like it was broken gold. I stayed locked into the ground, as the rain spilled from the sky on to my head, soaking my cheeks, and sliding down so that mud moved and stuck to the edges of my black shoes. I smiled to myself, as I watched the world engulf my lovers coffin like it was consuming it. I smiled to myself, imagining the puffed up dragon awaiting its meal, as the glorious rain continued to spit and strip me of warmth. I smiled to myself, as I whispered ‘my love, like the earth you believed in, you lay flat within it, worshipped by it, loved by it. My love, you are right’. The grief in my chest knocked the life out of me, the sun went down, the moon glowed arrogantly in its place and without her here to witness it, I decided that, the earth really must be flat after all.
Written by Abigail Mansfield
I am a queer writer and poet based in Bristol and North Somerset. I have published three books and like to write poetry to keep my brain moving when I am doing my grownup job, this is normally reactional poetry that I have created from the bleakness of something I have seen or the gorgeousness of something I have heard. I write songs and sing and cannot wait to be brave when open mic nights might welcome me inside again. I have a very low opinion of everything I do and question every single thing I write and send out, but I still want to keep doing it because it matters to me. I also really love cats.
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