Welcome to Trash City

"Welcome to Trash City," the tour guide's voice echoed over soaring piles of trash, "the world's only floating city— complete with amusement park and shopping mall!" Logan wished he had a hundred eyes. He rotated in a circle between his classmates. The trash piles were tall as skyscrapers and decorated with colorful flags and blinking lights. He could smell cotton candy and popcorn.

And something rotten.

"Everyone take your free bag of popcorn and come to see our first attraction: dolphins!" Logan craned up on his toes as his classmates pushed forward. In a pond of brown water, a group of plastic dolphins dipped up and down again, forever stuck in the murky water. Bags of popcorn surrounded then.

Logan frowned as the others laughed and pointed. When the chaperone wasn't looking, he slipped away.

Logan followed a tiny path through the trash. This one wasn't lit with lights and trash loomed over him, unsettling in its familiarity. He saw thousands of the grocery bags Mother used and plastic cups and straws he drank from. He had never before wondered what happened to the things he tossed in the trash. He kept walking, not sure what he was looking for, but knowing it wasn't this.

He came around one of the mounds and suddenly water stretched out before him.

He paused, held breathless. The water reached out to infinity. Then he picked his way closer. He'd seen pictures of the ocean, sandy shores and cream-tipped waves.

This wasn't it.

Trash choked the water, churning it like a filth-ridden stew. Then he saw a piece of trash move on the shore.

Something was alive!

He scrambled forward, the trash crumbling around him. Finally, he knelt next to where he'd seen the movement. He moved slowly, not wanting to scare it. Dark, black eyes like marbles stared up at him inside a tangle of green mesh-like plastic.

A turtle.

Logan had only ever seen stuffed turtles before. But this creature was beautiful. The turtle stared up at him, unable to free itself. Logan stepped forward, and then carefully began to unwrap the turtle. When the trash finally fell away, Logan gently turned the turtle and pointed him towards the water. The turtle crawled to the shore then slashed into the dirty water, his head just visible as he swam through the muck.

"Watch out!" Logan cried out, as more plastic tangled around the turtle. Logan ran along the shore, but the water was dark and thick, and he couldn't reach the turtle as he became more and more entangled. The current carried him away.

Finally, Logan made his way back to the group. He was silent the rest of the day. He turned down the popcorn bag, and the plastic bag of goodies, and when he sat on the train and looked at the receding island, he felt sad. He had unknowingly helped build Trash City.

And even though he could escape, there were those that never could.