It Used To Be Like This

I stand at the peak of the cliff and stare down at the brown waves below, wrinkling my nose slightly. Even though I've lived by the sea my whole life, you never can get used to the stench of rotting plastic.

"We used to go swimming down there, you know," Grandma says from behind me.

I turn around to face her. Her wrinkled face is solemn, tears glistening in her eyes. I frown, spinning back round to stare down at the water.

"You used to go swimming in that?" I ask, secretly worried that she's already gone a bit mad. She does say some crazy stuff sometimes, stuff that's normally in science-fiction novels. "Are you sure?"

"Of course I'm sure," she replies, shaking her head at me. "It didn't always look like that."

I can't imagine it not looking as it does now. Plastics stretched out as far as the eye can see, in every single direction. The water is churning, frothing, with rubbish, dumping it on the beach with a loud crash.

Grandma looks back towards the sea, a vacant look on her face. "It used to be bluer than you could imagine, darling. The sky is always so grey nowadays, with global warming and all, but the sea- the sea was glorious. Until plastic got to it, that is."

"Didn't anyone try to stop it? To clean it up?" I ask curiously, no longer humouring her, but believing. Wondering.

She glares at me, eyes suddenly turning harsh. "Of course we did. When we realised what was happening, people tried to develop ways to clean it up. People spent their free time down at beaches or in the sea, putting rubbish in bags. Scientists worked on things that could break down plastics faster. Governments brought in law after law to slow down the use of plastic."

"So why did it get worse?"

"There was too much." She shrugs, once again looking sad. "Humanity had finally managed to cause something that they couldn't sweep under the rug, that they couldn't just forget about."

"Like nuclear fallouts," I say. "We're learning about Nagasaki at school."

Grandma nods. "Plastics were the new nuclear war. They lead to a dystopian future that people had only ever written about."

"But we're still alive?"

"We are." She smiles humourlessly. "Humans are so very good at that." Her face twists. "And now there's nothing we can do about the amount of plastic in the world, apart from live in it and grow up in it and die in it. Maybe one day something will happen to erase everything, but-"

She is silent, staring out at the waves bringing more and more rubbish crashing down onto the plastic bottle beach.

"Grandma?"

"But," she says with finality. "I think not."

I shiver, and she starts. "You're cold, darling. How about we walk back home, and I'll show you some pictures of how it used to be?"