Not Your Usual Scary Stories

Filth - Part 1

Authors note

This is a dream I had.

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The trash continent.

I've imagined it many times over the years, but never in my wildest dreams could I have envisioned the reality. The last survey team had declared it to be almost the size of Guam, but that was years ago.

It's been growing.

No country will admit to still dumping their refuse here, but it must be twice that size already. We've been here for five days and still haven't found the other coast. Not that we've been traveling very fast.

The land is dangerous. It's covered from top to bottom in a thick ooze that seems to act as a mortar, holding its very mass together. It's incredibly slippery, even though every step causes a loud crunching of the ancient metals and plastics below.

Something's been blurring the satellite images of this ever growing wasteland for years. The whole area is covered in a thick orangish cloud that wafts upwards out of air pockets below the surface. In places the ground shakes as a bubble pushes it's way upwards through the filth, letting out noxious flatulence that tints the air around us. When my survey team first arrived, I didn't think the smell could get any worse.

Oh how wrong I had been.

The further in we went, the more the stench grew. With every breath I received a mouthful of millions of pounds of rotting food, years in the making. It wasn't unusual for members of the group to spontaneously vomit. The stench got into everything. There was no avoiding it, no reprieve.

We had been hired to map the coastline, but that was a nebulous task at best. The edges of the landmass were little more than loosely floating plains of refuse. Millions of plastic bags and empty cans covered the ocean for more than a mile in any direction.

We attempted to chart these at first, but they proved difficult. There was no way to walk to the edge, and even approaching it was dangerous. The land became less stable the further out until any random step could give way beneath you, plunging you down into the slimy goop below.

We saved Jim, he only fell up to his neck in sea water. Mark wasn't so lucky. He disappeared in an instant, mid-sentence, straight downwards. We reached in after him, but all we found were armfulls of greenish slime that covered us like snot.

We headed inland immediately after that. The center of the island was much more compact, even if the smell was worse.

Rather than stick to the perimeter, we decided to travel straight across the landmass to determine its diameter. Assuming it was basically a circle, we could at least discover the general circumference. It was necessary to find something. The people back home needed to know about this looming threat.

So we began to walk. The going was always rough. Hills and mountains of trash swelled forth in random piles all around us. It slipped underfoot and often squirted hot ooze upwards with each step. Many strange obstacles blocked our way while jagged pieces of metal stuck of the ground like the teeth of a giant monster, snaring and snagging at our heavy boots and protective pants. We tried to travel around the mountainous piles, but the low points of the land all held slow running rivers of sludge. There was no walking through them. They are as thick as molasses, dragging in and sucking down anything that comes too close.

The hills were no better though. The slime was often not strong enough to hold the piles of trash together under our weight. Walls crumbled like cake beneath our hands and caused massive avalanches of moldy refuse.