Listen to Katja reading her story:
Since the shipyard closed, we’re all just half-formed: us kids, whose childhoods have been faded out like an 80s record; the shells of our burnt-out buildings and our burnt-out parents; the boat skeletons that never got their flesh.
Last Thursday we were all down at the dock, sharing a joint, when three of us saw Jenson get up. I looked away when he stepped off. I thought what’s the point of watching him, I don’t want to learn how to do it.
Susie kept her eyes on him the whole time. Her dad was the first to go into the water that winter. She used to come down to plead with people not to do the same, but I think she actually only goes there now to watch, and she really does watch: she counts out loud as they take one step, two, three, a shaky fourth, and she holds her breath for the last few seconds – sometimes even a minute – until they collapse away from sight, like a punctured buoy.
Susie and Lola, my oldest friends, are fleshy bits that hang off the skeleton of this town. While they dangle, they smoke, drink, have sex too young with grey-faced men who haven’t jumped yet. Their moms don’t know where to find them between supper and dawn.
I went with them once to the empty Catholic school on the hill. They smashed the stained-glass windows and sprayed dicks on the old desks. Lola said there’s no God in town anymore, before she pissed into the Virgin Mary water feature.
I go there now sometimes, to the chapel, to sit in one of the dusty pews, imagine God is still here, just discarded like the rest of us.
At first, I prayed the water would rise up and sweep us all off the docks, save us the pain of choosing; once, last spring, I walked to the edge and pleaded, but it didn’t come and get me.
So now I pray for Jenson and the others.
I pray that, under the dock, there’s actually light, music playing, and angels who take turns to swim up and collect the souls.
This story was previously published by Reflex Fiction (3rd prize, Autumn 2021).
Katja Sass studied philosophy and now teaches religious studies in Somerset. She writes flash hunched over her notebook or laptop on the sofa, totally ignoring the specially prepared writing space behind her. Her stories can be found at Lost Futures, Ekphrastic Review, Janus Literary, Paragraph Planet, the Bath Flash Fiction Anthology and have won prizes at Reflex Fiction and Writers’ Playground.
Oh wow!