Industrialised Islands

“There are better things to see here than the red sand” I gushed as my family and I made it to Raudasandur Beach in Iceland. I led them into the sea, from where you could see a string of silhouetted industrialised islands with jagged cliffs. “Those ones are topped with oil…” I began. “Oil filters”, Genevieve said flatly. I realised that I was much more interested in what I had to say than anyone else was. But I continued to name the islands, and make up pretend names if I didn’t know them.

We were in the sea, holding onto a slippery rock wall, gingerly shuffling along. I told Ville not to walk along the bottom as it might be dangerous. He disobeyed as the ground looked solid enough to him; indeed, it was made up of densely stacked foodstuffs. We followed the yellow packeted ground to a cave. The floors inside were all made of deeply stacked packages of chocolate bars. There were cupboards and furniture, all with these packages in them. Someone was coming.

I hid in a high cupboard with no door, just a blanket that I draped across. We assumed it to be the owner of this storage facility, so kept quiet. I realised that I had been eating the food at will, not thinking that I was a thief. In my own head, I was imagining eating a Moro bar, making a loud rustling noise and being caught. “That would have been a silly idea”, I concluded to myself. My daydreaming meant that time had gone very fast, and we were now alone at the cave again. It was now a house, still packed with brightly coloured, uniform, rectangular packages.

Outside, I went to the sea which lapped not far from the house. A wooden fishing boat bobbed about near the breakers. I could make out a Victorian-era woman wearing a tall hat. She was fishing with a man. A big wave came, sending the boat onto the sand very near to me. The woman fell out spectacularly, before brushing herself off and rueing her lack of balance.

Back at the house, Andrew R was hatching plans to move in. He was thinking about how we’d get out here every day. “We could take the bus to Port Chalmers, buy a car and drive that to the end of the road, and then walk” he explained. Renja and I pointed out the difficulties involved, and that he had no license. I laid on a bed stacked with candy canes. Someone else was coming.

We decided that it was the caretaker, and were not too worried. I shut a huge black iron gate with spikes, so he couldn’t get past. He was on a ride-on lawnmower, tidying up the scruffy yard. I started thinking to myself again. I thought about all the times I had bought chocolate bars, and that I no longer needed to. I also thought that there might be new chocolate bars that were yet to be released, or old ones that had been taken off the shelves long ago. Finding nothing but Moro bars, I figured it to be unlikely. There was also a lot of vegetables, so we could eat healthily if we chose to. Someone else was coming again. I recognised the voice to be that of Norma’s. She and Andrew’s mother had come to pick us up. I ran to the supermarket checkout that was on the beach, and asked for something to write my dream down. They gave me plastic bags to scribble upon.