Slush fills the holes in my boots as I walk down the road curving downhill around a yellowed pond. This place used to be alive; grass and sand packed tight, back when people weren’t afraid.
I went fishing here once with my old man when I was young. I remember him helping me bait my hook as we sat on the bank, telling me to not be afraid of the worm. It was early morning and I could hear a song chirp out its greeting to the world in notes never to be reproduced by man in quite that fashion. The sun hurt my eyes then.

I wince internally as my foot sinks in another inch of mud, making an inward sucking noise. It pulls me in and I pull my way back out with an equally sickening sound. I look down and see my feet buried toe-deep in something that I am sure is liquefied shit, but know that it is merely that which used to be firm ground. Patches of soil now dissolved by toxic runoff into a viscous sludge fit only for insects and wild animals to tread, though they don’t – they have better sense than that. All the waste goes here.

It doesn’t matter now. It was all alive at one time, and now has died thanks to the machine that pumps out our death from its industrial waste pipe hung protruding just over the toxic pond, every minute of every hour, making us slaves to our own demise.
Like a diarrhetic sphincter it gives way only to sickly green runoff, fear, and death. And it is one of many. So many.

When the oil finally ran out, we had to find another source of energy to fuel our insatiable desire for fast cars and ready convenience, and that’s when coal made a huge cocaine-like comeback. Entire industries were built around it, manufacturing coal-burning cars and trains, public transport now ran exclusively on coal and our lungs became so decrepit over the years that we tasted it – we lived it. That sweet black gold mined from the heart of the planet now became our very blood.

But it was good, so we loved it.

Now, as the coal sand brushes its way past my goggles and into the sky, I –

The sky. The sky never changes. It has been brown as rust and has tasted like it for as many years as I can remember past adolescence. I seem to recall that at some point it used to be blue, but that memory is as vague as any other memory which has been pushed into the back of one’s psyche due to the overwhelming weight of reality. Spires of smoke stacks and plumes of black dust dominate the skyline now and you’re lucky if you see a star at night at all, though no one is ever sure when night time comes. Most say that when you see a star its just another top light on a smoke stack. It is all the same.

I walk further, curving deeper down the bank. The air tastes much more like copper now and my goggles are getting dusty.
The further I go, the closer I get. The further I go, the closer I get. My mantra.

Lung infections took the youngest first, before anyone said anything. Congressional hearings were held to determine the dangers of this new way of life we were adapting to.
Scientists and lobbyists were battling it out for years, even as the plumes rose higher and the smog grew deeper, until one day it was decided that it was cheaper to burn than to invest and invent.

All hail the mighty dollar.

My respiration mask is getting clogged. Shit. I don’t have an extra filter, but who gives two dimes worth a shit. Better make this one count. That’s all I care about.

I begin to run. The closer I make my way to the front gates before I double over the better. The industrial waste pipes and chimneys now loom before me like a light at the end of the tunnel. I must make it before my lungs seize up.

Eventually, we became aware of our folly. Small anti-corporate groups started up and held marches down broad ash-strewn avenues in major cities, advocating solar and wind energy, and were laughed down by contemporaries and government alike even as the tempestuous dervishes of copper dust stung their eyes and invaded their mouths. Temperatures rose and the weather went from being a bitch to being a full-blown thunder cunt. All the while clean energy was being called pseudo-science, pipe dreams and money holes. I wish I could say we never saw it coming.

I am now at the front gates of the plant. They stand before me as the gates of heaven, but black instead of gold. To the sides of the courtyard there are even more gates leading off to what I assume are operational areas where they mine, process, and package the coal. The cul-de-sac is centered by a large metal door in the middle of what looks like a mansion – the local corporate office. Overhead the sky turns a darker shade of copper. I see a human shadow in the central window, looking down. It’s time.

As I approach the main gate and several guards in gas masks and corporate “Earth within a laurel wreath” insignias on their brown jackets stop me. I’ve always found that emblem ironic. They ask me for ID and my business there.
I open my trench coat.

They shoot.

I have but one second to pull the release on my chest-mounted explosives as their machine gun fire rips through my stomach and legs. Poor shots.

I see the sky as I fall, and for a moment it looks blue, as it once was.
Then, a momentary flash, a faint sound of someone screaming, and then… nothingness.

Do not be afraid of the worm, he said.