THE LAST WAVE

Lockdown stirred the creative juices of reader Björn Alfthan, who peers into the future to present a fictional story set in the wild waves of Norway, five years from now.

- Björn Alfthan

VOICES

I stir to the sounds of quiet but excited voices around me. A faint smell of disinfectant fills my nose. A harsh, bright light pierces my eyelids. A shadow moves across, creating a halo above me. I recognize the smell of coffee. I make an effort to open my eyes, but they refuse. “He´s awake, at last”, says a voice I don’t recognise.

In vain, I try to respond and say something, but my lungs and chest feel tight, and my teeth, lips, and tongue feel massively bruised. I start to panic, and my heart starts to beat quicker and quicker. I cry out, but the only sound coming out of my mouth is a low groan. “Calm yourself. You need to rest. You’ve suffered a concussion, punctured lung, a few broken ribs, and a broken ankle. You’ll do fine but you need to rest”, said the strange voice. I am confused and for the first time in my life, I don’t know where I am, how I got here or how long I´ve been lying here.

NEW START

It was going to be an exciting year ahead, despite the circumstances. My parent’s B&B was surviving. We didn’t get many international tourists anymore. But that wasn’t stopping locals from coming. Cheap flights, and with it, mass tourism, came to an abrupt stop a few years ago. We could no longer fly whenever and wherever we wanted anyway, even if we had the money. They called it carbon rationing.

But I wasn’t really complaining. I’d had to abandon my university education to help out, but we were doing just about fine. Cash was short, but we learned how to mend things and keep them going. We worked our small farm behind the B&B when the local tourist season was down and had a solid supply of fresh fruit and vegetables.