Time to announce last week’s contest winner! Lat week, we asked writers to imagine what it would be like to live in an area affected by severe drought. How would everyday life change without access to water?
Our winning entry gave us a detailed glimpse into what life would be like under these extreme conditions. Congrats goes out to Tammy Mack for winning her second writing contest here at Literative! Thanks for your entry Tammy!
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Drought
By Tammy Mack
Sarah wasn’t like most in her small California based town. She didn’t take the drought with the ease that most did. Not when she felt like something could be done. At the very least, some kind of aid could be given to the towns hardest hit, like her’s. The drought wasn’t just killing the grass and plants. It was killing the normalcy of life. Showers were limited to five minutes. Quick, in and out. Just long enough to wet down your body and hair. Not only were showers limited down to a mere amount of minutes, but as it were, you could only take one shower every three days. THREE DAYS. You might as well label everyone in the state as disgusting and move on.
Most everyone she knew was living off of paper plates, which was definitely great for the environment, because washing dishes was a luxury that the state would no longer allow.
Despite the hellish temperatures outside, generally staying between sticky sweat phase and melting your face off phase, there was no way to cool down. Yeah, there was air conditioning, but because everyone was using theirs way more than they should be, there was now a limit on how long or what temperature your air conditioning could be set on. Pools were officially closed down, not surprising, but it definitely sets it’s own problems. The beaches, if you were lucky enough to live near one, weren’t much help. The sand is hot enough to set fire to your feet, and if you made it to the water, it’s always so clogged with people that the water is far too warm to even cool you down a degree or two.
Even with everything that sucked during the daytime, it was the nighttime that bothered Sarah most. It was the dreams. Ice cold rain pouring from the skies in buckets. It wasn’t a dream, it was a damned nightmare. To wake up and find that it wasn’t raining, and that there was no comforting end in sight for the hell that Sarah and many others currently found themselves in.
The scientists weren’t helping matters either. Going on and on about how the drought might last for years to come. Sarah thought about just quitting her job and uprooting to somewhere else. Some where were rain wasn’t merely a dream or fantasy, but a reality. Maybe she would move to Seattle. Rain was an nearly everyday occurrence there.
Every single time she thought about leaving though, Sarah thought about her family and friends. No matter how bastard hot it got, or how dry everything was, they weren’t about to just give up and leave California behind. Could she really leave behind those that she loved and cared about most? It was a question she thought of often. Some days aren’t as bad as others, and she knew she could live with the way life was in California. Those days, things were good, or at least as good as they were ever going to be. It was the bad days, when temps soared into the mid 100’s with absolutely no relief that she realized that those people she cared about were crazy. Who could just willingly stay behind in what had become desert? At least that was what she was currently telling herself as she boards a plane for Seattle. That her family, her friends, they were the crazy ones for staying. That everything would be much better, clearer even, once she landed in a much cooler area. Felt rain for the first time in the past three years. She had to keep telling herself that, because it was the only way she truly believed the words.
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For the last two years, Tammy has been hard at work on both a novel and on a series of short stories. You can connect with Tammy on Twitter at @tjmack1986.
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