'The Gravity of the Situation' by Bill Egarr

Water

The smells are all new, but there’s no time to enjoy them: the dog knows only that the girl is crying and needs her. She leaps into the water because there’s no choice. It’s full of fast-travelling debris, and the current is strong, but she is stronger, more determined. The girl grasps her as she passes, scoops her up and into her arms. The building beneath them shudders and groans, but at least now they will die together.

Fire

Emad is out when the bomb reduces his makeshift home to a crater. He’s been queueing at the aid truck all morning and has just eaten his first proper meal in a week. He stands at the rim scratching his head. A burst of machine-gun fire fractures the stunned silence. The irony that being starving has saved his life isn’t lost on him. He would laugh if his laughter hadn’t been stolen from him.

Earth

A flagging entertainer with a dyed jet-black quiff is singing rock and roll to tables of pensioners only slightly older than him. They are assembled in the community space of a tired shopping centre that will be shut down and scheduled for demolition next year. They huddle over their teas, some bewildered and inarticulate, others chattering like children. The gravitational pull of their dying town pins them inescapably in place.

Air

The shopping centre is a small brown hexagon viewed from the window of the passing aeroplane. The cars and people are tiny microbes, mindlessly belching out carbon dioxide into an already overburdened atmosphere. “Like cattle,” thinks the particle physicist as she looks down on them. “They barely know they exist.”