Your house isn’t flooded in the conventional sense. It’s an unconventional flood.
You knew about the rising seas and that, but this was faster, like the kind of disaster movie that pisses off your mates who work at MetService. One day it was the usual Wellington, can’t beat it, mushrooms in the cupboard, then the next day, with no tsunami and no warning, came the flood.
It’s a deep, calming, unlikely flood—no sewage in the water, fish and eels and dolphins all swimming by. You’re better off than the people who get really fucked over when there’s floods, but it’s hard to look on the bright side.
The news broadcast says not to use any motorboats when getting around the city so you don’t scare the cetaceans, whales and dolphins and orca. You really feel you’re more scared of orca than they are of you. When you see them, you climb to the roof, toss pebbles into the still waters, and watch them sink into the impossibly clear depths.
The roof of your building used to just be where you huddled to vape before you quit, and now it reminds you of cliff diving with your cousins out in the bay. But less rocks, more concrete. Clear water, scary deep, the footpath on one side with the canal the road’s turned into, and the tiny, drowned courtyard on the other. Only the fish can party there now. Occasionally a purloined traffic cone bobs fluorescently past, borne by unknown currents to unknown seas.
Because this definitely isn’t cold enough to be the Pacific. And it’s fresh water, which makes it even more confusing, and also it’s not like you’re about to drink it, so what a waste. You wave down the Delivereasy driver when they row past with Powerade.
What can you do? You batten the hatches. You call in sick to work, because all your clothes are soaked, and the laundromat is underwater.
Kev down the road says the owners fished some of the washing machines out with bungy hooks, and that they’re renting them out as waterproof lockers. The world turned on its head, rotated on spin cycle.
Your poet friend Minerva tells you the flood’s a metaphor, and you say yeah, I know that, mate, but knowing doesn’t stop the mould on all my clothes, soggy shoes and nothing to wear to work today.
On a call with your parents you tell them you’re getting by. On a zoom call with your ex you tell them you’re doing great. In a voice chat with your mates, too late at night, you say maybe it’s time to make your peace with the flood; floods can bring beautiful things too. Silt. Change. Ducks.
The next day you get a text that you’re fired.
You can’t be the only person to call in flooded. You post on the message boards about workers’ rights, and the mods delete it as a joke, because no one can ever believe anything bad happens in New Zealand. The Citizens’ Advice Bureau is underwater, your union rep doesn’t pick up, Fair Go stopped years ago. What can you do?
When your union rep finally gets back to you they can’t help, because all your paperwork was filed under your old name and gender and you break the systems, and they don’t say it out loud, but their voice is . . . kind of sus. Like they think you being trans brought on the flood, like you’re fucking Moses, or Noah or whoever, but you feel more like that guy who woke up as a beetle, except you don’t even get to be famous or a beetle.
Fuck your boss, anyway.
You hold your breath and dive back into your apartment. Battle through all the floating hoodies and business-casual fits and those sparkly shorts from when you went to Ivy, and you fetch the pufferfish who lives in your room, because from the roof you still get signal, you know where your boss lives, and you’re going to straight up fugu a motherfucker—
Because violence is bad, right, but you’re cold and drenched and you can’t live like this, you’re not Aquaman. And you can’t get back at every asshole who landed you here, but you can get back at Name Redacted, who is on the rich list, who lives uphill, and who voted for the party that put through the Floodwater Everywhere And Lots Of It Bill.
You bribe a passing kayaker with your last packet of instant noodles, and you’re underway.
It’s a long trip. The wind picks up, and you wish you’d traded a keep cup or something for a life jacket. Choppy waves splash at the bow.
Even when you get there, you stay in the kayak for a hot minute, bobbing against the walls of his house. “We can do this,” you tell the pufferfish, like it’s gonna either encourage or stop you, but it’s a fish. It has a sweet little face, though. Doesn’t look scared, even though you’re keeping it in a laundry basket. It’s not even puffering. The wind is cold.
If you don’t like getting flooded, fish probably don’t like getting laundry basketed.
You hold the basket under the waves and watch the little guy swim free. Something of yourself leaves with it, and you feel lighter. Like you’ve let go of something, like you can breathe easier. Like . . . you came from water, too, and maybe it’s not so bad to go back.
Then you find a marker that still works, and you write on your boss’s wall—what used to be the second storey of his house on the hill, and is now the ground floor—
Fuck you man
but that doesn’t really cover it, so you add,
Justice to those who bring the flood
because you think it sounds good, and underneath you write,
This is not a metaphor.
And you row back. Along the way a blue penguin pops up from the water beside you and inspects you for a second, as if it has that same fellow-feeling, cousins living the life aquatic. Then it dives again, leaving a sense of wonder and a strong stench of fish. The sun shines bright and blue on the submerged capital. The wind isn’t too bad really, but you wonder if anyone’s thought of using sails here.
Rowing is pretty fun.
Maybe you’ll be a dinghy food-deliverer, bringing people bread and milk and firewood. Row past the killer whales with a kind of ‘you don’t bother me, I won’t bother you’ policy.
For now, you move to your roof. That night your mates come by with a shitty Kmart tent and you play cards, like you’re just camping, and life feels like real life again. Go fish.