Unexpected Disposal

She was walking on the beach when she saw a bluff in the distance, a long cliff that began as a sand dune and then sloped up into a big hillside, and then dropped away towards the ocean, forming a picturesque bluff, complete with sea grass over the top, and a sandy white face dropping to the beach. She had been walking for about two hours, and being new to the area, she wanted to explore some more. Still walking along the beach, she approached the bluff, and as she grew nearer, it began to reveal its true size, it was a little farther away than she first thought- but as she was on vacation hear, it made little difference to her. Ann would get into a mood for long walk-abouts, and just go exploring- Ann loved to find new places, and this was a great new place for her. Finally at the base of the bluff, the cliff rose up slowly from soft sand at the base, and grey clay and rock were exposed about thirty feet or so up the face; roughly exposing the earth to the elements. As she walked near the base, she noted a ramp-like feature to the base that seemed to be a travel path. Though it was a natural feature, it went along the wall of the bluff and went up a ways out of site.

Ann started to climb the ramp and follow its winding path overlooking the ocean. She saw that people had indeed been using this path; there were footprints and bike tracks. When she got about one-hundred feet in, she stopped to look back, and the view was so nice, not a person in sight for as far as she could see. The warm ocean breeze, the day could not be more perfect she thought…

At the next bend in the trail she saw a place not too far away where the trail opened up to a large area; bigger than just the five or ten feet of the ramp. The dirt there was colored differently, pinkish, and glistened. The top of the bluff was some 300 feet tall, but the area she was standing on was about halfway up the cliff. Over on the cleared area, the pinkish color ran in a vein up the slope, not the same as the veins of the natural clay. Curious, she began to head over to the new site across the bend, some thousand feet away. The twisty path gradually brought her to the clearing.  At last she was just around the corner from the area.

Peering around the narrow bend, she laid her eyes on the pinkish area. It looked like marble, and was shiny smooth. There was nothing living in the area, and she could not see enough to gauge what it was. With the trail so narrow, and the footing precarious, she grabbed the side of the cliff for more support, and tried to get around the bend to where the clearing was. There was just enough ledge for her to stand on one foot before the pink rock-like clearing began some three feet away, too far for her to get to safely.

After leaning and peering for about five minutes, she realized that the other side had a place to continue safely up the ramp on the other side. Mustering all her courage, and driven by her desire to explore, she decided to jump the narrow gap in the trail to the pink clearing.  She grabbed the wall and braced her body, bent her knees, and made sure that her feet were planted firmly. Pulling herself forward and pushing off with all her might, she flung herself hard into the gap. Clear of the gap, she had jumped well over the narrow gap, and firmly landed in the pink clearing- further than she first thought she would… only to find out that she had been wrong about the pink stone… it was not stone.

Glistening in the sun, the smoothness of its surface was in fact slimy and not solid at all. It was gooey, mud-like and thick. The clearing was where something had been dumped, and over the exposure to repeated dumping, the cliff side had eroded down. She sank immediately up to her knees, and the gooey sticky slime was very hard to move in. Ann gasped in dismay for her discovery, and then frantically looked about for a place to escape the goo. The only path for her escape is that which she already knew- straight across the clearing to the other side, some 30 feet away. She lifted her right foot and pushed off with her left foot, only to find the ground beneath her still gooey, and not very firm. Getting her right foot out, left her stuck with her left leg in up to the hip. Now sprawled  out and bracing herself up with her right leg, she remembered what someone told her about quicksand, to spread out your weight, and not get bogged down into the muddy under part of the quicksand. Maybe this would work her too, she guessed. Pressing her torso onto the top of the goo, she pushed up and managed to free her sunken leg, but now her front side was covered in goo. She had to crawl over the goo to reach the other side, she thought.

Pushing on her hands and knees, she slowly plowed her body thru the mess. She was getting exhausted by the vigorous maneuvering. After all, she had walked about four miles just to get here. The goo was thick and deep, someone was responsible for this, and certainly, she thought, it had to be illegal to dump this stuff out in the open like this.

Getting near the center of the mess, she stopped to catch her breath. The mid day sun was right overhead, and she was tired. Looking around, the bluff was a natural blind for the dumping site; she could not see anything past the walls of the bluff in either direction. No doubt this was why they choose to dump here. The walls of the clearing had given way to the thick weight of the gooey slime, whatever it was. It had no smell, but looked like icing, and sort of felt like axle grease, only thicker, this stuff was not natural. It seemed to stick to whatever it touched, and she could not get it off. She could wipe it down to a point, but it stuck as long as she left it alone, it would take a lot of cleaning to free her of this goo, and the walk home would be terrible.

Being rolled up into a thick gooey mess clothes all ruined, guck stuck into your hair is very humiliating, and Ann felt like little more could happen to her now that she was a victim of such an event. But she was wrong. Her trip was just beginning.

This might be an industrial glue or epoxy batch that went bad, or it could be something worse, like a nasty toxic waste. She thought it best to get out as soon as possible. Just then she heard a noise from above, a big truck, breaking the natural silence of this isolation. She looked up to hear it getting closer, and she yelled at the top of her lungs, “HEY, Down Here!” but she knew that the sound of the truck was too loud for anyone inside to hear her. She waited for it to stop, and then she would try again.

The truck stopped, and she could hear it changing gears, then the sound of it backing up… she got a bad feeling- this would not be another truck starting to dump, would it? No! This was bad… she had to get their attention.  The truck stopped again.

“Down here!” she yelled, “I’m down here!” but the truck revved its engine and she saw the back end of the truck above start to move, the tail of the truck had a boom-like device attached to it, and surely it would begin soon to dump more goo down upon her.

The boom opened, and extended out over the bluff, then a sudden vibration of heavy pumping action followed, then the goo surged out of the mouth of the boom, falling, falling, down to the cliff, and splattering over the walls of the cliff, oozing into the clearing, where she was stuck. Lucky for her, the goo did not reach her, it was too far inward against the cliff wall. Ann sighed in relief. But it was not over, the goo was still coming down, and she knew this was only a temporary reprieve from the danger at hand. Building up, the new wave of goo began to spread out, and settle into the old goo. More still came down and she felt the goo under start to shift.  If enough goo came down, it could push her over the side of the clearing, and then she would fall off the side of the bluff. She had to get out!  

Struggling for her life, Ann crawled as fast as she could towards the side. She saw the goo she was moving as she struggled, and she was being taken in another direction. It was too late, her patch of goo was being over taken both by the new goo spreading out over her, and the movement of the goo under her. She was now covered head to toe in goo, up to her waist and the whole pile of goo with her in it moving slowly towards the edge.  Eight to ten feet away, the edge of the cliff was getting closer. Ann was being carried further from the other side of the center, making it that much farther to travel before she was to the other side. Inching her way through the mess, she was just holding even with the slow movement of the pool of goo.

The splattering of the falling goo finally stopped, and a great mound of new steaming goo was oozing down the slope, pilling up near the cliff wall, slowly spreading out as the evening sun hit it. Goo was slipping over the edge of the cliff, and Ann was getting tired fast. After a battle of about ten minutes, she finally gave up- with all of her body covered in goo, she felt like a fly caught in fly paper. The river of goo brought her up to the edge of the cliff, and she started to sink into the goo as her body was pulled over the edge. She could not move at all, every muscle ached, and breathing was all she had left. The thick goo did not fall over the cliff, but oozed down the side; she was turned over and her head began to fall first, with more goo hitting the back side of her body, she tumbled slowly as her mass brought her down.

Trying hard to keep the goo from getting into her eyes, she felt the goo now pressing on her, she was about half way down. The long fall to the sandy floor of the bluff was over two hundred feet. If she was lucky, she would make it all the way down without being stuck, and she could get free.

The goo oozed its way down. And she saw that the sun was getting low in the sky. Soon she would be at the bottom. Ann let herself go- and found that if she sat in a seated position, she could just close her eyes and wait for the goo to take her down without having to worry about moving. Ann dozed off several time during the night, and woke just before sunrise.

She could hear the waves at the bottom now- it was the tide coming in. She was about thirty feet from the bottom, and she could soon get out. As she came slowly closer to the bottom, she tried to work her way out, but her body was very restricted in the goo, over the night, it had hardened up slightly, no doubt because it was colder. As soon as the sunlight hits it, the goo would of course get melted and she could move again.

By now it must be about 8:00am, and she could probably get home by 1:00 if she was lucky. She heard the sound of another truck above, no doubt bringing another load to dump, but at the very bottom, it could not affect her now. She looked at the beach, covered by the goo- a mound of it pooling up as the waves broke against a hard crust that had formed a dam.

That was curious, Ann thought, why would there be a crust, forming a dam? It really didn’t matter to her now- all she knew is that she was about to get out of the pool of goo, and she would be walking home.

The goo was stuck to everything. She struggled hard to get to the side of the pool near the sandy beach, and now the sun was directly overhead.  The waves were lapping up to the top of the beach and splashing her as she got free of the goo, she dropped to the beach glad to be free of the goo that had taken her on such an unexpected adventure. The beach sand stuck to the goo still on her body, and she got up and started to walk up the beach to the dunes. Just then a giant rush of water came up behind her and knocked her down, she was engulfed by the water, and rolled over and over on the beach.

Getting back on her feet, she began to walk back to the shore once again, but she felt there was something happening to the goo still on her body. It was stiffer than before, and caked with sand. Moving fast to the dunes, she tried to get as far from the water as she could, careful not to let it catch her a second time. Ann trudged up the dunes, and reached the base of the bluff once more, this time she was at the bottom, about one hundred feet from where she ended her trip over the cliff. She moved slowly and the goo kept getting stiffer, she would not make it home, she thought, she had to save herself. If she could make it up to the top of the tallest dune, she might have a chance if someone saw her. She climbed up the tallest dune around her, and stood upright for her last movement. The goo stiffened up, and soon she was hard as a rock.

Ann could not move, her body was held in check by the goo hardened around her. Nothing could she do now- but wait.

The next day the workers returned to the disposal site and backed the truck up to the cliff wall. Once again, they would dump another load of goo down the slope. Getting out for a smoke- one of the men noticed a figure down at the bottom of the bluff, atop the sand dunes. He motioned for his helper to come and look.

“Looks like we got one…” he said as they both looked down on her rigid form.

“What should we do?” Asked his helper.

“Well, I’ll tell you what we aren’t going to do…” he sighed, “if we help her out of the mess she is in- WE are going to be in big trouble!”

He grabbed his rope, and started down the side of the bluff. When he reached the bottom, he came around the back of her position so he could not be seen. He wrapped the rope around her waist, and put his sweaty bandana over her face as a blindfold. Tipping her to the ground he began to pull her by the rope over to the bluff again. Ann could feel herself being dragged through the sand, but the goo was solid as a rock. She could not do anything.

She wondered what was happening to her. The man stopped at the base of the goo-pool, and looked around at the scene. Digging a shallow trench behind the base of the goo-pool, he placed Ann’s body into the shallow hole.  The hole was beginning to fill with water, as it was at the water level. He took a piece of driftwood and knocked a crack into the side of the goo-pool nearest Ann and the pit she was in, and fresh goo spilled over and into the trench with Ann inside. The heavy goo pushed the water aside and surrounded Ann. In minutes the goo was sealing Ann into a fresh prison of hard goo. Solidified by the salty water, the trench was now a solid block, with Ann inside, her head barely sticking out. The man took some goo and spread it over her bandana, and sealed it to her head.  Every part of Ann was encased now in the goo.

Dragging the rope still attached to her waist, he placed her above the pool, where all the goo was running down the slope. Now the path of goo would run over top of her body and into the pool. He splashed some water on the goo around her to seal it in place.

The next day the man returned with a hose, which he inserted into her Ann’s mouth, sealing it with more goo- then leaving her to be encased forever by the waste.

22.11.10