The Last Straw
A short story about a boy who will stop at nothing to save the turtles | Fiction | Coming of Age | Dark Comedy
Aiden’s blood ran cold as he sucked up the last sip of his chocolate milkshake.
He removed the plastic straw, and bent it between his fingers.
“Whether you throw them out or recycle them,” he muttered, “all your plastic straws end up in the same place…lodged in the throat of an innocent sea turtle…choking the entire species into extinction.”
This is what the tour guide told him.
The one from the aquarium.
Aiden stared at the trash, then the recycling, then back at the trash. All at once, he felt sixteen ounces of sheer panic bubbling inside him.
“Time to go, honey!” Mom called.
Aiden turned. He stuffed the straw deep into his cargo shorts and followed Mom to the car. He was quiet all the way home.
When Mom pulled into the garage, Aiden jumped out and ran upstairs. He tossed the straw somewhere in his closet. He thought no one saw, but little did he know, Mom was standing in the doorway, tilting her head.
I guess all little boys do strange things sometimes, she thought, especially when they’re young.
The next day, Mom was reading in the living room when she caught Aiden bringing a 12-pack of empty plastic Coca-Cola bottles into his bedroom, and locking the door.
That’s when she really started to worry.
10 years later, Aiden moved out.
Finally, he was starting his freshman year of college.
He had worked really hard to get here, but never attended class. Instead, he spent all his time crashing frat parties. “It all goes to the same place,” he said. Aiden stood up on a sticky ping-pong table. “Turtle esophagi!”
Suddenly, the music stopped.
Everyone went silent.
“Get off the table!” said a voice.
“We’re in the middle of a game!” said another.
Aiden jumped down, snatched a 6-pack of Busch Light.
He raised it above his head.
“Who cares about your stupid game!?” He was holding back tears. “Can’t you see? The turtles are getting strangled by these plastic rings every day! What if that happened to you!? What would YOU do!?”
Everyone stopped, looked, and laughed.
The music resumed.
The beat dropped.
Aiden sprinted out the door.
By 5 am, most of the students had passed out.
Aiden snuck back in, tiptoed around the unconscious teenagers sprawled across the house, and gathered every plastic ‘murder weapon’ littering the floors and tables. Then, he hauled them back to his studio apartment and dumped them into a mountain of takeout containers, plastic bottles, used cutlery, bendy straws.
His plastic kingdom had grown so large that the overflow spilled onto his hardwood floor like a clear-colored avalanche that would take thousands of years to melt.
Entering and exiting his apartment had become almost impossible.
In the meantime, Aiden survived on Amazon and UberEATS, and always made sure to request plastic-free delivery. Instead, they sent him cardboard and paper bags, which Aiden saw as equally as harmful to the turtles.
So he kept those, too.
Before long, his home was stuffed to the ceiling with bottles, boxes, and bubble wrap. It no longer looked like a studio apartment.
It was an ocean of single-use waste.
The next day, Aiden’s doorbell rang.
It was an extra-large chocolate milkshake from McDonald’s.
It came with a plastic straw—a plastic straw he specifically asked McDonald’s not to send. At first, Aiden was not lovin’ it. But then he remembered, this plastic straw would never leave his apartment, nor would it ever reach the ocean.
So, he stuck the plastic straw between his lips.
He leaned forward to dip it inside that thick chocolatey goodness. But before he could take a sip, something stopped him.
Aiden couldn’t move a muscle. His entire body was submerged in an ocean of garbage, stuck like a fly in Jell-O. Aiden struggled to break free, but the harder he fought, the more trapped he became.
The red-and-yellow striped tube slipped from his teeth, fell down his throat, and got lodged in his windpipe. Aiden coughed and spat, his body convulsing in a futile attempt for freedom. But his hands just wouldn't budge. He was bound by the six-hundred-square-foot straight jacket of his own design.
His face turned purple.
His eyes swelled up.
Aiden knew he wasn’t going to survive.
But as his world went dark, and time stretched into eternity, the fear slowly began to subside, and a strange calm settled over him. His teary eyes roamed over the landscape of trash that defined his existence. Never in his life had he seen something so beautiful.
Not a single one of these plastic straws would ever reach the ocean, he thought. Not one would ever choke the “most beautiful animal in the sea” to death.
Mom’s favorite animal.
The woman who had begged her “hyper-obsessive little boy” to throw away his trash, had tried again and again to save him.
But in the end, she had no choice.
She sent her only son to the psychiatric hospital.
Where the doctors finally diagnosed him:
“Environmentally insane.”
Wow that little comment he’d heard as a child grew to that level of commitment. Thanks for sharing
Thanks for writing it!