Post by Shadow Phoenix on Jun 6, 2009 17:27:43 GMT -5
I, um, wrote a short story. I was on a hang-up with older established characters, so I wanted to do something fresh to get me out of my rut. With this out of the way, I should be able to manage to start writing with established characters again. But since I can't remember the last time I did a short story (or wrote any fiction, here or elsewhere), I feel rusty. So this is me putting myself out there a little. Comments, critiques, and whatnot are all welcome. But I hope you like it.
The Beach, Andrew Exner
Wisps of pink, orange, and yellow curled together with the clouds to create a gentle, growing flame above the water. It was a pretty picture, the approaching new day. The puffy clouds slowly stretched their arms out and yawned as they saw the sun approaching. Below, the waves continued their endless pursuit of the shore, unaffected by the rising of the sun. One wave after another would rise on the shoulders of the one before it, doomed to be dashed on the grainy sands of the beach. Now and then one wave might make it a little farther, but never could they quite make it all the way up the steep slopes of the beach.
But on this morning, the waves dashed among the new company of small toes in the sand. The clouds did not take notice of these visitors; no one expected them to make a show yet and so they dozed. But the visitors noticed the clouds as they stared off into the horizon made of pink, orange, and yellow wisps. They noticed the blue-gray waves and their monotonous, meaningless efforts which resulted in the soaking of sand and skin. And they noticed the strange gray-green line on the cusp of the horizon, twinkling as day banished night.
A boy and a girl sat on the beach, seemingly motionless save for the wind blowing through their hair. They stared intently ahead. No words came to their lips. They just sat and watched the sun rise. They were young—neither older than ten. Brother and sister, judging from the thick, black, curly hair. Hers was long, his was much shorter. And these raven-haired siblings simply sat and stared.
The sun peeked above the gray-green line and the wisps of pink, orange, and yellow flames shrank away bit by bit as light blues stretched in to take their place. The flames had not last long, but they had been pretty. The clouds noticed the sun spying on them and started moving along faster, turning a little more puffy white. More people would be waking up soon—they had to finish getting up to. The horizon shimmered and simmered, casting a glassy glow on the still-moving waves. They kept moving.
“Sis,” the young boy said as the sun showed the top of its head, “my feet are cold.”
The girl blinked and nodded, “Mhmm.”
The boy looked down, away from the ever-brightening sun and watched as water encircled his toes. His feet mashed a little further down into the wet sand and he curled his toes to feel the cool grains against his skin. Cold, but…strangely nice.
“I don’t remember the last time we watched the sunrise like this,” said the girl.
The boy blinked and nodded, “Mhmm.”
How long had it been? The memory seemed fuzzy and fragmented. Neither the boy nor the girl could remember. The clouds and the waves didn’t remember either, nor did they care. The clouds just posed and the waves kept up their endless pursuit of the shore. It would be worthless to ask them. They all dropped the subject.
A gust of wind showered the two with a fine spray of sea and sand. The boy sneezed and the girl winced and shook her head a little as she felt sand embed in her hair. It felt awful, but she could get over it. A grain of sand had gotten in the boy’s eye and he started to cry a little. Just tears at first—a natural reaction. He rubbed his eyes with his small fist. But the tears didn’t stop and the whimpering began to follow. The girl almost didn’t hear the tiny chest-heaves of tears over the wind and the waves, but she turned to see her brother crying and reached out her hand along the sand. Her brother grasped her hand lightly and kept crying. The sand was long-gone.
“Why are you crying?” the girl asked.
The boy didn’t respond, but kept on crying and wiping the tears away with his arm. The girl looked away from her brother and back towards the rising sun. The wispy flames were faint amidst the blue backdrop now, and the gray-green line was indiscernible. The sun’s warmth was beginning to cast its rays on the pair of beach-sitters. It felt nice, even if the sand was awful in her hair.
The girl tried again, “Why are you crying?”
The boy took his arm away from his eyes, revealing a contorted mess of redness. “I don’t know why,” he whispered with a choked voice.
The boy looked up at the sun and shook his head, “I can’t remember.”
Despite the warmth of the rising sun, a chill ran up the girl’s spine as her brother spoke. She didn’t know why she all of a sudden got a chill, but it happened.
“Can’t remember what?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” the boy admitted. “Anything.”
The girl squeezed her brother’s hand and frowned. She breathed deeply and smelled the heavy, salty air of the ocean. “Anything?”
“Anything.”
The girl’s frown deepened, showing crossing lines not meant for a girl her age. She began to trace a finger through the dense, water-laden sand in thought. “Anything,” she repeated after a moment of wind-wave-silence. “Neither can I.”
The wind-wave-silence overtook the two once again and the sun continued to rise. A flock of seagulls made their presence known in the distance as they flew along the beach, breaking the silence with their noisy kee-awws. The girl continued to trace her finger through the sand and the boy eventually stopped crying. The smell of the salt stung their noses as they breathed silently, watching the waves and the sun and the clouds.
“Surely we have to remember something,” the girl said as the seagulls passed overhead, kee-awwing at their noisiest. She let go of his hand and brushed her hair out of her face.
“I remember coming here,” the boy responded. “Just not when or why.”
“And?” the girl replied incredulously, obviously not satisfied. “There must be more.”
“I don’t know,” he said simply.
But neither could remember much at all. It was fuzzy, like the clouds. Fragmented, like the fire wisps in the sky. Nothing important. Barely there…
It felt lonely to not remember. Anything.
“I remember you, sis,” the boy said.
“Obviously,” she said. She turned to her brother and stuck her tongue out with a little smile. He saw that and smiled, too. Then they laughed. That felt good.
“Then we must have parents, right?” the girl said.
“I think so. Maybe.” It made sense. People had parents. Right?
“Maybe we came here with them,” the boy said.
“Maybe,” the girl replied. But then again…
“Where are they?” she wondered aloud.
Wind-wave-seagull-silence.
“I don’t know,” the boy said. Anything.
The sun had nearly freed itself from the water. The clouds all looked different now, blown and scattered by the winds. The pink, orange, and yellow wisps were no more—only the growing blue. The seagulls were gone now, out of the range of hearing. The endless cycle of crashing waves had retreated back momentarily, receding from the toes of the intruders. But there was something new in the waves now, an inconsistency in the endless cycle. It glinted in the sun as it bobbed up and down with the waves. The new intruder made no attempts at violence—it merely went along with the motion of the water, carried forward to the front lines. It was at last ejected onto the sands, where it rolled along the dense grains of wetness and crested over a hill safe from the greedy riptides that accompanied the waves.
The boy stood up slowly, wobbling a little, and walked towards the object. It winked at him as they glistened on the film of wetness. It was a light green glass bottle with a cork in its top. The “Coca-Cola” label emblazoned in the glass partially covered though did not hide the contents of the bottle. There was a rolled up piece of paper tucked inside the glass. He got to the intriguing little thing and picked it up as the foam of the waves splashed around his ankles. He examined it half like a priceless artifact and half like it was dangerous. After being satisfied that it was actually neither, he turned around and showed it to his sister.
“Look!” he said, waving it in the air.
She looked up and saw him flapping the bottle about. She couldn’t really tell what it was or what her brother thought he was doing, but he looked like an idiot. “Bring it here,” she called out.
The boy scampered back to their spot, kicking up water and sand as he went. He sat down and handed the bottle to his sister. “Look!” he repeated, excitedly. “What is it?”
The girl smiled and held back a laugh. “It’s a bottle, dummy.”
The boy frowned and stuck his tongue out. “No, I know that,” he said, “But there’s paper inside.”
She actually hadn’t noticed that. “A message in a bottle.”
The boy nodded, “Let’s open it and read it. I’ve always wanted to write a message in a bottle.”
A memory?
“Why?” the girl asked. “That seems…silly.”
But she felt it, too. She felt the memory of wanting to write something, seal it up, and throw it out as far as possible so someone else might read it. Someone else had the same idea, and now they could read it whatever the strangers had wanted to say. It was kind of exciting, actually.
“I don’t know,” the boy said. “I just…want to.”
The girl held the bottle carefully and plucked the cork out of the top. She upturned the glass and the letter fell into her open, waiting hand. She threw the bottle back a little and unrolled the paper. And she started to read with her eyes.
“The handwriting is awful,” she commented right away.
The boy frowned, “Come on, that doesn’t matter! What does it say? Read it out loud.”
The girl sighed and nodded. “Okay, here goes.”
“August 5. No year…huh. Anyway. To Somebody. Mommy and Daddy won’t stop fighting. I wish they would. Daddy hit mommy again and it scared me. She keeps talking about leaving. I just want things to go back to normal again. Mary said it isn’t our fault, but I don’t know what to do. I want to fix it. I don’t think anyone can help. But whoever you are, Somebody, now you know. Pray, or something. From, Tommy.”
Both of them frowned. The wind-wave-silence was drowned out by the beating of their hearts in their ears. It was sad on a deeper level than either of them understood, but felt profoundly.
“Should we pray, or something?” the boy asked.
The girl blinked and nodded, “Mhmm.”
But their thoughts drowned out any effort of prayer as they closed their eyes and bowed their heads.
“Amen,” the girl said.
“Amen,” her brother repeated.
Wind-wave-silence. Anything.
“You know,” the girl said, “I feel like I recognize the handwriting.”
“Me too,” said the boy.
More fragmented memories. Fuzzy like the clouds.
“I think,” said the girl, “that I threw this bottle.”
The boy blinked and nodded, “Mhmm.”
“And that you wrote it,” she continued.
The boy agreed, “I remember now. But just barely.”
They looked up from the letter and looked out towards the horizon, where the bottom of the sun had just severed from the water. It glared at them angrily, its rays formerly of warmth now beating down on them.
“So what does it mean?” the boy said.
“I don’t know,” the girl replied. Anything.
And then the sun stopped. Just as it had just broken free from the water and started to rise, it began to sink back into the depths. The bottle came back to the girl’s hand and she rolled the letter back up and put it back inside. As she corked the bottle, the boy took it back from her and ran backwards to the surf. He put it back down and the waves recaptured it. The sun continued to sink back down to its former hiding place. The waves’ futile attempts to make it to the shore were even more doomed as they began to roll backwards into nonexistence. The seagulls flew backwards over head and the clouds went back to sleep as the pink, orange, and yellow wisp flames reconstituted and took the sky back from the blue. The sun disappeared into nothingness and even the flames were extinguished. The eyes of the children turned from the deeper blue-gray of pre-dawn as their figures scampered up the darkened hills of the beach, accomplishing a goal the waves never would.
As the sun disappeared even more under the horizon, the children found themselves traipsing backwards up the steps of the beach house, running as tear stains evaporated from the steps and their shirts and reentered their eyes. The door opened up behind them and they ran back inside, slamming the door in front of them silently. The room was dark, illuminated only by the moon in the window. The children scampered awkwardly underneath the table in the dining room. The boy watched the scene refold through the slits between his fingers while the girl covered his ears and continued to squint.
Their father’s figure rose like a marionette in the darkness, coming up from a crumpled bloody heap on the floor as though on strings. The bullet came out in slow motion from his head and reentered the gun in his hand, accompanied by the unbillowing smoke. He began to pace backwards, waving the gun around as sweat ran back into his pores and tears seeped to his eyes. Then his face contorted in anger as he reached the other side of the room where the body of his wife lay with several bullet holes marring her pretty yellow blouse. There were streaks of blood rising from her on the wall. Suddenly her body began to rise, erasing the red streaks as it went. As with her husband, the bullet miraculously lifted from the holes in her blouse and traveled back in quick succession to the gun in her husband’s hand.
They were alive, moving around and screaming. Bruises and bumps disappeared from her face as his hand lifted off. It all continued to run back until the children crawled up and sat in their seats at the table. Shattered glass rose from the floor and formed a bottle in the father’s hand that he removed from the wall. He stepped backwards towards the door and the alcohol trickled back from his throat into the bottle. He left and peace was regained in the house for a moment.
The boy and the girl scooted out of the chairs, stood up, and walked backwards upstairs. Everything began to rewind even faster. The sun reappeared on the other side of the house and the boy and girl sped out of the house and back to the beach.
Behind the children and out of sight, the sun stopped again just as it completed its pendulum swing around the other side of the world. It began to plunge back down to advance the world again. The sky before them was nearly overcome by night with stars already twinkling and the moon high in the sky. The boy gave the girl the Coca-Cola bottle.
“This won’t change anything,” the girl said.
“I know,” responded the boy. “But I want to tell someone. No one else understands. No one else believes. Maybe someone will find this and…at least understand. That’s all I want.”
Wind-wave-silence. “As long as you’re sure,” the girl said. “We didn’t put our address or phone number or anything.”
“That’s okay. I just want to tell someone.” Something. Anything.
The girl blinked and nodded, “Mhmm.” She wound her arm back and threw the bottle with her brother’s message out into the ocean.
They stood there for a moment, motionless except for their curly, raven-black hair billowing in the wind. Suddenly, a chill ran up the girl’s spine and she began to cry.
“Why are you crying?” the boy asked.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I just got a weird feeling. I can’t explain it.”
The boy frowned and reached out to hold his sister’s hand. “Someone will understand now. I just wish that we could forget all of this and leave it behind.”
“Me too,” the girl said, wiping the tears away. She sighed and turned to face her brother. “Let’s go back. Mom will get worried.”
They turned from the ocean and walked back to their house as the bottle bobbled up and down in the waves, rolling on in their endless pursuit forward. They would never make it to the shore they so yearned for. Their futile quest was eternal. But maybe even if they couldn’t make it, something else could. Maybe they could send a message of determination.
Don’t give up…
The Beach, Andrew Exner
Wisps of pink, orange, and yellow curled together with the clouds to create a gentle, growing flame above the water. It was a pretty picture, the approaching new day. The puffy clouds slowly stretched their arms out and yawned as they saw the sun approaching. Below, the waves continued their endless pursuit of the shore, unaffected by the rising of the sun. One wave after another would rise on the shoulders of the one before it, doomed to be dashed on the grainy sands of the beach. Now and then one wave might make it a little farther, but never could they quite make it all the way up the steep slopes of the beach.
But on this morning, the waves dashed among the new company of small toes in the sand. The clouds did not take notice of these visitors; no one expected them to make a show yet and so they dozed. But the visitors noticed the clouds as they stared off into the horizon made of pink, orange, and yellow wisps. They noticed the blue-gray waves and their monotonous, meaningless efforts which resulted in the soaking of sand and skin. And they noticed the strange gray-green line on the cusp of the horizon, twinkling as day banished night.
A boy and a girl sat on the beach, seemingly motionless save for the wind blowing through their hair. They stared intently ahead. No words came to their lips. They just sat and watched the sun rise. They were young—neither older than ten. Brother and sister, judging from the thick, black, curly hair. Hers was long, his was much shorter. And these raven-haired siblings simply sat and stared.
The sun peeked above the gray-green line and the wisps of pink, orange, and yellow flames shrank away bit by bit as light blues stretched in to take their place. The flames had not last long, but they had been pretty. The clouds noticed the sun spying on them and started moving along faster, turning a little more puffy white. More people would be waking up soon—they had to finish getting up to. The horizon shimmered and simmered, casting a glassy glow on the still-moving waves. They kept moving.
“Sis,” the young boy said as the sun showed the top of its head, “my feet are cold.”
The girl blinked and nodded, “Mhmm.”
The boy looked down, away from the ever-brightening sun and watched as water encircled his toes. His feet mashed a little further down into the wet sand and he curled his toes to feel the cool grains against his skin. Cold, but…strangely nice.
“I don’t remember the last time we watched the sunrise like this,” said the girl.
The boy blinked and nodded, “Mhmm.”
How long had it been? The memory seemed fuzzy and fragmented. Neither the boy nor the girl could remember. The clouds and the waves didn’t remember either, nor did they care. The clouds just posed and the waves kept up their endless pursuit of the shore. It would be worthless to ask them. They all dropped the subject.
A gust of wind showered the two with a fine spray of sea and sand. The boy sneezed and the girl winced and shook her head a little as she felt sand embed in her hair. It felt awful, but she could get over it. A grain of sand had gotten in the boy’s eye and he started to cry a little. Just tears at first—a natural reaction. He rubbed his eyes with his small fist. But the tears didn’t stop and the whimpering began to follow. The girl almost didn’t hear the tiny chest-heaves of tears over the wind and the waves, but she turned to see her brother crying and reached out her hand along the sand. Her brother grasped her hand lightly and kept crying. The sand was long-gone.
“Why are you crying?” the girl asked.
The boy didn’t respond, but kept on crying and wiping the tears away with his arm. The girl looked away from her brother and back towards the rising sun. The wispy flames were faint amidst the blue backdrop now, and the gray-green line was indiscernible. The sun’s warmth was beginning to cast its rays on the pair of beach-sitters. It felt nice, even if the sand was awful in her hair.
The girl tried again, “Why are you crying?”
The boy took his arm away from his eyes, revealing a contorted mess of redness. “I don’t know why,” he whispered with a choked voice.
The boy looked up at the sun and shook his head, “I can’t remember.”
Despite the warmth of the rising sun, a chill ran up the girl’s spine as her brother spoke. She didn’t know why she all of a sudden got a chill, but it happened.
“Can’t remember what?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” the boy admitted. “Anything.”
The girl squeezed her brother’s hand and frowned. She breathed deeply and smelled the heavy, salty air of the ocean. “Anything?”
“Anything.”
The girl’s frown deepened, showing crossing lines not meant for a girl her age. She began to trace a finger through the dense, water-laden sand in thought. “Anything,” she repeated after a moment of wind-wave-silence. “Neither can I.”
The wind-wave-silence overtook the two once again and the sun continued to rise. A flock of seagulls made their presence known in the distance as they flew along the beach, breaking the silence with their noisy kee-awws. The girl continued to trace her finger through the sand and the boy eventually stopped crying. The smell of the salt stung their noses as they breathed silently, watching the waves and the sun and the clouds.
“Surely we have to remember something,” the girl said as the seagulls passed overhead, kee-awwing at their noisiest. She let go of his hand and brushed her hair out of her face.
“I remember coming here,” the boy responded. “Just not when or why.”
“And?” the girl replied incredulously, obviously not satisfied. “There must be more.”
“I don’t know,” he said simply.
But neither could remember much at all. It was fuzzy, like the clouds. Fragmented, like the fire wisps in the sky. Nothing important. Barely there…
It felt lonely to not remember. Anything.
“I remember you, sis,” the boy said.
“Obviously,” she said. She turned to her brother and stuck her tongue out with a little smile. He saw that and smiled, too. Then they laughed. That felt good.
“Then we must have parents, right?” the girl said.
“I think so. Maybe.” It made sense. People had parents. Right?
“Maybe we came here with them,” the boy said.
“Maybe,” the girl replied. But then again…
“Where are they?” she wondered aloud.
Wind-wave-seagull-silence.
“I don’t know,” the boy said. Anything.
The sun had nearly freed itself from the water. The clouds all looked different now, blown and scattered by the winds. The pink, orange, and yellow wisps were no more—only the growing blue. The seagulls were gone now, out of the range of hearing. The endless cycle of crashing waves had retreated back momentarily, receding from the toes of the intruders. But there was something new in the waves now, an inconsistency in the endless cycle. It glinted in the sun as it bobbed up and down with the waves. The new intruder made no attempts at violence—it merely went along with the motion of the water, carried forward to the front lines. It was at last ejected onto the sands, where it rolled along the dense grains of wetness and crested over a hill safe from the greedy riptides that accompanied the waves.
The boy stood up slowly, wobbling a little, and walked towards the object. It winked at him as they glistened on the film of wetness. It was a light green glass bottle with a cork in its top. The “Coca-Cola” label emblazoned in the glass partially covered though did not hide the contents of the bottle. There was a rolled up piece of paper tucked inside the glass. He got to the intriguing little thing and picked it up as the foam of the waves splashed around his ankles. He examined it half like a priceless artifact and half like it was dangerous. After being satisfied that it was actually neither, he turned around and showed it to his sister.
“Look!” he said, waving it in the air.
She looked up and saw him flapping the bottle about. She couldn’t really tell what it was or what her brother thought he was doing, but he looked like an idiot. “Bring it here,” she called out.
The boy scampered back to their spot, kicking up water and sand as he went. He sat down and handed the bottle to his sister. “Look!” he repeated, excitedly. “What is it?”
The girl smiled and held back a laugh. “It’s a bottle, dummy.”
The boy frowned and stuck his tongue out. “No, I know that,” he said, “But there’s paper inside.”
She actually hadn’t noticed that. “A message in a bottle.”
The boy nodded, “Let’s open it and read it. I’ve always wanted to write a message in a bottle.”
A memory?
“Why?” the girl asked. “That seems…silly.”
But she felt it, too. She felt the memory of wanting to write something, seal it up, and throw it out as far as possible so someone else might read it. Someone else had the same idea, and now they could read it whatever the strangers had wanted to say. It was kind of exciting, actually.
“I don’t know,” the boy said. “I just…want to.”
The girl held the bottle carefully and plucked the cork out of the top. She upturned the glass and the letter fell into her open, waiting hand. She threw the bottle back a little and unrolled the paper. And she started to read with her eyes.
“The handwriting is awful,” she commented right away.
The boy frowned, “Come on, that doesn’t matter! What does it say? Read it out loud.”
The girl sighed and nodded. “Okay, here goes.”
“August 5. No year…huh. Anyway. To Somebody. Mommy and Daddy won’t stop fighting. I wish they would. Daddy hit mommy again and it scared me. She keeps talking about leaving. I just want things to go back to normal again. Mary said it isn’t our fault, but I don’t know what to do. I want to fix it. I don’t think anyone can help. But whoever you are, Somebody, now you know. Pray, or something. From, Tommy.”
Both of them frowned. The wind-wave-silence was drowned out by the beating of their hearts in their ears. It was sad on a deeper level than either of them understood, but felt profoundly.
“Should we pray, or something?” the boy asked.
The girl blinked and nodded, “Mhmm.”
But their thoughts drowned out any effort of prayer as they closed their eyes and bowed their heads.
“Amen,” the girl said.
“Amen,” her brother repeated.
Wind-wave-silence. Anything.
“You know,” the girl said, “I feel like I recognize the handwriting.”
“Me too,” said the boy.
More fragmented memories. Fuzzy like the clouds.
“I think,” said the girl, “that I threw this bottle.”
The boy blinked and nodded, “Mhmm.”
“And that you wrote it,” she continued.
The boy agreed, “I remember now. But just barely.”
They looked up from the letter and looked out towards the horizon, where the bottom of the sun had just severed from the water. It glared at them angrily, its rays formerly of warmth now beating down on them.
“So what does it mean?” the boy said.
“I don’t know,” the girl replied. Anything.
And then the sun stopped. Just as it had just broken free from the water and started to rise, it began to sink back into the depths. The bottle came back to the girl’s hand and she rolled the letter back up and put it back inside. As she corked the bottle, the boy took it back from her and ran backwards to the surf. He put it back down and the waves recaptured it. The sun continued to sink back down to its former hiding place. The waves’ futile attempts to make it to the shore were even more doomed as they began to roll backwards into nonexistence. The seagulls flew backwards over head and the clouds went back to sleep as the pink, orange, and yellow wisp flames reconstituted and took the sky back from the blue. The sun disappeared into nothingness and even the flames were extinguished. The eyes of the children turned from the deeper blue-gray of pre-dawn as their figures scampered up the darkened hills of the beach, accomplishing a goal the waves never would.
As the sun disappeared even more under the horizon, the children found themselves traipsing backwards up the steps of the beach house, running as tear stains evaporated from the steps and their shirts and reentered their eyes. The door opened up behind them and they ran back inside, slamming the door in front of them silently. The room was dark, illuminated only by the moon in the window. The children scampered awkwardly underneath the table in the dining room. The boy watched the scene refold through the slits between his fingers while the girl covered his ears and continued to squint.
Their father’s figure rose like a marionette in the darkness, coming up from a crumpled bloody heap on the floor as though on strings. The bullet came out in slow motion from his head and reentered the gun in his hand, accompanied by the unbillowing smoke. He began to pace backwards, waving the gun around as sweat ran back into his pores and tears seeped to his eyes. Then his face contorted in anger as he reached the other side of the room where the body of his wife lay with several bullet holes marring her pretty yellow blouse. There were streaks of blood rising from her on the wall. Suddenly her body began to rise, erasing the red streaks as it went. As with her husband, the bullet miraculously lifted from the holes in her blouse and traveled back in quick succession to the gun in her husband’s hand.
They were alive, moving around and screaming. Bruises and bumps disappeared from her face as his hand lifted off. It all continued to run back until the children crawled up and sat in their seats at the table. Shattered glass rose from the floor and formed a bottle in the father’s hand that he removed from the wall. He stepped backwards towards the door and the alcohol trickled back from his throat into the bottle. He left and peace was regained in the house for a moment.
The boy and the girl scooted out of the chairs, stood up, and walked backwards upstairs. Everything began to rewind even faster. The sun reappeared on the other side of the house and the boy and girl sped out of the house and back to the beach.
Behind the children and out of sight, the sun stopped again just as it completed its pendulum swing around the other side of the world. It began to plunge back down to advance the world again. The sky before them was nearly overcome by night with stars already twinkling and the moon high in the sky. The boy gave the girl the Coca-Cola bottle.
“This won’t change anything,” the girl said.
“I know,” responded the boy. “But I want to tell someone. No one else understands. No one else believes. Maybe someone will find this and…at least understand. That’s all I want.”
Wind-wave-silence. “As long as you’re sure,” the girl said. “We didn’t put our address or phone number or anything.”
“That’s okay. I just want to tell someone.” Something. Anything.
The girl blinked and nodded, “Mhmm.” She wound her arm back and threw the bottle with her brother’s message out into the ocean.
They stood there for a moment, motionless except for their curly, raven-black hair billowing in the wind. Suddenly, a chill ran up the girl’s spine and she began to cry.
“Why are you crying?” the boy asked.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I just got a weird feeling. I can’t explain it.”
The boy frowned and reached out to hold his sister’s hand. “Someone will understand now. I just wish that we could forget all of this and leave it behind.”
“Me too,” the girl said, wiping the tears away. She sighed and turned to face her brother. “Let’s go back. Mom will get worried.”
They turned from the ocean and walked back to their house as the bottle bobbled up and down in the waves, rolling on in their endless pursuit forward. They would never make it to the shore they so yearned for. Their futile quest was eternal. But maybe even if they couldn’t make it, something else could. Maybe they could send a message of determination.
Don’t give up…
