It happened at the sea shore.
What? Oh. Sorry, officer, I know that's the way I started last time. But...oh hell...no part of my story is likely to change, not the start, not the end, when those teenagers found me, and not the impossible parts in between.
Ok.
It happened at the sea shore. Down near Franklin. You know what the weather's been like these days. Warm, sunny, just a bit of a breeze. People spend the days swimming, but the evenings are still pretty cold. It was just past nine when I got there. The sun was down. I thought that the beach would be deserted. It took me a while to get the blanket open, and the food and candles set up. At least half an hour. Hmmm? Yeah, well...I was crying pretty hard...it was supposed to be our anniversary, Mike's and mine. He's such a creep.
That doesn't matter though. I wasn't going to let him ruin something we'd been planning for all week. I finally got the stuff set up, but I didn't feel much like eating. I just sat there, looking out at the water. You know how the ocean looks when there's barely any light? Sort of silvery black. Calm. I even stopped crying, looking at it.
There's a kind of peace in the ocean, for all its storms. I think I've always felt that. You know, growing up I thought that the sea was the only steady thing in my life, the one thing I could lean on, count on, love. I used to talk to it.
Well...I guess that's what I was thinking about tonight. I just sat there, looking at the water, and telling it all my problems...about Mike...and well...other stuff. I swear it was listening. It made me feel better. Sort of like one of those helpful, caring bartenders in the movies. Only I wasn't drunk. I mean that. You did that breathalyser thing. You know I wasn't drunk.
So, I was sitting there, in the middle of a romantic feast for two, staring at the ocean and starting to feel a little less suicidal, and suddenly I realized that there was someone out there swimming after all. A guy.
He was a ways out there when I first saw him, farther than I'd like to swim out at night, but he started heading towards the beach right away. My first thought was that I should pick up my junk and leave...I hadn't come down here to be with people. Then I realized, suddenly, that I wasn't really into being alone. I'd calmed down that much.
So I waited. Even started fantasizing a bit. What if this guy was the one I'd been looking for all my life? What if he was faithful, caring, and about to come sweep me off my feet? I thought about opening the bottle of wine in the basket, filling the two glasses...but that would have been just too corny. So I watched the way the moonlight glinted off his upper body as he swam...and dreamed, waiting...
When he got to the shallows I expected him to stand up, dance his way painfully over the pebbles (they're really hard on your feet) and reach for a towel stashed somewhere amongst the driftwood and rocks.
But he didn't. He just stayed there, treading water, where I could almost see his face... could see his long dark hair trailing down over his shoulders, blending with the sea. And he beckoned to me.
I guess I'd had enough of crying. Or maybe the suicidal feelings weren't all gone...just turned into general recklessness. Any way, I stood up, shucked off my clothes, and ran down to the water's edge in my bathing suit. I barely even felt the pebbles. The moon was fully up now, and I could see him bathed in its light, all silvery translucent skin, hair and eyes black as liquid pitch. Too bloody good to be true. It kind of made me hold back a bit. I stood there, with the water swirling around my toes, and couldn't get up the nerve to go swimming out to the guy. Mom would have been proud of me. I just felt awful, as though I'd swallowed a bit of something delicious, but likely to make me break out in hives if I ate any more.
I couldn't speak. I just sort of looked down at my feet and wished I had more nerve. Finally I pointed back up at the blanket. "I have towels...and food and stuff", I could feel myself blushing.
He just shook his head. He smiled, a bit sadly I think, then raised his arms from the water. This close I could see that they were wrapped in some kind of kelp. Wrapped tight. Taut. It disappeared under the water. There was no way he could have come much farther up the beach.
He sort of smiled again, then started moving back out to sea...not swimming...just as though the kelp was pulling him back, and down.
I didn't stop to think, I just raced up the beach, grabbed a knife from the blanket, and ran back to him, floundering clumsily through the water, one handed. As I sliced at the kelp he started making odd moaning noises, but he was going under, so I ignored them. I finally got him free, and pulled him, a dead weight, from the water, the way my swimming instructor taught me years ago. When I realised that he wasn't breathing, I even started mouth to mouth. Then I tasted salt. Something trickled from his lips. There was blood on my hands, on my bathing suit, and blood slowly leaking from the two raised, kelp coloured growths on his arms. That was when that group of partiers from the next beach over found me. Next thing I knew I was being dragged off to this station and he was gone.
He's dead, isn't he?
What?
Oh.
Ok.
It all happened at the sea shore...
Marcie Lynn Tentchoff lives in the small town of Gibsons, BC, Canada, with numerous animals and the rest of her rather odd family. Her work (fiction, non-fiction and poetry) has sold to Horizons SF, On Spec, Dreams of Decadence, Shadis, Pulp Eternity, Altair, as well as to various other print and web-based magazines. She is also a poetry editor for the Eggplant Productions.