Walking the dead shoreline helps me clear my mind, focus more deeply on my thoughts. Although it’s not like I haven’t been alone with my thoughts for long. Every day, the silence is only broken by my internal monologue. I can’t remember the last time I spoke to another person. Well, unless the guy I took that coat from the other day counts. I was polite, too. Introduced myself and everything. And yet, he just laid there, dust collecting in his sockets. He didn’t mind when I relieved him of his jacket. He must’ve been from the other side, judging by the feel of the fabric. They didn’t make anything like that over here.
It’s funny, still thinking about here and there and sides. There stopped being sides long ago, when there stopped being a winner and a loser. No one won, in the end, and we lost everything. The first weeks were the hardest, seeing shadows where monoliths once stood, the echoes of men and women and children. I don’t know if I ever quite adjusted to that. That’s why I came to the sea. It’s easier to forget what was among the black waters and iridescent sands. But here, I’m alone, save for the occasional fish that washes up on the beach.
There, on the horizon… A silhouette against the sky. It can’t be, I must be seeing things. But no, it grew nearer, a hulking wooden mass stretching across the murky expanse. A single bright wing crested over the top of it, catching the slight breeze as it soared closer and closer. I can’t help but watch it cut through the ocean of dusk and crawl onto the sands. I should flee, but my legs don’t move beneath me. I am fascinated, horrified, by what I see.
Instead of it turning to face me, as I anticipate a great maw to open and engulf me, its back opens, a timbered scale unhinging itself, and out come silver men, hobbling across the length of it and hopping back down onto the shore.
I must be hallucinating, perhaps it was something I ate. No, it couldn’t be. All I’ve had for the last six or seven weeks have been those purple berries, and I haven’t been sick once. But there they are, four shining walkers, making their way over to me. Curiosity has overtaken my fear. I wait for their next move. As they wield stubby wands at me, a crackle of noise fills the air, spasmodic, convulsive. They turn to one another, speaking in a sparkling tongue I can’t understand.
The one in front turns back to me and gestures for me to follow, pointing back at the wooden being standing on the shoreline. Should I follow? They aren’t holding those batons menacingly, but the way they snap back and forth to each other is disconcerting, to say the least. Either they mean to do me harm or not, but regardless, it seems as though they want to lead me away.
The wind is at my back as I am helped atop the vast shoulders of the winged beast, the shining men entering a cavity near the hanging scale. Wherever I am headed, it must be better than the absence that I’m leaving behind.
Inspired by Crosby, Stills, & Nash’s “Wooden Ships”
LAFworks 