Reclamation

A discovery on the beach one day leads to devastating consequences.

The fierce lick of the midday heat had relented, subsiding to the onset of the afternoon. Bitter sea air sighed coolly across the tanned brow of the sun which now slouched low like a belt in the Friday sky, ushering along the coast smells of decaying sea life. The tide had relented and had begun to ebb outwards, leaving behind a new striation of flotsam and jetsam on the haggard stretch of anonymous beach. Rubbish deposited from every periphery of the ocean, hills of sandblasted junk 2 feet high in some places, clustered at the high tide mark. Lying on the sand, the by-products of man and nature met, all having succumbed in their own way to the erosive force of the ocean’s power, rendered equally lifeless in this, their ignominious resting place. A quiet calm filled the air. The only sound was the water’s fringes as it slapped its slow outwards retreat like contented smacking lips. A stone’s throw inland from the beach was a quiet coastal road, littered with crusts and flakes of dead snakes and lizards who had mistaken the rough bitumen as a sun drenched utopia and had met a quick, lonely end. A low waspish buzzing sound approached on this road towards one corner of the beach, growing in volume until a bike came into view, meandering through the potholed route. Its speed decreased and the helmeted driver turned outwards to sea. Under the creepers of a large banyan tree the bike came to a stop and the rider kicked out the stand, removed his helmet and stepped over the exposed roots as he dismounted, running a hand through flattened hair. He stood still for a moment, exposing his brow to a pleasurably cool lick of wind.

 Michael squinted out at the detritus. From under the seat he pulled out a small white carrier bag and poked it into his pocket. He rubbed thick, white sun cream into his densely freckled face and the back of his neck. He was still a bit pink from his beach combing a few days previous. Although the worst of the sun’s power was now spent, it had not yet lost its capacity to burn his skin raw. Cursed British genes, he always told people, as during sun holidays, his freckles would join, like condensation on a window until he became one large, pinkish freckle. Now thickly veneered and smelling of coconut, he packed the suncream back into the compartment under the seat and stumbled a zigzagged path down the dunes to the high tide mark. He had been finding more and more interesting items recently; during his previous trip he had found the laminated airline instructions which are tucked in the pouch in front of passenger seats on aircraft. Objects such as this could send him into a daydream lasting minutes, as he imagined the circumstances leading to its arrival on the beach. Had there been a plane crash somewhere in the Pacific, or the Sea of China, leaving half a dozen or so survivors who managed to find land on a makeshift floating armada of wreckage? Were they now living in a tiny community, assigning survival roles to one another, desperately awaiting rescue? This was a luxury that life in London could never have afforded: time to think. Coming down to this beach and sifting through its intestines had become an almost daily pastime. Something felt comforting about the old items which turned up: reassuringly robust, having earned a medal of distinction for making the journey through the trials of the ocean. He enjoyed the heaviness of the metals and stones in his hands; in them was a type of trustworthiness and honesty. They pretended to be nothing; they professed to serve no purpose. Beachcombing for Michael had become a method of distraction from the maddening boredom which seeped from every building in the town, threatening his very sanity. For a moment he stood, staring out at the sun as it slumped lower and lower into the horizon, like the head of an old security guard sat in a museum. It had been two months since he had arrived here to start his new job teaching in a small school near the coast, and the events of the day that he arrived still often circulated in his thoughts.

A long flight to Kuala Lumpur had gone uneventfully and the second connecting flight in a small plane was pleasantly short and picturesque. He remembered meeting his new boss at the tiny airport and being taxied to his new home, full of excitement and expectation, waiting for a beautiful, well-maintained town to emerge from the sticky jungle road ahead. “It’s pretty quiet here, but at the weekends you can head to the city; it’s really easy to do, and a lot of us did it until we got married. Now we’re happy to stay in the town,” his boss had said, sitting with Michael in the back seats. The two of them maintained polite, inoffensively shallow conversation as they drove on down sweaty jungle roads past grassy verges, whereupon red brick buildings struggled to remain visible, their heads raised high, like a nervous swimmer. The taxi turned onto a wide road which led them into a bland, monotone neighbourhood. Each house had its own perimeter gates and mirrored windows to block the intense sunlight of the day. The taxi pulled in as the outer gates of a huge four bedroom house slid apart. For the briefest of time, Michael had felt optimistic about his decision to come. But that was before he had seen the town in its entirety, which took just two days. And as one of just a few expats here, he was certainly the only one who was single.

He snapped back to the present and checked the bottom of his thin flip flops; every few yards he saw syringes littered amongst the plastic, wood and rocks. In his head he imagined the cruel infected tip driving upwards into his vulnerable flesh.  His fear of needles was deep rooted and powerful, which had grown in power since childhood. It was the feeling of forced passivity; allowing a sharp, cold syringe to pop the surface of his skin and slide into his vein as he sat, burying his discomfort beneath a thin veil of calm. Gritting his teeth and shrugging off the unpleasant thought, he made his way to the high tide line. A vague,shiny metallic object caught his eye and Michael picked it up. Heavy and smooth from its ocean journey, it looked like a small lid, with threads around the rim. There had been something embossed in English but it was now too blurred and shallow to be read.  After a few meditative seconds he threw the object back into the ocean, watching it skim over a smooth wave and cut into the calm surf with a satisfying plop.  Looking a hundred metres out to sea, wheeling menacingly above the shallows, Michael spotted a huge sea eagle. Easily recognisable, the great bird’s incredible distinctive white, muscular wings beat against the rapidly changing winds, the huge beaked head seeking prey. Michael watched, awed as it circled a small rocky outcrop, its eyes fixed intently on a fixed point below. It spiralled out, turned inwards sharply and swooped downwards, talons outstretched. A second later it thumped into the water and began flapping furiously to gain altitude again, struggling with something heavy and large. Every noiseless flap of the great bird’s wings seemed to require huge effort as, silhouetted by the sun, it arced its head downwards to kill its prey. Michael watched on, shielding his eyes from the glare of the sun, trying to make out which unlucky marine inhabitant was for dinner. The struggle continued, and as the eagle wrestled on it moved out of the glare of the sun. The eagle was tugging at a giant whelk the size of a rugby ball. Michael could see its distinct colours and the shape of its shell now. It must weigh a couple of kilograms at least, he thought. All of a sudden the eagle lost its grip and the whelk tumbled from the sky, crashing into the shallows some 20 metres away. Appearing beaten and exhausted, the eagle lethargically climbed the currents up into the cliffs at the other end of the bay and out of sight. Without a second thought, Michael trotted carefully across the rubbish piles and, keeping on his sandals, waded out knee deep into the water.

 It wasn’t hard to find the whelk with its distinctive orange and white shell and prodigious size.  He picked it up, surprised at the weight of the creature, and looked inside. Like an enormous slug, the whelk contracted inwards, seeking deeper recesses inside its shell. It moved like a tongue that had been bitten, pushing hard against the gums to purge the pain. Without thought, Michael brought the giant whelk out of the water and back to his bike and with calm calculation he put the whelk into the carrier bag he used to collect his treasures, which he then filled with seawater. He imagined the shell cleaned out, emptied of the writhing tongue, polished and cleaned and decorating his living room but a pang of guilt pushed the thought from his head. If he left it here it was certainly going to die. With that, he started up the bike, hooking the bag over the handlebar and carefully drove off.

Bins stood silently in perfect rows; silent sentinels guarding the indistinguishable properties of his well-to-do neighbours as he clicked the remote and waited for the gates to open. When he got in, Michael looked around for something to contain the whelk. Pacing through the empty guest room to the utility cupboard, he cast the doors open and sat in the corner on a shelf was an orange bucket. He reached up and brought it out, coughing as it released a mountain range of dust into the air. He poured the contents of the bag inside. The whelk tumbled in with a thump, spraying saltwater up the sides of the bucket. He looked down at the pitiful creature. It had stopped moving. An indistinct mixture of melancholy and nausea washed over him. The air around him suddenly felt clammy; smelled sickly, like it was infected by death. An ill feeling took hold of him; he began to sweat a cold perspiration and his stomach felt tight. He lugged the sloshing bucket out into the garden, careful not to spill any of the death-infused water on the floor, as if in doing so he might infect the house. Dusting off his hands as he placed the bucket in the centre of the lawn, he quickly began to feel better, like a travel sick tourist stepping off a boat. Feeling in his pocket for his phone, he realised it had been a week since he had spoken to his mum. Calling her had been much more regular than he had anticipated before he left; it felt good to hear normal conversation. The connection crackled on the other end of the phone as he crept barefoot across the spiky grass back into the house.

 A shiver ran up Michael’s back as he stepped back inside; a strange feeling permeated the house, like it was under surveillance. In his head he thought he could hear video reel being fed through a camera, beamed onto a screen somewhere. The phone rang mindlessly on so he slipped it back into his pocket. His ears ached as a dull, soundless hum seemed to be pressing on his eardrums. For a moment, he paused, frowning. It felt slightly like being deep underwater, feeling the pressure forcing in his eyes and ears. He swallowed hard and his ears popped. Millions of invisible pins seemed to be hanging in the air, pointing in all directions, prickling his skin, about to crash to the floor all at once. There was inexplicable tension in the house. Living alone had made him slightly paranoid, Michael reassured himself as he walked powerfully and deliberately into the living room, switching on the TV.

The credits rolled down the screen at the end of the film, Michael had forgotten his unease. Yawning, he polished off the dregs of his cup of tea and looked at the time. It was 1:20am. He turned off the TV and headed to the kitchen for a glass of water to take to bed. As the sound of the TV slid away, the void was immediately replaced by the same discomfort from earlier. The stale smell was still loitering like a spectre in the air, reluctant to leave the spot where he’d placed the bucket. Michael stood for a moment in the darkness of the unlit kitchen and peered out the window. Still outside, the shell sat in the bucket at the end of the garden, though he couldn’t see it. Everything outside seemed shrouded in black. Even the stars seemed to have closed their eyes. Leaving the light on by the stairs, he turned away and headed for bed, inexplicably taking the extra precaution of locking his bedroom door behind him.

 Sunlight cut through the slats of the blinds in the bedroom window, dissecting the bed, creeping up to Michael’s face. Making a pained expression, he slid out from the covers and made his way into the en suite bathroom to brush his teeth. The air felt oppressive, making him suddenly self conscious; it was as if someone somewhere was staring at him from an unknown location. Unlocking his bedroom door he slowly padded barefoot downstairs into the living room. There was an unnerving, silent hum in the house. His eardrums throbbed from the noiseless racket, disorientating him slightly. Impulsively, he turned on the news on TV to focus his thoughts. Background noise felt better. As he went into the kitchen, he remembered the whelk. Opening the back door, he stepped barefoot out onto the already hot paving stones. The bucket’s water had nearly dried out, leaving salt marks around the sides. The whelk was now dry and sandy and blackened; shrivelled into what looked like a giant pork scratching. With what almost felt like relief; dismissal from responsibility, he reached into the bucket, pulled out the still beautiful shell and carried it in to the kitchen.

Standing at the sink, the atmosphere felt as though it was pushing in his eardrums, like the cabin pressure on a rapidly descending plane. He swallowed hard to pop his ears. He turned on the taps and poured in some washing liquid to try and clean out the corpse. The smell was nauseating as he scraped the sinews and tendons out from the inner spirals. So strange, he thought, that there is no birdsong in the garden today. Everything was deadly silent. The news coming from the living room cut out and went silent.  Michael could see the reflection of the TV in the living room mirror; it had a blue screen with AV1 in the top corner. Temporary loss of connection to the cable provider, no doubt, he thought. A moment passed in utter silence. Then with a slowly building urgency, the noise returned. Beginning with a quiet hum and quickly progressing into a wail, a distant siren that he’d never heard before howled painfully, echoing its deafening warning up and down the street. The sound reminded him of the videos he’d seen of the blitz and of the air raid warning sirens. Was the country at war? A few ponderous seconds passed and he heard his neighbours outside talking loudly and quickly; concernedly. Michael went through to the living room and looked out the front window. People were in the street. Growing in numbers by the second, people were tugging at their children’s hands, carrying babies and shoving their families into their cars. The family next door had all bundled into their 4x4, allowing the elderly couple next door to also clamber into the back. Then they screeched off down the street in the direction of the steep uphill road leading to the jungle. As his eyes followed them up, he noticed that they slowed to a halt behind a whole convoy of vehicles, honking and revving engines. Some were even driving off the road, over the jungle floor to continue up.

His attention was diverted by a loud crash from the kitchen. Michael ran in to find the floor littered with a mosaic of shards from the shell; orange and yellow and white. He looked at the cup on the sink, no ripples so an earthquake was unlikely. Very strange, he thought, he could have sworn that the shell had been inside the sink. Quickly he brushed up the mess into a pan and threw it into the bin. The noise outside had ceased, replaced again with the eerie quiet. Silence now interrogated him with deafening noiseless insistence. Inside the kitchen the air was almost throbbing. A malevolence seemed to hang in the corners of every room, like cobwebs containing billions of tiny venomous spiders. Michael swallowed hard to stop his ears from popping. He jogged out onto the street to see what was happening. Up on the jungle road, a convoy of hollow vehicles were frozen in their ungainly positions, rudderless toys. Through the windows of some cars he could still make out the heads of scuttling people heading up into the jungle. One of them seemed to turn her head. She stopped in her tracks, urging on those behind her. Clambering up onto the bonnet of a car, she gestured wildly towards the top of the hill. Was she shouting something? Her chest rose and fell and her hands cupped around her mouth. Her arms shot this way and that, pointing down the road and beckoning Michael up towards the jungle road. Her head darted between him and her family, who had continued towards the jungle. With a flop of her arms in resignation, she jumped from the car and ran up the hill to catch up with her family. There hadn’t been an earthquake, so what on earth was happening? Michael began to worry. If there was any problem, who would think to make sure he was ok? The sun had retreated amongst heavy white clouds, peering on like a child hiding in a bush. Only he remained; a single foolish straggler. A sudden cold, uncharacteristic breeze brushed over him.  He looked down the street to his left. He blinked and looked again. Like rapidly clawing fingers, grey water was running like spiders up the road. It shot up past his house and scuttled up the pavement like the grasping hands of the undead. Tendrils of sputum quickly gathered around his feet, swirling in a miniature maelstrom around his ankles until it was pushed on up the road by the force of the water behind it. Filling the town like a sink and with terrifying speed, the water was at first just a few inches deep, carrying branches and rubbish then rapidly it crept up his legs past his knees. Then the noise began: the slow groaning of trees and streetlights as they folded and snapped, dying painfully, followed by a crashing, horrifying roar. He watched, aghast, as some of the smaller houses at the end of the road toppled down as if they were made of cards. The torrent rose to his waist, making it almost impossible to fight the current. He gripped the front gate and forced his way back into the yard just in time for the walls to crumble like stale cake, smashing into his legs and knocking him off his feet.

Desperately, Michael grabbed at the bars of his gate, stretched horizontal in the seismic tug of the wave. Attempting to pull himself in to the house was impossible; he shimmied up the gate as the water levels climbed higher and higher. The entire street vomited its contents down the road at him; an invading army of mundane objects urged on by the ocean, poured into his yard and into the house, pounding and bruising his aching muscles. He felt the Velcro like tearing of muscle fibres in his arms as he was wrenched from the groaning bars of the gate. With frightening speed he was swept away helplessly by the advancing water, a car door knocking him under the roiling surface. Warm water enveloped him. A thousand clammy, formless hands ran themselves over his body, spinning him in all directions as furious undercurrents tore at him, rendering him as helpless as a shoe in a washing machine.  He could feel his left leg, the skin flapping around like a crimson curtain in a breeze; cut deeply from the impact of the wall. He felt himself weakening; it must have been minutes he had spent without air. His muscles all screamed acid shrieks at his beleaguered lungs. When they seemed about to burst, he finally surfaced. Exhaling explosively, he rapidly stole a breath as he looked around the boiling, frothing nightmare surrounding him. He was being carried past the mall in town, speeding past the multi-storey car park on the 3^rd floor.  With emotionless clarity he noted to himself that each storey of a building is usually about 10 feet high. That would make these waves 30 feet high and the town was five kilometres inland. He wondered how high the sea must have risen on the beach, but then reality reasserted itself in the forefront of his mind: for him, death was not only a possibility right now, it was probable. This spurred in him a new rush of resolve to survive. He buoyed himself left and right with flailing limbs, struggling to breathe, scanning the rushing extremities for a lifeline. Detritus hurried past from all angles: cars, lorries, yachts and beds. They all began to congregate as they bottlenecked between two narrow terraced streets, clunking together in ugly asymmetrical tessellation. Shoved into the side of a lorry, Michael grunted loudly as the air was knocked out of him, squeezing the strength from his failing muscles. With a last push of desperation, he scrambled over the makeshift island and looked about desperately for high ground. To his far right he saw the mall; its balcony railing invitingly close to the edge of the floating island. Rubbish was piling higher and higher as the waters continued to push inland. Hopping over, falling to his knees a few times, he reached the corner of the mall and with all his strength he grasped at the bars and managed to pull himself up and inside. Breathing consistently at last, he slumped back against the wall. Blood began running in thick tributaries from cuts on his leg, neck and shoulders. Wiping a crimson stream from his arm and flicking it away, Michael became aware of, all around him, dozens of people; horrified shoppers clustered together, hands over mouths as they watched on helplessly. Nervous chatters commentated on the scene as Michael looked upwards, listening to the roaring surf. Nobody came to help him or to speak to him as he gathered up a length of cloth and wound it tightly over his deeply gashed leg. Maybe emotion to them, as it was for him, was still strangely elusive. They were numb. Suddenly the air was sharply split in two by a high pitched scream. A woman reached out frantically as her tiny dog was pulled away from the safety of the roof of the car park and immediately rushed out of sight. Immune to her cries, the crowd watched as she began to weep pitifully, dropping to her knees. An elderly lady walked over and put her arm around the trembling woman, though her eyes remained on the rushing waters just feet below them.

Minutes passed and Michael listened on. The roaring seemed to be subsiding slightly. Looking down, the water levels seemed to be stabilising. With just 3 feet between the highest point left in town and the ocean’s new territorial gains, it seemed the worst might have now been over. At first, the flow of water slowed, then changed direction and with increasing speed, began dragging its way back out to the open ocean, taking with it everything in the town. Contents of shops, houses and hotels were tugged away; double beds, wardrobes, clothes racks and giant billboards. A floating armada of debris was now reversing out of town. Michael noticed a young boy squatting on his haunches on a large wooden door, hands clasped firmly on the handle as he floated on the surface of the retreating waters. Some people shouted to him to come over, to use the debris as stepping stones to the mall floor. Moving as little as possible, the boy shook his head, refusing to move. The crowd watched as he continued off into the distance along with everything else. Some now began to cry as the adrenaline dissipated. Michael watched them impassively; trying to empathise.

It was another 6 hours before anyone dared to venture down from the third floor. In that time people waited in fear that a second, larger wave would come crashing in. As time passed, people began to fear being stuck in the mall overnight and so decided to climb down the fire escape steps and the stationary escalators out into the emptiness. Michael struggled, one footed down the escalator, covered inches deep in sand and left the mall. The pain from his leg now began to sting into his consciousness. He tried to put it out of his mind as he clambered out of the exit doors, stuck in a bed of sand and silt. When he eventually struggled out, what he saw when he left shocked him: Where paths and roads had been there was now only mulch and silt two feet deep; drifted up to eight feet high against the walls of some buildings. Reasoning that medical assistance would be available to only the most needy, Michael began trudging back the 3 kilometres home; a task that had become difficult since most of the landmarks used to navigate his route were completely gone.

 An hour and a half later, Michael found his street and was surprised to see his house, still upright. All the windows were smashed in but no glass was on the floor. All his remaining furniture was piled up high on the left side of the room, only those items bigger than the door remained; the rest had been sucked out to sea. Michael walked into the kitchen, the sand crunching under his feet. The kitchen was completely empty. The sink was twisted out of recognition, now looking more like the pieces of metal he found on his beach combing trips. As if in a trance, Michael began scrabbling slowly; weakly, through the sandy, muddy junk on the floor; piling up the remains of his life in the living room. He rooted through the debris, turning over soaked rags of clothes and towels. He paused to pick up a framed photo which wasn’t his. What was the human cost going to be of this catastrophe? It was conceivable that thousands could have died, maybe even tens of thousands. Would his family at home have heard about the tragedy already? He imagined them frantically calling helplines set up by the government, his mother convinced that he was dead. He sat on an upturned table and put his head in his hands.  All the feelings he had expected earlier now began to grip him. Tears began to stream from his eyes. Shaking uncontrollably, he sobbed heartily like he hadn’t done in years. Coughing and spluttering and feeling cold then hot, he wrapped himself in a dirty quilt which hung from the window frame which wasn’t his. Rocking and shivering, he felt the night draw in. He lay on his side, utterly exhausted and fell straight into a deep, uninterrupted sleep.

In the night he awoke suddenly; he had been running down a narrow street. Behind him was a wall of water hundreds of feet high, blocking out the sun. He could hear his family shouting from somewhere to run faster but as they did each footstep he took seemed to be sucked into the sand, slowing him to an almost standstill. He watched helplessly as the water arced over his head.  He sat upright for a moment to reassert reality. He looked around the moonlit skeleton of his living room, checking it was all real. He noticed beneath a thin layer of mud one of his treasures from the beach; a mother of pearl make up box, open like a broken jaw by the door. He got up to pick it up. Beside it was a large shard of a shell; soggy, blackened sinews still clinging to its surface. He paused, listening intently, his heart shivered. A horribly familiar crunching, scraping, crumbling noise crept into his ears. Rising up like white noise he heard the deafening roar of the water returning once more.

Reviews

[Symphonic_Sunflowers]

I thought this flowed really well! I couldn't take my eyes away!
Good work, Nick! Ill be sure to read more of your works :)

[Mila]

Wow...this was incredibly good! I couldn't take my eyes off of it, and that's new for me because I have a nonexistent attention span. Very, very well written and gripping, and it flowed so well too!
Well done :)

[Nick Seymour]

Thanks so much! It really means a lot :-)