Ghost on the Beach

A retired government ninja walks on the beach Saturday mornings and notices a divine apparition.

A simple and divine ghost-tale about a government-man seeking retirement dawn while walking on the American beaches. Enjoy (signing off finally!), 

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Stan liked walking on the beach every Saturday morning. He'd worked for the CIA in some capacity or another for the last 10 years and sought to retire comfortable in Virginia Beach shores in his 40s, which was a young age to retire, but he'd been working actively for the US government since his 20s, after graduating from Dartmouth, acting as an Interpol-linked agent in British Columbia and the UK to subvert the spheres created by Euro-barons to forge blood-diamond traffic stretching from South Africa to Europe to North America, 'conflict gems' mined and used to finance terrorism regimes and funded by warlords. This corrupt international blood-diamond highway was corrupting the modern diamond market, and it'd become a new form of 'Gold Rush' for underground activity, making it difficult for modern gem merchants and companies to sort through the silos of clean gems and corrupted political gems from South Africa. Now, Stan wanted a life of mental peace and comfort and to forget about his past life of great sociopolitical and economic tribulations!

Stan took his regular walk on the beach in Virginia every Saturday morning, at around 7 or 8 am, despite rain or shine. If it rained heavily, Stan would perform his routine exercise walk on the beach in his raincoat jacket which had a convenient protective head-hood covering. He even started taking mental notes on poems he'd want to write about a life lived in peace and contentment, simply leaving behind his past life of great government intrigue. This was the light he'd envisioned while working tirelessly as a blood-diamond 'captain' in North America and Europe. He was happy with what he was able to achieve for the world governments and for his own and for Interpol/CIA! Stan just wanted now to enjoy his early retirement days, living off his comfy government pension and planning long poems about a life of peace and happiness. To that end, these Saturday morning walks on the beach became his regular exercise in mental catharsis and meditative peace. He imagined he'd become like the Hindu deity Shiva, a meditating god of destruction yearning for a thought-life of basic reflection!

Stan wasn't Hindu religiously but rather a devout Catholic. However, he seemed to identify with the deity Shiva's sense of self-aware meditative private quest for self-controlled dominion control and mental peace as a working god of great governance intelligence or destruction! Nevertheless, Stan continued to wear his Christian necklace, which had always brought him special luck and courage during his days of blood-diamond studies for Interpol/CIA. These Saturday morning walks on the beach in Virginia had become his special call-sign for a welcomed post-working life of sought spiritual tranquility. He concluded that these walks on the beach would regularly bring him welcomed thoughts about hospitality, warmth, American comforts, and environmental securities. He even bought a special diamond cuff-link set with a Christian cross diamond embossed on its face, which he'd wear with dress-shirts for special Virginia Beach church events which he'd attend as a semi-retired man of private dreams.

Things took a strange turn one fine Saturday morning on the beach in the summer of 2020, after the Coronavirus quarantine had begun worldwide! Stan was in his raincoat that wet morning and was partly walking on the beach, having recently quit his nasty habit of cigarette-smoking! Stan had been walking that morning somewhat drowsy, since he'd dreamt the night-before he was visited by the apparition of a beautiful young woman. While walking on the beach that rainy morning, wearing his usual protective Coronavirus mask, he noticed the silhouette of the same beautiful woman he'd dreamt of the night before while sleeping! He realized it was the very-same apparition he'd dreamt of while sleeping. Was this 'ghost on the beach' a messenger of a post-work life promised experience of spiritual sentiment and mental happiness, or was it a dreadful memory of some traumatic government-work experience signifying some kind of violence or complication? He decided to walk towards the beautiful apparition, but as he did, she simply vanished but not without smiling at him first! Stan whispered to himself, "God willing, this is a vision of a post-life 'wife' who'll entreat my needed sensibility regarding much-deserved divinity."

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"Money is everything" (Ecclesiastes)