To Know Why

To Know Why

 

The beach distinguished itself by the free atmosphere, no irritations of a too busy beach, just relaxation. Other than that, the beach was plain, it had warm sand, a salty sea and a sun that was shadowed by the clouds every now and then. The huge sandpit was filled with various types of day trippers, people who just came to the beach for one day.

It was busier than he expected it to be, definitely with the weather forecast that had warned for stormy weather this afternoon, yet still empty for this time of year. He looked at the beach-goers from his seat on the beach club’s terrace, not really interested in any of them and solely watching them out of pure boredom. But then, an odd group of people struck his eye. Odd enough to make him forget his almost drinkable coffee. The man, let’s call him David, was now eyeing the odd group of four that existed of two women who couldn’t be more different.

 

The older woman was a slightly sun-tanned woman around the age of 55 or 60, David thought. The woman wore a white cotton T-shirt with a pair of beige linen pants that were one size too big. The woman’s face was soft, not hardened in irritation with the passing years like so many old people, and contoured by white-grey hair, bob-line cut, which was blowing freely in the soft breeze.

The younger woman’s clothes, David didn’t notice, because the hard look on her face seemed to draw him in. The hard look seemed more permanent than David had previously thought after his first glance at her. The younger woman’s skin was of an unhealthy pale colour and signed by a signature birth mark beneath her left jawline.

Because David didn’t want to miss the two men of the group, he let his eyes fall onto the older man’s stained, probably by some jam, blue blouse. The older man looked like a 40-year-old, David guessed. The man was dressed as if he just came from a casual meeting of a board of directors. Though, the irritated look on the older man’s face seemed recent enough, though, David doubted it had something to do with the red coloured jam stains on his neat blouse.

The younger man, a dark skinned boy of about 20-years-old, seemed nervous for an undefinable reason, which bothered David more than he’d anticipated. The young man’s shoulders were nearly below his ear, risen so high from the tension of the situation. Even while the young man seemed incredibly nervous, it couldn’t have something to do with his clothes, David thought. The young man seemed to be wearing the newest clothing, all decorated by huge brands. He wore a white t-shirt with Levi’s printed on it in red letters. His jeans were dark and neat, without tears, stitches or stains in them. However, the bottom of his jeans had been too long, and therefore stepped down and muddy caused by scraping over the floor.

 

When David looked around the not-crowded beach, he noticed one big difference between this odd group of four and all the other beach-goers. The odd group of four wasn’t making one sound or communicating in any way. All around the beach, people were talking to each other about a wide variety of subjects probably, or walking their dogs and calling them back when they drifted off too far. But the odd group of four seemed silent and severely uncomfortable in each other’s presence. David didn’t see any familial signs between either of the four and he also couldn’t deduct why they were at this beach together at this time of day. His thoughts raced to the most macabre of imaginary stories and he forced himself to think of something more light-hearted than death, rape and murder.

 

Being pushed out of his thoughts, the muddle became smaller in his mind until he saw the half-full cup of coffee in front of him on the white lounge table. He placed his hands around the cup, feeling a tinge of irritation when it had grown colder than the breeze that was apparent. And while the beach club terrace had gotten more and more crowded with people fleeing the sudden stormy rain on the beach, the odd group of four stood still at the shoreline. They stood next to each other, all of them lined up, looking at the sea. When thunder rumbled in the clouded sky and lightning flashed quickly after it, the odd group of four had frozen.

Other people were shouting to their kids to hurry to the beach club to shelter from the bad weather, but the odd group of four didn’t hurry at all. They slowly moved away from the shoreline, as if they knew danger (lightning) was getting closer but they didn’t dare to move faster. David was pondering over the thousands of possibilities of the reason why they acted like this.

They couldn’t be colleagues; colleagues would be communicating. They couldn’t be family, neither of them looked like each other and even if that fact was disregarded for logical reasons of today’s possibilities, they were all in such different ages and combined with the fact that they were uncomfortable around each other, David deemed it impossible for them to be family. They could have been destined together, brought together by a traffic accident, or witnesses of a murder. But all of these reasons seemed unlikely. Some reasons were more plausible than others, but none of them seemed to fit perfectly, much to David’s frustration.

 

When the waitress disturbed his peace by asking him if he wanted to pay, which he did shortly after, he looked at his watch and realized he was late. A loud sigh of irritation sounded from his throat, frustrated of his need to rush, but way more because he still didn’t know. Because he still didn’t know what their connection was, why they were here together at this time of day. He still didn’t know, even after trying to deduct by their clothing, appearance and body language to know what the relation was between them that could explain their presence at this beach.

 

The ability to accept not knowing something, is diminished when the window of opportunity to find out, closes. After all, humans always want the impossible, and the hunger of their curiosity will never truly be stilled. David was no different at all, he was human. What David didn’t know was that he was more alike the odd group of four than he would ever understand. All of them were human. And all of them were filled with the instinctive urge to understand, to know. To know how, but more importantly, to know why.

 

 

Author's Note

I would love to hear your thoughts about it! I want to improve on writing my surroundings and descriptions, so I hope this was a solid first try.

The ultimate goal of this story is to make the reader; 1. curious as though why the four people were together at the beach, 2. frustrated, because in the end they still don't know.

Did I reach my goal? Tell me!