The Shifting Path [short story]

I am strolling down the beach at peace with myself, while a sweet-and-salty breeze is feeding me with optimism and tolerance. Further down the coast beams the five-star hotel. It’s built for celebrities, double-dealing politicians and the occasional businessman cheating on his wife. Inside, shuffling like termites in a fresh nest, an assortment of brown-nosed waiters, doormen, room-servicers, janitors, clerks and their slick managers are sucking up to the guests. Those numbskulls.

Breathing in, breathing out. At peace, please!

The beach is splattered with butts, legs, breasts and chests, changing positions to receive their allotted share of sunlight. I am treading ahead barefoot, my nose feeding on the breezes, with sandals swinging in my hands, following the narrow part of the beach where sea and shore have been meeting since the beginnings of the Earth. Here, on this ever-shifting path, I get the best of both worlds. Now I’m in the sea, now I’m on land. In the sea, on land. Sea, land...

But the sea reacts. Regular waves morph into malignant shapes, bulging out of gravity’s mold and boiling over my path. Before I have time to run away, the sea surrounds me, while the sand gives in beneath me grain by grain. Soon enough I find myself knee-deep, then chest-deep, then mouth-deep in the gargling masses of salty water. The insatiable sea is stealing more and more land from the dry world.

And all the sunbathing butts, legs, breasts and chests start scampering around in the fertile foams, colliding in a havoc of screams and splashes on what just a few minutes earlier had been a serene and peaceful beach.

The waters are now above my eyes. Despite my attempt to swim back to solid ground, where you can stand, breathe and pass judgement on doormen, celebrities, politicians, and businessmen who cheat on their wives, the far depths of the sea have already hooked me, reeling me in. And away the sea takes me, and the waves start to fight amongst each other for their prey.

Gone is the safety of the shifting path, on the edge of the water, where I felt protected both from the menacing depths of the sea and from the backstabbing joviality of the populated land.

Read my other short stories: Onore| To the Stone Bull Bluff| The Shifting Path | The Spy | Picnic on the White Cliff

image credits: Pixabay