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Creative Writing: The Beach

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I stand and turn in an unsteady circle, trying to orientate myself. The mist surrounds me and the waves surge and retreat, hissing and scraping like a reptile dragging its scales over the rocks. I don’t know it the tide is coming in or going out. I force myself to breath slowly and the beach comes into focus; sand and shingle dotted with rocks and dark clumps of seaweed. There’s a row of streetlights high above the beach. They look familiar, and I walk toward them until I stumble into the base of a wall leading up to the road. I run my hands over it. It’s uneven and slippery with lichen, and too high to climb. I want to give in, to sleep it off and wake up to how life was before. My eyelids are heavy, and my head droops toward my chest. Then, in the seconds before my eyes shut, I see it. Tucked in a hollow formed by an overhang of rocks and tethered to a ring in the wall, is a wooden boat. Warm grey against the darker stones, it’s as deep and broad as a child’s …show more content…

My head rests on a tangle of damp sheets and there’s a coil of rope under my feet; I’m lying in the bottom of the boat like a character in a fairy tale. I’m as light and insubstantial as the thread of my breath in the cold air. It won’t last, this lightness, there’s always a price to pay. Already a dull pain is creeping from my temples and across my scalp, settling on my skull like a cap designed for torture. I stroke the soft splintery wood of the hull, the gentle curves like cupped hands that had held me as I slept. I want to stay curled up amid the sheets and coils of rope and watch the clouds and gulls glide across the sky, but I’m cold. My arms are pimpled with goose flesh. I can’t see my clothes, and I stand up to look for them. There’s a man sitting a few yards away, rolling a cigarette. I duck down again. ‘It’s all right, kid,’ he says. ‘You’re in my boat. I didn’t want to scare you, but I have your stuff; it was all over the beach. I’ll bring it

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