Short Story: Man Lost At Sea

Hey ya'll! So, I've mentioned that I was in a writing dry spell, and last week the lovely Cristina suggested that I write a short story to get my writer brain working again. So I did. And it totally helped! I wanted to write one short story per month this year, but this is only my second one because I'm a slacker. Sigh. Here's the story.

Man Lost At Sea

I stand by the sea and wait.

The water is dark and tumultuous, crashing at my bare feet. The bottoms of my jeans are cold and wet, sticking to my ankles and up my calves. Rocks and sand give way under my feet as the water pulls back, claiming the land, taking it away because it can. Just like it wants to take me.

I run a rough hand through my briny hair. I don’t want it to take me, but I’ll go willingly. I’ll go on my own terms when I’m ready. I’ll leave Brit behind. She won’t care anyway. She never did. I reach down and pick up a rock, smooth and cool from the ocean, turning it over in my hand. I want to throw it but it won’t skip in this choppy water. It warms as it steals my body heat, rolling over and over in my palm.
       The sun is lost behind thick, grey clouds, turning the horizon into an angry infinity. I know they’re watching me from the water. They’re waiting for their chance, or for me to make a choice.

My cell phone jingles in my pocket for the seventeenth time and I know it’s Brit again. The electronic tune grates on my nerves, like it’s Brit’s voice nagging and pulling at me, and I yank the phone out of my pocket and throw it long and hard out to sea. The exertion feels good, really good, and I thrill as I watch the device soar through the air and plunk down under the water’s surface.

I can almost feel them laughing at me, knowing that I’m close. I’m so close.

“Ha! Cade!”

I’d know that voice anywhere, even obscured and disembodied in the howling ocean wind. I stuff my hand in my jeans pocket, holding tight to the rock, mildly amused that I keep the rock but chuck the phone. I keep my back to the shore and glance toward the sound.

“Cade Johnson, man lost at sea!” Hank Donnelly gallops down the shoreline like a damn fool, hair flapping in the breeze. I know it’s because he’s in love with Shannon Moore, and I bet he’s just been to see her and that’s why he has that dunce grin on his face. He’s oblivious to the world but somehow manages to make spot-on observations.

I grip the rock in my pocket. Not lost at sea yet.

He stops a few feet behind me to avoid the breakers. “Where’ve you been?” he asks, panting, and I can hear the grin still plastered on his face.

“Here.” It’s suddenly stuffy on this vast beach now that I’m not alone. I take a deep breath of ocean air, and when I lick my lips it tastes like salt.

“Brit’s been looking for you. Said she called you and you never picked up. I knew you’d be here.”

“And here I am.” My tone is mocking, but Hank knows I don’t mean it at him. I don’t even know who I mean it at. Brit, probably. I can see her catlike green eyes squinting at me, judging me, always wanting me to change.

The sea is inviting in its wild thrashing—dark slate water churning, urging me to come forward. I keep my ground, feet planted in the sand and in the sea. I’m on a precipice, in between, and I’m not sure what will sway me one way or the other. Jolly Hank Donnelly isn’t helping.

“Everyone’s coming for the bonfire. You’ll stay for it, right?” Hank says.

“Did you come all this way just for that?”

“Yeah?” He says it like a question, like I should know that he’d come down to the beach just to find me.

I do know, because he’s trying to stop me but won’t say it, and I won’t acknowledge it.

“It’s supposed to storm,” I say. The darkening sky confirms my words, and the wind blows icy shards of seawater into our faces for good measure. I don’t wipe it away—it might be my home soon.

“Cade…where are your shoes?” Hank takes a step toward me, still out of the way of the greedy water.

I step deeper into the surf, my jeans soaked through to my knees as the waves hit. My shoes are in the water with my phone, but I won’t tell him that. It’s a dead giveaway that I’m practically signing my life over to the sea.

Practically, but not yet. Not yet, I shout in my mind at the eyes that are watching.

“Come on, man. Let’s get the bonfire started.” There’s a shred of desperation in Hank’s voice. He knows. He definitely knows. Damn, I don’t want to do this with him here.

I take a minuscule step back. I know they’re watching me. “I’ll be right there,” I say, turning the rock over in my pocket.

Hank just stands there like he doesn’t know what to do, staring between the ocean and me. “Brit’s coming soon. I told her I was looking for you here.”

I rake a hand through my hair, then two hands when I let go of the rock, breathing loudly through my nostrils. I want to be furious at Hank but it’s not his fault he’s an idiot. It’s Brit. It’s Brit I’m furious at. I don’t want to see her, don’t want her anywhere near me. And I sure as hell don’t want her to see me go under the water. Just the mention of her name drives me forward into the waves.

“Cade!”

“Shut up, Hank!” I yell as the water hits my waist, chilling me to the bone. Dammit! I didn’t want it to be like this. I’m halfway there and I haven’t even made up my mind yet. At least I can be sure that Hank won’t follow me. He’s too scared.

The rush of wind and roar of the ocean is loud enough to cover my breathing and my pounding heart and any attempts Hank might make to stop me. I’m deaf with it, with the sea, and as a wave builds before me and water sprays into my eyes I’m blind with it, too. My sensation is lost, and all I know anymore is cold, freaking cold and wet and numb.

Numb.

Numb is what I’m after. Numb erases her name and her eyes and the sound of her voice when she lies to me.

I can hear them now. They’re laughing, jeering. They’re coming to take me if I don’t move quickly.

I make up my mind. I go willingly into the sea, plunging deep into the water and away.

It’s like ice to my bones and a heavy veil over my body as I swim to them. I can’t open my eyes yet but I know they’re close, and I know they see me, and I know they’re angry that they didn’t take me themselves.

This was my choice. Nothing from before matters anymore, null and void in the face of what’s to come. Cade Johnson the quarterback is dead. The only son, the failing student, the drummer, the boyfriend. He’s gone.

I brace myself and I open my eyes.

I am Cade Johnson, man lost at sea.

Short Story: Jinn Rising

Happy Friday! So I've decided to share my January short story with you. It's a bit lengthy for a blog post, but I guess an average short story length? The funny thing is that when I started writing it I was determined to make it a normal, contemporary story with no paranormal elements. Ha! I don't know what made me think I could do that, but the story changed pretty fast. Have a great weekend!

Jinn Rising

The thing is, I’m not sure I wanted it to happen this way.

I stood in line for Jinn Rising’s performance with Jessa, shifting my weight back and forth between my knee-high platform boots. The sidewalk was gritty, and the people in line were gritty, and I thought I fit in pretty well with my carefully selected outfit. Jessa picked out the bright blue mini skirt, and I chose the fishnet black top. Together with the boots and my outrageous makeup, I was perfect.

Perfect for Dylan—Jinn Rising’s lead singer, a senior, and way out of my league. But tonight, I’d find a way to get his attention.

“Liz, move up!” Jessa said, nudging me onward. The line had shifted forward and we were getting closer to the bouncer, a scary-looking bald guy with tattoos. When I thought of the word ‘bouncer’, he was exactly the kind of person my mind conjured up.

“This is a good idea, right?” I said. I knew it was a good idea. It was a brilliant idea. I just needed the reassurance.

Jessa made an aggravated noise. “For the millionth time, this—is—your—chance! Now put your game face on and make Dylan want you, babe.”

I laughed, a nervous, shaky sounding thing. No, I could do this. I’d been dreaming about this since freshman year, when I first saw Dylan perform at the school’s Battle of the Bands, with his spiked blonde hair with the tips dyed blue, and his eyebrow piercing, and the way he ripped his wife beater right down the middle after screaming his lungs out and the whole school went wild, and I’d nearly collapsed from swooning so hard.

I could do this.

Passing the bouncer wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be, and I walked into the club with a slight increase in confidence. I was in a club. I looked awesome. I had a plan.

The club was basically a warehouse. There was black fabric draped everywhere, strobe lights, a bar, and the stage.

The stage.

The music was so loud that it reverberated inside me, pulsing in time with my heartbeat like I was the music. The stage was the center of it all, and Dylan was the center of attention, and the music was the key to making him mine. He was breathtaking. He wore dark jeans and a black T-shirt that read the band’s name in white lettering. He raised an arm out to the side, exposing a tattoo of a star constellation on his inner bicep. His hair had grown out a little, so the spiked, blue tips were taller than usual and there was more blonde now than blue. He moved like a snake, slithering across the stage, and I couldn’t help but move my body along with his music. I was the prey, helpless against his power. But not for long.

“Damn, he’s sexy,” Jessa shouted over the noise. She bumped her bony hip against mine and flipped her sparkly black hair. Ever since I’d known her, which was only for the past two weeks, her hair was always sparkly. It looked like she’d doused her locks in glitter, except the glitter never washed out. Whenever I asked about it she just laughed. “Are you ready, girly?”

I swallowed. “Maybe we can just dance for a little longer? It…it makes me feel strong.”

“Of course it does, babe!” Jessa laughed and spun in a circle, though I couldn’t tell if it was a dance move or one of her random outbursts. She had them frequently.

Jinn Rising started a new song, a slow, primal beat that I felt in my bones. I wasn’t naturally a dancer, but Jessa brought it out of me, luring it to the surface until I couldn’t contain it anymore. I liked it. I liked the freedom I felt as the music moved through my body, and I liked the way people looked at me.

I liked the way Dylan looked at me.

Oh my gosh. Dylan was looking at me.

Breathe, I told myself. Just dance. Feel the music like Jessa taught you.

As if she could hear my thoughts, Jessa shimmied up to me and said right in my ear, “Feel the music. Feel it.” I could smell the almost sickly sweetness that encompassed her. It made me giddy. At least, I think it was the smell that made me giddy. I paid no attention to Dylan and let the music take me where it willed. “Good girl,” Jessa said. “You’re ready. Are you sure you want to do this?”

My dancing faltered. “I…I think so. You said it would make him love me, right?” I stole a glance toward Dylan, and his eyes were on me. I felt brave and flashed him a smile. Peeling my eyes away from him again, I said, “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll do it.”

Jessa’s onyx eyes twinkled in the strobe light. “You got it, babe. Do what I told you.”

She pushed me forward, closer to the stage, the speakers, the music. I was surrounded by bodies, jumping and swaying and gyrating, but I felt alone. I closed my eyes and danced to Dylan’s song, concentrating on it, but above all on Dylan. Lose yourself to the music, Jessa had said. And that’s what I did.

I didn’t know for long I’d been absorbed in the music, but when I opened my eyes everything was different. I was still in the club, and Jinn Rising was still on stage, and Jessa was still laughing and swishing her sparkly hair, but it was all…wrong. It was all wrong. I felt like I wasn’t tethered to my body anymore, like I was standing in this spot but everywhere all at once, and I was pulsing with the sound that blasted from the speakers.

I was the sound.

I walked through the crowd and bumped into a skinny guy with aviators. “Sorry,” I said.

The guy didn’t look at me. He didn’t acknowledge me at all.

I weaved around him and toward the bar. I needed a glass of water, but when I tried to ask the girl behind the counter for a glass, she acted like I wasn’t even there.

“Hello?” I waved my hand in front of her face.

Nothing.

My heart thrummed in panicked cadences. I spotted Jessa back on the dance floor and stalked over to her, grabbing her arm and spinning her around.

She giggled, delighted. “Hey, girl!”

“Jessa,” I hissed. “What did you do to me? Why is everyone acting like they can’t see me?”

Jessa frowned and twirled me in a circle like I was a little girl. “So ungrateful! But not to worry, babe. Dylan can see you. Look…he can’t keep his eyes off of you.” She nodded to the stage and I saw she was right. Dylan was watching me with hunger in his eyes. He was singing to me. And for me.

“I don’t understand,” I said. I wanted to repeat it over and over. “What’s going on?”

“You’re his muse, babe!” She squealed and jumped up and down in time with the beat. “What does Dylan love more than music? Nothing. So what did I make you? Not some pathetic human girl who fawns over him. Oh no, he would never go for that. You’re his inspiration. You are the essence of his music, now!” She grabbed a random guy from the crowd and threw her arms around his neck as she danced.

“Wait!” I cried. “What does that mean? What am I supposed to do?”

Jessa was suddenly lost in the crowd, and though I pushed through countless people and threw them back to get to her, they didn’t see me, and I didn’t see Jessa. She was gone.

I turned to the stage, slowly, disoriented. Dylan sang out the lyrics to my favorite Jinn Rising song, pointing to me.

You’re mine, my love.

Be mine, my love.

I’ll take you away.