More sand

I watched as a man left his house ten minutes after his wife, and then walked next door where he was greeted by someone who could only have been his mistress, and the two of them disappeared into the house, which was solid sand beyond the windows, and so I could only guess at what went on there. But I began to see, just by watching them, that these tiny creatures weren’t really so different from  you and I. One of them rammed his car into another’s along the street, and after getting out, and making sure no one was watching, he drove away without leaving a note or anything, driving faster now into the honey combed streets of sand. The afternoon sun was now high in the sky, and I was beginning to sweat, peering over that city, casting a shadow they surely must have noticed over what appeared to be the financial district. No one seemed to care. Not one of them looked up into the sky, all too intent on the hustle and bustle below.

I could see after a while why the artist might have left, why he might have wandered to some other part of the beach, maybe to peer at some shells, or toss a star fish back in the water. Put his gaze on something different then these curious creatures so like people you meet on the street every day, only miniature, and living at the edge of a disaster they didn’t see coming. I can tell you straight out that I still hadn’t gotten the metaphor by that point, she said.

She was sexy, long legged and bony, with small dark circles under her eyes that gave her a movie star’s bedraggled look.

I’m sorry this is taking so long, she said. But really, it was this night that changed my life. Anyhow, the day wore on, and I decided to go in search of the artist, to trust that no harm would come to that small town of industrious people, and I walked down towards the beach where that pile of kelp lay that the sea gulls had been pecking away at all day. And I as I got closer the monstrous stench of the thing nearly overwhelmed me, and I held my nose as I approached, sending a pack of three gulls scurrying away, not quite committing to flight. It was at that point that I saw the gulls hadn’t been pecking away at a pile of kelp all day but at a body, a black and bloated body, turned over on its side, facing away from me.

I’d forgotten by this point, all about the people in the city, and being in the middle of this place I looked around again for someone, only then remembering the artist, the artist who had perhaps done this and then made the people and the castle and run perhaps as a sort of penance. One could imagine such a thing. And I can tell you that though I didn’t want to walk around and see the bodies face, for I was sure that it would be bloated beyond belief and perhaps eyeless, so long had the gulls been at work on it, but a nagging feeling told me that I should. And I stepped around, sending a few squawkers off into the distance, winging towards the now distant sun, beyond dark cliffs holding black trees hostage or perhaps the other way around, and I saw my own eyeless face starting back at me. And I screamed.

It was at this point that I woke up from whatever had happened to me and discovered that the guy I’d arrived with had left, that the whole house was empty, everyone gone. And I knew what I had to do. I went and picked up my clothes from wherever they’d been thrown. I didn’t go searching for any of the lost right away. I understood in a flash, what my dream or vision was trying to tell me, and I accepted Jesus into my heart that very night, and I haven’t doubted Him ever since.