Stories

We were upstairs, this guy and I, Steve after a few minutes, and he pulled out a thin line of something white, that I’d never done but easily recognized.

And I had this vision, like the ancient Mayan witch doctors used to have, or maybe would still have of what my life was going to be like. I walked down the pathway, which was full of what seemed to be cracked sea shells along a beach, the tide was way out, and someone had built a sandcastle somewhere in between, because the front portion of it had washed away, but the main castle, and the outer wall, which guarded a town of sorts, a real life like town with a butcher and a blacksmith’s shop, you could tell because these tiny sand mounds had the drawing of a knife or two swords crossed over fire that signified what each shop stood for, really it was the finest example of a sand castle that I’d ever seen.

Two sea gulls landed on the ground and pecked wildly at something on the beach, but I was too entranced in the minutia of the sand castle to bother and see what they were up to. It was so far away. I could not understand how a person would have had time to make such a castle, or what the purpose could have been. What possible purpose, beyond anything, artistic I suppose, would drive a person to construct something so unbearably minute and detail filled and yet put it on the edge of constant disaster, because it was clear from the general make up of the beach that at the very least, on a particularly high night the tide came all the way up the beach and would slowly wear away at the castle and the town’s outer walls, and that if we had a hurricane somewhere that the whole thing would be gone, the project ruined.

And suddenly I realized, or maybe just thought I realized that there were infinitesimally small people moving about the town that were only visible if I closed my left eye and squinted, that the streets of the town were bustling, that the blacksmith and the butcher shop’s had actual doors through which people, or what appeared to be people as they seemed to be constructed of parts of the beach, kelp, sand flies, bits of shell, but definitely made to fit into the shape and construction of what you or I would call a person all bustling about. And I became even more concerned, as anyone would, that all of these people were living on the brink of a disaster that they seemed dimly unaware of, for I could see that no one was working on the retaining wall, that the water was damaging it each night, and though I couldn’t be entirely sure, no one was fixing it, they were all dimly going on about their day, waving to one another, picking up groceries, stopping at what were now clearly tiny traffic lights.

I can tell you that my first thought was that I must move them. Must get them all to safety or warn them, but I could tell that we’d have no way of communicating with one another. It was just out of the question. And, it struck me, just who in the world, what artist could have possibly constructed something so fantastical that my eyes and ears could not believe what they saw, the small wheels of a stroller turning on a street. But moreso, how could a person create something like this and then disappear? Who would possibly leave all of these people, or whatever, on the brink of disaster where the smallest misstep of a foot could bring an end to all that hustle and bustle? Who knew how long they’d existed like that, maybe a day, perhaps years. I couldn’t be sure never having been to the beach before, which by this time, I scanned again, trying to see if the artist was anywhere to be found, certain that he, or maker or whatever you want to call him, would certainly be within shouting distance. And I noticed again the sea gulls down by grey green water pecking at something, probably a bed of kelp. And I turned my attention back to the town, watching them go about their days, oblivious of my presence of interest.