White Seahorse: An Excerpt

There’s something in the water;

it's blackening my skin.

This mud that I am wading,

is coming from within.

The world’s a boiling kettle;

it simmers just like me.

The sand will trickle down until

it’s swallowed by the sea.

I’m glad I am a seahorse

because I will outlast.

I’ll settle in the remnants

when steam blocks out the glass.

The soot will still have feeling

when I am out of fight

I fear that I will mourn the day

that you once turned me white.

*

            Marv’s knee bounced, just missing the too-low, foldable table attached to the seat in front of him. It was growing harder and harder to pay attention to his lecturer, trapped in a cramped seat as his mind throbbed with one particular thought. He always promised himself he’d leave his phone in his bag during classes, and for once he wished he was strong enough to actually keep that promise.

            It was a brief scroll — a quick check — and now, all he could think about was that damn ambiguous photo he saw.

            He was forced into a tragedy most divine. His teeth were going to grind to dust by the time he left the lecture hall. He tried to put it out of his mind — to listen to the professor — who really was quite interesting when you gave him the chance to be — but he found himself distracted in a way he rarely was. It was deep within him. In his bone marrow. He could feel every moment of the process as his blood darkened with dread. He’d experienced this feeling on occasion. But not to this degree. His heart pumped his blackening blood around his body, and it only encouraged the poison to seep in.

            He couldn’t get the image out of his mind. It was the beach. Bellewaters beach. The beach he’d grown up on — the beach he’d introduced to Clara. The beach that he sometimes felt belonged to him alone. That beach was now the setting to a doom he could not even fathom. Something so extraordinarily built to destroy him specifically.

            The photo — Ray posted it without a thought. He and Clara were on the beach together. In the middle of winter.

            They were there without Marv.

*

            Marv got home from university, gaining even less than usual. He didn’t really have any friends in his classes, so no one noticed he was out of it. It didn’t matter anyway; he was quiet to begin with. It would have been hard for even those close to him to notice the change when it really deviated so little from his normal.

            He sat in his room in front of an open laptop, staring between a blank screen and his phone. The only noise in the room was the hum of electricity from his desk lamp. It was probably going to explode one day but it was in the shape of a jellyfish, and he wasn’t going to get rid of it until it did explode. Even then, he’d try to fix it first.

            He turned off his phone and sighed, resting his head in his hands for a moment. He then slumped down, lying on top of his folded arms and staring at the jellyfish. His eyes were so heavy — he felt the beginnings of a headache forming, and he could hardly see anything he was looking at. He attributed it to the five hours of pretending to pay attention to his classes instead of the thing that gave him the urge to shut off his brain indefinitely.

            It was so tempting to abandon any attempts he had at productivity or even enjoyment and sink into his bed at a cool 7pm and stay there until morning. But he thought that just maybe he was being dramatic.

            A lot of people in Bellewaters grew up dreaming of leaving. And Marv understood that. Part of the reason he went to university in the city was to satiate his urge to escape. But at least, through everything, he was always a ten minute walk from the beach. Everyone cleared out by sundown – the tide rose too high to walk without danger of wetting your feet and it was deathly cold. There were also millions of ghost stories that made the beach at night rather unappealing to most. It was probably smart to steer clear. But Marv had had a habit of standing alone with the beach since he was 14. Nothing had happened to him yet — the worst of it was the ends of his pant legs got wet.

            Marv rugged up and headed out — he wore his hood up and let his scarf cover his face. If anyone talked to him right now, he felt like he’d snap. He held his breath the whole walk. And when the wind kissed his cheeks with frostbitten lips, spitting salt into his eyes, he finally let go.

            The cold wasn’t something you could ever get used to. It was a shock to the system that, even if you began to anticipate, you couldn’t stop from ripping through you. It was a natural defence mechanism — indiscriminatory, and reflexive — and so Marv let himself be battered by the wind without offence.

            He walked. And as he did, he felt himself relax for the first time all day. The less you fought against the wind, the easier it was to proceed — he let it carry him, closing his eyes periodically and letting himself float. The wind moaned mournfully, and Marv let it take on his own burdens.

            Marv believed in ghosts. He didn’t have any evidence for them necessarily but, the beach, no matter how abandoned, never felt lonely. The wind carried him so readily and Marv could only imagine the number of other souls that preferred to travel this way. One of the most famous stories that barred others from late beach visits was a woman who, if you listened closely, wailed underneath the howl of the wind. She was dreadfully lonely. She lured in anyone foolish enough to walk the beach by themselves and they drowned. But Marv thought that maybe she just wanted someone to relate to. They didn’t drown because she drowned them but perhaps because she didn’t know they were walking into the sea. She called out desperately, and the poor people who answered to her suffered. Marv could only think her to be cursed. Her story was tragic. She did not scare him. If she existed.

            He blinked through the sand that powdered his skin like spitting rain, and walked until he forgot just how broken he felt.