… On The Beach

… On The Beach

By: Impy D. Imp

(CW: feet)

The sun was high, baking the sand of the beach. This didn’t stop two brothers who lay on their towels, a parasol folded and unused behind them.

Ron and John relaxed, the stress of their work far away from here as the heat danced upon their shirtless frames. Waves crashed, and water rushed back and forth, leaving patches of foam behind. Apart from them, no beachgoers were in sight, a shoreline without anyone to bother them.

Ron turned to his brother and tilted his sunglasses upward, exposing clear tan lines around his eyes that matched the farmer’s tan below his neck.

“Awful quiet, isn’t it?” 

“So?” John said, unmoving.

Ron frowned lopsidedly. He didn’t appreciate the flippant dismissal his older brother gave to his gut feelings. It wasn’t the first time, either. Ron knew he could trust them, but he couldn’t find others who agreed with him. Work normally suppressed these feelings, but away from it here, it tickled at the edges of his mind. He struggled with what this was about, but something clearly bothered him.

“So, it doesn’t feel right to me.”

John tilted his head slightly to regard Ron out of the corner of his eye, for what little he could be bothered.

“You are the only guy I know that gets ‘hunches’ on an empty beach.”

That measured tone was what really annoyed Ron most. His calm denial, like he was the only thing standing between John and a relaxing day. John hadn’t been this cold to him earlier, and it irked him now. 

“Look around!” Ron said, indignant, “Do you hear any seagulls?” 

“You worry too much, Ron. You really need to relax. We both needed this, and I’m not going to ruin this by humoring you right now.”

Ron lowered his sunglasses back and lay on his own towel, squirming to flatten out the sand beneath him. It felt like a lumpy mattress. Thoughts of taking a swim crossed his mind, but he didn’t much feel like working his way through the shallows and trying to avoid whatever was hidden in the clouded waters of the Atlantic. It would be just his luck that he’d somehow find a particularly slimy patch of seaweed, which made him prefer his current spot more.

He closed his eyes and tried to get his mind off things, but minutes stretched for longer than he wanted. Restlessness began to set in.  He tried to concentrate on the waves. The lazy rhythm of the crash and flow on the shoreline proved to be helpful. He felt his hearing sharpen as he listened.

Though it seemed far away, he could hear it now. This had a very different rhythm: Slow, ponderous. He couldn’t tell exactly which direction the sound came from. For now, the ocean distorted the sound. It could be anything, Ron thought, but it did stick out just enough to grab his attention.

“You hear that?” Ron said.

“Yes,” John said, “The waves, and the sound of my patience wearing thin.”

“But-”

“Shut up! Just relax!” 

Ron screwed his mouth into a frown. He must have been mistaken. He was stressed out. Overthinking things again, yeah, just imagining things that weren’t there.

He let his mind wander, taking him back to the lunch the two of them had earlier. He didn’t usually go to food trucks, but he couldn’t pass up the excuse to have fried fish tacos on the coast. He felt the taste of the breading, the crunch of the tangy coleslaw, and tried to keep the juice from dripping down and off his chin. The Satisfying chewing as it came with a-

Boom… Boom… Boom…

Ron pushed that thought aside and went to the boat ride they had taken earlier in the day. Out on the open water, feeling the wind blowing cool against his face. Dolphins followed in their wake, jumping and splashing with a-

Boom… Boom… Boom…

Moving along, the swirl of his thoughts cleared and came into clarity on the boardwalk. There were plenty of people there. Ron enjoyed a good round of people watching. So many people who wore so many different types of outfits here. Each carried themselves with different gaits and attitudes. Each with their own stories told through their bodies. What caught his attention was a tall woman whose path was to take her right by them.

She was gorgeous. Muscular, athletic, confident. A smile played across her lips at a joke in her own mind. Her skin was deeply tanned. Long, coal black hair parted to one side, with the area closest to her left ear nearly shaved. So short a haircut it showed off some small, gold earrings that reminded him of wind chimes. Heart-shaped sunglasses rested on her nose, lending a pink hue to the eyes behind.

She was toned, and Ron struggled to find the last time he saw any such definition on anyone. She looked as if she could lift him and his brother and not even break stride. Her hips swayed, drawing his attention to a segment of rope netting that worked as an accent piece to her skirt. He began to see her path change, and she approached him directly. Her bare feet brushing along the sand beneath with a-

Boom… Boom… Boom…

Ron’s eyes opened with a start, the thunderous sound before him. A panicked hand reached up to tear the sunglasses from his face as everything looked far darker above him.

The immediate sky above him was filled with the view of a massive bare foot descending upon him. Time slowed to a crawl as the sand-caked sole over him came closer to his body, tiny by comparison.

He tried to call out to John, but the words came alarmingly slow to his lips, as he saw the ball of the foot finally contact him and begin to press downward. The monumental weight behind it pressed him deeper into the sand, which cushioned him at first, but soon packed hard and pressed against his back. Air forced from his body under the crushing pressure. His mind raced as he wondered if this was the last thing he’d ever see.

As abrupt as its arrival, Ron suddenly felt the sun on him again. He gasped, feeling the briny air rush into his lungs, drinking deeply, clinging to life. 

His mind swam as he looked to where he heard the next footfall. He saw his gaze land upon the back of a heel. His eyes rose along the legs, past a skirt and familiar rope netting, and to a vast, muscled back of the woman who had just been seen in his mind. Hips swayed casually as she continued her way along the beach.

Ron’s thoughts went to his brother, a flash of an unknown horror quickly dissipated as he saw that John continued to lie, untouched, oblivious. A small shock of white in one of his ears showed that John may have put ear buds in to get away from him. 

“John!”

 Ron scrambled up and grabbed his brother by the shoulders, shaking him with a mix of fear, joy, and a little vindication.

“Jesus, Ron! The Hell’s wrong with you?!” 

Ron pointed in the direction that he had seen the gigantic woman go, but when his eyes caught up with his finger, she was gone. So, too, were the booming sounds of footsteps.

“Ah…” 

John pushed his brother away, all pretense of politeness burned away. Rage flushed his already reddened face.

“That’s it! I’m going back inside! You really need to get your head on straight, Ron!”

John rose, jamming his feet into his sandals, and grabbed his beach towel with as much wrath as one could with a beach towel. He stomped off in a huff as Ron sat, dumbstruck at all that had happened.

Hearing a sound from above, his attention was drawn upward to a seagull as it broke the silence. Its squawking felt like laughter at his expense.

From the gull’s position, it could see a massive footprint that Ron was in, as John’s own trail came from the undisturbed section between where the sole and toes cratered the sand. The seagull didn’t really pay any mind to this, though, as everything felt safe again, and it was the first here to look for any tasty tidbits on the beach before more of its kind arrived.