Digging The Beach

A short story for the STSC Sept. 2022 Symposium

Every morning I awaken on cool shifting smoothness, sand grains on my lips, in my nostrils, clumping on my eyelashes. The surrounding air echoes with a mighty series of sneezes triggered by the grains that travelled too far and I spit, feeling the grit on my teeth. The sand flees, but just a little bit of it. The rest is still there.

I sit up, shaking my head to fling dreamsleep remnants away. My eyelids retract and I squint at another dazzling morning. The brightness hurts, but it’s just another layer of pain.

Around me, sand, everywhere. Like yesterday and every day before that I am surrounded by sand. I know there were days before sand, before this damned beach but I can’t believe it. I have always been here; the past is irrelevant.

I did horrible things. I think I did. I must have, why else am I here? Or maybe that life was the dream and only this beach is real.

My skin has healed again, back to normal pink. It will be red soon.

The shovel is there, like always. The dreamlord’s servants are meticulous and unrelenting. The handle is smooth with a plastic grip. The blade is as big as my head and it shines. It’s immaculate. Again.

Another face stares back at me from the shovel. It’s mine, or so I think. That’s my assumption: I’m alone here. But I don’t recognize this person. I don’t remember the last time I looked in a mirror. I used to see my reflection in the sea but I don’t look at it anymore: it’s full of nightmare creatures whose looks slice my eyeballs into shreds while their voices fire cannons into my eardrums. The salty water turns my tongue to scratchy leather and my throat into geyser-scorched ruin. So the shovel and the sand are all I can almost bear.

The itching has started along my back, my arms and my face: the dreamlord’s geas will not be denied. I pick up the shovel before the itches become worse. I restart the dig.

The beach is endless, as is the strip of green water that borders it along the edge of forever. I tried to find the end once: never again.

I fill and dump one shovel full, then another. Hand, arm and back begin to protest. Their screaming will start soon, then fade to the normal dull throb which fills them most days, a poisonous pain-fatigue.

I dig. I dig. And I dig.

The dreamlord said that my task would be complete after I dug up every single grain of sand on the beach. I just had to move each grain out of its current position, even slightly. He even gave me the shovel. I couldn’t see his face under that damned mask but he seemed sincere, as sincere as a person can be who only speaks in a slow monotone.

I dig. I dig. I dig.

The sun is one quarter of the way above the horizon. The sky here is orange. I remember (or dream?) about blue skies that were occasionally hidden by mist and rain. The sky is always orange here. The sun is yellow. My skin is turning red. The shovel is brown with a blue handle and a silver blade. My eyes and hair are gray.

What kind of hell has an orange sky?

The sweat dries almost instantly. My skin reddens further and tightens. It will split as the day progresses.

I’ve been developing a new idea between bladefuls of sand. There’s no possible way to move every single grain of sand on this beach before the sun explodes and collapses into a white dwarf. There just aren’t enough days. So now I dig holes. I dig as deep as possible. I dig deeper and deeper until I am just throwing dirt on my burnt, lacerated back with a claw hand and a blackened arm.

I remember that I used to dig holes in a different beach as a child. I would bury socks, shoes, rocks, sticks, just about anything I could find into the huge expanse of beach near my home. I was hiding them so only I would know their location. They needed to be kept safe so they wouldn’t get in trouble. This was before I started burying clams. And fish. And birds, bloodied and broken.

And people.

A return to the earth through a shroud of sand was all that they needed. So I’d bury people, people who needed to be saved and preserved. I filled my beach with life. LIfe that turned to death for all of them. Death became sand. Sand was the start of life, the accumulation of dust everlasting. I tried to tell them this as I worked but they would all scream. I used the shovel to quiet them so I could save them. My beach grew more full of life.

My flesh is cracking. The raw wetness oozes. Sun and sand release my own life, slowly.

I am always hungry, I am always thirsty. That hurts, a lot, but it does not stop the shoveling. I am post-pain.

I dig more, harder and faster. I’ve thought of a new way to outwit the dreamlord. I will dig down, through the beach, into the darkness. I will not stop until I am through. My life, through the sand, to be saved.

I am the dig. I am the shovel. I am the sand. I am an endless cycle of sweat, ooze and pain. The cycle does not end.

This time, I am deeper than ever before. Every failure has made me that much stronger, that much more resilient. I am becoming the sand. I am darker and deeper than ever. I am shoveling myself, I am one with the sand.

My shovel pokes through, into emptiness. I stop, disbelieving. Has this happened before?

My shoveling returns with urgency. I am digging a hole below me and there is no more sand. I make the hole bigger, wider. I must break through, my escape is at hand. I lean into the work digging more, and more and more and…

Suddenly the sand before me shifts. The tunnel I have dug deep below the beach has become a slippery tube and I am sliding. I lose my grip on the shovel and it flies away from me. I see a spinning silver arc which quickly fades away. I fall into the dark. I scream from excitement, from fear and from pain. I fall. I fall. I fall.

Into endless nothing. I become the nothing. I am gone.

---

I awaken on cool shifting smoothness, sand grains on my lips, in my nostrils, clumping on my eyelashes. The surrounding air echoes with a mighty series of sneezes triggered by the grains that travelled too far and I spit, feeling the grit on my teeth. The sand flees, but just a little bit of it. The rest is still there.

I sit up, shaking my head to fling dreamsleep remnants away. My eyelids retract and I squint to another dazzling morning. The brightness hurts.

I look at myself; something is missing. I am puzzled for a split second, then the memories return.

I had become so used to not having legs that I’d forgotten that I’d ever had them. Each time I dug through to the bottom of the beach I fell through the endless black until I awoke again. I had broken through the bottom twice before, each time with one less leg.

Now my left forearm is gone. Smooth skin at the end of the elbow. And the shovel lies beside me, shiny and new.

The itching is starting. I grasp the shovel handle with my right hand. I try to balance the shaft on my left stump to make it easier to lift the full blade of sand but my remaining arm is too short and the shaft falls to the ground.

I haven’t cried in centuries. But I am crying now and my body convulses with torment. The words come to my lips unbidden. I know it’s too late.

“I’m sorry!” I wail but only grunts emerge. My skin begins to melt away. The agony doubles with each second but I am human enough that my sorrow overpowers everything. I am bubbled muscle and rendering tendon with skin blazing, tender parts dripping with acid and white bone smeared with streaks of unspeakable color. My eyes boil, hiding the horrible scene before me. My jaw bone locks mid scream as the soft tissues drip away, then it falls to the beach, followed by my slimy skeleton.

Somehow I feel every microsecond of the anguish. The dreamlord’s geas will not be denied. Then darkness.

---

I awaken on cool shifting smoothness, sand grains on my lips, in my nostrils, clumping on my eyelashes. The surrounding air echoes with a mighty series of sneezes triggered by the grains that travelled too far and I spit, feeling the grit on my teeth. The sand flees, but just a little bit of it. The rest is still there.

I sit up, shaking my head to fling dreamsleep remnants away. My eyelids retract and I squint to another dazzling morning. The brightness hurts.

Around me, sand, everywhere. Like yesterday and every day before that I am surrounded by sand. I know there were days before sand, before this damned beach but I can’t believe it. I have always been here; the past is irrelevant.

I did horrible things. I think I did. I must have, why else am I here? Or maybe that life was the dream and only this beach is real.

My skin has healed again, back to normal pink. It will be red soon.

A trowel is there. The dreamlord’s servants are meticulous and unrelenting. The handle is smooth with a wooden grip. The blade is the size of my hand and it shines. It’s immaculate.

The itching is getting stronger. I slip the trowel’s blade into the sand, scoop some up and toss it behind me. I look around the endless beach and see the green strip of ocean running along the horizon. The dreamlord said I was cursed to move every grain of sand on this beach before my penance would be done.

That’s impossible, I think. The sun above will run out of fuel and explode into a nova before I can do that.

Suddenly, an idea: why not dig down? Surely if I dig down enough, far enough, eventually I will escape. I don’t see any other way.

I don’t know how long I’ve been here but this is the first glimmer of hope I can recall and I seize upon it. I dig deeper. The work would be so much easier with a shovel and two hands to use it.

But… didn’t I have two hands before?

I shake my head and get back to digging the beach.