Beach “Blood on the Rocks”

Blood breaks upon the rocks, as the water cascades and shifts around me. The foam is a rich pink, while the green lake water looks like oxidized plasma.

It is sunset, but the only difference that makes is the deepening of the reds that have dominated the sky, along with the enlarging of the sun, if only through distortion. By all accounts, the sunset is one of the worlds great forms of creation, but ever since the sun changed the creativity is muted along with the warmth.

I wanted to see where she went in. I wasn't close with her like you were, but it still hurt me when things fell apart.

By now all evidence of the act has been lost, but you and I both know where it was that she entered the water. It is by the old beach house, the one that fell out of use, set far back along the beach. I look down at the rocks, but I remember that they are not rocks. They are broken pieces of concrete and rebar, used to help ensure the stability of the shore.

It is cold, and the shore is thick with ice. Somehow I do not feel it, the warmth of the sun enough to drive away all thoughts of winter, if only for a short while. There is no one else here, no one else left who could find pleasure in this view. Even when things were normal, it was summer when such a place was enjoyed. But some part of me knows that there won't be another summer.

Only endless winter.

I wish I was wrong. More than anything I wish that gut feeling was incorrect, so that I would know that there is enough time to find you before it is over. I know you are still waiting for me, somewhere along that strange stretch of road. By now I have come to accept its strange properties, the way it goes on and on for those tied to it.

If I wanted I believe I could have followed it all the way to you. But who knows how long this road really travels, and who really believes that there is an end?

I miss you, and I will not stop looking for you no matter how long it takes. Honey, I know it is hard right now. I have no way of knowing if this is even reaching you, though I try to send it through every method I can imagine. But even if you don't receive the emails or the letters, I am still recording them, on that wonderful present you got me so long ago.

When finally we are together, you and I will listen to all the letters I am writing, so you can know how much I truly love you and just how much I am wishing I could have told you the truth earlier. Maybe it wouldn't have helped, but I think maybe it would have. I don't have the same experiences as you. When I think of my dreams, there is mostly pleasure there.

That is something that separates us, but maybe the truth would have bridged the gap.

If I had to give up the waking world for a dreaming one, if I had to let go and fall into the fold, as the rest already have, I would refuse.

I would refuse unless I knew that it wouldn't pull me away from you.

There are bodies in the water, floating there as they pulse against the rocks. How old they are or where they came from I cannot say. Maybe they came here for the same reason Ariana did. Maybe they were seeking out the feeling of being part of a new form. But if they had, it seems that they have found themselves rejected.
The Thing on the Beach already has what it wanted.

Their forms, a least some of them, are held fast against the shore, the shifting of the water coating them in layers and layers of ice, preserving them against the onslaught of the coming dark. The sun is lowering now, and soon the night will arrive, with the moon cast in the red of the sky. Every night there seem to be fewer and fewer stars, and there is a smell to the air I cannot quite place.

I think maybe it is strange that sights like these don't really get to me the way it may some people. But I also think it is normal for those who spends their lives along this strange stretch of road. The darkness and the violence, the monsters and the stories just feel like the cost of living, and there are really beautiful moments to the found.

And monsters need a home too.

I love you Niomi. I know if you think about it, you can remember a time when things were better. I will share my moment with you, the one that keeps me looking for you and keeps me feeling safe and understood in the weirdness of things right now.

In December of 2020, you told me you loved me for the first time. It was your New Years resolution.
And that is the happiest memory I have.

I think I will reach you by next week. The roads are choked with abandoned cars.

Please wait for me.