Sorry about ugly formatting. It was nice and pretty in a Word doc. I'm not good with formatting on forums.
The Beach
My beach was the only home I’d ever known. I would sometimes seem to remember a time before the beach. But I could never tell if it was real or just a dream. Then again, nothing on my beach seemed real, nor did anything on the beach seem like a dream. It was a surreal place of my own where time failed to flow.
It was always dark on my beach. It always was dark, and always would be. The sky was pitch black. The sun never rose. The moon never appeared. The stars, if there were any, were always hidden. The wind never blew. The ocean was always still. It was always cold on my beach. There was a lighthouse on the far edge of the beach. But it never shined. Because of that, I started calling it the darkhouse. What good was a lighthouse without a light?
Each day was the same. I’d wake up, work on my sandcastle until I was sleepy, and then went to sleep. I had no friends to talk to. No mommy. No daddy. All ten years of my life had been the same way. At least, I think it’s been that way. But I always did what I wanted to do. Whenever I wanted to do it. For the most part, anyway. But it almost didn’t matter to me, because I was alone. Alone and sad.
A Lady spoke to me occasionally, but she wasn’t a friend or a parent. She just gave me instructions. She was like a teacher. My first actual memory of being on my beach was waking up, and hearing a voice telling me to never enter the darkhouse. A few days later (I think it was a few days; you couldn’t really track time on my beach), I asked the Lady if I could have something to eat. I was used to eating multiple times a day, but she told me that I never needed to eat while I was on the beach. I was confused by that, but I didn’t argue. To be honest, I didn’t really even remember what food tasted like anymore.
After a while, I started to get bored. So I started building a large sandcastle. It was hard to see, but after a while my eyes adjusted to the darkness well enough to see my castle, the darkhouse, the dunes behind me, and the motionless ocean. It got to the point where my castle was several times larger than me, and had a dry moat. It excited me to see all of my hard work paying off. One day, I wanted it to be large enough for me to sleep in.
I was the princess of my castle, waiting for a knight who would one day come to rescue me from this place, my beach.
One day, the Lady asked why I was lonely. I told her that I had no real friends on my beach, and that made me sad. The Lady didn’t reply for a long time. But when she did, she told me just to imagine any friend I wanted, and they would appear. I smiled. I would finally have people to play with. I would have people help me with my castle. I would build a kingdom on my beach, and everyone would live happily ever after.
All I’d ever wanted was a friend, and now I finally had the opportunity.
Soon after the Lady told me this, I sat down and imagined a friend. I was the princess of my castle, and I needed a prince. I closed my eyes and imagined my prince. Suddenly, I was dreaming. I couldn’t see anything, but I heard a lot of people. I could tell that I was in a large room filled with people. Gradually, everyone in the room went quiet. There were footsteps across wood. Then a boy spoke. A young boy, probably around my age. It was my prince. He was speaking to the people. They all listened silently. I smiled, listening to my prince speak. I was happy knowing that he’d be here with me soon. We’d rule this kingdom together.
It was hard to make out what my prince was saying, but I could tell that he was very confident. I giggled excitedly. I was looking forward to having him as my friend. We would be best friends forever. We’d live happily ever after. We would…
But then my dreams started falling apart as my prince started stuttering. His words slowed and slurred. I frowned, scared, wondering what was happening. The crowd murmured uneasily. And then…my prince fell silent. I could hear him hit the ground. The crowd exploded into chaos. People screamed. Some cried. Countless feet ran towards my prince. And then the dream ended.
I shrieked and stumbled backwards, crying. I fell onto my beach. I gasped for air, scared at what I had just heard. I knew what had happened, even though I couldn’t see anything. By trying to summon my prince to my beach, he had died. Somehow, I knew that it was my fault.
I cried for a long time.
Once I calmed down, I asked the Lady what had happened. I asked her why my prince died when I tried to bring him here. All she said was that he did come here. I frowned, because I didn’t find anyone else on my beach. No prince. No friends. I asked her how to find him. She told me that I wouldn’t ever be able to. I asked her how I was supposed to have friends on my beach, and she said that I just had to imagine them, and they would come. I told her that I already tried that, and my prince had died somehow. She said that just because I couldn’t see him didn’t mean that he wasn’t there. I didn’t know what she meant, but I said okay anyway. I decided to go to sleep.
Once I woke up, I asked the Lady if imagining someone would really bring them here, or if they would just die and never come. She promised me that, eventually, a friend really would come and live with me forever on my beach. I said okay. I didn’t want to accidentally hurt anyone again, but I really wanted friends. So I closed my eyes and imagined another friend. A knight. After all, knights always save the princess. There’s no way he’d get hurt.
I hoped.
To be honest, I really half-hoped that I wouldn’t hear anything. I kind of hoped that I would never find anyone on my beach. Not after what had happened to my prince. Even though the Lady said I would have friends, I felt like I would only ever hurt people. But…I was selfish. So I imagined my knight.
This time, I saw him. My knight. But the image was fuzzy, out of focus for some reason. I couldn’t make out his features. He was lying in bed. Bright light streamed into his room through a window. My knight was just waking up. He rolled over, hugging a teddy bear close to him. A music box in the corner of his room quietly played a soft piano track. The boy stayed in his bed, listening to the pretty piano track loop over and over again. The tune was pretty. It was sad and hopeful at the same time.
After a long time, a woman walked into his room. I assumed that it was his mother. She smiled at him and leaned down and kissed his forehead. Her eyes shined when she looked at her son. He clearly meant the world to her. I smiled at that. I’d never felt loved like that, but it was really nice to see someone be loved. My knight giggled and covered his face with his teddy bear as his mother kissed him. His mother started tickling him, laughing as her little boy squealed and squirmed. I smiled, watching them. I’d soon have that same happiness as well.
And then my heart and dreams shattered again because, after just a few moments, the boy’s movements started to slow. I started crying. Screaming. I tried to get out of the dream. I couldn’t, couldn’t, let my knight die. But…it was too late. The boy stopped smiling and went still. His mother continued tickling him for a few moments before stopping uncertainly. The boy went limp, his head rolling to the side. The mother screamed and pulled the boy out of bed. I couldn’t tell who was crying louder: me or the mother.
The dream ended.
The Lady didn’t speak to me anymore. I called out to her, screaming, tears streaming down my face, asking why I was hurting people. I begged. I pleaded. No response. I cried every now and then. I didn’t work on my castle anymore. I didn’t want to be a princess anymore. I just wanted a friend to play with. I wanted someone I could bring here without hurting them. But apparently that would never be possible. So I never tried to bring a friend to my beach again. I decided that I would be lonely forever rather than hurt someone because I was selfish.
But one day, I began to think. The Lady said that I did bring my prince here. That means that I also brought my knight here. She said that I just wouldn’t ever be able to see them. She had also told me to never enter the darkhouse. But what if my friends were locked up inside of the darkhouse? What if they were actually with me? What if I disobeyed the Lady and entered the darkhouse? I thought about it for a long time.
I decided that I didn’t care about what the Lady said. She had made me hurt people. Anyone who did that obviously couldn’t be trusted. I wasn’t going to listen to her anymore. So, fueled by anger, rebellion, and determination, I made my way to the darkhouse. As I walked towards it, a growing sense of unease filled me. At one point, I wanted to cry. The closer I got to the darkhouse, the heavier and scarier the darkness seemed to become. Out of the darkness, long, skeletal fingers seemed to reach out for me, trying to grab me, slow me down. I was scared, but I didn’t stop. I reached my hand out to the darkhouse as I got near it. The Lady finally spoke up, telling me not to do it. I ignored her. She said that I would regret disobeying her. I didn’t care. I didn’t care about what she said. I hated the Lady.
The Lady fell silent. My hand reached the door to the darkhouse. The door gave a disapproving squeal as I opened it. Ignoring the dust that flew off of it, I hesitantly entered. It was darker in the darkhouse than it was outside. I carefully made my way to the top of the darkhouse. Every footstep echoed loudly. The metal stairs and walkways squeaked and rattled with every step, as though they would collapse at any moment.
I reached the top of the darkhouse. It was a big circular room with a giant spotlight in the middle. But the spotlight was dark. I walked around the room once, twice, three times. It was empty. I frowned. Why had the Lady told me that I couldn’t enter here? Neither my prince nor my knight were here. There was nothing here but a broken light. I sighed and sat down, trying to think. Why had the Lady not wanted me to come up here? There was absolutely nothing to hide. I couldn’t even see outside the windows of the darkhouse. It was too dark. The darkhouse housed no secrets.
I was startled by a voice. It was the Lady, telling me that I was wrong. Before I could respond, the darkhouse suddenly became a lighthouse. A powerful, intense light suddenly filled the whole world, blinding me. I cried out in pain as the light stung my eyes. I shielded my eyes for a very long time, waiting for them to adjust. Waiting for the light to stop hurting. Once it did, I looked out of the lighthouse. A beam of light swept over the ocean. The beach. The dunes. The ocean was utterly black, even in the light. It was perfectly still. Sharp, jagged rocks stuck out of the water. Hundreds – no, thousands of them. As far as the eye could see, rocks stuck out of the water. It was an ocean of death. It was eerie.
My beach was also completely black. My castle was as dark as night, and terribly built. I could see it clearly now. It looked sad. I had spent a long time on my castle, and it was still ugly. No princess would ever live there.
But then again, I wasn’t a princess. I was a little lost girl with nothing to love and nothing to lose.
Then I looked at the dunes. I could only see the dunes for a brief second as the beam of light flashed over them, but I frowned. There was something behind the dunes. I waited for the lighthouse to illuminate the area again. Once it did, I gasped.
Behind the dunes were stones. Rows and rows of dark, uniform stones. A massive graveyard. There were more graves there than there were rocks in the ocean. Gravestones stuck out of the earth at odd angles, inches away from other gravestones, extending for miles in every direction. Then I noticed something else. A few of them closest to the beach looked…fresh? They were newer. Cleaner. I looked around my nightmare world once more before getting down from the lighthouse. The door slammed shut behind me. I walked across the beach towards the dunes. As I did, I heard someone whispering. I stopped and looked around, but no one was there. I asked the Lady if she was trying to speak to me. The whispering just continued. I realized it wasn’t the Lady. It was someone else.
I put my hands against the dunes, and the whispering intensified. More voices joined in. It grew louder. I realized that the whispering I heard was all in my head. I shook my head and whimpered. I was scared. I was really tempted to just stay on the beach and continue obeying the Lady, rather than exploring what lay beyond the dunes. But…I also felt something. I felt like the graveyard was hiding something from me. I felt like it held a terrible secret. I shivered, but I started climbing the dunes. The whisperings grew louder…and angrier. They filled my head, clawing at my skull, filling me with their anger and their fear. I screamed, trying to be louder than them, trying to make the voices go away. But they didn’t go away. I started crying. I was terrified.
Then I was over the dunes and in the graveyard. The whispering stopped abruptly. I stood, eyes wide, hardly breathing. The lighthouse illuminated the graveyard briefly. I found the new gravestones. I walked over to them slowly, wondering whose they were. Why they were here. I slowly reached my hand out to one. As soon as my fingertips brushed against the stone, the light flashed over me. Suddenly, I wasn’t in the graveyard anymore.
I saw a boy on a school bus. He was my age. I’d never seen him before in my life, but I knew that he was my prince. I felt guilty. My prince looked happy, surrounded by friends on the bus. Behind the bus, I saw a lady waving. I knew, somehow, that it was his mother. She was smiling. The boy was talking and laughing with his friends on the bus.
I wanted to cry. I was watching my prince’s last day of life, knowing what was going to happen. Knowing that I was going to cause it. He was so clueless. I wished so much that I could change what I did. But…I couldn’t, could I? My prince was so happy…laughing…smiling. I took all of that away from him. His mother in the background, waving to her son, was unaware that she wasn’t going to see him alive again. All because some little girl wanted a friend.
The scene shifted, and he was in a large cafeteria. Some old person on a stage at the front of the cafeteria called a name and announced the person as the final contestant for some competition. My prince stood up and walked to the stage. He looked calm and cool. Confident. I looked away and covered my ears as the boy began to speak. I started crying even though I was trying not to. The crowd fell silent.
And then the vision ended. Which I guess was fine. I knew what happened next, and I didn’t want to see it. Hearing it had already scared me enough.
I wished I could bring him back. I wished I could undo my mistakes.
The light from the lighthouse had stopped moving. It was focused directly on a single gravestone. It bore a boy’s name. I stared at it for a long time, my vision blurry from tears that stung my eyes. It was so eerie with the light frozen, and with the whisperings suddenly gone. I felt uneasy. I felt like something very bad was going to happen if I touched the gravestone. But…I realized that I didn’t really care. I felt so dead inside. So numb. I couldn’t bring myself to care about anything. So I took a shaky breath and reached my hand out. My fingers brushed the cold stone. Someone screamed in my ear, and suddenly I was gone.
This time, it wasn’t a vision. I was standing in a sunny field. There were a lot of people standing around, dressed in black. They were quiet.
It was warm outside. It was nice. It was beautiful. I looked around in awe. I could hardly remember the last time I saw real sunlight and felt its warmth. But it was so beautiful. The warmth alone was enough to make me giggle happily. Birds were flying above. Clouds filled the sky. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
But then I saw the casket. I realized that I was standing in the middle of a funeral. I couldn’t hear what anyone was saying, but I could definitely tell. All the people who looked like they were mourning. The important-looking man standing in front of the casket. The black clothing. I looked around and frowned. No one seemed to notice me. Except for one person…
I saw a little boy standing beside me. He seemed to flicker in the sunlight. No one noticed him, either.
“Whose funeral is it?” I asked him quietly. He was silent for a long time.
“Mine,” he finally said. And then it hit me. This boy was my knight. I looked down and started crying. I had caused this. The funeral. I had caused not just the death of my knight, but the heartbreak of everyone who loved him.
I was a monster.
“I didn’t mean to,” I whispered. My knight hugged me and rubbed my back. I hugged him back tightly.
“I know you didn’t,” he told me. We stood there for a long time. I cried and cried and cried. I hadn’t meant for any of this to happen. All I’d ever wanted was a friend to play with. But…I was doomed to hurt people, wasn’t I? That’s all I would ever do, wasn’t it?
Finally he asked me if I wanted to go play. I nodded. He let go of me and told me that he knew where we could go play. He went and hugged his mother, who didn’t seem to notice him, before walking back to me. Then he took my hand, and we were running. I giggled as I ran away with my knight, sunlight warming my face.
I was still sad. I felt horrible, but I finally had a friend. He seemed happy, too. I’m not sure how, but I was finally with my knight.
We ran through the large city, crossing streets and dodging people who didn’t even notice us. It was incredible, seeing all of these people. After being alone for so long, it amazed me that so many people even existed. Everything I saw was new and wonderful for me. Eventually, I saw a large park in the distance. Lots of kids my age were playing there. My knight told me that he used to go there almost every day with his mother. I told him that I’ve never had anyone to play with. He looked at me. He asked if that was really true. I nodded.
Then he spoke. You should have obeyed me, child! He said. He sounded just like the Lady. I backed up, eyes wide, confused. Before I could react, I blinked, and…
The beach wasn’t really that bad, I guess. I told myself that out loud to try to convince myself that it was true. When I woke up on the beach again, I couldn’t really do anything. I was in a new type of prison. The darkhouse was all chained up. There was no way get in it anymore. A large barbwire fence was set up in front of the water. There was no swimming anymore. I couldn’t climb the dunes either. Every time I did, the dunes just got taller and taller. Steeper and steeper until I just fell back down to the beach. And really, the voices in my head weren’t that bad. I got used to them pretty quickly. I had to, since they never left me alone no matter where I was, or what I was doing.
The castle was destroyed. I didn’t really mind. It was ugly, anyway. It wasn’t fit for a princess. I could always just build a new one. That being said, it had been a really, really long time since I met my knight, and I still hadn’t started working on a new one. I just kinda sat there on my beach, watching the darkness do nothing.
The Lady didn’t speak to me anymore. The last time I heard from her was when I returned to my beach after visiting my knight. She told me to keep killing people or else I would suffer.
I didn’t like that the Lady thought that she could still tell me what to do.
I would obey her one more time. I would harm just one more victim, and I would do it without remorse. After all, I was already a monster. A monster who had stolen lives just so she could have some friends. I was selfish. One more death wouldn’t be so bad, right?
Especially when it was the death of the Lady.
I wasn’t going to take the lives of innocents anymore just because some evil person said I had to. So I sat down on the beach, looked out at the darkness, and sighed. And then I closed my eyes. I imagined one more “friend” that I wanted to “play” with. It was a mean, old Lady. A Lady who tricked children into hurting their friends. After a few seconds, I felt the connection.
No, the Lady said. Stop, child. I will not tolerate this. I didn’t respond. I focused on the Lady’s life. You fool, she hissed. What will you accomplish by doing this? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. You think that you’ll just survive on your beach by yourself for the rest of eternity? Forever’s a very long time to wait for nothing to happen, dearie. I hesitated. Maybe if I obeyed her, I would have a chance at getting off of my beach…?
I hesitated, but I did not stop. Suddenly, a furious roar swept across my beach. This is your final warning, you evil, disobedient child! You don’t even know what you’re doing, you ignorant fool! Kill me, and you die, too!
I didn’t care.
Sand rose from my beach and attacked me, stinging as it cut into my skin. I screamed in agony. The ocean rose and swelled and crashed over me. The dunes collapsed on top of me. I was suffocating. I was dead, but dying anyway. But I didn’t stop what I was doing. Even though I was scared. Terrified. I was in horrible pain. I was drowning. I was being suffocated. I was being crushed. But I didn’t stop.
And then in the final moments of the Lady’s life – the final moments of my life – I saw it. It was a flashback, not unlike the visions I saw when I imagined a friend. In this vision, I saw…myself. In the real world. The realm of the living. I saw a woman – my mommy – tucking me into bed. She smiled at me, and I smiled back. She kissed my forehead. She told me that she loved me. And then she was gone. I rolled over in my bed, clutching my stuffed dragon. In the corner of the room was a pink castle with knights on horses outside of it, guarding the princess who stood on a balcony at the top of the tallest tower of the castle. A dragon nightlight was plugged into the wall beside it. It looked like the knights were about to fight the light that kept me safe from the monsters underneath my bed.
At some point in the middle of the night, I simply stopped breathing. One moment, I was sleeping happily, probably having a nice dream. The next, I was simply…gone. It was weird to watch myself die. I frowned as I watched myself lie in my bed, cold and lifeless. I cried the next morning when I watched my mother try to wake me up.
You can have all of this back, the Lady told me. Just stop what you’re doing and you can have all of this back. I will set you free.
I don’t believe you, I told the Lady. She screamed. And then…silence.
As it turns out, the Lady wasn’t lying about one thing. I couldn’t survive on the beach without her. As soon as she died, I faded from the beach. But I also returned to the real world. I found my knight at the park, playing with children who couldn’t even see him. I decided to join him. He looked really happy to see me. He asked what happened. Where I went. I didn’t answer, but he didn’t really seem to care.
My knight and I met another child like us. We played at the park every day with all of the other children. They didn’t know that we were there, but we swung on the swings with them. We went down the slide with them. We helped them build sandcastles in the sandbox. Sandcastles out of actual white sand. And even though the other children never knew that we were there, my knight and I were always happy. We were never lonely.
We played Knights and Dragons a lot. I was always the princess. My knight always saved me from the other boy, the “dragon”, who was never happy with his role. He always said that he was supposed to be the son of the king.
It felt nice to be able to actually play with other people. I had wanted that for forever. I realized that I made the right choice by getting rid of the Lady. None of these children would be taken from their parents because of someone like me now. Their families wouldn’t suffer the heartbreak of losing a son or a daughter. And that thought made me smile.
I finally understood that the beach was never really home. Though I lived there for most of my “life”, it was never really home. Home is where the heart is, right? That’s what mommy always said. I didn’t hate the beach, but…at the park, I felt like I was finally home. And my knight, my prince, and I played from that moment on, forever, never wishing for anything else.
