Another short story from the writing workshop – this one’s about twice as long as the others.
Content warnings: child abuse, suicide
She dreams of the sea. Tosses and turns between blue satin sheets that become cresting waves and swirling tides. The salt air is sharp in her nose and high above her she can hear the cry of a gull, searching for land. Even in the dark, the sun is too bright for her eyes and burns her skin.
The gull’s cries get closer, clearer; become words.
“Sarah!”
She breathes in water, and wakes up choking. The bedroom is starkly lit; white walls crowding white pressboard furniture. The white carpet is stained with red wine. He hates to clean.
“Sarah, you were having a nightmare.”
Was she? She doesn’t remember. There is sand between her toes.
She dreams of the sea and the sand. She treads water; when she looks down she sees fish in every colour of the rainbow. The sky is clear, clear blue. Ahead of her is a beach that stretches from one end of the world to the next, a streak of white that fades into the blurred horizon. There’s – she frowns, feels the expression pull on an echo of her face. There’s a house on the beach. She knows that house.
She swims to the beach with legs that never tire, and she walks around the house that she thinks she remembers staying in as a child. It’s barely more than a shack; four walls and a roof and a big verandah out the front with three colourful chairs. She used to love sitting in those chairs.
There’s a little girl sitting in one of the chairs.
When she wakes, there is a bracelet around her wrist woven from seaweed.
Her fiance sits her down in the kitchen. Tells her it’s for her own good. She tries to focus on his face and his words, but he’s blurred around the edges like a watercolour, colours bleeding into each other.
“Sarah,” he says. “You’ve been sleeping badly.”
Has she?
“You need to talk to someone. Hell, talk to me!”
There’s nothing she needs to say. Her eyes feel heavy. Gritty. They drift closed, and she hears the roar of the ocean in her head.
“Sarah!”
She opens her eyes and the room snaps into focus, but the crash of waves remains.
The girl is waiting for her when she falls asleep. Arms spread wide, spinning on the beach.
“I thought you’d forgotten all about me,” the girl says.
She had.
“But now you’ve come back!”
Has she? Her feet are flat on the dry sand, but there’s an echo of wetness. When she focuses on that, the beach flickers. The girl’s smile fades.
“No,” the girl says plaintively. “Stay with me. You promised!”
But it’s too late; the dream is gone. The beach is frigid tiles and a dark room. She reaches out a trembling finger and finds a light switch. Stark bright light fills the bathroom and illuminates the body lying face-down in the overflowing bathtub.
It’s him.
She kneels on the tiles, and reaches out to him. His skin is cold and still, and she fights back a sob. When she rolls him over, his eyes are wide and terrified, and his neck is ringed in finger-shaped bruises. She gently places her fingers on the bruises, knowing they’ll be a perfect match before she touches his skin. There is blood under his nails.
She turns the taps off, and pads out of the room. Paces slowly through the apartment, looking at the overturned furniture with unseeing eyes. She checks the front door. It’s locked.
The bed is soaked in seawater, and the mirror over the dresser reveals scratches on her face painted with dried blood. There is nothing in her head but her.
With shaking fingers, she dials a number she knows by heart.
“Sarah?”
“Mum. There’s something— I need—”
“Are you alright? Sarah?”
She takes a deep breath. “Did we ever spend summers at a beach house?”
“Yes, of course. When you were younger, we went there every year.”
“Why did we stop going?”
“There was…a terrible accident. Your father and I thought it might be best for you to stay away.”
“Did it— did it involve a young girl?”
“I suppose I ought to have known you were too old to forget it entirely. Yes, it did. She was your friend; a local girl. Her father…he was a violent man.”
“Did I know?”
“She told you. And you told us. By the time the police came, it was over.” Her mother pauses, then adds softly, “We were too late.”
She hangs up.
She sits by the bathtub for a long time, trying to remember bright eyes, and sun-bleached hair against brown skin. White lace dresses, and bruises where a child shouldn’t have them. Days of being burdened with awful knowledge and not knowing what to do. Doing the right thing much too late.
Eventually, she takes off her engagement ring, and places it on his chest. She unlocks the front door and leaves it wide open. Gets in the car, and drives. As she drives, she fiddles with the radio until she finds a station that is nothing but static. She winds her window all the way down, and the wind and the white noise fill the car like the roar of the ocean and sweep her away.
When she reaches the beach, she doesn’t lock her car.
She walks onto the sand, and spreads her arms wide. Turns in a circle. Something deep inside her says – at last. The sun beats down on her, warm and inviting, and the ocean sparkles. The sky is clear, clear blue. The salt air is sharp in her nose and high above her she can hear the cry of a gull.
She takes off her shoes, dry sand filling the spaces between her toes, and then the rest of her clothes. Folds them carefully and places them in a pile, shoes on top.
Then she walks into the waves.
Megan Writes 