Flotsam

Like a ghost, I rose in the water and the sea turned me upside down. I felt so insubstantial that the tumbling water seemed to run through me, while the waves breaking above my head brought me inevitably to shore. Carried by the swell, I lay among the worn beach boulders. The push and pull of tide rocked me, like a baby, back to sleep. I resisted and stared at the high mackerel sky, at the folded clouds where the sun was hiding.

I tried to remember. I had gone deep, had been so deep. What memory I had was a dull green light and the muffled sound of water echoed by the racing tide. I closed my eyes but, even then, I could still see beds of wrack and kelp, heaving like a slow motion forest. Across my mouth, the weed, like a lover’s hand; from my mouth, as I cried out, no sound, no bubbling air, just a voice as shrill as water itself. I could not remember my words.

Face-down in the shallows, between round stones, I found sand beneath, sand and scuttling crabs, sea-lice and mermaids hair. Around me the storm-debris of so many years, the scattered remains of wreck and ruin carried here on forgotten tides. Memory brought me, falling, into depth, hands, for a moment, in mine as I tumbled in frantic water.

I tried to rise and failed, stood up with so much effort, seemed so light to rise again. Memories of people, loved ones, voices in the hushed flood, came like heartache. My head was spinning. My shuddering sight looked for solid ground. At my translucent feet I saw a body rise and fall, a sad and battered face, astonished by disaster. I knew it was mine. Ghost that I am.

 © BH 2012

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This was the first story I wrote on the theme of seashore for submission to The Wee Seashore Book -Book Two. I found myself thinking of a recent canoeing accident. In the end it was too dark, I thought, and I put it to one side. I called it Flotsam.

Eventually, by the time I'd written Jetsam, I had discovered the meaning of these two maritime legal terms, plus two others - Lagan and Derelict. As a result two more 300-words-or-so stories followed.