I can't leave the beach. That much is clear. There's no boardwalk, sea-wall, or parking lot to turn to. Or run to. There is nothing behind me. It's a nothingness that is not void or null, or even nothing. It is unrendered, unimagined. It is not. There's nowhere to run.
Each wave swells, curls, and crashes onto the sand, steadily inching closer. As the shore shrinks before me, the slope of the beach grows steeper. Soon, I will lose my footing and slide down the wall of sand to be swallowed whole by the unrelenting sea.
To my left and right lie two jagged jetties protruding far out into the dark swirling waters, like the feelers of some horrid bug. The ocean slams into the jetties's pointed rocks, dislodging mollusks and crushing crabs. The water froths and tumbles to shore.
"Come on!" shouts my sister. She bobs up and down and dives under a thrashing crest and pops up on a swell, waving for me. "Come on!" And under again, twisting wretchedly in a cross current. And up again, waving, not for help, but for me, urgently. "Come on!"
The waves lap closer and claim an abandoned bucket. The sand shifts beneath me. I scramble up the slope. I can no longer stand. I pull my feet under me, crouching, wound like a spring, but too terrified to spring anywhere. Where's Emma? A mountain of water breaks and races toward me, anointing my foot. Where's Emma? The water's cold shocks me. There! A flash of red hair, a pale arm. "Come on!" she waves.
The waves break closer and closer. I feel their spray. They arch and curl and spit on me. The jetties are nearly gone. Devoured.
Don't look back. Don't look back. Don't look back.
I breathe deep, once, twice. I time the breaks, leap up, and, pounding on the damp sand, ankle deep, knee deep, no ankle deep again as the water recedes, priming for the next punch, I plunge headlong into Poseidon's halls.
"Gah!" I rise, sputtering. I am towed under, tumbled and twisted. My knee ricochets off the sandy floor. I struggle upwards and outwards, towards my sister.
Don't look back. Don't look back.
I've almost reached her. She kicks out farther, ducks, dives, and turns. She waves. "Come on!"
Up and down and up again I go. Wiping water from my eyes, I catch her face. She looks back at me, no, behind me. She's laughing now, happy, mirthful. Confused, I struggle towards her. She swims away.
Don't look back. What does she see? No. Don't look back. Look back. Look back.
I turn. The beach is gone, eaten by the sea. The next wave swells. Up, I soar, up and up. It curls, seems to pause, considering for but a moment if it should or should not. Decision made, it does. It and I crash into the nothingness, swallowing the void, its unthought streets, its unimagined homes. I am drowned, flattened, torn, dissolved. The red bucket clatters to a halt against a sign: No Parking.