The whisper of the beach goddess (standard:drama, 1237 words)
Author: Beachcomber	Added: Oct 18 2004	Views/Reads: 3399/2234	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
The mind is a strange place. It is inhabited by whispers. It is these whispers that speak the words we live by...or die by.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

close to death, should now think to be careful about how he chooses his 
footing. 

The reason I decide to interfere in his thoughts is simply a matter of
selfishness. If he should step off the cliff to find his new world, my 
chosen world is altered with the intrusion of police, sightseers, and 
then, God forbid, the family mourners. I'll have a week of people 
coming to see the ledge from where he leapt off, crying, leaving 
flowers, screaming how they didn't know things were so bad. I might as 
well be back in Baker Street. 

I'm so content here it's hard to control my dissatisfaction at the
thought of his presence. Couldn't he go through his hateful stuff 
somewhere else? I can't fathom why he would want to contaminate the 
frothy excitement below. His demise won't even get a mention back in 
the land of barking dogs, traffic lights, two wheel bikes, and mad 
butchers with cleavers. He could quietly enter a building, one with an 
elevator, brass gates and lit buttons, and no-one will question the 
reason for him being there.  No-one is going to care whether he's had 
transsexual therapy, too many martini lunches, or if his car has failed 
the smog test. No-one will think to ask him a contrived moral question. 
Instead, he comes seeking out a desolate beach. I'm wondering if he 
knows how many beaches there are, and how many of them are better 
suited to his present frame of mind. Instead we sit here on the cliff 
and look like ill fitting dentures against the gum of reality. 

The man again shifts nervously. A few grains of dust fly away. 

“Just so you know, I'll not report the fact you leapt off, if indeed
that's your intention. They'll find you some day up ahead. It's a kind 
of unwritten law; the sea only gives up those who don't love her.” 

I don't know why he's doing this and I don't care, other than he's going
to ruin my serenity. Does he not understand there are greater questions 
to ask than which presently confuse him. Silly questions... where do 
jellyfish go in winter? Why does beach grass grow where nothing else 
does? Why does the tide give up certain objects and not others? Where 
do the great whales go to die? What makes sand build itself into 
something as stable as a dune? He won't hear me asking. He's about to 
let go of life. Anticipating his next movement, I speak one last 
fleeting notion. “By design, just so you know, life is not intended to 
answer everything.” 

At that moment the whisper of the beach goddess spoke more sense to him.


I look across to where he had sat. A gold ring rests on a cushion of
powdered rock. 

I stand and look over the beach. A wave changes and breaks. I turn away
and move back from the invading white. 

A week from now flowers will bloom where nature never intended they
should. 


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