"A Thousand Empty Days" by Winona Morris

A Thousand Empty Days

by Winona Morris

The problem with being mostly dead is that sometimes completely dead is better.

It had taken her too long to realize that the precipice did, in fact, count as part of the beach. If she had realized it earlier, she thought she could have swum all the way back to the mainland. She wasn’t stupid, and knew the hazy grey mass was farther away than it looked, but she was also in the prime of her life and people had swum farther.

The day she finally climbed up, she wondered if the climb itself would kill her. Her muscles were weaker, her body breaking down. Her watcher followed her, climbing better than a mountain goat. She wondered if it would catch her if she fell.

She didn’t fall.

The beach was hot, but this tall outcrop of rock was hotter. She stayed up there all day, sitting on the edge, knees pulled up under her chin, staring out at the ocean and the grey landmass just out there on the edge of everything. Her watcher stood behind her, doing nothing as the relentless sun baked her shoulders into an impossible shade of red, before causing them to erupt in blisters.

When she stood, her legs burned where circulation returned. She stood right on the very edge of the precipice. She had decided, and the only thing to worry about now was if her watcher was going to stop her.

She almost turned to look at it, to see if it was moving closer to her.

She dived.

It wasn’t graceful dive, and she hoped briefly that just hitting the water would break her neck.

It didn’t. 

The water was shockingly cold, and the salt burned her abused skin, but she didn’t have time to waste on adjusting to it. She aimed herself towards the mainland, even if she couldn't see it anymore, and she swam. 

She waited for her watcher to pop up in front of her, to grab her, to drag her screaming and crying back to the beach.  

It didn’t.

She swam until her legs turned into dead weights on her body and her arms became useless strings, unable to propel her any further forward. She didn’t turn back, not even once, just faced where freedom was as she sank.

Once she was well and truly submerged, she took the deepest breath she could. She had been sure her body would fight her, the primal urge to live outpacing her desire to just be done with it all. Her body compiled, however, and for a brief moment, she was at peace.

breathe
breathe
come back to us
she’s breathing
roll her on her side so she doesn’t choke on it

Life forced itself back upon her. Her lungs, violated by the strange breath of another person, reacted by expelling all the seawater she had worked so hard to bring in. Her breastbone groaned, and as she lay gagging and coughing on her side, she was sure her they had broken a rib as well.

Her watcher was laying prone on the ground in front of her. Its black eyes and gaping maw made her feel ashamed of herself somehow, as if she were a puppy that had escaped out of the back fence and scolded as a bad dog on the leash-bound walk back home.

She burst into tears, and the other survivors gathered around her, wrapping her shoulder with thin blankets, telling her it was okay, that she was safe now. 

It wasn’t fair that they could do this to her, not after she had gone to such great lengths to simply just not exist anymore.

After a while, the group broke up, separating into duos and trios. Each person was blissfully unaware of the watcher that followed behind them.

They all thought it was their own decision to stay on this island, to wait for rescue without trying to patch the boat, or light a signal fire, or even to just swim away.

When the storm had blown up while they were sailing, she had seen them in the waves. Gray shadows, like cloaks without a body, massive black eyes, and large round mouths. They just followed the boat, never coming too close, but never going away.  

Until they had capsized.

Then they came close enough to touch, close enough to drag each and every one of them to the beach.

Somehow every one on the boat had survived.

She was the only one of all of them that could see the things they shared the beach with. The first few days, she watched with growing horror as each time a person walked towards the center of the island, or tried to wade out in the waves, their watcher would move in front of them. Eye to eye, mouth to mouth, inches apart but never touching, person and phantom would face off until the person decided they didn’t want to go looking for fruit after all, or trying to swim for the boat on a sandbar just a few feet off-shore was too much work.

She started calling them the watchers, because all they ever did was stare, but they were clearly in control.

Nobody could leave the beach, and nobody seemed to notice or care.

All of their bodies were all little more than walking skeletons now, lacking food and fresh water for so long, but everyone seemed to think they were at the funnest beach party ever.

Everyone but her.

Face pressed into the beach sand, salty water dribbling like snot from her nose, eye to eye with her watcher, she knew she would never really escape. None of them would.  

Until that moment, she had hoped that death would finally come for them, for her. She knew now that it never would.

It had been three years now. Three years with no food and nothing to drink. Three years when they should not have lasted even three days.

And always, the watchers watched.