"Riptide" by Kat Goss

Riptide

by Kat Goss

Rough, scouring shells. 

The fine, devilish things slice and pierce my skin. Mere moments ago I was stuck, fixated on the calm horizon, words from a childhood song slipping from my lips. 

Oh where the salt and sky meet the land,

Once I saw my merry man. 

Eyes as blue as the water’s depths,

He tethers me to the sand… 

It seemed to me for a moment as if the calm surface of the water had bulged. I could compare it to a sigh, as if my song had reminded it of something fond. My own chest had heaved in unison with the tide, my mind swallowed by the vast horizon, my thoughts absent. 

Heavy were my feet – anchors buried deep within the sand of ground-up shells and coral. Alone on a beach is a grand place to be if you can convince yourself that you are ever truly alone. Such colossal movement of air and water must carry life, envelop it around you. Or perhaps I am more like my grandmother than I thought, swept away by mystical stories and dreams. 

My feet are not heavy anymore. They struggle against a constriction so soft, yet so determined, that I am almost convinced to give in – to stop fighting. It’s the scraping against my skin that brings me back. Salt in the wounds. 

There is no seagull’s cry or wave’s crash. I float, not yet in the water, not quite on the shore. I am at the mercy of the voice that sings back to me from the sea. 

Oh where the cold is deep as night,

And you never see the light.

It is here you’ll find your merry man,

Find him if you can. 

It is a voice with no source, the water its amplification. It is a verse I do not know, a feeling I do not like and yet, I am rendered helpless to the call. By now the sand is embedding itself in my hair. Long curls drag above me, forming dreadlocks of seaweed and sponge, heavier and heavier with each few feet that I am pulled. 

The grip on my ankles is frigid, as if the owner of the unseen hands has spent all eternity deep beneath the sand’s surface where the water holds. When they tripped me, I’d hit the ground hard enough to be stunned, for my lungs to still a moment, struggling for air. 

How can that be when the air here on the beach is endless and constantly moving? 

I am still moving without consent, as if I have fallen into the drawback of a wave. But I am not in the water. I was standing only a moment ago. 

If you wish to see your merry man,

Then brave me if you can. 

At rest you’ll be your very best for your reckoning with me. 

The last verse is little more than a whisper at the nape of my neck, carried by the breeze. 

My feet plunge into the cold, lapping water, and my heart jolts. 

No. 

I plunge into fear without control of it. I must get out. Clawing, the sand mounds at my sides, streaks of struggle left behind on the shore. The only sign that I was ever here. I’m up to my knees now and the sand has hilled beneath me. 

It is no stopper to my fate. The restraints tighten the more I fight – the ocean now a turbulent thing. Salt spray clings the parts of me not yet drenched, a warning of the iciness to come. At last my lungs suck in air and it chokes me. 

The smell of rot pressurizes through my senses. It is as if every creature that has ever decayed here is back to meet me and I can taste them on my tongue. It is no use to kick, my knees meet only the harsh sand and already they are raw. 

I have swallowed some of the air now, putrid and thick. I grasp at the beach, my nails breaking off to become part of the strand – to be turned into castles and have names with hearts drawn into it. Is that what will become of me? Will my own rotting stench join the air of this bay?

I’m up to my ribcage and already my feet are numb. There is a frozen vise on my lungs. My breath is raspy, coarse like the crushed shells that slice my skin. 

The cold envelops me as my head plunges beneath the water. What little sun is left in the sky is dappled by the choppy waves above my head. I kick, but I do not swim. The water wraps around me like fabric, heavy and flowing. 

Deeper I struggle, each inch downward colder than the last. 

Bubbles escape my nose and mouth, finding their freedom to the surface and I watch them go. My heart billows in my chest, fighting against the pressure of endless water weight around me. 

Something warm has touched me now. A living, blood-filled hand that wraps around my thigh. Hopeless, I search for its body, my eyes straining against the dark, salty sea. There is nothing. I feel sand again. And coral and crabs. Yet, I sink deeper until my knees are buried in the ocean floor. My heart pounds out its final thumps, a rhythmic backdrop for a song so innocently sung. 

This time the voice has no melody. 

The words burst from the depths as a wretched scream, determined and furious and all around me. 

Eyes as blue as the water’s depths! 

He tethers me to the sand!