MusicalBurialOfficialTwilamore

Death with Music

Traci Kenworth

 

            The waves lapped onto the beach, the sand deep, wet, between fifteen-year-old Audrey Wilson’s toes. She twirled around at the edge of the water, exhilarant in her months off from school, her parents, authority—“Or at least from Aunt Zel and Uncle Jared for the moment—”

            She scowled. Not that the two had been “bad” about her stay with them, she just wanted more freedom, more of a rush. Glancing back at her friends, further down the beach, she clambered over an outcropping of rocks in her path and came up on a new beach entirely. There was a glimpse of a group way off but otherwise, she had the place to herself. She wrapped her arms around herself and squealed. “This, is heaven!”

            Exploring further, she reached into her pocket for her slim, pink IPod. She smiled as a tune from Ua came on called, “Lost on the Seashore.” So, right. She twirled around again and stubbed her toe.

 “Damn, litter bugs!”

She hopped on one foot as the blood dripped down. A piece of glass lay on the beach and she sat down to inspect her toe. She pressed on its sides and bottom but didn’t feel anything in it. Standing, she walked over to the water and washed it. She glanced at her watch and grimaced. Four o’clock, time to head back to her Aunt and Uncle’s. She started to back track her steps. The sand felt dry, hot, beneath her feet as she walked further into its depth. The sand was darker, more of a heavier variety. It reminded her of something.

Up near the branch of rock she saw something shimmer in it. She bent to inspect it.

“What is it?” she said and picked up a few strands with her fingers. Could it be? Gold?

Out here? She glanced around her. Was anyone else near? No, the group had disappeared. She knelt and slid a few more drops through her fingers and cried out. Blood coursed down her fingers as though tiny little teeth had bit her. She pulled back her hand and stumbled backwards. Fanning her hand, she tried to get the blood to stop dripping. She went back to the water and washed but still her fingers bled. Putting her other hand beneath the injured one, she hurried back toward the branch of rock, intending to climb over it and return to the other shore.

            When had it gotten so foggy?

            She could barely see a step in front of her.

            “Where is that rock?”

            She began to run and tripped over something.

            The branch of rock.

            She groped it, thankful to have found it again and the sudden image of a skeletal leg came to her. Screaming, she pulled herself up, her feet streaked with more blood. She glanced down at her hand, suspecting it as the culprit then saw the new cuts on her kneecaps. Why hadn’t anyone heard her? Why hadn’t anyone come? She heard a sliding groan as though someone had opened a coffin or one of those sarcophaguses in an Egyptian tomb.

            Gold sand—no dust—sprinkled over her cuts.

            She screamed as it moved, tasted her cuts.

            Something was moving in the fog, a human shape burst out of it.

            She reached out to whoever it was. “Can you help me? Please? I’m lost and I can’t find my way and there’s some freaky stuff going on with this sand.”

            The fog parted to let the person through and Audrey screamed as she caught sight of the figure. Broken and gutted, with new skin forming on its bones, the skeleton smiled at her with missing teeth. She screamed and backed into the gold-colored sand behind her, feeling the tiny nips of incisors again. “Oh, God, oh Jesus! Please someone help me.”

            The tattered flesh of the skeletal hands, reshaping, bursting through with new skin like cloth on a sewing machine and gripped her neck. Its mouth came forward and pressed her lips to its. She felt it sucking her life-force from her body, even as she beat upon it with bloody hands, their flesh losing the battle with the sand.

            “Don’t fight,” a voice whispered. “I’m Sari and this,” the skeleton whose fingers were now sewn with sinew waved a hand about the gold sand, “is my gravesite.” She smiled against Audrey as she added, “Or where my dust washed up on the shore. Do be a dear and open your mouth further to my kiss.”

            Audrey screamed, the last thing she saw as she faded to nothingness was the sight of her IPod half-buried in the beach, still blasting that song by Ua, “Lost on the Seashore.”

©Copyright July 17, 2010 tlc.

 

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