Beckon

A Story by space

Every year your family goes to the same dreary town on the eastern coast for summer vacation, this year was no different. Your family piled into the small van and drove for hours until reaching your hotel, where you unpacked and lazed around for a couple of hours. This same routine continued for a couple of days, interspersed with breaks to the tourist museum of the boring things that happened here a hundred years ago. While on one of these trips, something unusual catches your eye - a small figurine of the town’s lighthouse surrounded with a ginormous wave of ocean water, and a big blob of muscle mass hidden within. You pick up the souvenir - cheap, definitely not worth the fifteen dollars that the price tag labels it as - but decide to buy it anyways.

Three days later, you are still sitting in a bed in your hotel room, your father and the family dog laying on the bed next to you, both completely asleep, and snoring. Your mother and two little siblings are out at the beach, enjoying the day. Today was too hot and sunny for your pale skin, you decided, so you are relaxing on your bed and scrolling through your social media feeds, while some low-budget romance movie plays on the television. Everything seems normal everywhere else in the world. You like some pictures of your friends on their summer vacations, and retweet some funny memes, until you scroll to a post that you have to take a double take to completely digest.

‘TIDAL WAVE HEADING TOWARDS UPPER EAST COAST. EXPECTED TO CREATE GREAT DAMAGE. TAKE CARE AND GO INSIDE IMMEDIATELY IF NEAR THE IMPACT ZONE’, the caption reads. You quickly tap the link, and scan the article, an official report by the weather government agency of whatever that the tidal wave would be heading to northern Massachusetts. Directly towards you.

You climb out of bed, throwing blanket to the ground, and shake your dad awake. He continued to snore for a few seconds, but eventually your shaking opened his eyes, and he meets your eyes, sensing that something is very wrong.

With your dad and dog running behind you, you find the rest of your family on the beach, where they are sitting and working on a half built sandcastle. They notice your arrival and your dad takes your little siblings’ hands, and your family runs back to the hotel, but your dog stays. The puppy that you got for a birthday present when you were six. He sits next to you, as a blue mass comes into view in the horizon.

Within seconds, the wave is there, and you still haven’t moved. Your legs are locked in place, and your dog next to you is still loyal, despite trembling in fear. You reach a hand down to his head and rub behind his ears.

In two seconds, the wave is there, and you still standing. It’s okay, though. Even as the black shape you recognize from the figurine you bought in that store comes closer, you know that it is okay.

Even as it reaches a giant, clawed hand out to you, looking like it will swipe you off the face of the earth, it is okay.

When it takes you and your dog in its hand, and brings you up to its face, you know it is okay.

You smile, looking into the sea creature’s big dark eyes, and it grins back, a toothy smile full of seaweed and little crunched up fish skeletons, radiant in the simmering summer sun.

I missed you, old friend, you say, and it pulls you close to its chest in the tightest embrace you have ever felt.