It is life, it is humanity
Sef. The seagull. The spider. The explorer. Spider. The wolf. Pillar.
Seagull
He wakes up on the shore. Sef. The beach. He’s naked and there’s the rhythmic noise of waves lapping against hard packed sand. A seagull cries, hops over to Sef, and leaves tracks that fill up with water and disappear in seconds. Sef blinks and it’s flown away and it is like the seagull was never there.
Imagination
He’s lost all of his memories. He cannot remember what it looks like beyond the beach, further up land. All just white fog. Sef’s face is pressed up against the sand. Bubbles of air pop out of the seams of the grains.
“Hello,” says a spider.
“Ahh!” shouts Sef. He remains flat against the shore. A wave washes over Sef. The spider scurries out of the way to safety, then returns to him.
“I’m sorry I was scared,” says Sef. “I can’t remember why I was so scared.”
The spider doesn’t move.
“You can talk?” asks Sef.
The spider doesn’t move.
“OK, maybe I imagined that, then.” Sef does not believe himself.
Whose body is this
“What are you? What can you do?” he asks.
The spider starts crawling away.
“Are you like a dog? I can remember dogs. An animal.”
The spider disappears into the white wall beyond the shore. Sef groans and picks himself up off the ground. He wriggles his toes in the sand. They aren’t his.
Frame
Driftwood frame of a home. No walls, just support posts inferring an enclosed space. Sef sits in the center and draws a face in the sand.
Knock knock!
An explorer stands in front of where the door to the driftwood house would be if there was one.
“Hello. I’ve brought cookies,” says the explorer.
I love cookies
Sef and the explorer are halfway through the plate of cookies. They sit in the sand across from each other.
“I love cookies,” says Sef.
“I’m a casual fan,” says the explorer.
The cookies are all gone. Now what?
Evil animal
The roof of his driftwood house is finished. Sef walks along the outside to admire his work. The spider, assumedly the same spider, crawls towards the shelter. Sef picks the spider up off of the sand and places him into the tide. The spider drowns, sinking to the bottom of the shallow shore. The submerged sand swallows the bug corpse.
The vision
Squinting his eyes, Sef can see a shape in the whiteness beyond the beach. A triangle. It unfolds like paper into a rectangle. He starts building a conical structure out of driftwood.
House
The walls of Sef’s driftwood house are completed. It is effectively constructed. He is working on his cone shed in the yard behind his house. The explorer introduces a new guy.
“He’s new to the area,” says the explorer.
“My name is Spider,” says the new guy.
Sef turns to face them. “Oh. Hey.”
“I’m here to help you,” says Spider.
“I don’t need any help, but you can hang out and watch me work,” says Sef.
Recognition
Sef and Spider have finished the cone shed. They are taking turns drawing faces and shapes in the sand. Adding features to each other’s drawn faces and making crazy geometric bodies that continue under the neck.
“I wish I could show someone this driftwood house I made. And the cone shed we made,” says Sef.
“I’m here,” says Spider.
“Yeah, but you saw me making it. And helped me.”
“The explorer liked it.”
“He said it was cool?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t have anything negative to say about it.”
“Huh,” says Sef.
Nighttime
It’s dark out. Nighttime. The sky is full of stars. Some red or green and most a vibrant white-yellow-gold that look like pinholes of distant flame. Sef lays inside his house. Spider is outside. He’s made a fire. The light shines through the gaps of driftwood onto Sef’s face. A deep rumbling. The explorer.
“I do like the house. And the cone shed,” says the explorer.
He holds out his hand and lightning streaks out, snapping against the house and shattering the wood into brittle pieces that fall to the beach like hard rain. The house is destroyed. The cone shed remains. The explorer leaves. Sef pounds the sand with his fists, holding back a sob. Spider watches everything, silently.
You’ve done that already
Morning. New driftwood frame of a house in the same location. Sef builds it alone. Spider sits in the entrance of the cone shed.
“Don’t you want to make something else, now?” asks Spider.
“I want to sit in my house under the stars again and make it through the night,” says Sef. “And display my creation to the far celestial bodies above.”
“You’ve done that already,” says Spider.
Sef continues searching for driftwood on the beach.
Wolf
Progress has halted and the second house remains a frame. A wolf appears from the white beyond the beach. Shaggy, blue fur that shines nicely, beautifully, softly.
Sef lays flat on the sand much like he did before. “Oh,” he says, and raises his head slightly.
The bench
The frame of the second house is gone. The driftwood has been repurposed to make a bench beside the cone shed. Spider sits on the bench and pets the wolf, who happily pants. Sef sits outside the cone shed and draws a triangle in the sand. He brushes it away and draws a rectangle over where it would’ve been.
Exploration
Sef has walked a long ways from camp. He’s walking along the shore until he finds a tree. He gathers the leaves and some bark in a piece of driftwood carved into a sled or bowl shape. Sef pats the tree on the side of its trunk. The bark makes a nice noise.
At camp Sef and Spider twist the fibers from the leaves and from inside the bark to create a crude string. They create the string all day while the wolf runs laps along the edge of the shore.
Complexity
Sef reels in a fish using a pole created from sticks and fishing line. Spider tosses a ball across the beach and the wolf runs after it. Beside their bench and cone shed is a second cone shed. A fire pit between their structures smokes as if it was used recently.
“Why do you hunt and gather and eat and build houses for yourself?” asks the explorer. “You have no reason to sustain your body or protect yourself from threats.”
“It’s just something I have to do,” says Sef. “It’s hard for you to understand, but one day you will when you see what I become.”
Invasion
The next day. Sef and Spider warm their hands on the fire. A cold misting across the beach. The wolf shakes his fur and sprays the camp.
“I will give you a reason,” says the explorer.
Dark armored soldiers hack their way through the white beyond the beach, making their way into camp.
One soldier kicks the wolf and another slashes at Spider with a machete. It cuts into his calf and he takes a knee on the sand. The wolf retreats into the first cone shed and Sef holds the soldiers back with a small knife as he helps Spider into the second cone shed.
The Star
The soldiers (3 of them) try to return beyond the beach, past the white. It is a wall to them and they are stuck on the beach.
“Crap,” says a soldier.
The three of them gather a few yards away from Sef and Spider’s camp and sit on the hard wet sand.
Sef enters the first cone shed to treat the wolf’s wounds. He returns to the second cone shed to treat Spider’s wounds.
Days pass. Two of the soldiers lay on the shore, sleeping for a long time. A third is awake, and bored.
“OK, we’re sorry! I’m sorry!” says the soldier.
No sound from the cone sheds.
“My name is Pillar,” says the soldier. Pillar waits a moment. “What are your names?”
“My name is Sef,” comes from the second cone shed.
“My name is Spider,” comes from the second cone shed. “Why did you attack us?”
“I don’t even know,” says Pillar.
Nightmare
“I’m having a nightmare,” says Sef. He is atop a proud brick fortress on a hill. Rain comes, and melts the stone bricks like acid and the fortress is reduced to a puddle. “I remember this place,” he says.
A giant troll with the explorer’s face carries a boulder, swings it and swings it and throws it at Sef.
“It didn’t happen this way,” says Sef.
Wolves howling. An octopus. The chorus of a song he knew. Darkness.
Community
Pillar and the other two soldiers sit around the campfire with Sef, Spider, and the wolf. They roast fish on sticks.
Around them are the two cone sheds and bench from before, and now a triangular tent-like house across from them. There is some kind of string instrument lying in the sand.
Music to my ears
“Did you enjoy it?” says the explorer. There is an evil-looking bat beside him.
Sef is on the bench practicing chords on his instrument. “Enjoy what?”
“Everything,” says the explorer.
“I’m fine now, thanks,” says Sef looking down at his instrument.
The explorer scrunches his face up. “You sound ungrateful.”
Pillar punches the explorer across the face. The explorer is knocked to the ground. The bat creature tries to bite at Pillar but the other two soldiers grab hold of it and rip it in half. Pillar chops the explorers legs off with a machete.
The explorer’s mouth opens up like a scream but no sound comes out.
“I have become conscious of my past failures,” says Pillar, “and aim to right them through force of will and spiritual bloodshed.”
Sef strings the chords together and it becomes a song.
I’m so sorry, Spider
“I feel like myself, again,” says Sef.
Spider sheds a tear.
The wolf sheds a tear.
Pillar and the other two soldiers shed tears, under their masks.
Sef walks into the ocean, beyond the low tide.
“I’m so sorry, Spider,” he says, facing the horizon. “I hope you can forgive me and find your own way.”
Sef continues to walk into the ocean, feet planted on the submerged sand, the water enveloping his body and head until it’s like he was never there.
Written by
Jack-Henry Lee.
