Shoreline

Shoreline by RomeDome.

The beach at Northwinds Sandestin had emptied before midnight.

Only the four of us remained, walking at the seam where the Gulf folded itself onto the sand. Far out over the water, a thunderstorm pulsed behind the horizon—silent flashes at first, then a low delay of thunder that seemed to travel beneath our bare feet.

Every wave left a thin green-blue glow behind it.
Phosphorescence, we said. Plankton. Chemistry. We shrugged.

Then my flashlight found the creature.

It lay on the wet sand just beyond the wash line: pale gray, squat, and soft-bodied, no bigger than my hand. Its shell—or maybe its skin—was patterned with dense, dark lines like a fingerprint enlarged beyond recognition. Two blunt feelers worked the air. It moved with awful patience, contracting and pushing itself forward by fractions of an inch.

“Sea slug?” someone said.
“Some kind of ray embryo?”

From my iPhone flash photos, my Gromet.ai had already guessed at horseshoe-crab larvae, sea hare, armored slug, juvenile mollusk, and several things that did not resemble it at all. None of the names held.

The creature stopped beneath the beam of the flashlight.

A round, amber disk opened on its underside.
Not an eye.
Not a mouth.

It dilated.
We backed away.

In the shallows, the green, milky water broke into dozens of sudden, darting streaks. More of them. They moved too quickly to see clearly, bursting through the glowing foam and vanishing into the next retreating wave. Every short burst left a luminous scar across the surface, as if the water itself had nerves.

The one on shore turned toward us.
It had no visible face, yet it knew exactly where we stood.

“Don’t let it touch you,” I said, though none of us had suggested doing otherwise.

The thing crept on. Slowly enough that the fear became ridiculous. Slowly enough that we laughed once, sharply, to prove we were still people on a beach and not prey in some old story.

Then the storm flashed.
For a fraction of a second, the entire shoreline became white.

The sand was crawling.
Not with dozens.
With thousands.

They had emerged in a broad moving line from the luminous water, each one pale and patterned, each one opening its amber disk toward the warmth of the shore. The dark beach behind us was no longer empty. Shapes had already crossed our footprints. Some had reached the abandoned chairs. Some had climbed into sandals. Some were disappearing beneath the loose hems of towels left near the dunes. I felt something on my left thigh, then a sharp pain in my groin but I ignored it in the rush & panic.

The one in front of us made a sound.
A wet click.

Then another answered from the surf.
Then another from behind us.

We ran.

We did not stop until the lights of the resort rose ahead, bright and yellow and human. We rinsed our feet beneath the outdoor shower until the water turned cold. We checked each other’s legs, ankles, backs of knees. We told ourselves that nothing could be there.

Later, back alone in my room, alone in the bathroom, something.
In the mirror of the condo bathroom, I saw the faintest dark whorl just below my navel.

A fingerprint-shaped pattern beneath the skin.

It did not hurt.

*

About the Author : RomeDome collects sea-things by the seashore.
About the Artist : Romeo Esparrago loves fake crab from the Jimmy Buffet line.