And the Ocean Crashes

Here's a short piece of fiction (thriller) that I've just written. I've decided to leave it on a cliff-hanger but if you want to, you can contribute ideas as to how you'd like me to end it! It's written mostly in the present-tense and focuses on a third-person perspective. Enjoy!

And the Ocean Crashes

Waves break and form rhythmically against the sand-dusted grass. The dying sun glimmers as the shade it created begins fades away, moulding into the twilight and swallowing up the beach in a long black veil. The coastline glistens as it sweeps violently into shore, crashing like a thousand vehicles, epically spraying his face with water droplets as the sand dampens. Pebbles scatter like marbles on tile, snatched by the sea’s grip like a predator pouncing upon its prey.

  

A shack sits abandoned across to one of the smaller archipelagos; a light sits uncannily upon a table through a window. At least he thinks it’s a table, at 600 feet away he isn’t too sure. The wood hut looks local, pine and holding it’s own against the occasional violence of the tides in the area. It was still quite warm outside, even at night. But that light . . .

  

He ushered himself forward; he’d have to find out somehow. He ran across the beach, the sand sinking and rising in tiny dunes, like suction cups lazily grabbing his feet in place for a split second with every step. He passed under trees and their shadows, their giant leaves like fingers waiting to grab whoever dared pass under them. He made his way around the circular path of the beach, progressing around the archipelago at a modest pace. He felt that he needed the energy. He reached the edge of the first beach; the shack was around 350 feet away now, where the beach broke away into a small area of the sea, separating the two landmasses into their own little islands. It was barely a rivulet at his feet; waves so tiny, like those he’d seen in diagrams about sound frequencies; they entranced him for a second. He raised his head up and kept his eye firmly fixed upon the shack. A bird called out somewhere from the forest of palm trees behind him and crickets buzzed in the salty air. The eeriness that had dawned on him slowly, descending like a spider on one’s neck, took hold of him and shook him as if he were rolling down a hill; he began to sweat coldly as he felt his confidence begin to drain like air escaping it’s confinement. He quickly shrugged it off, quivering as he did so: He splashed his way the couple of feet, uncaring of what was or was not there and made a point in doing so as the splashes rang out dramatically. He stepped on the shack’s beach, and the sun began to set.

It didn’t take long for darkness to descend. It was as though it had been expecting him. The beach stretched around some mounds of rock jutting from the surface like crude, multi-bladed knives. He progressed around them as best he could, occasionally stumbling over an insidious stump in the ground at which point, he’d turn, thinking it was a trap set by whoever was going to kill him. The fear took over in those moments and caused him to sprint a short way towards that light in the shack, which was slowly becoming a beacon in the encroaching darkness.

Five minutes passed. He eventually made it . . .