Castles Made of Sand

Injunction:

I’ve been silenced. Vocal Media ain’t too happy with my prompt protests. They even rejected my last entry (I simply questioned why a teacher’s reality can’t qualify as dystopian). So I acquiesce and construct, for them, their wishes: some improbable, unlikely fiction.

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“You have five hours.”

“That is all?” She asked, squinting up from her haunches, brushing her hands to remove clumps of wet sand. The broad figure above her stood in silhouette against the hot sun.

“Five.” The figure moved to cast a brief relief of shadow across her shoulders, then turned to tromp toward the dotted line of pool beds and volleyball nets spread across the resort’s boundary. She relished in the figure’s struggle with the fluidity of dry sand beneath clumsy feet.

“Five,” she muttered with a sneer tugging her upper lip. She plunged her hands back into the sand probing for the cool, packed grains that felt more like molding clay. Her thoughts traced the letters within the number. F-i-v-e. Five fingers fingering beneath the surface. The youngest of five siblings (not all blood related). A five hour time limit. It has been five years since…

She shuddered, squinted down the shoreline and counted the rhythm of lackadaisical waves. Pop-ups and clusters of bodies bobbed with them in the distance. The sun bleared the distinction between cloud and horizon. It caused her pupils to ache. Five hours, less time than anticipated, so she returned her focus to the underbelly of paradise’s granulated top layer. Her fingers probed deeper.

Jimmy Abilene produced a low grumble when his boots reached the concrete slab of the resort’s pool deck. Bulbous beads gathered at his temples and his knees ached. He kneaded two thick fists into his lower back and mouthed “Bitch.” He used his sleeved shoulder to eradicate the perspiration dripping down his blotched face and tucked underneath an umbrella’s shade. He stared down at her body hunched over sand, minimized by the vast backdrop of ocean.

Jimmy Abilene tasted her dismay at the time-limit like a sour tongue roll. How hard is it to make a sand castle? He snorted at the thought and wrenched his face into a wide smile to nod at a passing couple. It was his director’s idea to hire a sculptor because the director did not have to manage the patrons or the raking crew or the nature preservationists who crawled out at dusk to rope off pathways for birthing sea turtles. The director also ordered Fire throwers to arrive in six hours and their contract demanded a hard erected stage. Not sand platforms built by that woman.

Jimmy Abilene glared once more at the kneeled figure next to the sea then picked up abandoned daiquiri glasses from a poolside table. He straightened and greeted a family staring in stupor at the scenery, weighted in backpacks and blue jeans. “Welcome to paradise, family! Our entertainment tonight boasts of flame swallowers and magnificent sand sculptures. See you there!” Jimmy bowed and slipped away with an expletive blown under breath.

Three hours passed and the lumbering figure had yet to return to announce time limits. She was grateful of that. She ran her hand along the smooth sinews of sculpted sand as a collector of cars would to a rare, vintage model's frame. She stood and stretched. Her knees spit and her back spat in revolt at being straightened. She clasped hands behind her back and pulled her arms up. “Five hours,” she sneered with the flare of a nostril, “I did it in three.”

She swung her arms around and clapped her hands together so tiny mounds of sand pelted pockmarks around her feet. She stepped back and stared down the coastline. New patterns of bodies bobbed against the distant waves increasing in size and intensity. The low, swollen sun allowed more accuracy in distinguishing the hairline edge between sky and ocean.

“Beautiful!” An oiled, bare chested man panted as he jogged perpendicular with the shore. She put her hand to her brow to block the sun and called after him, “Thank You!”

“Beautiful,” she whispered to herself, then kneeled once again next to the sculpture. She folded hands into her lap and studied each divot and crevice. Her eyes traced lines finely feathered by her nails. She tracked each reflection dancing off grains tightly packed together and breathed a sigh of relief. Little would anyone know that deep within the sand castle’s center she buried a diamond ring. Five years since…

She shuddered. The figure was barreling once again toward her from the resort's boundary, knees knocking in a battle between girth and pliable earth. She heard labored puffs before the swishing of sand underfoot. She relished in the clumsiness.

“Finished!” She called out, shielding the sun with her hand.

“It’s…” Jimmy Abilene stopped beside her, pressed his thick hands into his thicker thighs, locked elbows, and chased after several breaths. He wiped his forehead across his shoulder and muttered, “It’s…actually quite…majestic.”

Still seated, she placed her hands back into her lap and her pupils grazed the spires and turrets. Jimmy Abilene noticed, for the first time, her freckled jawline and the skin across the bridge of her nose thin and peeling. Something compelled him to lower to his knees and soil his khakis in the damp sand. He attempted to sit cross-legged, but toppled sideways and settled on a groan, pulling his large knees to chest.

The two studied the sculpture in silence.

Jimmy Abilene coughed. “Fire dancers will arrive soon. You’ll want to rope this off. There’s nylon string and stakes at the lifeguard stand down the beach.”

“That won’t be necessary,” she said turning her gaze the opposite direction. Down the shore, waves began to froth at the tips and slapped at a few remaining bodies bobbing. The first tickle of dusk nipped the horizon, cutting a deep navy stitch between sky and ocean.

“You’ll want payment?” Jimmy Abilene spoke, startled by the softness in his own voice. He shifted body weight at the discomfort of wet sand seeping through his trousers. His eyes fixed on the sand alcazar with latticed windows, sprawling before him.

She nodded.

Jimmy Abilene’s knees slacked, and he rested into a more comfortable seated position. His eyes traced the base of the fortress, followed the moat, and landed on hands folded in her lap. They were tanned, thin, fingers bare, nails dirty under the beds. He swiped his cheek across his shoulder, “What happens when the tide rolls in?”

“It all disappears,” she spoke to the carved drawbridge, then turned and locked her grey eyes on his.

“Why do you do it? I mean, why do you build something guaranteed to be destroyed?”

She kept her pupils locked to his and felt a release in her shoulders. She noticed, for the first time, the lower pout in his lips and the small lines etched along the corners. She turned her hands over in her lap and looked down at her palms, “I don’t know. Penance, perhaps?”

Jimmy Abilene heard an elderly couple holler, “Beautiful!” in unison. Without looking, he knew they walked perpendicular to the shore with arms linked together. He released a long sigh through his nose, closed his eyes, and leaned back on his elbows, allowing the sand’s moisture to wet his shirt. His right leg spread straight, his left leg crooked. His eyes opened to rest, once again on her bare, dirty fingers.

“Paradise,” the word tumbled out of his mouth. Jimmy Abilene sprung up in an attempt to catch it falling out. He stared sheepishly into his lap, “I hate it here.”

“And I build sand castles,” she murmured.

Her gaze drifted down the shore to see one lone body bobbing against the far away pummel of waves. The space between air and water discernible by the color of a sunset’s bruises. “In under five hours,” she turned back, her grey eyes flashing.

“What did you do with the ring?” Jimmy Abilene asked, staring again at her bare fingers coated in the remnants of forming temporary sand palaces.

“It’s been five years since—” she stopped. Shuddered.

“I’m sorry. I should have loved you better,” Jimmy Abiliene resisted the urge to grasp her fingers, weave them once again through his. Instead, he pointed to the sand castle, “It is beautiful. Truly.”

She nodded.