The Ink In-Between: An Anthology

Golden Hour

PROMPT: Write a story that includes a famous movie line ("I'll be back"). 

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It's high tide, and the sea is restless, anxious for a storm.

Not a safe time to be out and about at the abandoned stone pier. Certainly not for an old man with brittle bones and a weak heart, though that has never stopped Jonah before.

He sits on the edge of the second highest platform, just to be safe, but it doesn't take long for the sea to catch up to him. With every wave, the water laps over the concrete beneath him, leaving his swim shorts drenched and heavy, red fabric clinking to his legs.

The water is freezing. But he enjoys the sensation, the way the cold seeps through his skin and into the very marrow of his bones, the way it travels up his spine and shocks his brain awake, making him more alert. More alive.

He needs to be. There's no one else there but him. No one crazy enough to brave the freezing waters and the approaching storm.

Him... and someone else.

Someone who also prefers it cold.

Jonah looks up, squinting against the light. The clouds loom above, casting their shadows over the pier, but the sky still burns through, glowing in harsh reds and soft golds.

The sun is getting ready to kiss the horizon.

Six degrees above,

you'll wait for me.

He checks his watch.

It's reflexive, a motion born out of habit. He doesn't really need to check the time, knows this all by heart now. Feels that dull ache in his chest, like a knot pulled tight in anticipation, every time, without fail, even after days, and weeks, and years, and decades of being let down.

Not this time though.

Today will be different. He can just feel it, somehow. Like the soreness in his joints, telling him that rain is coming.

So, he sits there, alone on the pier, shuts his eyes against the dying light and waits.

It doesn't take long for him to feel it.

A touch.

Something or someone bumps softly against the heel of his left foot.

Jonah's legs are dangling over the edge of the platform, water up to his knees, and when he looks down, he can't see much of anything in those murky depths, no way of knowing what lies beneath.

But he doesn't pull his feet out or tuck his legs, barely even flinches. He keeps them there, heart lurching in this throat as that shy touch turns into a grip.

A hand crawls upwards to curl around his ankle. It's an odd sensation, not the warm give of flesh, but something colder, harder and rubbery.

Another hand joins it, and both slowly trail up his leg, sharp nails grazing against the thin skin there.

And Jonah shivers, but it's not from the danger or the cold. But because there's something almost embarrassingly reverent about the gentle, inquisitive way those fingers brush and press into every bump and dent, every vein and every scar on just that one part of his body.

It's only when those hands reach his knee that he finally gets to see it.

A face, or something close to it, emerges from the cold depths. It breaks the surface right next to his leg, the warm, golden glow of the sunset dancing off its smooth, pitch-black scales.