Down to the Riptide

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"I was scared of dentists and the dark.
I was scared of pretty girls and starting conversations."
-Riptide, Vance Joy.

The ocean.
I suppose you could say it's big. Enormous would be a better adjective. And blue. A deep, rich, Sapphire blue, but not today.

Today, it seemed more white, and the deep blue seemed almost black against the angry clouds that stared ominously down at the face of the churning water.

He stood by the towering rocks. He shivered. The wind was bitterly cold, and his thick woolen hoodie, did nothing to protect him from the chilly blasts of air.

His short, wavy locks of blonde hair whipped across his forehead, and at his ears and neck. Tears streamed down his face, they were caught in the stubble on his jaw.

He crouched in the pebbly sand, leaning against a jagged rock, staring out into the stormy depths. His back hurt. Greg had done it. Sarah had been drinking again, Greg was having his way with her unconscious body. He was in his room, listening to music full blast through his headphones, trying to drown out the grunts from his mothers room.

Greg drank too. He came to his room, seeking a different kind of pleasure. The bottle hit him. So did Greg's fists, knees, boots, and belt. He couldn't do anything. Greg and Sarah, didn't feed him much, and Greg was a cop, a very muscular one.

He barely made a sound as Greg beat him. When it stopped, Greg wandered off; probably to grab another beer and snooze on the couch- and he fled the house.

His feet brought him here, an alcove in the rocks, a small beach nobody knew about. It was his safe haven.

School wasn't any better than home. He was a senior, and he was still bullied. His grades were excellent, but the cuts on his wrist, and his mothers drunkeness, earned him daily beat downs by the members of the football team, he was even bullied by the girls, and that didn't help his reputation.

He sat in the cold wind. Sand coated his jeans, and the sky seemed ready to cry with him. He pulled his hood over his head, and hoped that the ocean would come and swallow him.

Somehow, over the roar of the ocean, he heard, f o o t s t e p s.