The Subtle Taste of Midnight

Time Remembers

                                                                                                                                      ...Time forgets...

                                                      ...Time remembers...

Time screams.

Like the sea crashing against the shore. It churns, bubbles, curls up tight into itself before it flings silver foam against my legs. The sea is angry at me and it's got fucking sharp teeth!

Pain shoots up from the bite-marks in my skin. A reminder, courtesy of the ocean. It wants me to do something more than just stand here with my head stuck in a dream and my toes buried in the sand. It wants me to remember.

Remember what? Sand?

Ah! Sand.

I feel the silver grains creep between my fingers. I try to hold on tighter and tighter to them, but they just slip away faster and faster. Tumbling over and over in the salty breeze till they fall back into the water. The sea curls into itself again and flings the grains of sand back at me. A bull's eye. Right in the fucking face!

Cough‒cough! I choke on the sand. It's everywhere − in my nose, mouth, eyes. I reach up to wipe the sand from my eyes, but my hands...Gods, my hands?! They ain't hands no more. They are sand twisted into fingers and palms and wrists and elbows and...

NO! I ain't flesh and blood no more. My whole body is sparkling sand as silver as stardust.

"No! No!" I bat at my chest and legs. "NO! NO! NO! NO!"

What the fuck's happening to me?

Bits and pieces of me fall off. An ear there, a finger here...my pussy...an arm...a leg. I tip to the left and then to the right, my balance slipping away from me 'cuz the ocean's gnawing at the only good leg I still got to keep me solid and standing. The sea breeze shifts from a gentle whisper to a tempestuous bitch that slaps the shit out of me. It clocks me one in the face...in the stomach.

Oomph! Another one to the guts! My belly rips open, and sand comes pouring out of the wound with a vengeance.

"No!" I scream as I try to scoop up my insides and hold on to them tight. I don't want to lose them. I don't want to lose myself.

Oomph! The wind knocks my jaw off my face. It tumbles...tumbles...lands with a 'plunk' in the middle of the silver-colored water. The sea hisses again, hurls it right back at my head. Clocks me solid in the skull and down I go, a giant toppling like a skyscraper being knocked down so that something better can replace it. I hit the shore hard and lose more body parts while I'm at it.

The sea comes in again and snatches them up quicker than quick. I try to kick at the fucking thing with my one good leg, but the sea lassos me with its silver foam and hauls me in when it curls back into itself again. I kick against it. If this son of a bitch is gonna kill me, it's gonna have to fucking fight me first!

"No!" The screams don't come out of my mouth like they should 'cuz my jaw's gone and my tongue can't make words if it ain't got something to beat against. Not that it matters anymore. The silver sea drags me under and swallows up my words, gurgling them inside its watery throat only to spit them back out at me in a voice.

In her voice.

'Time remembers,' the siren sings.

Gods! No!

I'm drowning...

                                                                      ...I'm dying...

                                                                                                                          ...I'm dreaming...