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Forbidden Shores
Ashur didn't know for sure how he'd gotten here. That beach was unknown to him. Had he ever been to a beach anyway? His memories were confused. He looked down. Apart from his usual yellow briefs, he was naked. He was grasping a shovel and a small, empty bucket.
Deep inside, he knew something was out of place. He shouldn’t have been here alone. But he didn’t feel either lost or threatened. The landscape was still and silent, except for the soft rustle of the waves as they broke on the sand ahead of him. He set out, padding towards the shore. The sun scorched the beach. He didn’t care. Had he ever known anything else than scorchers since he’d been born anyway? Once, his father had told him about clouds and rain, drops of water falling from the sky, grass and trees and forests. He’d chuckled. Wasn’t that another one of dad’s proverbial fancy stories?
When he reached the sea, he stooped down, dipped his forefinger into the water and put it into his mouth. It was deliciously salty. Laying the bucket aside, he dug a single shovelful of sand and watched the walls of the hole crumble into it until it was leveled. Then he took a step ahead and shuddered as the water came up to meet his toes, for it was icy.
Something at the edge of his visual field caught his attention. He spun to the left. His parents were sitting there, at short distance. How come he hadn’t seen them before? He waved to them with his shovel. His father waved back, motioning him to come nearer. Ashur stood up, scooped seawater into his bucket, and walked towards him.
As he came closer, he spotted a sand castle a few yards beyond where his parents sat. He ran to it. The castle had a lofty dungeon surrounded by curtain walls and a moat. Ashur emptied his bucket into it. The water flowed around then slowly seeped into the sand until nothing was left of it. Looking into his bucket, Ashur discovered a tiny shell still lying in its bottom. He picked it up, turned around and walked back to his father.
Ashur sat next to him, opposite his mother. No word was spoken. His parents’ eyes were locked onto the horizon. Ashur reached out to his hand, and squeezed it. Then he too turned his gaze to the horizon, hoping to make out what it was they were so intently gazing at.
The sun was shining hot. The rustle of the waves was lulling him. It was hard to remain focussed. His head dropped, ever so slightly, and his eyes shut.
It seemed to him that he’d dozed off only the tiniest fraction of a second, but when he opened his eyes again, the landscape had changed dramatically. Ahead of him, the sun was sinking into a crimson horizon. The sky was navy blue. The sea had turned into a maelstrom. Giant waves, bigger by the second, broke and rolled onto the shore with a thunderous roar. One of them reached Ashur’s feet. When it retreated, another one immediately took over and crawled up to his crotch.
Ashur wanted to run away but found he was paralyzed. Another wave swept his midriff. Suddenly, he remembered his father, and turned to him for help.
There was no one around.
Ashur screamed, and screamed again, but what good was his frail voice against the raging ocean? A new wave came crashing against his neck, and left him half-buried into the sand. He saw the next one rushing to him, towering above his head. His eyes widened.
It was another of those now too common missions for the Italian corvette L’azzura patrolling along the shores of Lampedusa. Once again, the ship has come too late, only to discover the flotsam of yet another dinghy sunk by the tempest. The corpses, stuck in the shallows, were being picked up one by one by divers and hauled aboard. Migrants, whose journey to a better world had ended only yards away from the promise land.
Gianfranco, the third officer, was a stout mariner, but he couldn’t help wincing each time the lifeless body of a child was reclaimed from the sea. What was that one? Six? Seven, tops? Gianfranco knelt next to him and brushed the tangle of dark, soaked hair away to reveal a delicate, winsome face.
“Fuck it man!” the voice of Sandro, the on-duty yeoman, said behind him. “No children should die like this. This is a damn shame.”
Gianfranco nodded for all answer. He let his eyes sweep down along the corpse. They stopped midway. The boy was clutching something in his right fist. Delicately, he parted the fragile fingers and saw a small, garden variety seashell. Probably some sort of keepsake, Gianfranco thought.
He remained there, silent, for a minute. Then, sighing, he closed the boy’s fist back. “Godspeed, my lad,” he whispered as he zipped up the opaque plastic bag in which the body has been placed. Then he turned his attention to the next victim, which was being dragged over the gunwale.
Deep inside, he knew something was out of place. He shouldn’t have been here alone. But he didn’t feel either lost or threatened. The landscape was still and silent, except for the soft rustle of the waves as they broke on the sand ahead of him. He set out, padding towards the shore. The sun scorched the beach. He didn’t care. Had he ever known anything else than scorchers since he’d been born anyway? Once, his father had told him about clouds and rain, drops of water falling from the sky, grass and trees and forests. He’d chuckled. Wasn’t that another one of dad’s proverbial fancy stories?
When he reached the sea, he stooped down, dipped his forefinger into the water and put it into his mouth. It was deliciously salty. Laying the bucket aside, he dug a single shovelful of sand and watched the walls of the hole crumble into it until it was leveled. Then he took a step ahead and shuddered as the water came up to meet his toes, for it was icy.
Something at the edge of his visual field caught his attention. He spun to the left. His parents were sitting there, at short distance. How come he hadn’t seen them before? He waved to them with his shovel. His father waved back, motioning him to come nearer. Ashur stood up, scooped seawater into his bucket, and walked towards him.
As he came closer, he spotted a sand castle a few yards beyond where his parents sat. He ran to it. The castle had a lofty dungeon surrounded by curtain walls and a moat. Ashur emptied his bucket into it. The water flowed around then slowly seeped into the sand until nothing was left of it. Looking into his bucket, Ashur discovered a tiny shell still lying in its bottom. He picked it up, turned around and walked back to his father.
Ashur sat next to him, opposite his mother. No word was spoken. His parents’ eyes were locked onto the horizon. Ashur reached out to his hand, and squeezed it. Then he too turned his gaze to the horizon, hoping to make out what it was they were so intently gazing at.
The sun was shining hot. The rustle of the waves was lulling him. It was hard to remain focussed. His head dropped, ever so slightly, and his eyes shut.
It seemed to him that he’d dozed off only the tiniest fraction of a second, but when he opened his eyes again, the landscape had changed dramatically. Ahead of him, the sun was sinking into a crimson horizon. The sky was navy blue. The sea had turned into a maelstrom. Giant waves, bigger by the second, broke and rolled onto the shore with a thunderous roar. One of them reached Ashur’s feet. When it retreated, another one immediately took over and crawled up to his crotch.
Ashur wanted to run away but found he was paralyzed. Another wave swept his midriff. Suddenly, he remembered his father, and turned to him for help.
There was no one around.
Ashur screamed, and screamed again, but what good was his frail voice against the raging ocean? A new wave came crashing against his neck, and left him half-buried into the sand. He saw the next one rushing to him, towering above his head. His eyes widened.
It was another of those now too common missions for the Italian corvette L’azzura patrolling along the shores of Lampedusa. Once again, the ship has come too late, only to discover the flotsam of yet another dinghy sunk by the tempest. The corpses, stuck in the shallows, were being picked up one by one by divers and hauled aboard. Migrants, whose journey to a better world had ended only yards away from the promise land.
Gianfranco, the third officer, was a stout mariner, but he couldn’t help wincing each time the lifeless body of a child was reclaimed from the sea. What was that one? Six? Seven, tops? Gianfranco knelt next to him and brushed the tangle of dark, soaked hair away to reveal a delicate, winsome face.
“Fuck it man!” the voice of Sandro, the on-duty yeoman, said behind him. “No children should die like this. This is a damn shame.”
Gianfranco nodded for all answer. He let his eyes sweep down along the corpse. They stopped midway. The boy was clutching something in his right fist. Delicately, he parted the fragile fingers and saw a small, garden variety seashell. Probably some sort of keepsake, Gianfranco thought.
He remained there, silent, for a minute. Then, sighing, he closed the boy’s fist back. “Godspeed, my lad,” he whispered as he zipped up the opaque plastic bag in which the body has been placed. Then he turned his attention to the next victim, which was being dragged over the gunwale.
Before I go, I'll give these three stories a review because it makes me sad they're being left out. So here you go!
Good Stuff: Apart from one or two technical problems (like "Gianfranco nodded for all answer"; I think you meant "for an answer") the prose is pleasant and flowing, and largely easy to follow. The scene-setting and character notes were well-conveyed, and it was at least interesting to wait and see what would happen. The little notes of mystery in the first half, and the grim matter-of-factness in the second half, work very well. The second half in particular I thought had the stronger material, simply because of the defeat in Gianfranco's worldview when faced with the reality of his job.
Bad Stuff: "Dead child" is an easy ploy for a tragic story, but without a larger message or a clear one (there's talk about desperate migrants in the second half, but the first half implies they're already there!?) it's just shock for shock's sake. Despite the connection of the child's fate, the two halves feel so different they almost took me out when the scene change happened. And what did happen? As far as I can tell, a child died because of rough waves, strange stuff happened like his parents just vanished, and these poor people had to retrieve the bodies of migrants, but the kid is there too? I'm sorry, it's too confusing for me. I never got a sense of what this was all about beyond the obvious "and then this happened" stuff.
Verdict: Needs Work. While it is mostly well-written and has some ideas, at the moment I think it needs to be tidied up so that it's more than just two scenes about a child drowning. I think if you write something like this again, you need to put more thought towards the reader's questions of why this is happening and what it means or is trying to tell us. Just killing a child and throwing some possible hints feels to me far too empty a reading experience for me to rank it highly.
Good Stuff: Apart from one or two technical problems (like "Gianfranco nodded for all answer"; I think you meant "for an answer") the prose is pleasant and flowing, and largely easy to follow. The scene-setting and character notes were well-conveyed, and it was at least interesting to wait and see what would happen. The little notes of mystery in the first half, and the grim matter-of-factness in the second half, work very well. The second half in particular I thought had the stronger material, simply because of the defeat in Gianfranco's worldview when faced with the reality of his job.
Bad Stuff: "Dead child" is an easy ploy for a tragic story, but without a larger message or a clear one (there's talk about desperate migrants in the second half, but the first half implies they're already there!?) it's just shock for shock's sake. Despite the connection of the child's fate, the two halves feel so different they almost took me out when the scene change happened. And what did happen? As far as I can tell, a child died because of rough waves, strange stuff happened like his parents just vanished, and these poor people had to retrieve the bodies of migrants, but the kid is there too? I'm sorry, it's too confusing for me. I never got a sense of what this was all about beyond the obvious "and then this happened" stuff.
Verdict: Needs Work. While it is mostly well-written and has some ideas, at the moment I think it needs to be tidied up so that it's more than just two scenes about a child drowning. I think if you write something like this again, you need to put more thought towards the reader's questions of why this is happening and what it means or is trying to tell us. Just killing a child and throwing some possible hints feels to me far too empty a reading experience for me to rank it highly.
I like the idea here a lot:
But a couple things sort of nag at me. First, Asher is kind of a generic character. Give him a little more individuality. I mean, if he's never been to a beach, how does he know that a bucket and shovel are appropriate gear? How does he know what a sand castle is? Do these come from his father's stories? Make us see this specific kid, and we'll care about him even more than we do. And second, the yeoman's line at the end seems way too heavy-handed. The author's job isn't to tell the readers how they should feel. The author's job is to show the readers why they should feel what the author wants them to feel.
Mike
But a couple things sort of nag at me. First, Asher is kind of a generic character. Give him a little more individuality. I mean, if he's never been to a beach, how does he know that a bucket and shovel are appropriate gear? How does he know what a sand castle is? Do these come from his father's stories? Make us see this specific kid, and we'll care about him even more than we do. And second, the yeoman's line at the end seems way too heavy-handed. The author's job isn't to tell the readers how they should feel. The author's job is to show the readers why they should feel what the author wants them to feel.
Mike
The first part of the story feels very dream-like--objects do not appear to exist until they are observed, and the narrator asks himself many rhetorical questions.
As the reader, we know nothing of the main character in terms of physical description except that he's wearing some yellow briefs and nothing else. (They are referred to as "his usual yellow briefs", which makes me wonder if he never changes out of them, and why they are yellow.) We don't really get a sense of his age until after he moves around and digs a hole on the beach. It'd seem reasonable that Ashur is a child, but he "chuckled" at "another one of dad’s proverbial fancy stories", which sounds like a grown man remembering his childhood through rose-tinted lenses.
By the end of the second paragraph, there have been three rhetorical questions. Rhetorical questions are meant to make some point instead of getting an answer, as the one being asked is expected to already know the answer. But without any background, these questions don't really have a point to make. "Had he ever been to a beach anyway?" We, the reader, don't know--we only met Ashur two sentences ago. "Had he ever known anything else than scorchers since he’d been born anyway?" "Wasn’t that another one of dad’s proverbial fancy stories?" No one's better suited to answer these questions than the narrator himself. The middle of the story eases up on them, but at the end, Gianfranco asks himself how many dead kids he'd seen so far. I think it'd be easier and better--for both author and reader--to state the number outright (with the incidental bonus of conserving word count).
The first part of the story, for the most part, sets a stage--there's a beach, there's a kid, he plays in the sand and water and takes a nap with his parents. These are, however, mostly normal things that I'd imagine a kid to do on a beach. As such, this account of his actions on the beach doesn't seem to meaningfully contribute towards the story, so it makes me wonder what purpose the first scene serves. (Of course, this is my own opinion, and it may be based on missing information.)
What happened to his parents at the end of part one? Did they just ditch him? Granted, all I know about tsunamis comes from that one time I watched Ponyo years ago, but tsunamis seem difficult to sleep through and don't really happen suddenly. It's also hard to imagine his parents getting swept away without the tsunami taking him too.
The connection between the first and second scenes also seems missing. I imagine the tsunami swept him into another ship's wreckage?
For a story under 900 words, it feels like there are two distinct stories being told--one about Ashur's day on the beach, and one about Gianfranco's recovery efforts. Given the events at the end of the first part, it's difficult to tell this story without a sudden perspective shift--but still, the shift is too sudden and throws the story off balance.
Agreed with >>Baal Bunny on the second scene's dialog.
As the reader, we know nothing of the main character in terms of physical description except that he's wearing some yellow briefs and nothing else. (They are referred to as "his usual yellow briefs", which makes me wonder if he never changes out of them, and why they are yellow.) We don't really get a sense of his age until after he moves around and digs a hole on the beach. It'd seem reasonable that Ashur is a child, but he "chuckled" at "another one of dad’s proverbial fancy stories", which sounds like a grown man remembering his childhood through rose-tinted lenses.
By the end of the second paragraph, there have been three rhetorical questions. Rhetorical questions are meant to make some point instead of getting an answer, as the one being asked is expected to already know the answer. But without any background, these questions don't really have a point to make. "Had he ever been to a beach anyway?" We, the reader, don't know--we only met Ashur two sentences ago. "Had he ever known anything else than scorchers since he’d been born anyway?" "Wasn’t that another one of dad’s proverbial fancy stories?" No one's better suited to answer these questions than the narrator himself. The middle of the story eases up on them, but at the end, Gianfranco asks himself how many dead kids he'd seen so far. I think it'd be easier and better--for both author and reader--to state the number outright (with the incidental bonus of conserving word count).
The first part of the story, for the most part, sets a stage--there's a beach, there's a kid, he plays in the sand and water and takes a nap with his parents. These are, however, mostly normal things that I'd imagine a kid to do on a beach. As such, this account of his actions on the beach doesn't seem to meaningfully contribute towards the story, so it makes me wonder what purpose the first scene serves. (Of course, this is my own opinion, and it may be based on missing information.)
What happened to his parents at the end of part one? Did they just ditch him? Granted, all I know about tsunamis comes from that one time I watched Ponyo years ago, but tsunamis seem difficult to sleep through and don't really happen suddenly. It's also hard to imagine his parents getting swept away without the tsunami taking him too.
The connection between the first and second scenes also seems missing. I imagine the tsunami swept him into another ship's wreckage?
For a story under 900 words, it feels like there are two distinct stories being told--one about Ashur's day on the beach, and one about Gianfranco's recovery efforts. Given the events at the end of the first part, it's difficult to tell this story without a sudden perspective shift--but still, the shift is too sudden and throws the story off balance.
Agreed with >>Baal Bunny on the second scene's dialog.
I'm quite surprised, in a good way, that someone decided to take on this subject. I always approve of an author not pulling their punches when picking what they will show their readers, especially when they pull it off without cheap forms of "shocking content" (such as profanity or violence). The story itself sets up the tragedy quite well, and shows us the humanity of those involved.
I partially agree with the other commenters, the reader is left wanting more, though I chalk that up to the word limit more than anything else. You can't really squeeze much more in and also keep the flow of the prose.
Well done, sorry you didn't make the cut. Between you and me, I think this was far better than most other entries.
I partially agree with the other commenters, the reader is left wanting more, though I chalk that up to the word limit more than anything else. You can't really squeeze much more in and also keep the flow of the prose.
Well done, sorry you didn't make the cut. Between you and me, I think this was far better than most other entries.
>>DumpsterDweller
Thanks ❤️ The story had defects, though, as people pointed out. Maybe too symbolic (the first part was a dream the boy was making aboard the dinghy, before and when it capsized), or too shambolic. :P
It was experimental anyway, so no big deal it failed.
Thanks ❤️ The story had defects, though, as people pointed out. Maybe too symbolic (the first part was a dream the boy was making aboard the dinghy, before and when it capsized), or too shambolic. :P
It was experimental anyway, so no big deal it failed.