CASUAL ✷ chappell roan

OO2 .. sea foam

As she placed the brown paper bag on her basket, Chappell felt something cold rush past her. The wind tugged at her hair, teasing like a toddler on a bad day. She undid the bike chain from the bollard outside the grocery store, focus elsewhere. Chappell mounted the bicycle, calculating her next move. Her foot pushed off, setting the pedals into motion.

Her house was only a five minute ride away from the store, but Chappell needed to make this ride longer. She knew that she would be up until midnight again, but she hoped she could settle her fears by doing this.

The roads were quiet, they always were. The wide streets with grand beach houses. She cycled past Elia's grandma's house, grand and gazing out over the ocean. She wanted that house to tell her the truth.

She was getting close to the shoreline, where she could pull up and watch the waves peel at the sand. But there was something in the way. Blue and red flashes entwined in one another danced ahead of her. A tent was being set up, strangled with blue tape. Stepping out was a figure bloated with protective coverings carried a cooling box.

She slowed, reaching the two vehicles knitted together. They shielded the scene off from her, but she knew exactly what was behind it. She had joked before that the next body part to surface would be a hand. By the size of the container, she may have been right.

Chappell wanted to ask questions straight away to get it done with. But every question would meet with 'we can't dicuss anything at the moment'. For the amount of deaths there had been, you would have hoped the police were doing more to protect the people. There now was a large life guard presence on the beach, but they had no authority. Most people had enough common sense to stay out of the water.

But that was not changing anything. Nothing could stop the sea from swallowing it's victims up. That's where she came in. She would figure out what was luring these people into the water. She would stop it once and for all.

She could hear a faint siren, riding up behind her and rushing to control the situation. A crowd was now beginning to form, neighbours coming out to greet the familiar sight. Chappell knew it was wrong. to trivialise the situation straight away without grieving. But she had grown up with it for so long, he was only a victim to her. She would attend his memorial next week. She would answer a few questions on her research, admit it was going nowhere and go home again.

This time was different. Chappell fixated on something across the wider beach. She couldn't work out which was more bizarre: her apathy or the person sat at the end of the beach, head down in a book. The beach was desolate before, attention only focused on where she stood. How were they able to avoid any attention? How were they not as interested as everyone else?

A crackle burst through the air, a police officer huffing into the megaphone. He ordered the people to disperse, that more information would be available soon. Chappell pushed off again, pedaling faster this time to return home. She needed to get to her notebook fast. She had catalogued every death so far to check patterns. Every two months. Missing person identified as being a body part up to seventy-two hours later. One hundred and twenty seven victims, now made a hundred and twenty eight.

Crashing through the front door, dumping the groceries on the counter, she was at her desk. She scribbled everything down, hesitating at her 'extra info' segment. Was a person on the beach worth all her paranoia? She could convince herself now that they were the cause of this. But what if they were an innocent tourist caught in the middle.

She ignored it, for now. It would play on her mind for the next three nights, but it didn't need writing down. If it led to something, then she would know. She left it alone, leaving the book open on her desk.

Fourty minutes later, her food finally made its way into the refrigerator it belonged in. Chappell hoped it hadn't spoilt her dinner. For now, she could pretend she was calm.

── blue speaks !

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