As The Ocean Bites At Our Rusted Shores

Chapter 4: Blame It On Bad Luck

Once more Russell was gazing into the vortex. The blue light tended to the headache sweeping him. He stared into the centre of the cavity and thought.

The marriage was held on that same beach, not one hundred feet from where the couple had first consumated their relationship. The shack was a wreck. The tender tide which had washed it clean had turned savage and beat at the foundations of what was left of the house. He felt pretty similar to how that house looked right now. He glanced left, and saw the shy smile of his girlfriend poking out of the veil. The wind whipped sand round their feet and the water was rising to run between their bare toes. The vicar in front of them looked mightily uncomfortable, his shoes clearly not right for the location. He pronounced them, and they kissed in front of the magnificent ocean.

In the background, outside of the pursed lips and trembling touch, the sun set and Russell wondered if he would still be here were it not for the second heart beating in his wife's womb.

Time passed.

He had no idea what to do. Lester had said that Melanie was dead, that there was no chance that she was alive. Russell had no desire to stay in this iron prison any longer. His eyes traced the huge outline of the portal, three rusted tubes tumbling and twisting around each other wound over the top of the door as a frame. Around them, everything was metal and cold to the touch. Everything was cold here, even the biting air, even the artificial sun, even the beating ground, even the people, even the corpse of his daughter.

Should he go back?

Could he go back?

What would he do if he tried to go and found the guilt too much? What if his heart stopped out of sheer lack of respect? It had no reason left to beat except to push tired blood round his arteries carrying his worn body through the shell that was his life. The light bathed him with responsibility and he could feel the metal buckle beneath his feet every time he tried to walk away from them. When the mug had broken,

The mug she bought for me

It was just one less reminder of Juliet

'Worlds best dad'? Something like that, anyway. She didn't even wrap it herself.

Maybe when Melanie broke it would be just one less reminder of Juliet. He saw her face crack in half and felt himself bleed when he touched her face. Tears dribbled down his cheek and he couldn't leave. He looked up at the vortex, and steeled himself. Then he turned around, and back facing his safety net, walked forwards into the darkening night. He had a deathly responsibility, to see his daughter one last time before her face was swallowed into the earth.

"Nothing is ever easy," she hummed to herself and bent over the washing-up, layered with suds and muck, "nothing is ever free.". Juliet had heard of women who envelop themselves back in the 1950's, who wear all the right clothes and get their hair in curlers and wait for their husband every night with a hot meal and a wet, willing mouth, but she didn't go in for that shit herself. Why the hell she was doing it was beyond her. She looked back in time and saw that house and wondered where it went wrong, or if it even did. When you marry a man like that, is this the best things can be? Did she settle too soon?

Washing-up provided lots of opportunity for self-depreciation like this.

Sebastien grabbed a beer from behind the bartenders back, leaning up on the greasy glass tabletop to snatch a metal-tipped bottle of scum from the shelf. He didn't particularly like stealing, but they hadn't had decent work in a long time, and this was the only way he was going to get drunk tonight. The bartender never noticed anyway. At this time of night the moon-lamp hung directly overhead and the glare from the tables made it impossible for the old geezer to see anything except his cataracts. Sebastien looked up and admired the moon. They called this an 'open-air' bar, but it was just a hole-in-the-ground, all hunks of curled metal where people sat and drowned themselves every night. The beaten metal beneath them was bent with years of stomping boots and broken tempers.