I don't care anymore. Whether I live or die. There is this boy in my dreams that is walking along the beach, the sun is setting, and there is some fog in the air, it smells of sea, and it's cold, it's getting cold. The beach is deserted, except for the wall of rocks encircling it, framing the bay and dividing it from the rest of town. The little boy is tired, he has been walking around for days looking for something, he can't find it.
He has been looking for exactly 6 years, 72 months, 2 191 days, and a few hours, and he decides to rest. I take a look at his face and his face has caved in, the skin stuck against his cheekbones and the skin around his eyes is dark. His whole body is covered in thick, blond hair from the hunger, his only food has been the mussels on the rocks and his water that from the sea. Every day he walks that beach and he asks the people "Have you seen...", "Have you seen my...", and he always faints before telling people what it is he is searching for. He forgot it. He doesn't know what it is. All he knows is that he hasn't found it.
One day he is walking along the beach and he hears a distant scream, it's a girl, near the rocks. He approaches with curiosity, his frail heart trembling with fear and excitement. As he draws near, he sees the shape of a monstrous man, bent over a pair of red and bruised legs, he is moving his body rapidly and at each thrust, the girl screams more and more, the little boy hides behind one of the rocks, his face is blank, he doesn't understand. The girl, in her twenties, screams more and more to a climax when her last scream is heard: a gutural sound which reminded the little boy of the sound of waves bursting against the entrance of a cave, there was no other sound after that, and she lay there, motionless whilst the man kept moving, an animal, zealously utilising his prey until there was nothing left, but there was, for him, there was nothing more than the body and for as long as it was there, he kept moving, thrusting against it. The little boy approached the man, he left his rock and walked over to the girl, he looked at her motionless face and gasped. As he did, a huge shadow, which loomed over him for less than a second, materialised into a rock which crushed his infantile body, which mixed his insides with the fog in the air, the rocks, the sand, and the sea which he had searched for the past 6 years, not even then, as he gazed at the back of his skull, did he know how old exactly he was, he was 100, and he was 1 at the same time, because he had reached his time to die, but had never really found what he was meant to find in this life. Or did he? As he said goodbye to his body, he looked to the sun, setting, one last time, and he saw a girl, maybe in her 30s, open arms, saying something which he could not hear, it was death, so he drew nearer, and she embraced him, kissed his head and said "Welcome home", he gasped and said "Have you seen my... shell?" and as he said this, Death took her hood and her long blonde hair fell down her back, she cut a strand of it and gave it to the boy saying "She searched for you as well". He took it and immediately understood those words. His eyes started to cry. Finally, as his cold body gazed at the sky again, a single tear rolled from his eye and, having found what he was looking for, he died.
I'm still in that beach it seems.
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