Shell

The Monk by the Sea, Painting by Caspar David Friedrich

Her eyes looked soggy, reddish, and somewhat wondrous. She sat on the seashore. The dark waves went berserk around her feet as if they came to solace her, but she felt that the shores even guarded themselves in black veils. She laid her body on the burden of her hands and stretched her legs towards the shores. Her hands dug deep into the sand, and her left hand's fingers touched something hard. It was her wooden box. She opened that and took out the items one by one. She rubbed the box and filled her left palm with the nostalgic scent. She breathed twice, but the old scent was lost. She could only feel the embracing ocean aroma. By now she was assured that the old smell was hiding or it was never there. It was never real.

Some crisscross game papers, a broken kaleidoscope, a small diary, and an engraved wooden plank with four names, including hers—she adored these belongings for almost eighteen years. The kaleidoscope used to be her favourite. One afternoon, when she was looking through the kaleidoscope, she suddenly got an elbow push. She fell down on the hard terrace bench. She could not stop her hand’s reflexive action; the kaleidoscope fell on the mosaic floor. When she again looked into the small hollow, it just showed cracks and scads of unknown colours. She had been holding it since that day; it's been almost eight years now.

She opened the pages of the mini-diary. Dates were not written, but each time she remembered that she was coming out of an illusion—an illusion that she was loved. But every time, her friends’ faces looked blurred. She knew by then that she was a major misfit. She outpoured her entire childhood trying to be someone who would be her friends’ priority or who would be listened.

"Were my expectations unjust? Didn’t I deserve a lil bit of ..."

She saw the last words of that diary.

She started murmuring, "2001, ’02, ’06... I was four, then... hmm…six, and ...what did I do?"

A gust of wind blew the papers and messed her black, shiny hair; it looked like the shore offered her its own luminous, dark veil. Her nose and her lips glowed within, and the moonlight showered its omniscience; some celestial beings might have peeked too. Was she photographed? Probably not, or she might have missed the flash. Nevertheless, she was just passing through a soupçon of past darkness. She loosened her hands. The squiggled neurons were trying to release the knots of time.

She shouted out, "I am in 2022..."

She swallowed and again shouted, "Not in the decades before or after."

Her low tone howled like the waves of the sea. And the sea roared back to her. A white shell moved swiftly under her right hand. She looked at it; it was sparking with the sand dust. She smiled. Perhaps some tears rolled down. The new golden ray beamed on her entire body, and the light followed her foot mark on the sand. She heard a cheerful voice, "Look…my new white tee!"

A child was running and cheering along the beach. It was getting crowded.