Adipocere

The story begins….

Becky stood on the rocky shore listening to the edges of the ocean. The lap and scatter of small seaweed-laden waves. She’d hoped the sudden change in environment would loosen the choking, unremitting clench of her life. Therapy wasn’t going well. Her therapist (Nancy) suggested this trip. She (Nancy) said that getting close to the ocean would improve her mood and put things in perspective. Something about the ocean’s vast majesty and finding her simple little niche in the universe. 

It wasn’t working. What’s the big fucking deal about the ocean?

She looked out at the faded gray horizon. Maybe if she saw something dramatic. Maybe if she saw a whale it would fix things. Quickly. 

No, one whale would not instill sufficient awe. She needed a herd of whales (did they travel in herds? Or schools? Whatever…). She needed to see a mass suicide of whales—fearsome behemoths beaching themselves right before her astonished eyes. A vast advancing mass. And she would walk among the flopping, encrusted leviathans—sperm whales or blue whales, the biggest the sea can provide—and she would listen to their dying cries and feel so overwhelmed that her meager little life would take on a new context. Her small concerns would float away amid the low, mournful death-songs of the failing whales.

Or maybe an oil spill. Maybe a huge tanker could run aground and spill black poison into the water. A wide oil slick would eat into the beach, engulfing birds and seals and naked bathers. Dying animals would wash ashore, gasping and struggling, mired in the sticky, ink-black pollution and she would witness an extinction. She needed to be a part of something goddamn it. 

Or what if a dead body washed up on shore? Maybe a man with unrelenting sorrow could walk out into the water and drown himself. Or, no wait, he stands on a rock beyond the breakers. He has a gun. He utters his last words into the wind—a brief suicide note instantly erased. Then he blasts his memories into the churning sea.

She (Becky) let her thoughts drift out with the sounds of the shoreline, scattering into the wind and the whispering words of the surf.

Hm. She did feel a little better after all. Maybe she finally had something positive to tell the therapist (Nancy) next week. 

She turned her back on the ocean and headed toward her car.

The story ends.