Hi all,
another piece of writing prompt fiction. Enjoy!
‘It’s just a game,’ she said. It didn’t feel like one. I waded deeper into the water, the sand melting away under my toes.
I was only about 2 metres from the buoy at this stage.
The thing about the buoy was that it was just a pocked white ball, more teeth-white than milk-white. Seaweed grew the length of the rope that kept it anchored. Strands floated over the buoy, the mass of it dark under the water.
It looked like a dead body. Face down until the sound of splashing woke it.
The water was shallow then dipped suddenly. So you needed to swim to reach it. I’d told Rebecca that it looked like a dead body. She insisted I go and touch it. She was going to toughen me up, she said. Make a man of me. Which was what I wanted to be. Especially if it meant spending time with Rebecca.
I leaned into the deeper water and pushed off the seabed. The seaweed waved from the rope. The thought of the cold slimy weed made me feel sick.
‘Come on, Pete!’ Rebecca was getting bored. I reached out and tapped the buoy.
‘Knock, knock,’ I said, turning to get back to the shore.
I was fast on the way back. The thought of the bleached white skull with its robe of weed pushed me, Rebecca on the beach, in her swimsuit, pulled me.
I splashed towards her, grinning. She was looking behind me in horror. I wasn’t going to fall for that.
Sometimes the waves slap against the rope. It just sounds like something splashing around.
The prompts were the photo and the random title prompt ‘joke quicksand,’ which I changed to Quick Sand for this post. The idea of the dead body/buoy came from a recent holiday*. Walking on the beach I saw a ball-shaped buoy covered in seaweed and it really did look like the skull of a dead body. I had to watch it until we went past to make sure it didn’t start moving…
*the same holiday that inspired Toe Suit
