R.I.P. Tides
(Google Doc Version: https://docs.google.com/document/d/15ArKshwKi_Twlw52_fPssDtmCQb81tnBrMe6tF7uEJA)
The tunes were blasting loud and the drinks were pouring ice cold, just cold enough to fight off the heat of the enormous sun’s vicious rays. Bright and flowery buttoned tees were the order of the day and everyone was wearing one, save for the lifeguard on the high tower overseeing the party’s affairs. He was fine in his large black hood covering his body from head to toe. Not that he, nor anyone else at the party had much of a physique to speak of in the first place.
Dougie Doug raised his bottle high over his head and poured the beer over his face, letting the cold drink seep into the cracks in his head and fill his empty eye sockets and nose cavity. With his bottle empty, he leaned over the guardrail above the exuberant partygoers below and let the beer pour out of his head and onto the gleefully awaiting skulls jumping up and down and cheering his name. Dougie chucked the bottle behind him and threw his fists to the air. He let out a loud holler and jumped into the crowd back first. The sea of bony hands caught his light body and carried him over their heads as his name filled the air. They couldn’t overpower the whammy electric guitars and basses of the band on stage, but they were going to try anyway. Without a throat their voices wouldn’t get tired, so what did they have to lose.
The crowd surfing and music almost brought tears to Dougie’s eye sockets. The days he would spend listening to his favorite music on a cheap radio and jumping off his bed to a nonexistent crowd felt like a distant dream now. To be under the hot sun and blue sky, a crowd of friends chanting his name and carrying him like a rock star was so close to paradise he could practically taste it. Not that he could taste much of anything without his tongue.
That was the only factor missing from this whole shindig. Having spent his years sculpting his body at the beach and sticking to a strict diet to maintain the body to turn every head in a 2-mile radius, to say Dougie had gotten the party off on the wrong foot on account of his missing musculature and skin would be an understatement. He could only scream when he first awoke on the beach. Having gone from a bronzed beach bum to a sun-baked bag of bones was an awful case of anatomical whiplash. But there was something about the party’s atmosphere that helped take his mind off his new skeletal body. There weren’t any bodacious babes to scout out or impress, nor was he even sure if there were any men at all. Every skeleton in the vicinity only wore flashy Hawaiian shirts. Short-sleeved and unbuttoned. They danced in the air as everyone jumped up and down to the beat of the music, and created a gorgeous kaleidoscope of colors that hypnotized Dougie and freed his mind from worry and confusion. Who cared where his body went? There would be time to find that out when the party ended.
But the party never did end. Not that anyone noticed. Or cared. As long as the music was good, the drinks kept coming, and the sun kept blasting its gnarly rays, who cared how long the party lasted? No one got tired or needed to sleep, so the party never needed to end.
Doug raised a hand to block the sunlight blaring its rays into his face, but thankfully a helpful cloud floated into its path. The shade was appreciated but Doug tilted his head. He hadn’t remembered seeing any clouds in the sky for as long as he could remember, where did this one come from? More clouds floated in from out of Doug’s line of sight, and they too covered up the sun, along with much of the sky. In what felt like seconds, the brilliant blue sky had turned completely white with cloud coverage. The wind had picked up too, and despite his lack of skin and nerve endings, Doug brought his hands to his arms and rubbed them to heat up his bones. It was the first time he could remember being cold in a very long time. Had anyone else noticed this? Just where were they carrying him anyway?
He would soon find the answer. The sound of crashing waves had Dougie sitting up from his skeletal hand mattress, and he saw that the crowd was carrying him toward the ocean. Doug was certain that this ocean had not been here before, he definitely would have noticed it by now, especially with the pitch-black waters crashing into the shore and kicking up thick, grey streams of foam. The waves were so tall they towered over the clouds. They were so loud when they crashed that they kicked up sand and made everyone’s shirts flutter in the aftermath. The band had gone silent, and the cheering had died down to the last two people. Each one trying to be the last to speak.
The seemingly endless crowd of skeletons ended, it seemed, as the last one in the crowd dropped Dougie on the beach. The black tide brushed against his bare feet, and bubbles emerged between the joints in his toes. The water was cold. So cold it made him gasp. He could feel it between every single one of the bones in his feet. It sent a shiver up his spine. He backed away from the sea but his back hit something hard and he looked up. It was the tall white chair belonging to the lifeguard.
The lifeguard stood up from his high chair and the wind picked up. The sky had turned from a white color to a dreary gray and the sun was nowhere in sight. He reached into his cloak and withdrew from within a long, flat stone. It was much longer than he was, and the mystery of how he kept it in his cloak would be one Dougie wouldn’t have a chance to ask about. Throwing the stone in Dougie’s direction, it landed with a crash. Kicking up sand all over Dougie’s face. He examined the stone and grabbed it with both hands.
It was as tall as he was and completely grey. There was a painted skeleton on it surfing a wave. It had the same shirt as Dougie and even the same crack in his skull. With the fin sticking out the back, there was no doubt left in his mind what the lifeguard had just given him. The lifeguard raised a hand with a thumb and pinkie finger extended and shook it back and forth. Dougie looked back at the crowd, doing the same with their hands too. The colors of their floral shirts had gone dull and gray, and Dougie could barely tell what color his own shirt was either. “Ride.” A deep, booming voice echoed from inside the lifeguard’s cloak and Dougie felt compelled to try and lift it. Despite being made of stone, it was as light as a feather in his hands and he had no problems lifting it over his head. Dougie Doug carried his surfboard into the frigid water and clambered on top of it as soon as he could to escape the cold water. The crowd’s cheering erupted once more and the band kicked off their next song.
Paddling out away from the shore, Dougie winced every time his hand touched the water. It felt like the water was cutting him with each stroke. The ocean was suddenly calm and he could only ask where had all the giant waves gone as he got further and further out. Looking back at the distant crowd, they were still cheering his name. So loud he could hear them from so far out over calm waters. He raised a fist, but their voices were soon drowned out as the waves suddenly came to life once again.
Dougie paddled faster and faster to build up speed and turn his board towards the beach. The wave beneath him picked him up and he jumped to both feet, balancing himself and catching the wave. He crouched low as he adjusted his feet shoulder-length apart on the board, balancing himself as the wave crested higher and higher. Like he had done it a million times. Or closer to a couple dozen times. Dougie balanced himself as best he could without skin to provide the friction he needed, and his bony feet fighting to keep from slipping on the black puddles forming underfoot. The wave carried him higher and higher. Soon, he could see the entire crowd looking up at him, and could even see as far as the band’s stage, and the wave was still rising. The beach party looked so small from this height, and as Dougie gripped the front of his board with his toes, the wave carried him into the clouds with no apparent end in sight.
The wave cleared the clouds and Dougie’s jaw dropped at the sight that awaited him so high above the black ocean. There, in front of him by a few yards was a staircase made of white marble. It was a long staircase and it led to a pair of large, golden gates. Dougie could see people behind the gates. Not more skeletons, people. With flesh, and hair. There wasn’t a raucous bout of music playing, but a soft choir singing in harmony soothing his mind and coating his bones with a warm sensation. Dougie reached out a hand towards the gate. His bone hand oscillated, and red strings emerged from his palm and ensnared it up to the wrist. A layer of red meat quickly grew over the thread, before finally, a layer of bronze skin coated the meat. Dougie raised his hand to his face, examining the fingerprints he had lost so long ago and almost weeping. The red string grew over the length of his skeletal arm, and instantly, a muscular arm grew in its place. Dougie laughed and excitedly reached for the staircase that came closer and closer. It was so close; it was in jumping distance.
But as Dougie was watching the gate and the staircase, he wasn’t watching the water. Nor was he watching what was emerging from it as he prepared to jump with his back leg. Something broke the surface of the water and grabbed Dougie’s ankle. He quickly looked down but it was too late. He lost balance and waved his arms around as his body tilted from side to side. The wave carrying him to such heights began to plunge, and without the balance he needed to keep upright, Dougie fell and kicked his stone surfboard toward the beach. He crashed into the frigid black water. The shock from the cold engulfing his body froze him stiff. The salty taste overwhelmed his senses. He didn’t need to breathe but he was still hyperventilating as he felt the grip tightening around his ankle. From the sunlight breaking through the water’s surface, Dougie saw the silhouette of a hand emerging from behind him and grabbing his forehead. Another hand appeared and grabbed his jaw. From the deep abyss below him, more hand more hands reached out to grab Dougie Doug, pulling him down from the water’s surface and away from the sun’s light. He tried to reach out a hand of his own but he was still frozen from shock. More hands grabbing his wrist, elbow, and shoulder ensured they weren't going anywhere anyway. The final hands covered his eyes, plunging him into a complete, cold, paralyzing darkness. It was only now that Dougie found it in him to scream.
Dougie’s surfboard fell fast, crashing into the beach tail first, with its nose pointed to the sun in the sky. The lifeguard shook his head. The crowd stared at the sea as the crashing waves died down again, and the tide pulled away from the shore. A crack emerged underneath the Dougie painting. From the crack, a bright orange light erupted, and as the crack propagated across the surface of the board, it twisted and turned into different burning letters and numbers. The crack finally stopped moving, but the words on the face burned bright. As the tide ebbed, more and more upright surfboards appeared from beneath the waves, each with their own burning words and painted tributes. Soon, the ocean was completely gone, leaving nothing but a sea of headstones jutting out of the sand, each with its own paintings of surfing skeletons, sacrificed to the Black Tide. The latest one reading “Douglas ‘Dougie Doug’ Sharp, 1986-2000 – Catching the big wave upstairs.”
The crowd stood silent, the band taking the time to tune their instruments and do a mic check. The clouds above parted, revealing the blue sky once again. The sun regained its brilliant light and shone its rays on the back of the beach. The color of their shirts returned to their original vibrancy and the heat they were relying on bathed over them.
The lifeguard looked to the band and gave the pinky and thumbs up sign, and they burst into their next song. The lettering on the tens of thousands of headstones flashed different colors in tune with the music. The lifeguard reached into his robe and withdrew a bottle of beer, shaking it vigorously in his bony hand before punching a hole in the bottle cap with his thumb. He sprayed the beer over the crowd and slowly, a cheer grew from within the mob. The cheering turned to jumping, and the jumping turned into dancing.
The party was alive again, and the sun was pounding gnarly rays onto every dry skull on the beach. The black tide was now completely out of sight. Hot sun and cold beers were back on the menu and everyone got their party on. With the knowledge in every skull that the Black Tide would return and they might be the one who has to try to ride it, they danced and drank with all of their energy. Every drink, every song could be their last, and they were damned sure to make sure they were enjoying it when the time came for the lifeguard to pull their likeness out of his robe.
