1
He trudged desperately along the beach trying to step as gingerly as possible, not that it was at all helping. His feet were torn open and bleeding profusely, his left ankle fractured and his right shattered. Seven of his toes were broken almost beyond repair. The smallest toe on his left foot was torn half way off and wetly smacked against his gaping wound and the side of his foot as he limped through sand. This stuck to all of his various gashes and tears, grinding in as far as the tiny pebbles could go. This added more shearing pain to the already agonizing steps he took and causing more blood to flow from them, soaking into the sand trailing him like grizzly, macabre footprints. Both of his eyes had been badly blackened and lacerations flecked his face. Deeper cuts laced his arms. His shirt had a wide tear across it and in its place was a bluish black bruise ringed with yellow that pulsed dark, deep pain throughout his chest. His nose felt broken but he wasn’t exactly sure. Behind him he drug a girl on a silver tarp. Her once beautiful, shimmering hair was now caked with blood and sand. Both of her legs snapped in different directions at the knee and she too was spattered with blood and laced with bruises and tears along her body. He looked at her, and then looked across the fogging shore. Watching the waves crashing into it and sliding up the slick wet sand before thinning out and receding back to start the cycle over. He didn’t walk so close as to accidently let a wave of salt water rush over his mutilated feet, or worse rush over her. He envisioned her being taken off the tarp and taken out to sea beyond his reach, beyond his help. He shuddered at the thought and pushed it from his mind immediately. A small white crab danced along the shore, running toward the water as the tide receded then it quickly skittered backward as a new wave came crashing in. He watched the crab for a minute, expecting it to get swept away each time a wave would swell, but each time it skittered just out of reach. Tears streaked down his face in hot rivers and dripped into the sand. Blood and sweat mixed and waited on his brow, waiting for a slight movement of his head that would send it cascading down his face and sometimes into his eyes. The beach was entirely empty except for him, her and the crab. Somewhere, he could hear a gull laughing but he didn’t see one. The sound of the waves and the gentle breeze that lapped his face on any other day would have been peaceful. But today it kept reminding him that the day was fleeting and that he needed to hurry if he wanted to save her. The fog allowed him to see for a couple of miles but then after that, the shore and the line of buildings that ran along it faded into a white oblivion. He had passed a hospital about a mile back but he wasn’t headed for the hospital. He knew exactly where he needed to go. Somewhere in that blank empty void that the fog hid from view. Every step sent tremors of white hot electric pain into his feet and up his calves. At times he would cry out in pain or curse into the air. At one point, he knocked his half torn toe on a shell jutting up from the sand. This almost caused him fall over and let her go. Almost.
“We are almost there” he choked. Talking hurt. He was missing some teeth and his tongue felt heavy and bloated in his mouth. He could still taste blood. “I’ll get you to help, don’t you worry” he sobbed. The tears weren’t all because of the pain, in fact, most of them were fear for her. Fear of losing her. “They can fix you up” he babbled, “I know they can”. He stopped. The rope that attached to the tarp he was pulling was raw in his hand and loosening his grip caused a burning pain to fill in his palm. However, he hardly noticed it. He knelt down, winced through the tremors in his feet as he bent his knees, and kissed her blood soaked forehead. He felt her stir and that was good. He limped onward along the beach.
Onward toward help.
Onward towards hope.
Onward towards that white oblivion.