on a beach

The wind is nonexistent today, the air is languid. The calmness is despicable to me, but it is by far the least despicable weather the town has seen in recent days. I stand upon the shore of a great body of water, sifting through debris. Yet so little has survived... a scrap of fabric here, a baby doll's disembodied limb there. The storm had been senseless, in a sense, but it had also been frighteningly efficient in its destruction-- nay, deconstruction-- of the cruise ship-- hardly a smidgen of material larger than a fist or so could be found among the wreckage blasted upon the shore but two days ago.

I search for something personal, something irreplaceable. I must must must have a souvenir of the accident, if only to remind myself evermore of what I had seen out my window looking out onto the great body of water. Otherwise I would dismiss the experience within a week; certainly, if anybody else had also seen what I had in the storm, they would have dismissed it within a minute. 

I feel my bare foot brush against against something mostly-buried in the coarse sand, and I lean down to dig it out. Is it personal? No, it's nothing more than a ouija board, the boring commercialized kind, available for a few bucks from the local toy store. I've never used one before-- I've never even had an interest in the occult before the storm. But nonetheless, the plank of wood excites me unbearably, and I race back up towards town, waving the board triumphantly.

On its surface, in sharpie, is scrawled a desperate message, but a few words of a spirit who knows its time in this world is ending: "He has taken Us, He knows who We were, beware the Storm, SOS." 

Are there other messages, on other bits of debris? Perhaps. But those can be found later, a rescue mission can be mounted later (not too much later, of course). For now, one thing matters to me, as I feel my feet slam into the sand, as I race back towards town touting the ouija board up exuberantly, high above my head, a dozen conflicting thoughts and theories spinning about in my cranium, and they all reach one resounding conclusion: I have been verified.