The Endless Sands

The smell of salt air filled my lungs and I felt the ocean spray on my face as I gradually awoke. The cries of seabirds circling overhead pierced my ears, and I felt sand between my toes. This was all a little strange, as the last time I’d checked, my bedroom did not have an ocean, seabirds, or sand in it.

I opened my eyes and was initially met with harsh sunlight that left me blinking frantically, trying to adjust. However, once I did, I found that my other senses had indeed been telling me the truth; I did, in fact, appear to be on a beach.

Trouble was, it wasn’t any kind of beach I’d ever seen before, and I mean, I’d seen a few. I wouldn’t call myself an expert, by any stretch, but I was pretty sure most of the beaches I’d been to hadn’t had neon purple sand, for instance. The reddish-orange water was a bit of a tell, also.

“Bit tropey.” I muttered to myself, assuming as I stood up and brushed myself off, that this was some kind of alien landscape. I decided I had better take stock of my possessions, and my surroundings if I was going to try and figure this out. It was nice that I could still breathe the air, I’ll admit.

I was of course, still wearing my pajamas, though the cuffs of my pants were stained wet from where the tide had lapped around my ankles as I lay unconscious, and I had a little bit of sand in places that, as they say, didn’t bear mentioning. Really, I was surprised how little sand I ultimately had to dislodge, considering how far the beach stretched in either direction. If there was an end to it, I couldn’t see it. I rolled up my cuffs and, electing to keep the sea to my right, started off down the coastline. Barefoot, because of course I was. What was I going to do? Sleep in my shoes? Well, given what had happened, it was something I’d probably have to consider in future.

After about ten minutes of walking, I realized I’d begun to get bored with this whole endeavor. It was just some damned endless beach, which frustrated me, on account of I’d really rather have been back in my bed, tucked under the covers with a book or something. You know, as I had been doing. I kicked at the sand in futile anger, and, just my luck, immediately stubbed my toe on something sharp.

I cursed under my breath, and then remembering that, for all intents and purposes, I seemed to be completely alone on a strange alien beachhead, cursed extremely loudly. Over my breath? That didn’t sound right, but I didn’t see a grammarian anywhere to correct me if it wasn’t. I cursed over my breath.

Once I’d gotten that out of my system, I determined that, as my toe was only bleeding a little bit, this was less of a major problem than it was a minor setback. I bent down to examine what I assumed was a small, sharp rock some jokester had buried to do precisely what it had done and make a fool out of someone like me. An extremely lucky, coincidental payoff to a joke that no one appeared to be around to witness, to be sure, but it was the best guess I could muster, my having woken up on an alien beach less than half an hour ago with no idea as to how I’d managed to do so.

To my surprise — which, it should be noted was a reaction I was, rather justifiably, having a lot today — the object I’d kicked turned out to be a peculiar metal box. Shiny and apparently solid with no visible seams, I could nonetheless feel something rattling inside as I picked it up and held it in my palm.

When I did, I felt a mild electrical charge shoot up my arm, which I initially put off to my nerves having been more or less completely shot, but then it kept occurring. A small tingle shot up my right arm, then again, and again. It didn’t hurt. It wasn’t even particularly uncomfortable. It was just noticeable enough that I could tell it would get annoying if it didn’t stop sooner or later, so I passed the box to my left hand.

The same electrical sensation began to shoot up that arm as instead. Now, if I’m being honest, most of my knowledge of electricity can be summed up as “Well, it comes out of that plug in the wall.” So, it’s possible that what I did next was not necessarily the brightest of moves. I put both hands upon the box, figuring, for whatever reason, that this action might “complete the circuit.” I’m sure any electrical engineer will tell you that that’s a good way to electrify or possibly electrocute yourself (the latter, I should clarify, being a term to describe the state of being electrified specifically to death), but that’s not what happened. Instead, the little metal box split down the middle, the two halves separating immediately.

As it happens, I realized that I apparently hadn’t been holding the box upright, since the split occurred vertically, causing the contents of the box to drop to the sand between my feet. I sighed and rolled my eyes, which thinking back on it now was a pretty cynical reaction to accidentally managing to open some mysterious alien box on a mysterious alien beachhead through the force of sheer suicidal stupidity.

I peered at the two halves of the box and could see the interior had been lined with some kind of soft material but could otherwise see no mechanism that would have caused it to unlock as it had. I tried placing the two halves back together, but they simply slid apart, no matter how I combined them. Eventually I gave up trying to repair the box and decided it would just have to be a mystery for later. Assuming there ever was a later, anyway, which given my circumstances did not seem particularly assured.

Bending down, I peered at the object that had fallen out of the box. It was about the size of a key fob, the kind you’d use to unlock your car, or maybe start the engine before you got outside, depending on whether you were wealthy enough (I wasn’t). It appeared to be made from the same material as the box, and likewise had no distinguishing seams or markings, which I was coming to realize seemed typical of the objects I’d encountered on this beach.

Anyway, I picked up the fob, as I had elected to call it, and immediately regretted it. Where the box had caused my arm to tingle with electricity, the fob burned, sending shocking jolts of energy up my arm with a force that I was certain would shatter the bones before long. For the sake of my dignity, let’s pretend that, while this crackling force shot up to my shoulder, I gritted my teeth and avoided doing the following: screaming, crying, cursing over my breath.

Of course, I know the solution to this predicament seems simple on its face: simply drop the fob, bury it in the sand (which, I should mention again was purple; just a detail that I don’t want to be overlooked in light of the rest of my strange encounters), and continue walking away down the beach. And of course, I tried that, but as you must have guessed by now, I found that task somewhat… impossible.

Try as I might, I simply could not open my fingers to drop the damned thing, clutched as it was there in my palm. The jolts of lightning shot up my arm, which flailed anew with each wild shock. After my success with the box, there seemed only one option available to me, assuming the two were designed around the same principle. I fell to my knees in the sand, clapped my hands together as quickly as I could manage, and-

*****

The smell of salt air filled my lungs and I felt the ocean spray on my face as I gradually awoke. The cries of seabirds circling overhead pierced my ears, and I felt sand between my toes. This was all a little strange, as the last time I’d checked, my bedroom did not have an ocean, seabirds, or sand in it…