The woman was standing on the beach, perfectly still in the strong wind; like a statue of salt left behind by the tide. The corner of her eyes were red from tears she wouldn’t let out because he fucking didn’t deserve it - him, him, him, that world like a raging curse. She wished she had been the type of woman to handle heartbreak with grace, but experience had just proven otherwise. She seemed to be the type to handle it with torpor, and an empty look on her face. She didn’t want to imagine what kind of face she had made when she had found them both in bed - without her. No, not without her; why was she talking like she wanted a threesome ? She had a sudden fit of anger. She looked so dumb, so fucking dumb. The dumbest in town. How could she not see it coming ? Her friends had been on his tail for months now, dropping hints of doubt like little clues wrapped in acid. Sour candies she let roll off her open hands, because she couldn’t take the burn of it. She thought their story was worth more than that.

More than that cliche ending on a beach.

And she was cold as hell, but she didn’t move. Because she was still mad, she could still feel something tugging a corner of her heart - nostalgia, probably, about what they lived together. And she wanted it to die on this beach. She wanted to throw it up. She kinda felt like each time the wind hit her, that feeling would unwrap itself like a piece of paper about to get ripped off, and she was just waiting for it to come undone. Whether or not it would come undone before she froze to death, she didn’t know.

It was like a staring contest, except she was looking grief right in the eye. And honestly, both endings sounded fine to her.

She clenched her fists inside her pockets, shivered a bit. Her eyes were fixed on the horizon, but she wasn’t really looking at it. So when the first foot appeared, a few meters in front of her, like a white pillar descending into the sea, she didn’t realize what she was looking at. The sky had been a single shade of white all morning, the clouds high in the sky, oppressing, and light had been like mist - all over and blinding at times. As massive as it was, the foot was almost invisible against the sky and her mind failed to process what it was. But then, she heard the water split.

It was nothing, really. Just the faint sound of water colliding against something, but it was enough. Enough for her to realize that she wasn’t looking at a piece of sky, enough for her to realize the breath of another being was surrounding her.

She looked at that white pillar numbly, and her eyes followed it upwards until the part it was connected to the body. Then it turned into craziness, because the body was huge. Because it stood against the sky, she couldn’t tell where his body ended and where it began; but she could still feel its weight above her and guess its size from it. A lot of info she collected in those few seconds felt like instinctive prompts. Knowing it didn’t have a head was one of them. It stood on four feet, with a main body like a tank and then nothing; resembling a myth made from white clay by the hands of a child. His body shape was rough and undefined, but his skin looked tender, even permeable. It didn’t make sense for a creature as tall as a twelve storey building not to make more sound while entering the sea, but it was as such the creature wasn’t even standing here. There was barely a ripple on the surface of the sea; even the birds lazing around the creek didn’t fly away.

The strangest thing was, she didn’t feel the urge to run away either.

The creature was huge and she was in its way; but she didn’t fear it as much as she thought she should. Instead, she felt uncomfortable all over. Stuck as a statue of salt in front of something that as soon as it made its presence known, grossed the shit out of her. It was a sly feeling, a gut instinct. Strong enough to repulse her, but not strong enough to induce a flight answer.

She stood here on two feet, forgetting her heartbreak in front of monstrosity - but still waiting. For what, she didn’t really know. Maybe for the tension to break. Birds were free in the wind, and people on the coast were slowly waking up as she heard the far away cries of the weekly market rise up into the air, but she stayed here. She stayed until she felt the wind slow down around her, and a pungent smell fill her nostrils.

The creature had tilted forward so slowly that she hadn’t even realized it was closing up on her. Panic swelled up in her stomach as she choked up on its body odor. That thing smelled like death, and this time, she really felt like throwing up; but primal instincts were preventing her from opening her mouth. Lips sealed, she watched as the creature’s body grew a new body part to reach out to her, right where its head should have been. It looked like the creature was throwing up excess skin, then strengthening it with random bones until the structure was stable enough to add up to it. The whole thing looked so bizarre she couldn’t tear her eyes away from it.

But then, the new arm of the creature was right in front of her, a little above her head, and she couldn’t help but regret everything. Her mind played like a broken record the scene of her entering that room where she caught her boyfriend cheating, wondering what would have happened if she just never pushed that door open. But right as she remembered what his face looked like under the surprise and then, very vividly, her own dumbfounded expression in the mirror across the bed the guilty were laying naked in, something broke like a water balloon above her head ― and blood splashed everywhere.

Covering her face, clothes, shoes. It got into her eyes, and she couldn’t see anything anymore but under the adrenaline, all of her other senses heightened in a second and she distinctly heard the sound of something falling into the sand in front of her. There was something here.

For the first time since the creature appeared, she felt genuine fear.

Fear for that thing she couldn’t see, that was lying at her feet. Fear because of that blood that was soaking her clothes and which smell made it harder for her to breathe. She wanted to leave, she wanted to leave so fucking badly. She stumbled backwards, trying to clean the blood on her face and opening her eyes. Her view was blurred but she still saw the shape of that thing on the ground. It was unidentifiable, but its skin looked the same color as the sky and was covered by multiple dark points. Maybe it was a blessing that the woman couldn’t see properly, because those dark points were actually eyes covering the whole body of the newborn, and all of those eyes were looking at her.

Trying to figure out how to mimic it.

Trying to figure out how to look like it, move like it, breathe like it.

How to be it.

Each time the woman blinked, the shape of the newborn adjusted itself. Growing legs and arms, reducing the size of its torso, trying to guess how much a head should weigh and in which direction it should look. Innate knowledge was helping it shape its body way quicker than just relying on visual assessment could have and in the end, it all took just an instant for it to look like a genderless mold of a human being.

Humans have two eyes, so it only kept two.

But they were still looking at her. Looking at her. The woman’s breakdown came in waves of sobbing hysteria. She couldn’t help it anymore, it was just too much. Way too much, and she held herself as she fell knees first on the wet sand.

It was so easy to believe she would die right this second.

So easy to believe it was coming for her.

The newborn struggled on the sand for quite a long time before managing to stand up, and she watched it all with fear and humiliation. When it finally figured out how to stand on its own two feet, it tried taking a step forward - and fell flat, right on her left. She let out a cry like a dying animal, but the newborn had no vocal cords yet so it said nothing. It just stood up again, and tried again - and this time, it got it right.

It was its first step, and it only needed one more to touch her. Its foot went up and down again, brushing the hem of her coat; but the hell she thought would come never came. The third step went past her. And the fourth step turned into a run.

A mad, mad run.

The exact run she should have broken into the minute she had seen the creature appear above the sea. She turned her head around, dazed, as the newborn ran with all its might and newly formed vocal cords. Its cry pierced the sky like thunder as it used all of its lungs capacity in it, fell down because of a lack of oxygen, then got up and ran again. The woman saw it reach the street giving to the beach and disappear behind a passing car. Tears still streaming down her face, she shivered violently as if to wake up and turned her head back to the pool of blood she was sitting on.

Certainly, it couldn’t be the end, could it ?

She looked up to see the creature, the one that had started all of this, but when she looked up, she saw nothing at all. Nothing but the sky, and a little bit of blue finally appearing between two clouds above the beach.

The creature had disappeared, maybe already a long time ago, when she was focused on the thing it had given birth to. She didn’t know. The only evidence that was left of what had happened was this blood she was covered in, and that taste of terror on the tip of her tongue. She tried to spit it out, but it didn’t quite leave.

So she thought that it’d do her better to just go home and take a shower. Erase everything she had been a witness of, throw away her clothes, rub a layer of skin off. She slowly got up, shaking. She felt heavier than before, but somehow… Somehow, that feeling that was tugging at the corner of her heart, wrapped around her like ivy, as candid as a short love letter pinned to the fridge - that feeling she had hoped the wind would blow away, she couldn’t find it anywhere anymore.