by Gary Fry
Back at the hotel they all went upstairs, Sophie now at Oliver’s side— surely her rightful place. Her parents stepped into their own room wearing expressions implying that they were locking the youngsters out rather than themselves in…At least, that was how it had appeared to Oliver. But maybe this was just wine befuddling his mind.
After guiding his girlfriend inside the twin room, he tried kissing her. She didn’t resist, even when he forced her towards one of the beds. Then they were sitting on the mattress and there was an unambiguous presence at Oliver’s groin. Sophie must have felt this pressing against her leg, because she tried pulling away, even though her face continued exhibiting the look of girlish pleasure she always wore—the look he’d been attracted to after first noticing her in an English class.
“No, we can’t, ” she protested, offering him a kiss of consolation and yet nothing more.
“Why not?” he replied, striving to control his erratic breathing. He’d had sex several times in the past. He didn’t know whether Sophie was a virgin, but it was all no big deal, was it? Not in this changing world.
His girlfriend held him at arms’ length and then the bed squeaked, but not with Oliver’s desired activity.
“My da…I mean, my mum and dad might overhear, ” Sophie explained, the alcohol she’d consumed mangling her speech.
“Hey, we’re not kids anymore, ” Oliver told her, barely restrained frustration making his words sound taut. Something about this situation struck him as peculiar, but he couldn’t figure it out. His mind swam—no, felt submerged by…by…
Through the window, a rumble of water from the distant sea shut off this thought.
Oliver stood and reluctantly withdrew to the other bed. He waited while Sophie changed in the en suite bathroom, and then observed her exit and get into the fi st bed. Next he entered the bathroom with his pyjamas from his case, stripped, resisted the temptation to masturbate, washed, dressed, returned to the room, fell into the empty bed beside his already snoozing girlfriend’s, and soon dreamt about weird events involving circles and people and other mysterious matters.
The following morning, he had a headache, which hardly put him at his sociable best over breakfast. He’d woken before his girlfriend, and in a petty-minded attempt to punish her for resisting him the previous night, he’d put on his tightest shorts and sat in a chair beside the window. He was a good-looking guy and had never struggled to draw women’s attention. Indeed, when Sophie had finally opened her eyes, she’d appeared shocked, as if her obvious attraction to him had nothing to do with what she’d been dreaming about and which had put such a lascivious smile on her face.
After devouring bacon and eggs in the dining room (Kelly had nibbled only on toast and jam, presumably to maintain her looks), Will went to get the car, while the women prepared in their rooms for the beach. Oliver was soon in the vehicle’s back seat, feeling like an intruder, as if he was here to steal someone else’s joy. Before long, the two women appeared from the hotel, wearing matching unbuttoned shirts, and once they’d climbed inside the car, Will pulled away.
Arriving at their destination, they found the beach deserted. Sunshine illuminated a golden curve of sand, fringed by a tranquil sea. Will parked in an otherwise empty lot—it was too early for many other holidaymakers to appear—and after getting out, they followed a path to the sand, which proved to be warm underfoot.
Oliver was wearing lightweight trainers, while the others were in sandals—clearly a family preference. Once they’d found a suitable place to settle, he glanced around. It was a hot day and he might even get a tan. Maybe if he foxed himself up a little, Sophie would find him irresistible tonight, rather than the dismaying alternative.
These thoughts began nudging his shorts out of shape, and after slumping to the ground, he turned to watch the others do the same.
Kelly had now removed her shirt.
Despite knowing he shouldn’t allow his gaze to linger, Oliver realised he had no choice. His girlfriend’s mum looked good in her bikini—no, better than that: she looked marvellous. Even at college, among so many teenagers, she’d be considered desirable. Since becoming sexually aware, Oliver had once seen his mum naked—about five years ago; he hadn’t realised she was in the shower when he’d gone for a pee—and had been shocked at the lines on her hips: stretch-marks, he knew these were called. And of course he’d caused these.
His girlfriend’s mother’s skin, however, bore nary a blemish.
But he must glance away, and at once he did so. Then he found himself looking at Sophie, who’d also stripped to her bikini. Nevertheless, despite the sight confirming everything he’d hoped for—she was slim, shapely, and with firm breasts—he was unable to prevent himself ascribing his guilt while looking at Kelly to his girlfriend. This caused his penis to sag immediately.
And so here they all were: his girlfriend’s parents laid higher up the beach, further away from the frothing sea, while he and Sophie lay side by side, as young lovers should.
Oliver at last felt able to marshal his unruly inner world. His thoughts had been deviating from what he knew was the way of the world, but now he was determined to bring everything back into appropriate line.
But wasn’t it also true that the world was changing? In fact, hadn’t it already changed?
Reclining to enjoy the morning’s heat, he found it difficult to avoid reflecting on an idea he’d recently developed after many experiences. The planet was altering every day—not only geologically, as scientific studies had shown, but also socially. The modern family was fragmented, wasn’t it? Women’s roles had been transformed and men also had a different status from the previous generation. And what else might alter before long?
It was all too confusing to work out, making his head hurt to try. Oliver often yearned for a simpler life, perhaps one involving being marooned on a desert island, alone with Sophie…
His mind had turned again to sex. Despite the free accommodation he’d been offered on this holiday, Oliver wished his girlfriend’s parents would leave them both alone for a while.
His thoughts making him feel uppity, the heat roused him to action. He sat up, turned his upper body to confront Sophie, and asked, “Do you fancy going for a walk somewhere? Just the…well, you know, just the two of us?”
By this time, several other people had arrived on the beach to set up territorial zones a good distance away. With her long, smooth body on display to whoever chose to glance this way, Sophie didn’t even open her eyes as she replied, “Maybe later, Olly. We don’t get much weather like this in Yorkshire. I’m lapping it up!”
At that moment, Oliver realised how silly and shallow his girlfriend sounded a lot of the time. Perhaps he simply hadn’t spent enough time with her to understand this…or was it rather that the context here was different? And if that was true, what had changed?
The answer was straightforward, Oliver thought: it was the presence of Will and Kelly.
Or perhaps just his girlfriend’s mother.
Oliver was uncertain about the source of this insight, but nonetheless knew it felt right. And as soon as the notion took grip, he stood and began pacing between his girlfriend and her dad, and then around the back of both Sophie’s parents, before returning to his original spot. He’d dragged his feet all the way.
His girlfriend had been watching, wearing a puzzled expression. Maybe she thought he was playing a childish game. During his intuitive act, Oliver had managed not to steal a glance at her more mature and—yes, he could admit it—more appealing mother.
Glancing at the tracks his feet had carved into the sand, Oliver noticed that he’d drawn a circle around the two adults. It was clearly this to which Sophie now responded, in a similar way to his own.
She got up to quickly pace around Will and then back to where she’d started, creating another loose circle on the beach. A moment later, she stepped inside the area where this new shape overlapped the other.
Oliver was now excluded from
the family. A beach-circle bound the two parents, and another paired off his girlfriend exclusively with her father.
He gazed at Sophie; she gazed back.
After their sexual misunderstanding the previous evening, did they both understand at a subconscious level what was going on here?
Whatever the truth was, Oliver felt bitter and disappointed enough to pace forwards, into the part of the first circle occupied only by the half-naked Kelly.
Then Will, dressed only in his swimming shorts, sat up. “Hey, what’s going o…” he tried saying, but that was as far as he got.
The sand beneath both him and his daughter, inside their combined section of beach-circles, had started to run perceptibly soft, lapping around their ankles and sucking them inexorably below the ground.
“What’s hap…” Sophie cried, now the little girl she perhaps still wished to be. She reached out for her father, but Will responded only by reaching across for his wife.
“Darling, help. I–”
Kelly grew immediately alert and sprang to her feet, but shock at what she saw rendered her immobile.
Only Oliver seemed physically capable and mentally prepared enough to help.
Of course he did so, rushing across the beach to grab his girlfriend by her flailing arms. By this stage, half of her had been pulled into the sand. After briefly stepping into the area where Sophie’s circle encroached upon his own, Oliver felt his foot sink in, and he pulled it out at once. To save his girlfriend, he’d have to lean across from outside the spot. He tried doing this…but it was no use. First her narrow hips, then her smooth belly, and next her large breasts were consumed by the hungry planet. Will was suffering a similar fate, though Kelly, Oliver noticed, had made no attempt to rescue him. Perhaps she was still in shock.
Oliver couldn’t think with any purpose. A crab was sidling towards his girlfriend’s face, the one part of her still visible. Its savage claws snapped at her nose, but then Oliver, standing outside the affected area, swung out a leg and kicked it away. However, it landed on Will’s head and proceeded to nip at one of his sunburnt cheeks.
Then both of the creature’s victims sunk away, beneath the surface of the sand. Seconds later, other people were crowded around this bizarre spectacle, summoned by Kelly’s unbridled scream.
And that was the end of it.
After regaining sufficient composure, Oliver placed one foot on the half-circle that had swallowed up his girlfriend and her dad. It was now solid, as tolerant of weight as it had been before the crazy episode.
He stooped, dipping hands into the firm surface and then hauling back armfuls of sand. He’d got about three feet down—accompanied by a couple of guys who, at their partners’ behest, had elected to help—before realising that Sophie and her father were gone…for good.
Later that day, after Oliver had driven Kelly back to the hotel (he’d got his provisional licence earlier in the year and already had several lessons), he returned to find authorities using big diggers to excavate the patch of beach that, according to one witness, had “eaten a man and his daughter alive. ”
Large men operating the machinery delved about twenty feet and then gave up. Police asked Oliver for evidence, but what could he tell them? Not much that made sense, in truth.
The story made the national news, and then—via modern tools of communication, which had altered life forever—worldwide reports. However, even experts in geological matters were unable to explain it.
A few weeks later, Oliver was in his bedroom in Leeds, surfing the Internet (he rarely accessed porn anymore; even though his mum was out working and he was alone in the house, he’d gone off sex, especially with the simple-minded bimbos invariably found online), when he chanced upon a report about the Antipodes Islands. Apparently these volcanic territories, located off the coast of New Zealand, were the nearest dry land directly opposite the UK on that side of the globe.
Marine biologists, conducting research in the region, had recently found two corpses washed up on the beach of one of these inhospitable islands. Both bodies, interlocked in an act of either coitus or security, had been burned to the bone. Their identities remained unknown and had aroused much interest in the region’s media.
The following day, still in a state of bewilderment, Oliver was stirred from these geographical enquiries by a phone call. It was Kelly, who told him that she’d found his telephone number while going through her daughter’s possessions. The furore in the national newspapers had by this stage died away, and she asked him whether he’d like to come to her house, to try and make sense of their shared experience. It might have been grief that lent her request such a lascivious undercurrent.
Oliver thought about the invitation a long time before making a decision. Then, his young body moving with irrepressible eagerness, he went out.
He now knew the way of this changing world.
DOUBLE SPACE
———
It was the use of an errant double space that alerted Jim to what his wife got up to in his absence.
Jim had travelled to Suffolk by train, missing the manic crowds of London after setting off mid-morning. That was the luxury of being an independent writer, of course. Provided that publishers’ deadlines were hit, you could work whenever you pleased and at your own pace. And with this latest contract—writing a history of printing in East Anglia—Jim had all the time he needed for a comfortable year.
If only everything in his life was so agreeable, however.
After checking into his hotel late afternoon, Jim dropped off his luggage—laptop, change of clothing, a trusted notepad and pen—and went downstairs to dine in the restaurant. He’d stay in this village near Ipswich for two nights and had arranged to visit a local printing company first thing tomorrow. This was part of a month-long period of research, gathering materials from interviews and observation. He loved his job; it was everything he’d ever wanted out of life.
Well, almost everything.
Jim received the email at about eight o’clock, after returning to his room after a few digestion-facilitating brandies. He and his wife were used to spending time apart, having done so many times during their twenty year marriage with few complications. More recently, however, Jim had sensed something awry in the trouble-free nuptial home. Since Meg had hit forty last year, she’d seemed…uppity, Jim thought the word might be. The usual recrimination-free trips he made around the country had become fraught with uncertainty. Meg was his typist, the person who made sense of his handwritten manuscripts. He relied on her a great deal, but not only professionally.
He logged onto the hotel’s WiFi service using the password he’d been given at reception and received a number of emails from various sources: his financial adviser arranging an annual review appointment; his publisher confirming deposit of this quarter’s royalties; a contact who’d identified some information about offset printing techniques in the late nineteenth century…and here, finally, was the one he’d wanted: a missive from Meg, typically brief, and yet, like a poem, every word loaded with compressed meaning.
Hiya, have decided to take myself out to the cinema this evening— that new French movie. Perhaps we can speak on the phone tomorrow evening.
Love, Meg.
Jim spent the next half-hour scrutinising every phrase. Even after washing and changing for sleep, he ran over in his mind the words his wife had used.
…have decided to take myself out…that new French film…Perhaps we can speak on the phone…
These turns of phrase were so uniquely Meg, they might be trademarked. He was intimately familiar with how she expressed herself, having lived with her all these years. There was no mistaking the casual, direct way in which she engaged with others…with him.
So why did he feel as if something was wrong here?
It wasn’t just the fact that she’d used email to contact him. Meg had been a reluctant recruit to the modern world of electronic communication, preferring the more direct telephone or even han
dwritten letters. However, she’d recently begun dealing with technical aspects of his work in this way, finding computer-based word processing far more efficient. But given a choice, she’d much sooner speak or write in pen. And so she’d chosen to go to the cinema this evening—well, this was hardly unprecedented. Both she and Jim were movie fans, preferring the big screen treatment over anything a home DVD might offer. Often while away researching in some nondescript part of the country, Jim would also source a picture-house and see if he couldn’t chance upon a rare classic or a foreign gem that might otherwise have escaped him.
So Meg’s absence this evening—the fact that she hadn’t called on his mobile and had suggested speaking tomorrow instead—contained no grounds for suspicion. She might even have gone out with Brendan.
Brendan and Jim went way back together, were fellow Oxford alumni. Both independently wealthy from inheritance, they’d worked in the same field of publishing—experts in media and communications—but more recently Jim had powered ahead, getting a string of book deals and wider exposure. Not that he believed Brendan was envious. Indeed, the man—a bachelor—had been nothing less than gracious during his frequent visits to their home. As a fellow resident of Maidstone, he sometimes took Meg out whenever Jim was away on business.
Nothing wrong with that at all. Why shouldn’t mature adults function in that way? Besides, Jim had always suspected that the man had unpalatable sexual preferences. This was not something they’d ever discussed, but one day back in the nineties, Jim had found some decidedly risqué websites stored on his friend’s PC. Brendan always used a computer. He loved them and had developed an idiosyncratic way of preparing his relatively minor manuscripts…
None of this was getting Jim anywhere. He had an early appointment in the morning and much to think about concerning his latest project. He should try and get some sleep. After glancing again at that email, he closed down the laptop, switched out his room’s light and then descended into atypically bizarre dreams.