The Tidal Wave
The water was so tall and so clear. It towered over the buildings. Things swam in that great cliff of water. It moved slowly, more slowly than seemed physically possible and it never crested, it never spilled over, destroying the city by force, instead it drowned it slowly. A great wall of water moving inexorably forward, stopping for no one and nothing.
I’d been at the beach the day the great wall of water came. At times I fool myself and think I might have dreamt of the wave coming before it did. I’d always been a bit leery of the ocean though I’d never been able to explain why. When I was 12 and we moved into a pokey little house near the beach, just off the PCH, we spent an awful lot of time there. I’d thought I was over it, but my dreams never got over it. Now — now I don’t think I’ll ever be over it. Because I was right to fear the ocean.
My little brother and I were building a sand castle. Sean was tasked with going and collecting buckets of sea water to wet our sand down.
“Bobby!” he’d yelled. “The ocean got further away!”
I didn’t listen because he was always saying stupid shit like that and while I loved the kid, I couldn’t listen to every single inane thing he said. So, I ignored what he said and returned to my regular programming — trying to find the metal station on the radio. The beach was the only place where I could catch the really good one in LA. I’d just about honed in on the signal. A wavering voice said “you’re listening to 103.5, the Dungeon, spinning only the platters that matter.”
“Bobby!” Seanny giggled. “The ocean’s waving bye.”
“Can I Play With Madness? We’re about to find out, here’s some Iron Maiden,” the DJ on the radio said. Satisfied that I would at least have my tunes while I watched my baby brother, I finally looked up.
The beach was dry. There was a line of drying kelp but then further out were some jellyfish, and some sort of fish flapping its gills trying to breathe.
I first saw the tidal wave that destroyed the West Coast as a little curl in the distance steadily getting larger as the tide rolled back in ready to eat us all.
The End 10/10/2022
