October 22, 2020.

SPOOKTOBER STORY #14:

Fait Accompli, Chapter Five.

The boy in the sand is doubled over, holding his stomach. He is silent as I approach him and I am thankful for his silence and I use the time to catch my breath and settle the turmoil of my body's sickly creature.

I say hello and when he looks up his eyes are white and wide. He seems very afraid of something or maybe me, so I make soothing noises and try to appear nonthreatening, although I am certain it does not work. Covered in sand and vomit, dehydrated, drunk, blistering in the sun, I likely look like a ghoul.

Children and I are not very friendly. Annie Xiu has two children and they find me repulsive and my very existence offensive. I can't disagree.

I try to think of something reassuring to say, but I can't think of anything good so instead I say hello again. The boy is blistered too. I look around for where he might have come from, towards the tower, but to reach the boy I have climbed down a dune and there is a boiling haze rising from the sand that obscures anything past maybe twenty feet, and I can no longer see what I had seen from above.

Where did you come from, I say, but the boy continues his silence. He just stares at me.

Do you have parents somewhere, I say. You didn't come here alone.

I say: um.

I offer him whatever's left of one bottle of water.

He doesn't take it and instead he says it's you it's you. I say you're right but I don't think I know you. Who do you think I am. And he says they said they said it I didn't know it was today I didn't they said I didn't oh no oh no oh no father.

And I think O.K. this kid doesn't make any goddam sense but it sounds at least like he has a father somewhere. And then I think he's not calling me father, is he. And I look at his face and I cannot be sure, so I say: I'm not your father.

And he says no, you're not my father, my father is dead.

And I say when did he die. The boy's eyes are glassy, his face bruised with sun and sand. And he says something that doesn't make very much sense to me.

He says: Forever.

Then he leaps to his feet and sprints, away from me, towards the tower I had seen rising above the dunes.