The Sudden Shore

As I said the other day, I am now taking requests from my somewhat limited readership - semi-regardless of what they might be or how ridiculous they may be (i.e In the past I've been asked several times to write a story about ducks and although I have yet to write anything doesn't mean that I never will).

The Sudden Shore is a response to my first request - for pirates and swashbuckling - although as you read it you will quickly notice that, so far, it involves neither.

Unfortunately/Fortunately for what was probably not an entirely serious request I seem to have managed to get myself rather involved in writing this story and it has ended up being far longer than I had originally planned (hence the current lack of pirates/ending and the time taken between updates).

Still I figured that I should at least put something up, just to show that I am actually working on something and so I can get some feedback on the basic idea.

So here it is: the beginning of

The Sudden Shore

The body floated face down in the water, slowly drifting between the various pieces debris and detritus that littered the surrounding ocean. Every so often it would disappear beneath the surface as it was swallowed by a particularly strong swell, only for it to be spat out somewhere distant many minutes later, with only a slowly fading ribbon of red marking where it had been. As the hours passed the stain it left in the water grew steadily smaller and smaller. The body cooled and grew stiff as rigor inexorably began to set in. Birds started to circle overhead, their cries loudly announcing their find to their fellows.
By the time the body was found there was very little left to point to who the owner had been, but to the man who found him this didn’t matter. He knew who it was, had seen them only a few days before: when the body walked and talked and still went by a name.

Geoffrey Andale, poked gingerly at the body of Arthur Roe with the end of an oar, held tightly in one hand as the held a salt stained handkerchief up to his nose with the other. The body bobbed and for a moment he almost expected it to roll over and wake up. Instead it just was just pushed away for a brief moment before the current caught it again and it began to bump up against the side of his small row-boat, skin wrinkled and made pale by the sun and sea.

Geoffrey wanted to retch, but there was nothing left in his stomach to bring up, so instead he licked cracked lips and lay down, trying his best to ignore the noise the body made each time it came into contact with the boat. Tried to ignore how thirsty he was.
Up until an hour ago, when he had first seen the body, he had been seriously considering drinking some of the water that surrounded him. It had been a stupid idea, a suicidal idea, he knew that, but it had been so long since he had had a drink that he had begun to slowly convince himself that, surely, only a little bit wouldn’t hurt any more than drinking nothing. Surely just enough to wet his lips wouldn’t do any harm.
Now, however, the very idea made his stomach churn. As far as he was concerned it was as if the body had now polluted the entire ocean, to the point where he flinched back every time the spray flicked across his face. Drinking sea water was now the last thing on his mind.
Time was slow to trickle by. Lying in the bottom of the boat meant that the sun became the only constant in the sky and it seemed to have climbed to its zenith and then to have stopped, where it now beat down upon his brow like some molten hammer. He draped the handkerchief across his eyes and tried to rest, tried to ignore the hollow 'thunk' that Roe’s body made each time it brushed up against the boat. Sleep or unconsciousness (he had started to lose all distinction between the two) was slow to come and when it he was plagued by dreams and disjointed memories.
Roe’s face was the first to come to him this time and then the man was in the boat with him, whole and grinning, as if he had somehow forgotten that he was supposed to be dead. He began to talk but it all passed by Geoffrey without leaving any meaning behind, who instead sat there transfixed by the deep cut that lay just beneath the other man’s ribs and the seeping redness that had begun to colour what was left of Roe’s shirt.

Roe followed his gaze and the grin slipped from his face. “You did this Geoffrey” he said with an accusing hiss, his voice suddenly clear. “You did this! Left us all to die. Left us to rot... You coward.” He tried to pull away but Roe reached out with pale hands to grab the front of his shirt.
He tried to scream, tried wriggle from the dead man’s cold grip but instead he was pulled down. Down past the boat and into the inky black of the water. Quickly it filled his mouth, filled his lungs. He screamed a silent scream as Roe pulled him away from safety of the row boat – back in the direction he had come, back to the broken wreck that, only days before, had been The Harlequin...


Alright, so that's it for the moment - this is only a fraction of what I've done so far, so it's a little short, but it seemed to be the most natural place to cut it off as the next bit of the story deals with Geoffrey’s past - from childhood - to how he ended up on the Harlequin and then in the boat (I'm not finished with that thread yet so seemed silly to put it up as well).

Anyway - there will be more up in the next few days - seeing as I'm writing it right now.

Starting to feel good about this.

Comments appreciated.