See Shells

She sat staring out to sea. Her gaze fixed on the horizon, the point where sea and sky joined, the place where two worlds touch.

Pebbles underneath pressed against her, the body of her coat offered little protection to dull the feeling. By concentrating she could make one part of her body feel the pain leaving the other areas numb. This point of exaggerated connection brought an intensity that was unworldly.

 

In the distance she could hear the excited voices of a family playing on the beach. She tried to tune them out, to return to the meditative state of horizon and prickly pain but they were too loud. She knew the exaggerated noises of enjoyment were really a piece of drama to encourage her to join in. Her family, desperately worried about her, just wanted her to return to normal. To play games like she used to. To be one of them again.

 

She glanced toward them and saw them looking back before they immediately went back to their game with an increased energy to disguise the fact they had been caught looking. But she didn’t need to catch them, she knew they were always looking, always caring, always sympathetic. Too caring, too sympathetic. They wanted to wrap her in loving cotton wool to drive away the pain, to protect her from her emotions. The problem was the pain was inside and the love they surrounded her with just trapped the feelings deeper inside her.

 

If she concentrated on the pain, focussed on that, she could drive out some of the other thoughts. She was so thin there was little to protect her bones from the insistent pebbles. She thought of standing and folding her coat to make a thicker cushion but just the thought tired her.

 

She dropped her eyes from the distant point and they fell to her legs. Before she could feel revulsed she moved quickly onto the stones and pebbles around her. Shades of grey, white, orange and sand colours surrounded her. A quick glance gave them a uniformity but scrutiny revealed the differences, the irregularities, the things that made each one unique.

 

And as she stared, her mind momentarily freed from the burdens it carried, other things revealed themselves. Fragments of glass made smooth by the actions of sea and shore. Bricks worn to tiny red spongelike shapes and shells. 

 

The shells, perhaps knowing their value, hid amongst the pebbles but once she had spotted the first others seemed to magically appear. It reminded her of how, when the issue that caused her so much pain had first surfaced, it seemed to be mentioned in every TV programme, every radio show, every newspaper and magazine. Constant reminders as if the world wanted her to never to be able to forget. So much so in the end she just had to tune out of real life.

 

She leant to one side to pick up the shell she had first noticed. Doing so increased the pressure around her hip and the pain from the pebbles made her wince. She glanced to her family in case they had noticed but they were consumed by the game.

 

Shuffling to ease the pressure she held the shell in the palm of her hand. It was nothing special, the sort an animal might have lived, in but it was beautiful in its own way. As sunlight caught it areas showed their translucence, others a rich deep pink vein.

 

A distant voice echoed through to her. Her mother’s voice imploring her to listen to the shell to hear the sea. So clear was the voice she glanced again to her family before registering this was a younger voice, a voice before concern had changed its tone, filled it with crushing care. A voice from her past.

 

She brought the shell to her ear as she had as a child. She stared out to the horizon and closed her eyes. And there for a moment the sound of the sea. Not the sea in front of her, not as close, as insistent and without the sounds of the pebbles being turned by the waves.

 

This was the sea of dreams. Calming

 

Then she could hear her mother shouting, and then the others. It was time to go. She looked at the shell in her hand and made the decision. She would leave it, leave it where it belonged, safe, in the right place. She gently laid it down as near the exact spot the she had picked it up from. Then she gently prised herself from the beach quickly wrapping her coat around her to hide her body from spying eyes. She turned and began to walk back to the car.

 

 

When the car had gone so the questions started. What had he heard? The shell was unusually quiet despite the demands of the beach. In a soft voice he tried to find the words

 

‘It was not,’ he paused, ‘not like the usual. Not what I was expecting, not what I wanted to hear…….’

They waited.

 

The Shower – Three Choices

The water was just not draining from the shower tray as quickly as it should. He looked at the suds gathering around his feet and decided he should do something. He bent and lifted the cover from the shower tray outlet and saw the matt of hair that had weaved itself across the top.  

Slightly repulsed he drew it together with his fingertips and lifted the seaweed of hair out. The satisfaction was the immediate flow of the water down the drain, but it didn’t overcome the shuddering revulsion of the clogging wet hair in his fingers. 

 

He dropped it by the sliding door and immediately rinsed his fingers madly under the shower before bending to lift the bottle of shampoo again. The very act of touching the dead hair had made him feel grubby. As he showered, he realised the irrationality of the feeling. The hair was either his or his wife’s. It must be clean, having been washed out by the very act of shampooing the head but he still found it stomach turning. As he turned off the shower he stared at the knot with slight nausea.

 

Stepping out he put on his bathrobe and then turned to the hair. He didn’t really want to touch it again, but it had to go somewhere and the thought of flushing it or rinsing it away just seemed to be not right. Not solving it but rather contributing to another problem further down the pipes.

 

Opening the cupboard below the sink he saw a jar with the last cotton wool ball in it. The irony was lost on him he tossed the ball into the toilet bowl before gingerly placing the soggy hair into the empty jar and back under the sink. When there’s enough, he thought,  he’d take it out to the garden for birds to make nests with. That thought somehow cheered him. Their dead hair would provide a home for new life.

 

Stepping into the bedroom his wife glanced up registering the half smile.

‘You OK?’ she asked

‘All good,’ he replied slipping back into the bed next to her.

‘Ooh you’re all wet still,’ 

He realised that with his mind distracted he had not towelled off his hair. 

 

…

 

Over the next few months the rising tide in the tray would prompt a routine and the jar filled gradually under the sink. Tucked towards the back of the shelf, so it wasn’t automatically visible, it caused no concern nor prompted any questions.

 

Then after one shower, a matted bundle of hair ready, he reached in to find the jar empty. Shouting from the shower ‘did you empty the jar?’ he felt rather disgruntled that he had done the horrible work of filling it and she had the pleasure of emptying it out.

‘What jar?’

‘The hair jar,’ he hadn’t realised that he had given it a name.

‘What hair jar?’

‘The jar, the jar full of hair under the sink.’ He found his anger irrationally rising.

‘What jar of hair?’ said his wife opening the bathroom door, a gesture he found strangely antagonistic.

‘This jar,’ he said, holding it forward much as one would to a child.

 

His wife looked innocent and unaware, screwing her eyes to focus on the jar before speaking. ‘I have no idea what you are talking about.’

‘Really?’ he said already knowing the answer.

‘Really,’

 

There was a silence as he slowly lowered the jar and began to feel the rising tide of doubt within his mind. Had he thrown it out and forgotten? Could he have done that? He was sure, almost totally sure, he hadn’t but he knew his wife was innocent and they were the only two living in the house. It must have been him, somehow.

‘What was in it?’ he heard his wife say for the second time breaking through the fog of self-doubt.

‘Hair, hair from the shower plug.’

‘Oooh that’s revolting, what were you keeping it for?’

He didn’t want to explain, didn’t want to let her into this moment of doubt, both of his actions and the fact he must have emptied the jar and forgotten. To cover his embarrassment, he picked up a towel and started rubbing his hair. When his wife had left the room he picked up the tangle of hair from the shower tray and flushed it away affected by a feeling of stupidity.

 

…..

 

 

So, at this point we pause and offer three endings to this shower of a story. Your choices:

 

1)

Some weeks later, returning from an afternoon of running errands he found his wife in the armchair. As he moved towards her she ‘shushed’ him and let her eyes fall to the tiny bundle in her arms. 

 

Moving to the back of the armchair he glanced down to see what she was holding. 

A tiny, furry shape in human form. 

‘Look,’ said his wife, ‘It’s a hair boy, I found him trying to climb into the shower’.

 

2)

‘OK, what have we got?’ asked the Detective Inspector ignoring everyone in the room bar the Pathologist, ‘Double suicide?’

‘Not that I can see, it just doesn’t add up.’ He paused from examining the body on the metal slab. ‘Come over here.’

He led the DI over to a table where two gruesome exhibits were laid out.

‘What the hell is this?’

‘These are their lungs. Completely filled with hair and it’s the same in their throats.’

 

3)

Well, that’s up to you.