A man walks down the beach. The calm and perfect beach. Filled with calm and perfect people. Except they only look that way.

Inside it’s different. Inside everyone is fucked. Messy and red. But these people, they’re laying out on bright coloured beach towels, smiling at each other, big gaped tooth smiles, and they’re all hiding the fucking red messy insides of who they are.

Sunbathing instead their pale paunchy bodies. Bodies that have been hidden from the sun for seven months, now unleashed into the light. Into the minds and memories of all the other grinning, gaped toothed, pale, paunchy bodies.

This man walking down the beach, he’s walking like someone with a secret. A secret like lead in his mind. His front pocket. Dragging down his body, each step further and further into the sand. Deeper and deeper until he can feel the oysters. With their small oyster bubbles tickling his toes. His secret pulling him along. Walking him along the shoreline. The surf thundering like whispers. The whispers driving him along.

Just say this man with a secret, like lead in his front pocket, was someone you knew. A person from high school, maybe. From your shitty grey with the linoleum peeling high school. Where everything smelled like stale farts and ripe b.o. Where you sat in a class filled with people you loathed and who loathed you back. But having an urgent desire to fuck every single one of them anyhow, those loathsome people. That shitty school with the principle like melting butter.

That man with the secret, he could be one of those loathsome kids you wanted to fuck. But soon, soon he’s going to be fucking everyone on this beach. He’s going to ram his cock inside everyone’s memories until they die. And even then, if memories are what we take with us, he’s going to continue fucking everyone. His cock deep inside the pink bloody mess of everyone’s mind.
And think, people probably dreamed of this man back in high school, when he still had pimples and wore hand me down t-shirts. Of him taking them in the middle of the grey cracked linoleum in the center of the cafeteria. Him, all over them. And now, he’s going to be fucking everyone forever.

Because this man, who no longer wears hand me down d.a.r.e t-shirts, but instead wears black button ups that choke his neck, he needs to share his secret. As soon he finds the perfect rock, the stillest tide pool, the happiest family to stand in front of, he’s going to pull out his secret and ram it into your brain, into everyone’s brain. And orgy for eternity.
And you, you’re going to watch. You will watch and record everything. Maybe by seeing with him, feeling with him, being him— you will be remembered.

Maybe you will be able to forget about who you are for a time. Maybe, you will be able to stop feeling like a small piece of shit, in a large universe filled with other small pieces of shit. So you put your book down. Or whatever you have filled your pale hands with. You drop them to your sides and you watch this man being pulled along the shoreline. You study his steps. His gait. The way his left leg seems heavier. Leaves a deeper footprint than the right. They way his fingers curl around his pocket. Clench and curl and clench and curl. And you think about that time in college when you stood in the corner of the room with the flashing lights, and the pounding music, and all you could focus on was the drunk pile of flesh in the middle of the room. The way the edge of her skirt pulled itself up until the bottom of white her panties flashed in the strobe lights. The way your hand curled and clenched around the cold red plastic cup. How your other hand drifted down to the hardening material of your crotch. You leaned into the shadows then. Pushed your back against them. Disappeared into the wall and watched. Clenched and curled, stroked and moaned. The edge of her skirt lifting and lifting. Fingers inside the zipper now. Fist inside the zipper now. Lights shifting. You stood there and watched. You were invisible then. You are invisible now.

Then he comes to a halt. He stops and digs his feet into the sand. He doesn’t look at anyone. And no one sees him. He is as invisible as you.

You feel a tightening in your belly. In that soft part, the middle part. The part that shifts and moves. That sends electricity into you. It tightens as you watch him. Your feet. They are covered in sand. Sand and bubbles. Clenching and curling his fingers, his pocket —your pocket. You study this man. Because being fucked by someone in the brain, in that middle part where it’s all bright and flashy, you’ll need to know everything to be remembered, to not be invisible. You’ll need to lean into his cock because you’ll need every inch of it. You’ll need every detail. And so you watch and record. You watch, record, and feel electricity.

You record the way his hands unbutton his black collared shirt. How they take it off stiff white shoulders, fold it into a square and lay it on the sand. They way the hair on his back curls. Is messy. How you have hair that is the same. It invades your space. It licks your skin. It pries apart the secret places and invades. It shouts to people passing by your shameful stench. It grows until you shave it off and then grows again. It is why fists beat on your back. Why purple spreading bruises turned green and then yellow. That face in the darkness. Over yours. The anger in the veins. In the red face. Hairs ripped from roots around your stiff cock. Your face turned to the pillow, pushed into the heat of it. Breathing through one open nostril. And you hate that black hair. The coarseness of it as it covers your body now. The feeling of razors being pulled along the skin. Having to get rid of it. But this man. The hair on his back is messy. His black collared shirt buttoned up to the neck is gone. And you, you pull away from the heat of the pillow. You pull away from the fists on your back and the weight above you. You squirm into the sun. You watch. You record. You’re becoming remembered. Just by watching. Just by leaning in.

From the man’s pocket. In his fist. His secret. You felt it in your hand. It hit you in that soft belly place and you sat up straight. You moaned into the deepness of it. But this man didn’t stop. His arm, fluid. It reached up and pressed his secret into his temple. That grey dull lead. He —you, pushed it against your throbbing bloody temple. He pressed so hard that you felt it. Inside your own brain you felt it. Pushed into you. Flooded into you. And you opened yourself to it because in order to become remembered you had to give everything. People would need to speak about this man on the beach with the black collared shirt. About every inch of him. Of how his stomach played games with his liver. You will need to know too so you open yourself to him, you take him into your mouth, into your hands, into every part of you that has clenched and uncurled. You and this man with a secret like lead, you are invisible on this calm beach. You shiver, your back convulses. Muscles in your thighs spasm. The bluntness of the metal on his head hurts your head. It digs into your brain. Not his. You want to move his hand. To move it to other parts of you. To parts that need hands on them. But you can’t. Not now, not when you’re close to being remembered.

And you begin to crack open. A little at first and then more and more and more and things start spewing out of you. Liquid like hot lava. It seeps out of you. More and more and fills you up and runs down you. Fills your empty memories and empty places and you push into the bluntness now. You want to be cracked open. You want to be filled by this man with the blunt hardened edge. You need to not be invisible.

And no one notices. No one looks away from their paunchy bodies. From the drool that collects in the sides of their mouths. They stare at each other and flap huge mouths and spew garbage back and forth and don’t look at you and him. They don’t even notice that you don’t have your shirt on anymore. That your hair is messy and smells like stale pillows. That you have been getting fucked by the man in the black shirt on the grey linoleum for hours now and that you are loving it and moaning for more and more and pulling him into you deeper and deeper and no one notices that you are spilling secrets all over and it’s melting into the sand and lava is spilling on your thighs and you love it and want more and more and more and there have always been fists in your zipper and pillows suffocating your screams and they just blabber on about nothing and nothing and nothing and nothing and don’t even notice the bluntness and hardness pressed against your temple and that you’re about to become remembered and that the man is fucking each of you in your brains and that they need to lean into his cock and take him in because only then will they be able to see his secret but they don’t even notice.

And when brains go splat, when they smear and run down the side of our cracked face. When the drops of them go flying, and hit the woman spilling out of her swim suit, when they rain down on her, you’re only going to be thinking of one thing. Is the mushy pulp of a ex-human, being soaked up into the sand, becoming food for the diving seagulls, someone that is still invisible?
And so you stop thinking. And he stops thinking. And the people never thinking. So you pull on the hard bluntness trigger against your temple. You pull and become remembered.

About Francine Cunningham

• More Posts(1)