Across The Sea

Chapter 6

           SARAH

The beach was teeming with people. Families with kids, honeymooners, girl gangs, boy gangs, old people gangs, photographers, thrill-seekers, singles and backpackers - every type of tourist was there, mixed with a healthy dose of locals. It was the peak of travel season, so it was expected. Even if it was a Monday. In fact there was hardly any difference between the weekdays and weekends.

I'd know. I've been coming here for nearly two weeks now.

I'd sit here on the beach, eat all the delicious food the beach restaurants had to offer, drink from coconuts and people-watch. I liked it like this. Looking at people from far and not having to interact with them. I liked to make up stories about them in my mind, give them names and lives as vivid and colourful as the dresses they wore. No really, the ones in black got a dark story, and the ones in the multicolour swimsuits basically got the same treatment as real housewives of Beverly Hills. I even matched their stories to the prints and patterns they wore on their clothes, or the colour of their hair. In fact, just yesterday I saw a guy with blonde hair with black polka dots in the middle - like a cheetah. I named him Cheetah King - Tiger king's Asian version.

When I was not people-watching, I read my books. To be honest, I wasn't doing it often though, even if I sat with the book open in my hands. My eyes still lingered on the people, not conspicuously, but subtly. My gaze got pulled from one person to another, from colours to activities, from adults to kids. It was like my brain wanted to capture everything before my eyes, and was working overtime to achieve just that.

And it wasn't just the visuals, but the sounds too. There was just so much noise around me, that everything blended into each other, and yet still remained distinct enough that if I focused on one, I could tell what it was and exactly where it was coming from.

It might sound like sensory-overload to some. But this was what I preferred to the quiet confines of the little cottage I was renting. In the cacophony of the chaos, the voices inside my head seemed a little less loud. I could drown out the thoughts that constantly plagued me, never giving me a moment of peace, in the thoughts of other irrelevant things. It was like watching a trash mind-numbing movie. The worse the quality the better it was for me, because if I used my grain to focus on it, then I wouldn't have to use my brain to think.

I sipped from my coconut, and zoned in on a pair of twins, about 6 or 7 years old building a sand castle with the help of a bucket. But it was too large for them, and every time they tried to fill it with sand and overturn it, the sand just spilled over and scattered. The kids were now starting to get frustrated. Any moment, they were either going to start crying or give up on their pursuit.

I was waiting to see which one, when a certain sound distracted me from them. It took me a second to realise why the sound was familiar, until I realised it was my own phone ringing.