Zero

The Beach

                  As long as I can remember, I've always hated going to the beach. I don't know, maybe it's because I met him there. I was a child, innocent, a bit stupid; I guess unfamiliar with the malice roaming our world might be a better way of putting it. I had met some mean people in my life already, mostly among my classmates. Lea had bad-mouthed Sophie, Julie had whipped Emma with her skip rope because she had been first to kiss Thomas. Sandbox drama. Which makes me think that while I have always hated going to the beach, I actually really enjoy digging in the sand. I don't think there is, as a kid, a more exciting activity than looking for a treasure, may that be shells, coins or even lost jewels. And if you're equipped with a brand new plastic shovel grandma gave you for your birthday, you're up for quite an adventure! I was that kind of kid, either shoveling for treasure, or digging a moat around my sandcastle when we went to the beach.

​

I was just doing the latter, under the searing heat of August, when I met him. He walked on the beach in our direction, and I was told afterwards he stepped on a few sandcastles in the process. I can imagine the waves crashing at his feet like hands of foam reaching for his ankles, trying to drag him to the ocean, as if they already knew what was to happen. When he first saw me he must have thought, 'What an idiotic brat' but said hi. I didn't answer, I didn't know he was talking to me. It was a midsummer afternoon and the beach was so crowded – he might have been talking to anyone, really. But my little brother gently tapped me on my shoulder, so I turned around and I immediately understood. I was clever as a child, even a prodigy: he was Mom's new boyfriend but I didn't think anything of it. I didn't care; all I cared about was my castle.

​

Do you want me to help you finish the construction of your sand castle, or would you rather I built one close to yours from scratch?

​

He did both in the end, despite what I wanted. On the one hand, he laid his fingers on my towers, my dungeon, completing my castle while I stared at my mother, furious; couldn't she see he was not being nice, couldn't she already see his obsession with controlling everything?

​

There was another castle, on the other hand, invisible to the uninformed, oblivious eye. At first he seemed nice, clever, talented, and continued to act like a lovely person with the outside world. However, behind closed doors, and in the years to come, he became that same fortress builder, intrusive, digging deeper and deeper moats. Water flooded these imaginary moats; dreadful swells of bans and belittlement ready to drown any one of us who would attempt to escape, and threatening to making us wash up, back to the castle. And then you are left with no choice but to knock on the drawbridge, enter, feel miserable, try to escape again, fail deplorably, wash up back to the castle, knock on the drawbridge, enter. Over and over again. We were trapped and isolated, without anyone ever knowing what happened behind the thick, sound-proofed walls of our dungeon.

​