Competition Eighteen Winning Story: Annie Builds Walls by S.A. Greene

She plants them on the beach around midnight when she can’t sleep, when the moon weeps, when the sea turns its back on her and grumbles.

Annie builds walls from horizontal timber boards and vertical posts. They stand side by side like fence panels, parallel to the shoreline. Seventeen of them, at the last count. She adds windows because she knows she can’t stop looking. She draws on shutters by the windows in case she changes her mind.

Annie paints the walls in bright big colours. Greens, reds, yellows. The colours of joy, the colours of toys. The colours of beach huts with dry towels and flasks of tea. The colours of ice-creams and buckets and spades. The colours of tugboats chugging round the brim of a small sunhat.

When Annie rides the coastal bus to her job at the salt-bitten Grand Hotel, she sits on the lower deck now. She used to sit on top, looking out at the sea, looking down on the shadowed rooves of beach huts lined up beneath the seawall.

Annie doesn’t blame the sea. She understands it, knows the swell of its appetites although it will never acknowledge hers. She knows what the sea can swallow when you turn your back for a second – one split second, honestly – just long enough to nip inside the hut to pour some tea.

She knows the sea does not return its prey. She knows, but she can’t stop searching. Can’t close the drawn-on shutters and hide the sea away.

Annie builds walls. She plants them on the beach around midnight when she won’t sleep, when she can’t die, when the stars blink down in judgement. She pounds the timber posts firmly into place while the moon bares its teeth and the sea shouts down her lullabies.

S. A. Greene writes short fiction. Her words have appeared in Mslexia, trampset, The Phare, Janus Lit., Sledgehammer Lit., Ellipsis Zine, Reflex Fiction, Flash Flood, Retreat West, and, of course, Free Flash Fiction.

@SAGreene1

@sagreene1.bsky.social

Painting by Andy Carpenter – More of his paintings can be viewed at: ABC – Andy’s Paintings

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