Competition Eighteen Highly Commended: Fish Sands, 1984 by Kathy Hoyle
The sand is pelt-soft. We pull off our sandals, hitch up cotton skirts and tuck them into our knickers. Then, we run.
The water is teeth-suck cold. It foams around our ankles, around our calves, around our thighs, until my sister calls out, ‘Don’t go any deeper than that!’
We catch hands, plunge them into the sea, laughing at how white they are, like underwater stars. We ripple and spin, singing old shanties that daddy taught us.
Up on the pier, the lighthouse shimmers. Everything is ripe and fish-tang. The air sizzles with summer heat and magic, just waiting to be conjured. Below, cold, green moss drips from huge iron legs into murky sea-puddles. This is where the boys are. The boys who are older than us, their chests broad, their eyes flinted and full of secrets. The boys who cat-call my sister, tell her she’s beautiful, dare her to follow them.
‘Stay here,’ she says, ‘you’re too young for this game.’ She slips her hand from mine and sashays from the water.
I watch as they circle her. I watch as they disappear into the echoed darkness.
My skin puckers from the cold. I follow the swirling sea foam towards the steps that lead to the pier. At the top, I let the sun warm my face. I pull out my spyglass, wink an eye shut, and search the horizon for pirates, or mermaids, or great white whales.
The lighthouse turns. I spin and spin in its rainbowed fingers of light. But suddenly the magic is too much, too powerful. Breathless and dizzy, I stumble to the ground. Tears blur when the splinter-sting hits, nausea curdles in my throat.
Overhead, spite-filled gulls shriek out curses.
They drown out the whoops and hollers below.
They drown out my sister’s desperate cries.
Kathy Hoyle’s stories are published in literary magazines such as The Forge, Lunate, Emerge literary journal, Ellipsis Zine, the South Florida Poetry Journal and Fictive Dream. She has won The Bath Flash Fiction Award, the Retreat West Flash Fiction Award. Other stories have been placed in competitions such as The Edinburgh Flash Fiction Award, the HISSAC Prize and The Cambridge Flash Fiction Prize. She was recently longlisted for The Wigleaf Top 50 and her work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions, Best Microfictions and The Pushcart Prize. Kathy is currently studying for a PhD in Creative writing at The University of Leicester She lives in a sleepy Warwickshire village and when she’s not writing, she spends her time singing Dolly Parton songs to her long-suffering labradoodle, Eddie.
Twitter @Kathyhoyle1
BlueSky @kathyhoyle.bsky.social
Photo – Emma Bate on Pinterest
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I like this very much. Sinister and intriguing.