Who Is Truly Alone on the Beach?

She’s never alone, she claims. She has the waves. They devour the pebbles of the beach and run up to the crooked door of her house; with the voices of the ocean for company, she couldn’t be lonely. So she says.

The townsfolk know it’s untrue. All women need someone, someone to keep their feet on the earth. Even if they’re monster-women, raging women, not women at all, not really, not with teeth that never smile. Not with eyes always drawn to the unfaithful ocean. Not with words that rip into things, things with no need for holes.

So they’re doing her a favor, the townsfolk, the land-bound, the bold men—yes, usually men. They venture from their warm safe houses and the arms of their wives, down to the beach where the unmoored woman walks at dawn. Duty calls them to save her, as they’ve saved many others; this is no place for a woman, this beach, this unprotected house, this dirty, solitary, almost-washed-away house. They’ll take her somewhere secure and solid.

She’s waiting when they arrive.

Unlike the ones before her who lived in this house, she’s opened the crooked door, stepped out to wait ankle-deep in the surf.

But just like the ones before, she waits alone.

The rescue party sees this. They walk faster, unsheathing their thick-tendoned hands.

They should have listened.

Waves stretch to meet them, carrying the voices of those they saved in seasons past, the ones who never needed anything more than a home, who never needed saving at all. They come as foam, at first, then muscular waves, then overpowering currents that still remember the sound of fists pounding down a crooked door.

These waves know what it’s like to be uprooted and dragged away from their mooring-place. Today, the townsfolk, the land-bound, will learn how it feels, too.

When the townsfolk begin to run, they’re already in too deep.

She watches. Not hiding. Not alone.

Of course, she was never alone, was she?

© 2023 Anja Hendrikse Liu

About the Author

Anja Hendrikse Liu writes stories. Some of them have appeared in Diabolical Plots, Uncharted Magazine, Fusion Fragment, and elsewhere. Many of them veer toward the whimsical, the mythological, the queer, and the places where magic collides with real life. Find Anja online at anjahl.com.