wordwhacker

So, I'm still working on "Splintered Soul". Honest. I have it open in the background, right now.

In the meantime, however, I was smacked upside the head with an idea for

dvandva's challenge. It's a short drabble, but I think it turned out okay^*.

Wet Sand

They tell me it was hot that day, that the sun had beaten down on my shoulders so hard that I was red for weeks. I'd been swimming earlier, they say, but Nan was watching me now, helping me dig in deep with my plastic toys, her silky hands shaking with every shovel full of wet sand that found its way clumsily into my bucket. They say I loved making castles, that I jabbered on about towers and moats while meticulously tending my slumping masterpieces.

I don't remember the castles; I remember the wet sand and how it felt between my toes, how it stuck between my fingers and crawled up my shorts as I toiled away. They would periodically pick me up and dust me off, they say, muttering all the while about how hard it was to keep their children clean. They hadn't that day. I clawed into the sand with my bare hands, the coolness of it grinding against my skin.

I was sent home with Nan that night; she wrapped me in a blanket, a pouch of warmth and softness and sand buckled in tightly in the back seat. She carried me inside, letting me sleep next to her on her bed, still enveloped in my cocoon and her arms. She couldn't bathe me, she says. She couldn't bring herself to.

They tell me my brother drowned that day, and all I can remember is the feeling of wet sand.

Comments, criticism, questions and rabid weasels are welcome and encouraged.

* "Okay" meaning "I don't quite want to jab out my eyes as penance for having written this piece of shlock."