Things Unseen

I love the Beach best moments before summer. I love when the air is still cold, the sky still overcast, the water too frigid to step into. On chilly evenings I will don my red parka and black hat to walk the still silent sands in solitude. Sure, there are occasionally shifty people when it gets dark who I keep my distance from. But generally, it’s just me in cold moonlight and crisp thawing stars, basking in the sounds of the dying spring. 

It was the night before my birthday in early May. I was on tender hooks, telling myself I didn’t care about age and the movement of time. I was telling myself that all people grow and exist on separate non linear lifescapes. I was telling myself I was not a failure just because I had not had an audition in almost 8 months. I was reminiscing about my past birthday, and the goals I had set for this year, incomplete. 

I was then bitten by a large mosquito. Agony shot up my arm. The first mosquito of the year, celebrating the coming summer with my blood alchemy. I lifted my right hand to the ghost of my bicep only to feel something wet. I looked up at the sky. No rain. No bird relieving itself upon the terrain of my body. In the low light world the liquid looked black upon my hand. Blood, so much blood. This was not the bite of just any mosquito. This was not the bite of a mosquito at all. 

Whipping my hand on my black skinny jeans. I took a moment to survey the beach around me. Another bite! This time on my right hand. Agony! Then another on my face. I flailed my arms into the air and made contact with something thick and meaty. I knocked it out of the way and began to run towards the lights along the boardwalk. Heaving breath I clutched the lamp pole. The three bites were throbbing with the beat of my heart, and i was covered in red blood. I thought the lamp light may frighten away my attacker, or at least illuminate me as to what my enemy was. For this was no insect of the spring time. Perhaps a coven of rabid vampire bats?

Another bite! This time on my ankle. I crumbled to the ground. Another bite to my face! Still seeing nothing at all, I waved my arms around. Again, I came in contact. I grasped at its fillet form. It felt like a fish. I took a moment to examine it with my hands. Scales, fins, jerking around wildly like a hooked trout. I could hear the snapping of its teeth as it worked to turn its face towards my fingers. But still I could see nothing. Just air with form in my sweaty hands. I worked it under my foot and stepped down hard. I heard a pop as it’s body succumbed to my weight. My vegetarian animal loving heart held back a whimper of regret at having to kill the beast, but i knew that its revenge would be ample and swift if i let it free. 

Three more times I was bitten. All I could do was run down the board walk as fast as my high tops could take me. I swatted my hands in the air, beating away the invisible sky pirañas, and tried to keep my face down. Screaming out for help I tripped. That is when I saw Kimmy Slim. The man with the two braids who sold drugs to teenagers at the McDonalds just before Beach Road. He was dead. He was freshly dead, and to my abject horror being consumed at that very moment by a murder of invisible sky pirañas. I pulled myself up and kept running. I ran until i reached the entrance of the 24H McDonalds where the late Kimmy Slim for so much of his life made a living. RIP sweet sketchy stranger.  

Once inside the fast food sanctuary, I sat down on a plastic red chair and began to weep. I need to make changes. How can my agent believe in me if I do not? If I ‘m going to turn things around for myself this year I need to fire Bev. I need to put forth that extra money to hire somebody with a better record of employment. I need to show my face around town. To network! Update my head shots! Go to the gym! If I wanted to get the good parts I needed to work for them. I held my winter hat over one of the deeper wounds to help clot the blood and walked to the counter. “One Oreo McFlurry please.” Drink in hand I walked outside and into the night. As I stepped onto the bus I listened to the sounds of a hysterical man describing the unusual but dire situation to the emergency services. People pressed their faces to the bus windows in horror watching their fellow man be torn down. Kimmy Slim was dead. I decided to quit smoking marijuana for the next month. Start my 31st year clear headed. It should not have taken a fury of invisible sky pirañas to show me I needed to turn my life around, but it did. I sipped my drink, tapped my presto card to the box, and took a seat. 

Photo: https://www.torontograndprixtourist.com/2011/03/night-at-sunnyside-beach.html