On the Beach

It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity, says the Orchov, his tri-colored eyes mere slits as he attempts to gauge my appearance through the purple fluid streaming off his forehead. I pass him the velvet pillowcase I’d brought with me so he can mop his face. Despite the way it looks, his skin is actually quite delicate, its concavities and spiked ridges softer than the wilting rose petals he cups in his outstretched palms.

I hold out my hands for the flower fragments. He crouches down as if to give them to me, then quickly straightens up and drizzles them over my head, laughing; nearby waterbirds take to the sky at the sound. I dance in the downpour.

We’d met on the same spot every year since I was a young child, under the pier at Old Orchard Beach, on the same day every year, August ninth. The day after my birthday. I’d been little enough then that my stories of our friendship had aroused no particular concern, just grown-up appreciation of what my father had called a fine imagination.

Things started to change when I came home for college vacations. A tenderness crept into the Orchov’s voice, and he started to keep more distance between us as we sprawled on the sand and caught up on our most recent trips around the sun and talked deep into the night. It had hurt my feelings until I understood. 

I had never gone to bed the night of my twenty-fifth birthday. Instead, I’d stayed awake practicing what I’d say to the Orchov the following day.

As it turned out, it was the Orchov who did most of the talking. And afterwards, there wasn’t a lot of conversation.

Things are different where he’s from; gestation takes a bit over eighteen months. No one in my world has remarked upon my new shape, except for one very outspoken aunt who yesterday slipped in a remark about body positivity as I cut my birthday cake.

Now, the Orchov presses the pillow cover against his silky bronze eyebrows and swipes it downwards across his trident chin. He gazes intently at my mid-section and puts his arms around me. Time to decide, he whispers, his voice an urgent rumble of piano keys, a siren call that summons the waves to shore.

A Best Microfiction 2024 winner and Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best Small Fictions nominee, Carolyn R. Russell‘s stories, creative nonfiction, and poetry have been featured in numerous publications, including The Boston Globe; Eunoia Review; 3rd Wednesday; The Citron Review; Bridge Eight; Blink-Ink; Litro Magazine; Club Plum Literary Journal; Daikaijuzine; Orca: A Literary Journal; Penumbric Speculative Fiction Magazine; Brilliant Flash Fiction; and New World Writing. She is the author of four books, the latest of which is a collection of cross-genre flash called Death and Other Survival Strategies. Carolyn lives on and writes from Boston’s North Shore.

A Song for Carolyn