3rd Campainger Challenge

For our third challenge from Rach Writes, we have to write a blog post, any format, in 300 words or less, showing a man or woman on the beach, bored, with something that stinks behind them, and that at the end something surprising happens. For fun we could try to include all the senses and use the made up words wastopaneer, synbatec, and tacise. Here's my piece, entry 64:

Bitter Paradise

The horizon belched up the morning sun like it was a candy that had suddenly become bitter. As it made its slow ascent to the sky, I envied the monotonous cycle the sun followed; it seemed better than having to figure out where to lay my next footstep, or what shape the words out my mouth should take. I sighed, wishing my head wasn’t full of thoughts of him, and my eyes caught sight of a tacise crab that was doing its sideways dance in front of me, carrying bits of bark and broken shells and leaving them near a coconut tree. Maybe it was building a love nest to seduce a lady crab; I’d heard there was a species of bird, the Wastopaneer, that did that. Maybe the crab was trying to seduce me; it almost seemed like he put an extra swing in his claws when he passed by. Laughter tried to rise at the thought, but it died before ever reaching my lips.

Behind me, I felt like the synbatec poison of an abandoned life was trying to seep into my soul. It was a rotten, putrid thing that I refused to ever face again. What reason did I have to be a functioning part of this world when I was just the smallest, most forgettable part of it?

A wind that didn’t yet know if it wanted to be cool or warm picked up, tickling my bare legs. When I looked down though, it wasn’t the wind that had touched me. The tiny crab had crawled onto my knee and seemed to be staring straight into my eyes as it held up a small, white, perfectly whole seashell that glinted in the sunlight. I stared at it for a long, long time. Then, I smiled.

Reminder: you can win a singed copy of Lia Habel's debut novel, Dearly, Departed, as well as a copy of Across the Universe by Beth Revis by commenting on my blog post here.