It started out innocuously enough.

I was lying on the beach; or rather, I was at the beach, and I’d gone in to the water a bit, just enough so that I could lie back and float peacefully on the surface. I was zoning out there for a while, floating in savasana, until through the water I heard some muffled cries. I looked up and the water was at high tide, rushing up the shore, taking people’s flip flops and folding chairs and beach bags with it. (In my rush to stand up and run out of the water, I reached down and felt my iPhone completely submerged down there and thought, motherfucker.)

So I fled with my family, up the beach to higher ground (the beach was slanted at a very steep angle down to the water, so we were all running up a hill from the advancing ocean).

And then—curiouser and curiouser!—at the top of the hill, looking out away from where we’d run, we saw that it only sloped DOWN again to ANOTHER ocean, ALSO advancing furiously.

So just then when we think there’s no way we could be more fucked, a GIANT STEAMING FUCKING LOCOMOTIVE (think like the Baldwin 60000) comes barrelling down the one ridge of solid land we have, with almost comic speed and intensity. It runs over some people, but most of us are able to get out of the way, teetering precariously on the bar of sand between the train and the tide.

The train stops and the cars are open, and most of us jump inside to what we assume is safety. So then of course, some people who are on the train already grab me and my dad from behind and tell us they’re going to kill us and literally turn us into human barbecue. (Not the annual music mini-festival/cookout Human BBQ, but like, actual hickory smoked homo sapiens spare ribs.) Actually they tell us they’re going to kill one of us. And they’re going to do it by bashing in the skull with a hammer. And I’m crying out, me, kill me, which is actually totally selfish because I just don’t think I can live on suffering the memory of watching my dad die in such a horrible way. And I’m thinking, if they get it done quickly, the train can speed off again and the water won’t wash over it and the people here can get to safety.

I wake up thinking, maybe if they aim the blows the right way I’ll die quickly and there won’t be much pain.

Good morning!

1/25/10—thewordunheard