Listen to the author reading this story:
Wavelets teased the sand and pebbles, leaving a thin layer of foam on their surface, like a lingering caress from a long-gone lover manifesting in a dream.
The Walker gazed at the empty beach as the last vestige of dawn retreated into the shadows behind the rocks, and the first rays of the sun kissed the pain away from his right shoulder — as a mother would a child.
He abandoned his towel on a blue chaise longue covered with morning dew, removed his sandals, and stepped forward like a baby turtle instinctively attracted to the sea. When he reached the line where the sand was both wet and dry; where his weight left the slightest footprint and the sea rose to meet his soles, he paused and smiled, turned, and walked on. From one end of the beach to the next, he counted each step he took, to clear his head of the loans and debts owed by his mother. To replace bad numbers, scary numbers, unfeasible numbers, with plain one, two, threes, to digits he could control. He walked until his brain was filled with numbers that made sense.
The Swimmer marched between the rows of chairs, waved at the Walker, dumped her bag on the sand, and dived in. It was too early to socialise; she was not ready, and appreciated the Walker always respecting that. Sometimes she came first and loved those stolen moments with nature alone, but she knew he needed them too.
Time was irrelevant here. Time and space.
She was free. She was alive. She was whole.
All that mattered was her breathing, finding her rhythm. Inhale up, exhale under. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. As long as she did it, she was alive.
When the wind grew stronger and a decent wave came her way, she dived into it like a playful dolphin. Again, and again, and again, she dived, and she swam, focussing on the ins and outs, on the rhythm that kept her alive until her toes cramped, until her legs rebelled and reminded her she was no dolphin. She was a human whose body was tired and on the verge of giving up. A body covered with scars because it always came back. So, she retired to the earth, sat on the sand, pressed her palms hard, and let her fingers dig to find cooler ground. She closed her eyes and listened to the waves — the earth breathing.
The Pretender was disappointed to find only the Walker and the Swimmer on the beach. He’d hoped for a better audience, but they would do, for once the Walker stopped walking, he was pleasant enough company, and the Swimmer — although not particularly friendly — made for decent conversation. He cleaned the sand off the last chaise longue on the right of the front row, flattened his towel on it, and strolled towards the Swimmer seated by the sea. Her eyes were closed. Was she meditating? He cleared his throat and mumbled a greeting, moving away when she remained silent. He waved to the Walker, considered joining him, checked his watch — the rest of the group shouldn’t be long.
He’d wait for the others, the ones who also craved company, the ones who liked him. His wife hated them, of course: the Walker, the Swimmer, the Floater, the Complainer, and especially the Observer, who always made her angry. But he loved talking to them. They didn’t sigh or roll their eyes. He felt seen and heard here. Like an octopus with tentacles reaching out from the depths of an ocean of loneliness. Here, he could forget about the sadness creeping throughout his mind, forget about his wife’s punishing silences — his one mistake never forgiven or forgotten.
He inhaled and jumped into the womb of the sea, welcoming its warm embrace.
The Floater strolled along the wooden planks to avoid getting sand in her crocs. Sand scared her; anything tiny and scratchy made her uncomfortable. She reached the seat she’d reserved the day before by leaving an old towel on it. It looked filthy. She shook it out, then rolled it into a plastic bag before spreading a freshly laundered one on the chair. She creamed herself thoroughly while scanning the sea for turtles. No one listened to her warnings, of course, but the sea was a dangerous place. Turtles, and there could be snakes and sharks too — she’d read about that time when people had spotted what they were confident was a shark fin on a beach further north. No one listened to her warnings, of course. No one ever listened, not even her psychologist, who just hum-hummed through her anxiety.
She left her crocs where the sand was both wet and dry, and tiptoed in; those tiny fish with a weird name she could not remember had a habit of waiting close to the shore to bite inattentive swimmers.
She knew better.
She jumped up and down as she wet her arms and the nape of her neck before gliding in and floating away like a watchful jellyfish, always scanning the depths of the sea for predators. Those turtles, they were known to bite people. But all anyone did was hum-hum to whatever she said.
The Complainer trudged on the wooden planks and sighed, because his favourite chair was already taken. Typical. There was no respect anymore. They all knew this was his chaise longue. Not that it made much difference anyway, his morning had already been ruined when he woke up to his neighbour’s hoover whistling. It had been three years since that hoover’s hose got stuck and started whistling. The whole neighbourhood knew it, but she was young, and not very clever. A young idiot who kept hoovering at the weirdest of times, a night owl wanting a clean floor. But they all knew how nasty her husband was, so no one spoke.
He sure didn’t want to be responsible for her bruises.
She was a sweet girl really, she’d always been, but her dad had been so mean… patterns. They all followed the ingrained patterns in their psyches.
He pushed away a wasp that was flying near his leg as the Pretender waved at him and shouted a greeting. He sighed and shook his head. That man’s need for attention was annoying, just like the wasp’s irritating buzzing as the insect returned closer to his face, buzzing along with his thoughts as if those were not enough already.
He rose, irate. There was no peace anywhere. Not at home, not at the beach. Why couldn’t people just leave him alone?
He was tired. He was people-tired. And disappointed. So disappointed.
His kid wouldn’t talk to him anymore. Just like he’d turned silent on his own father. Patterns. He hated patterns. He’d tried so hard to break them. He’d done his best.
Bloody wasp.
He ran to the sea and dived in, swimming away from the Pretender to avoid their morning pattern.
The Observer stretched her back and reached for her pouch. She placed a filter between her lips, extracted a silk-thin paper, and sprinkled tobacco on it. She rolled for a second before smoothing the hard bits, the ones that could ruin a cigarette if one wasn’t gentle enough. When it felt smooth, she added the filter to the left, rolled, licked, and lit her cigarette. Then she gazed at the sea like a seagull searching for air bubbles on the surface — for any movement hinting at the presence of fish.
The Observer had come before dawn, but when she lay down on a chair in the centre of the middle row, no one noticed her, and she liked that. She liked being invisible.
She was not much of a morning talker; she enjoyed silence, and the waves. She loved the sound of the waves. And people-watching.
She saw their pain.
Each and every one of them covered their hurts with a smile, mundane conversation, and joyless laughter, but she saw their pain reflecting her own on the surface of the sea.
And there was a story there.
Delphine Gauthier-Georgakopoulos is a Pushcart-nominee Breton writer, teacher, mother, nature and music lover, foodie, dreamer. She is a contributor to Poverty House, co-founder of The Pride Roars, and the EIC of Raw Lit. Her debut historical novel Laundry Day was a Novel Fair Runner-up. She lives in Athens, Greece.
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This layring of perspectives builds something powerful about collective lonliness. The way each character's internal struggles remain invisible to the others while The Observer sees through them all captures that weird beach phenomenon where everyone's escaping something. I've defintiely had those mornings where I'm walking past people and wondering what weight they're carrying. The title perfectly frames that truth about how pain isolates us even when we're surrounded.