Billy shaved with a kitchen knife which he had made so sharp it was effortless. The TV blasted from the other room- men with authoritative voices hawking everything and women singing about it. The picture was black and white and hard to make out on account of the broken antennae but he kept it on just for the white noise. Next door his ex-girlfriend and the manager of the hardware store were getting it on and he didn’t want to be forced to listen.
Shelves and shelves of ceramic pots and vases and clay mugs with fat handles lined the walls of the pottery class. Brokenhearted, Beth stayed long after everyone else had left, spinning the clay at the wheel, pulling the loose clay as it spun to form the bottom of a teapot. Her hair was in a pony-tail and her apron was covered with dry powdery clay from where it had splattered. She cried and cried, tears falling into the teapot as it spun, mixing with the wet clay.
The beach cooled as the sun lowered in the sky and the sunbathers took their towels and lotions back to their cars that had been baking in the parking lot. They were replaced by workers getting off their shifts looking forward to drinking a beer on the beach as the sun went down. Further up the strand the beach had emptied out completely and the wind was picking up. The waves crashed and crashed and crashed.
There was a stirring in the middle of the empty part of the beach and a depression began to be created as sand swirled like a drain. Continue reading