Camp

The sea was, in less than words - extreme. They had been brought out to the beaches, shovels and tools in hand, by the overseer and told, in no uncertain terms, their task. Wetsand, from this bank to that, on the narrow spit where the river and the sea met piling sediment against each other, half flooded and shifting daily.

The wind tore at their shirts and hair, Versace and Gucci and all the others they wore to flex on each other flapping it like sails across the air, cutting through the grey sky, the sun shrouded in a thick omnipresent blanket of cold, only the black water and white wind left to mediate across the indifferent sand.

He was in competition, that other cunt stealing his spot when he showed up outside-world fresh and clean more than money could be, his time and his taste invested… he couldn’t compete with that cunt. He had to sabotage him.

The guard towers turned into trees after enough observation. Cold soup became hot after days upon days of it. The guards stopped becoming unnatural, deer and bears and wolves stalking from the pines, no face no soul, a part of the world carrying rifles slung around anonymous brown uniforms.

They beat him when they caught him masturbating that night, gentle flapflap sounds under the blankets worthy of immediate and severe retribution. He stood outside, the northern mosquitos far lessened after dark.

They prayed as they worked, taking their hands off their shovels to lift them up to the muted sun, to God, to the cold wind and pleading whispers of the clouds, to hear someone else raise a cry echoing theirs, to hear someone answer their own, something, anyone, a sign a hand a pale whisper from a ghostly ancestor to bring back home to a warm summer day in seersucker and plaid.