Dream -- Apocalypse Boardwalk

Dream – Apocalypse Boardwalk



The surf crashed beyond the boardwalk. Several members of my family and I sat at a picnic table situated on the wooden walk amidst streams of people on vacation, on some foreign, metropolitan coast. A man we knew and didn’t know occupied the tabletop, his arms were stretched to the sky and legs sprawled on the bench. Passersby began to notice him, and he started to tremble. Tourist children scrambled away from their parents to gawk at the man, and their parents screamed and yanked them away.
His skin wrinkled and suppurated; it split down his arms and legs symmetrically, puddling down on the table. A skeleton of rust-colored chitin was revealed, and it vibrated so, it seemed to be the overlapping bug bones of a nested thousand, which shredded and splashed the remaining skin into the crowd into our faces.
I was horrified, disgusted, and somehow grieving for this mysterious creature, and urged my family to run. A great and echoing BOOM sounded from miles away within the ocean and the land shook, throwing people to the ground. A towering wall of water began to close in on the boardwalk, and my point of view doubled into what I saw with my own eyes and a perspective from high in the sky. People scrambled around me and from above looked like mad specks hopelessly running from inevitable doom.
We ran inland toward a stone building that was open on the street side. Huge train tracks ended at the wall facing the ocean, upon which rested two abandoned railcars so enormous, they seemed designed for giants.
Again my perspective changed, except this time I became two people. One of me was still running with my family for the safety of the building, whose POV blanked out. The other me was wedged in the giant linking pins between the two railcars, stuck in the chain holding the two together, my leg caught somehow. The chain was loose, but I knew if the car behind me was pushed, I’d be crushed in half by the joining metal.
I looked back over my shoulder, making a squealing sound. The wave was growing closer, yet moving absurdly slow. Debris and people saturated the water, legs and arms writhing about like thousands of cilia.
I tried to yank my leg out, but it wouldn’t budge. I screamed out to a boy fleeing the wave, about to enter the building. “Help! Please help me!”
The kid stopped for a second with his hand on stone. “That sucks!” he said and entered the protection of the building.
I screamed as sprays of water soaked my back just before the foothills of the powerful wave pushed the railcar behind me and the compressed chains sheared me in half.
“Oh no,” I said, as my bottom half fell into gravel. I passed out.
And woke within the other me.
I had just followed my family into the building and turned to watch as the wave and its successors crashed inland. Despite one wall being open, the water passed like the angel of death over blood painted lintels. But the thunder of water was creating a gruesome painting on the edge of the wall facing the ocean as hundreds of bodies were smashed against it, a many-layered charnel, and while we were spared the water, the inside of the building was continually spattered with gore.
We retreated deeper inside to the farthest corner from the open side, where we found another picnic table. We sat down, and members of my family began talking, but their voices were mute to me. I tried to interject, but they only stopped for a few moments, then their lips moved again.
Frustrated, I stood up and saw an adult-sized tricycle in the shadows. I got on and started cycling. It moved forward a bit, then lifted into the air. It rose up on an invisible track as I pedaled, to the ceiling, then in large circles and down back again, repeat.
I rode the tricycle in its loop over and over as the ocean purged its endless depths into the city, depositing a wall of death along the open side of the building. I rode the tricycle as my family talked in silence. No words could I hear.

Dream Over