"Dribbles" by Gabriel Moore

Salty breeze flew past me, ruffling my hair and leaving a salty aftertaste on my chapped lips. My hand reached up to feel them, and played with a dry flap of loose skin before letting go. I moved on to the smoother part of my face, and gently caressed my neck. The laughing of gulls shattered the silence like a sledgehammer obliterating a carrot. Their raucous caws echoed non stop through my head. My feet hung off of the dock I was sitting on, toes hanging onto worn sandals, lest they fall off. My eyes flitted to the soft orange glow appearing on the horizon, slowly burning away the midnight blue that had been fading for the past couple of hours. A rustling sound came from below me, and I looked down. There didn’t seem to be much there. Just small chunks of sargasso in the sand, drying in the forthcoming sun. Then, there was some movement in the sea oats. The green stalks parted to reveal a large ghost crab. Long black eyestalks stuck out of a pale white shell like the sea oats and sand the crustacean had just been hiding in. It scuttled warily away from me, raising its hairy orange claws. I lock my eyes on the little creature in front of me, curiously watching it warily back into its hole in the ground. I had been looking at the crab so long that I failed to notice something. The sun had risen, sending everything back into their own darknesses.