Flash fiction #2 Rock Climbing

Katey, her arms outstretched, looked like she was nuzzling the air. She said,

"I'm at one with nature!"

Daniel snorted. Still, if he had planned a beach - if he could, himself, have arranged the sand and the rocks and the bright hut at the top - he couldn't have done a better job himself. The weather was a compendium: bright light and spots of rain and everywhere the wind. This wind - its constant bullying - insisted on the primacy of its environment; it told you that you counted, in the scheme of things, for almost nothing.

He said,

"Come on. There's no point sitting on the beach."

He led them up into the rocks. Susan, his teenage daughter, lagged behind. She had a gimmicky hand-held device on which she was rearing an electronic animal. She had to nurture it, she said; to pamper it. Her hair had been pushed outwards - she had done this herself - so that it looked like something you might see at Halloween. Her nails seemed to be slathered in neon light.

"Susan", he said.

He was going to tell her to hurry up; to watch her feet. They were on a plateau of rock but there were also egg-shaped stones, big boulders and jagged detritus; gravel, almost. But, he thought, what was the point? It was the same with Tom, his 9-year-old. He felt, sometimes, as though he was dreaming it, his family; as though he was the only one who heard his voice. His wife, meanwhile, had found a spot in the lee of a rock. She looked, from here, bulky and indeterminate but she was like that anyway. She had become generic: a wife and mother. In bed, he concentrated on different areas, as though he was trying, and failing, to dig for treasure. She said,

"Dan! Over here! The blanket: quick."

He spread the blanket. He helped to distribute the food. He watched the sea, its stateliness and grandeur. Here, in the chaos of his family - amongst spilled food and Susan's ipod, tssking everyone, and Tom's loud hatred of the wind - the sea seemed an ideal. Like poetry: line after rhythmic line. His wife had blobs of ketchup on her chin. He said,

"I'll just..."

He didn't want to complete the thought. If he put it into words then Katey might complain; Tom might ask if he could come. He picked his way away from them, over the rocks. He felt as though (this was ridiculous, but let it stand)he felt as though he was fending for himself. If one concentrated on one's own body - if one really concentrated on it; if one lived in one's feet and upper thigh and in the disposition of one's arms and legs - then family all-but-disappeared. It was delightful. Like meditation, or being drunk, you felt as though you were both inhabiting your self and watching it. More: watching over it. Behind him, the noise of his family became just that: noise. It was like a stain, a smudge, that was being erased by the wind. They looked like litter that he had, recklessly, left behind. He felt free.

By the cliff face, the rocks increased in size. Insects, too small to be identified, ran off the surface, in rivulets. He started to climb properly; to use handholds. He could hear the depth of his own breathing. He began to feel a little frightened but he also felt as though he had committed himself to something. It was as though the success or failure of the climb would say something definitive about him. He turned and, there, before him, was the sweep of the whole bay, defined more by the sky than by the sea and shore. He was a good way up. The wind was slapping at him, trying to tug him off.

And there, too, were his family. They were waving at him, now, and everything - his wife and children and the sea and shore and sky and the brilliant light, like water poured into a bowl - seemed to make perfect sense. He saw the way his son and daughter fitted beside his wife. He saw them as a pattern but, more than that, he saw them all as triumphantly human; colourful and vibrant in the grey and ragged rocks. He saw a space, too: his.

And then he fell. There was a moment of panic; no more: his head hit a large rock. He would never be able to tell them what he knew. Even as they began to run towards him, his body was cooling down. He was - his body was - becoming one with the larger, colder landscape of the beach.