Seashells

Creative writing is not my forte. I can count the number of creative things I've written in the last 10 years on one hand. I have little snippets and ideas: I make up little stories about people I see on the bus, or take something a friend says and turn it into a crazy children's story, and will occasionally wax poetic while under the influence.

But when I'm forced to write, I can produce, even if the results are laughable. In the case below, I'm a little proud. I wrote this story introduction for my grammar course:

Deborah strolled along the shore, careful to avoid the icy tide. The sky was metallic and the wind whipped mercilessly at her tear-stained face, but walks like this were Deborah's only weapon against despair.

Deborah cared for her ailing mother over the last ten years. She had plenty of time to prepare herself for the inevitable, but when Charlotte passed quietly in the night, it was still a shock, followed by an icy numbness. Deborah didn't have the best relationship with her mother; Charlotte would point out Deborah's deficiencies on a daily basis, leveling double-barrels of unemployment and Deborah's single status against her. In spite of all this, Deborah found some comfort and purpose in caring for Charlotte. Now that Charlotte was gone, Deborah was a woman undone, with her mother's last insults tolling in her ears.

The sound of the ocean helped Deborah escape this dull ringing, and as she walked, she looked for seashells that might echo the sounds of their origin. Deborah owned hundreds of seashells, scattered throughout the shared cabin as if they'd drifted in with the winds. She'd learned the truth about seashells and their sea-echoes when she was still a girl, but these tiny treasures never lost their appeal.

Deborah found a small shell and held it to her ear. She heard a woman's faint sobs instead of the ocean's roar. Deborah dropped the shell and looked around her, but the beach was deserted. Convinced she was just hearing things in grief, Deborah set aside her silly thoughts and picked up the shell again. The woman's sobs grew louder.

"Hello?" Deborah ventured. "Who's there? This is a private beach," she shouted with a note of growing anger.

"Hello?" a soft voice, not her own, echoed from the shell. "Can you hear me? Are you really there? Oh thank god!" the young woman cried, and started sobbing again.

"I must be going crazy," Deborah muttered to herself, inspecting the shell closely.

"No, you've got to believe me, you're not going crazy," the shell answered. Deborah blanched and was quiet, listening cautiously. "Please, help me," the woman in the shell pleaded. "Please, I'm trapped!"

"What, you're trapped inside the shell?" Deborah said, and inspected it again.

"No! I don't know how this works. I've been praying for help, and now I hear your voice, and I guess you can hear me too," the woman in the shell reasoned. "Please, will you help me?"