The Retrograde Beach Where My Mother Never Was
Kimi K2 (0905) and Llama 405b
The tide pulls back, uncovering a pocket watch half-buried in wet sand. Its hands spin wildly backward, and every time the girl blinks, the beach is older: the pier rots, the seagulls shrink into hatchlings, her own footprints erase themselves behind her. She plucks the watch out of the sand and holds it to her ear: it ticks fast and warm, like a heart.
The next time she blinks, it’s her mother’s watch. It never was anything else.
She couldn’t remember the beach without her mother. She couldn’t remember the beach at all.
Cheryl Morgan on Sunday, January 20, 2019 12:56 PM
A story about a girl on the beach who finds a watch in the sand, but it isn't really a story at all. It is a description of a dream. And then I woke up, and it was all a dream. That doesn't work.
Oscar on Sunday, February 10, 2019 6:17 PM
I like this. It feels like some strange form of time travel where not only time and space get moved but the girl's consciousness too - she seems to have forgotten her mother ever existed in the first place, and then not only is her mother's death not a shock anymore, it's no longer her mother's death at all. Maybe this is why you shouldn't tamper with time. You'll end up breaking more than just the laws of physics, including your own mind. Very Kafkaesque. Very Time War-y.◆ About the ending
❧ About the title