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Small Grains

C. M. Humphries

    “It’s a message in a bottle,” Alyssa said as she shook a bottle full of sand.
    “No, it’s definitely not,” Craig responded, his eyes squinting as they struggled to make out the finer details of the bottle and its contents. “It’s either a dumb hour glass or a souvenir bottle, the ones they sell in tourist shops.”
    Alyssa placed the bottle between her left arm and side, snug underneath her armpit, and sprinted off towards a small cabin that sat at the top of a hill. Craig chased after her as she headed away from the ocean. He kicked sand into the air with ever step he took. His calf muscles grew sore as he scaled slanted sand dunes. No matter how fast he ran or how much effort he put out into catching her, Craig could not keep up with his younger sister.
    “Wait up!” Craig yelled, though he was losing his breath. He started to clamp his chest as he began to scuttle.
    At the sight of Craig taking small strides and clutching his chest, Alyssa began to panic and slow down. She took a few glances behind her and discovered Craig was falling behind. Before, there was a distance between the two of them, but now Craig was acting like a prisoner strapped down with ankle weights and shackles. Craig became petrified and fell to the sandy ground.
    “Craig!” Alyssa screamed as she darted back towards the ocean. Her face felt hot from mixed emotions; the tears that she began to cry felt like sulfuric acid running down her cheeks. “Craig! Oh my god, Craig! No!”
    She slid beside her brother like a runner to home base. She placed the bottle down on the beach and struggled to reach underneath Craig and flip him over. She knew CPR would be wise to perform while waiting for help.
    “Don’t die on me, Craig. Don’t die on me,” Alyssa repeated as she readied resuscitation.
    As her hands were about to slam down on Craig’s chest, a smile spread across his face. “Ha-ha,” Craig said as he swiped the bottle from his sister. He stood up and then loped towards the cabin.
    To his surprise, Alyssa was much faster than he fathomed. Slam! Craig could hear the sound of his sister tackling him down echo over the beachfront. For a minute, Craig thought he could taste blood.
    Alyssa snatched the bottle and looked into it. “What?” she muttered as the contents of the bottle began to change. Instead of small grains of sand sitting at the bottom of the bottle, a playground began to form. Emerging from the limited amount of sand: monkey bars, a swing set, a seesaw.
    “What is it doing?” Craig asked. His eyes opened wide as his mind succumbed to bedazzlement.
    Alyssa’s look of confusion contorted until it developed into a beautiful expression of joy. A smile. She said, “I was thinking about this last night—how much I wanted to play at the playground.”
    “Who’s your buddy?” Craig had to ask after seeing a granular version of his sister hanging around a boy her same age.
    “I don’t know.” And Alyssa knew that was the truth as she scratched the back of her head.
    “Maybe it’s because you don’t have any friends,” Craig said, tormenting his sister as she snagged the bottle. He looked into and once again, the sand changed. The playground became a couple of cars on a straight, which looked like Hot Wheels. “Huh, I told Dad I wanted cars for my birthday.”
    “It shows what you want,” Alyssa said as she watched Craig’s thoughts being portrayed in a sand bottle. She could even see little people driving the cars around, which turned the pretend city into a living one. People roamed the streets. Stores changed their door signs to OPEN.
    Alyssa and Craig took a deeper look into the bottle. “Look, it’s me!” Alyssa said, thrilled to death by the sight of her driving a car.
    “It’s just pretend,” Craig replied. He became short on breath, but tried to hide it.
    The sand lookalike of Alyssa revved the play car’s engine until the real Alyssa and Craig both though they could hear it over the sound of seagulls and the ocean waves smashing against the rocky cliffs down the shoreline.
    She sped down the roads like a pubescent high school boy trying to prove his masculinity. Then, a small boy stepped in front of the car, and before the sand-made Alyssa could slam on the brakes, it was too late. Blood splattered across the pavement. Alyssa jogged away from her car and towards the body. She screamed at the sight of the body. Who was the passerby? It went without saying.
    Alyssa dropped the bottle and turned to her brother, who had fallen to the ground, clutching his chest.



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