The X-Beaches — Games, Discovery and Death

Sometimes death lurks in the oddest places.

‘The Gate to Happiness’, part 1 — Oil painting by J. Sharland Day

Walking along the edge of the warm Caribbean sea, flicking sand with your toes as you go from the wet onto the dry, trying to avoid the tide as it rolls in closer, not wanting to get your feet wet. Getting wet would be fine, as the temps are in the low 80’s, the breeze is warm and balmy, but as a game, you see how close to the water you can get without letting the surf touch you.

To make the game more challenging, you look to your left and watch the palm fronds from the nearby coconut trees blowing outwardly, but only a little. After all, it is not a gale wind, it is only a gentle breeze. But then you sense coolness from the sand and look down just as the tide is ready to nip at your feet. You jump up to the dry ledge and continue on.

The ocean is a breathtaking azure, until it turns a darker green/blue and then a deeper ultramarine where the sand drops from a visible floor to a trough and beyond.

The sky is a cloudless cerulean that will soon be turning pale yellow, pink, or lavender as the sun sinks out of sight. As you breathe in the wondrous moist air, you feel the dampness on your skin that makes its surface say, “Thank you” for taking away the dryness from the arid climate at which it has been accustomed, to something that makes it feel quenched and alive. You laugh as you feel the moisture on your feet. The sea has caught you off-guard.

You kick at the foamy waves as you continue your journey to no place in particular. But in the next kick, as the sun begins to sink lower, you feel something hard that hurt your toes.

You stop to look down at what has broken the spell of your peace and quiet momentum and see something white and glistening half emerged in the soft sandy ground.

Stooping to take a closer look, you feel your skin prickle from what you think you are seeing, but you need a firm stick to dig it up to make sure. Luckily a piece of driftwood is lying nearby on the edge from the last tide deposit, and you reach for it to probe.

The scream that rises involuntarily from your throat echoes in your head as you look back to civilization and how far you need to run, after seeing the bleached, sightless object leering up at you from empty sockets.

This is not supposed to happen in Paradise, you can’t help yourself thinking, especially on your vacation. But then, you tell yourself that it is not harmful to you, it is not your skull or of someone you know. You’ve only made a discovery; it isn’t actually hurting you, only your toe, and that sting is already gone. But the mind has already started its imaginary trip down a path that you don’t really think could be possible, not in a place as beautiful and soothing as this beach with warm water and swaying palms. Or could it? What makes this place immune from the darker side of life, you ask yourself? What really lies beneath the umbrella of such a place, such a paradisiacal setting, besides seashells and dropped coconuts? People do live here, and people are people, with human traits and cryptic and sordid aspects of themselves, so why can’t something bad happen?

Obviously, for the poor soul whose major body part was washed to shore, bad things can happen in paradise.

‘The Gate to Happiness’, part 2 — Oil painting by J. Sharland Day