This is my first time responding to one of the Writers Block prompts; also, it's really my first time writing -- and finishing -- something creative in a LONG time. Hopefully I haven't lost my touch or anything, haha.
Spoilery thoughts: The main inspiration for this came from my fascination with androids, which was fed more by my reading about them on Wikipedia this morning for about an hour and a half. I just like the idea of something looking human but not really being human, which would of course make the actual humans want to snuff it out. We can't take the competition. The other main inspiration for this was my trip to South Carlsbad State Beach last weekend. A bunch of us went down there late at night, and this is basically what it looked like. It made a pretty strong impression on me.
Anyway, on to the story!
EDIT: It's pretty obvious, but I guess I should point out that I responded to the "Sunday morning" prompt.
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"Sunday at the Beach"
I could only hear the waves when it was all over.
A cold wind snaked silently through the sand. I knew it was there, but I felt nothing, not even a ghost of a touch. Never could.
It was dark out that Sunday morning. The beach should have been bright and full of life, or so I understand.
The sun would come up soon; that lifeguard station would have someone sitting upon it spying the seas; that ocean would hold scores of people floating and having fun.
Maybe they came later; I don’t know. I was long gone by then.
The only thing I could clearly sense from that moment was the blackness of it all. It entered my head like flashes, coming and going like an electrical current, snapping to life one moment and gone the next.
I looked to the left and to the right. Nothing. I was all alone with the cracked gray of that long stretch of sand and salty sea. It was like one of those film noirs from forgotten times –- all shadows and silence save for the brutal pounding of that black ocean.
And, of course, there was that dash of ruby red provided by my assailant.
I don’t remember who he was anymore. He could have been anybody; in all probability, that was the first time we met. It often turns out that way.
Another breeze whipped through the beach at that moment, fluttering my hair across my eyes. I still could not feel it, but I at least knew it was there now.
Suddenly –- I cannot remember why -– I felt a compulsion to lean down and examine the body. Perhaps it was some long buried command; I lack the ability to make sense of it, myself.
The blood was still spreading just out of the tide’s reach. It soaked into the sand until it looked no different than the wet ocean sand exposed to the world.
So, this was what blood was like? I had never stopped long enough to notice it before. I could almost smell it, which confused me. That should not happen.
None of it should have happened. I was careless, just like before, and the time before that, and so on.
His ID had the familiar seal on it -– he hunted my kind, those his kind randomly created and randomly decided to destroy. They had stopped just short of giving us life and wanted to take away what little we had received.
I stood up again, still looking down at that lifeless body. The chip in my head whirred away, a million miles per second, calculating where to go and what to do, but it had little to say about this man’s fate.
What does a human see when he looks down at one of his own? Does he see what I see?
I saw nothing. He was gone. Even I could understand that.
Before I left, I carried his body into that dark water and watched the tide take him away. It swallowed him up in seconds, but I stayed a minute or two to make sure.
Then I was alone with the ocean. It groaned softly, pulsing back and forth against the sand with its soft waves. The sound echoed through the sensors in my head.
I left. The tide erased my footprints. Nobody had been there as far as anyone could tell.
But what about the corpse?
It was the work of a ghost, a shell of a man, something not alive that will share his fate with the rest of the world. He was created to destroy.
The waves pounded through my head as I stepped onto the boardwalk.
