Greetings

well this is a short story... a short story that kind of grew from a poem, which I also put on the list. My apologies if the grammer isn't up to snuff, anyhow it's all there starting with the poem and I broke the story down into pagelong chunks, so don't get confused just follow through from top to bottom!
If you feel the need to comment just go to my other site (life of a not so ordinary jo, the link at the right side there) and leave a note on my comment link there.
Alright... Enjoy!

I had seen many of these days, and just as many nights. Heard the same doubts and questions again and again. I felt tired, desperately hungry, and was a great distance away from that sandy beach. Far away from the cottage and its rustic beauty. Ever further away from the city I once loved, the life I once lived. At one point I thought I must have done it myself, all the effort I have put in, muscles in my body working incessantly, the threats of nature that pushed through. I thought, 'how else could I get this far?'
Onward I hauled, fighting with the waves, attempting to ignore my fear of the creatures. Onward I moved further into the sea, away from what I used to be, to discover where this chain has chosen it's ending. Until the day when the sun broke over the horizon and shone its light on things my eyes had not seen before. In the distance in front of me I could see a faint blob of land, as I drew closer I could see mountain peaks and tall trees. I still had many days travel, but I could see the end. I could see where this chain was taking me. So I pushed forward using every ounce of strength left in my battered and bruised body. As I drew closer to my destination, the water, the wind, they both grew warmer. The nights weren't quite so cold, and not quite so lonely.

I didn't fully realize how very tired my legs were until the moment I found solid ground beneath my feet. And as I stumbled closer to the shore, I could see my skin had become pasty, no, translucent white and wrinkled. Any fat that had resided on my body when I ventured into the ocean had disappeared; I was thin and gauntly. The incessant hunger in my body was eating me from the inside out. My hands, once soft and smooth, were now wrinkled like the rest of my body but red from the layers of skin that had been rubbed raw. Another thing I had noticed, for which the pain would not let me forget, was all of the gouging wounds that covered my body. Those creatures had tried to make a meal out of me before I gave them a taste of my foot. My body resembled that of a corpse, mangled by who knows what, and floating in the sea for who knows how long. As strange as it was to see my body in this state, what happened next was even stranger. As I stepped onto the shore, as I left the sea, my body began to restore itself. The colour returned to a healthy pink colour, the wounds miraculously healed, my tired limbs rediscovered their strength, and the hunger subsided.

So this brings me to the chains end. As I stand here, on the glittering pure white sand, I realized that I had lost the chain. I turned around and sure enough, it lay there, its worn, rusted and slimy links on shore, extending far into the clear turquoise sea. But it is no longer there for me; it is waiting for someone else. As I set out to explore this new place, the thought struck me, how odd that I was always looking for something of worth, a treasure that I could take home, but the treasure that I chose brought me home with it.

The sun sets at the end of everyday, marking the end of the daylight, but it was never the end of, or even a rest from, my journey. Darkness brought something quite different while I treaded those strange waters. Darkness never fully surrounds a person the way it surrounded me out there; it was a consuming darkness. Darkness had once, in my mind, represented a time of rest and rejuvenation; there it was a time of uncertainty and fear. The water, it swished quietly and turned bitterly cold. Slowly numbing at first all the smaller appendages, toes and fingers, and a shiver over my skin; which eventually brought a deep chill into my limbs, down to my very bones. My breath flowed steadily out of my mouth and nose in great puffs of fog in front of my face. All I could hear were my own thoughts running through my head to the rhythm of the moving sea.
Once I had paused to look to the sky and there, sparkling faintly by itself, was a star surrounded by a vast dark void. Loneliness marked that solitary star, striving to shine all alone. Its light was not particularly bright, nothing of magnificence to speak of. Still, it had managed to pulsate its flickering light all the way to earth. As I stared at that star something whispered to my heart, possibly the loneliness that plagued it, or even the empathy within it. It spoke to me telling me that the star that I stared so intensely at was myself, all alone in the giant void. Despair was speaking to my heart, forcing that feeling of loneliness over my being. Questions and doubts once again came plummeting into my consciousness asking me what am I doing there, or what I thought I could accomplish; telling me I'd never find the end of this chain, and that I'd certainly die out there. But as I had determined already, perception is everything. And deception was trying to trick me into thinking that I could believe what I saw as the truth, if only my vision was not deformed. I let those thoughts out of my head with a deep sigh and a large puff of fog. I strained my neck to look around the rest of the sky, and there, not so far and distant as originally thought, were millions upon billions of tiny lights burning, flickering, just like mine. All were struggling together to survive in that large dark void, hoping maybe they'd make it through the night. Each light was only a mere fraction of the strength of what the sun provides to us on earth, but together they seemed a mighty force. An army of tiny luminaries ranked together to fight against the darkness that surrounded them.

Finally a day came when my obligations to the world suddenly seemed somewhat less obligatory. I went down to the beach one last time, trod through the rough sand to place on the beach where I knew where the chain remained, it had found me and then waited for me, patiently. My hands, strong, soft and clean, were devoid of scars, calluses, or any other sign that would show these hands to be hard worked. Those were the hands that picked up the chain and with a firm grip followed it out into the cold and clear water. At first the miniature waves broke around my ankles soaking my pant legs, then rose up to my knees, and eventually swallowed me up to my waste. My body was washed with waves of goose bumps over and over again with every step I took into the chilling water. Hand over hand I followed it into the tide, without turning to look back at the shore. The links were easy to grip; they were clean, devoid of rust and grime. But as I ventured further in they began to develop a coating of slime and were becoming somewhat slippery.
I could have gone back to the shore, but I wondered where this chain would go, what it could lead to, what would I find at the end. I decided to give it another good tug, but it allowed me no cede, holding firm to whatever it was that it happened to be grounded in. I continued to wade in the water, feeling burdened by my clothes which were now soaked and heavy with water. The growing waves were then crashing around my head, jolting my body around as if I were nothing but a flimsy doll. Odd though, the chain did not budge, it did not waiver from side to side as my body was so easily thrown. It held firm, and taut. Something about that gave me strength. Knowledge deep within told me that as long I held onto this chain, I would not be swept away.
Eventually I disposed of my clothing. I no longer had any purpose for them, they provided no warmth, no protection; they were nothing but a weight tugging on my body. Then instead of the cold wet feeling clinging to my body, it swept over my uncovered skin. The ocean floor had also long disappeared from beneath my feet, leaving a hand grasping desperately onto the chain for guidance, and my legs pumping, continuously, to keep moving. I could not yet see where it ended, or where I would have to travel to get there. Hunger had gripped my stomach long ago and death could have found me before I found the end. But it was much too late to turn back even if the desire had entered my mind. I had come too far and could not follow the chain back to the shore. I had tried to at one point, my heart told me that this journey was useless and if I turned back then I might make it back before the sun would set. But the end of the chain seemed to have followed me, for it was trailing only a few metres behind. Though the last few feet were, for one, floating, and for another cleaner and smoother than the links that I had just been gripping. Just like the very links that had lain on the shore. The links that I had picked up on the beach, it was almost as if I hadn't pulled myself along at all.
There were times when the waters were still and the only thing I thought was moving beside myself was the wind. It was then the creatures came close to the surface, at first I thought it was my imagination playing tricks on me, but they were most definitely there, though I could not quite see what they were, only vague shadows and forms haunting me. They swam around discreetly, causing me to feel like their prey. Sometimes they nipped at me, snuck up under me, which frightened me, but all I could do was keep moving. And though they ate away at me, a strange knowledge that they could never wholly consume me comforted my mind, not as long as I held on to the chain.

As the days went by I found that I was unable to break my usual habit of waking early and began going on early morning walks. I had found myself most often drawn to walk down by the shore. The tide was in, the waves swept up onto my toes as I stood there staring in to the great beyond. The sky was streaked with peach, pink and yellow, the early morning rays of sunshine. I breathed in the refreshing cool air, and then turned to wander down the beach. I tromped through the thick damp sand, hoping to find some new treasure washed up upon the shore, something from far off mysterious lands or from some ancient sea wreck. Although usually all I found is garbage and left over coals from the party that was on the beach the previous night, once in awhile I could find an interesting shell or a fossil of sorts. Still, my hope remained that something else, something interesting, would be discovered here.
Once I had been wandering here, when I found an old dirty bottle with a treasure map inside of it. The map was quite poorly drawn. However, I could make out the stretch of beach and the forest that was a few kilometres down from where I stood. I knew that this was more than likely was from some child who was having a grand time pretending. But having nothing but time on my hands, I followed it anyhow. By barely determining landmarks and the certain number of footsteps, I discovered the spot, and the treasure. I found a broken plastic toy; a child had no doubt obtained from some fast food joint, with which they had become bored with within hours of begging their parents for it. Some say that one mans junk is another mans treasure, suggesting our perspective changes everything; my perspective told me that the toy was a piece of crap before it was broken. Strange how we fill ours lives with useless clutter because some form of media or another has told us its what we need. If its what we need why do to continuously need more? If we are so confident in our answers, then why do we still search?
It was on that beach that the strange chain appeared. Made of large and thick metal links, it extended far into the water that slapped at the shore. I would like to think that I had found this, like I had found the other things, but that is what was so strange. It was as though the chain found me, it did not follow me, it was more like it knew I was here, and would continue to come back here. A feeling crept over me that I was being watched. But I shrugged it off, resolving that these early morning walks with solitude must have been going to my head.
The chains' links were clean and smooth, which made it easy to grip. I tried tugging on it, but tugging proved useless for it did not give way; I thought it must be grounded to something solid. Curiosity tempted me to follow the chain, tempted to me to see where it could go. But everyday was the same: not today, not now, maybe tomorrow. I walked away in search of unanchored treasures to take home with me, but the next day I knew I would see it again. And so it was the same every day, the chain lay there and there it stayed, except my occasional visits, for I would usually try and tug on it, to see if maybe whatever it clung to would release it.

It was quiet and lonely and I wasn't quite sure what I was supposed to do there. So I puttered around the cottage doing absolutely nothing. It took my wife an entire two hours to tire of my puttering, then she told me to see if there were any good books to read on the shelf in the living room; she thought I should find a nice place to sit and relax. I must say the book shelf held an impressive collection, though I'm still not sure why the owner would leave his books here to be handled, destroyed or possibly taken by anyone who stayed here; maybe he knew I did not have any of my own to read. There were numerous classics, books by Charles Dickens, Jules Vern, J.R.R Tolkien, there was even some of Shakespeare's plays, and a book of his sonnets on the shelves. "The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe", and the books that follow in the series by C.S. Lewis were on these shelves; but there were also other numerous books written by him that I had never heard of before, Letters to Children, Surprised by Joy, something called The Screwtape Letters, there were more but this one caught my eye. Such a strange title, and it looked shorter than the rest of the books on the shelf, so I decided to read it; in any challenge I had always started small and worked my way up. I hadn't read a novel since my college days, and probably was not fit enough to follow a plot line develop through 300 pages. I found a comfortable recliner and began to read.

Reading was anything but relaxing; the book was about as screwy as its title, and was no easy read. The entire novel was a collection of letters from a demon. To think my wife thought that I needed a vacation, and here this guy was trying to figure out what the devil thinks. I never in my life believed in the existence of the devil, or demons, finding it to be a weak excuse for the hardships of our lives, a ranting of superstitious beliefs. I read on though, it was interesting enough, and well written.

Sometime later in the week, my wife discovered a fire pit in the backyard, and a great deal of firewood nearby. She thought it would be a novel idea to create bonfire that evening. I sat outside in a wooden chair, which was more comfortable than I had expected, and watched the sun as it crept down below the horizon; splashing magenta, dark pink and orange around the sky. The colours streaked it as if to leave behind a trail, like slugs leave trails of shiny slime behind them. However, slime dries, and the streaks left by the sun also vanished, and my wife began to set up the fire pit. She soon had the fire crackling and burning in a steady blaze. It got quite cold outside after awhile, and my wife had had enough of the novelty and decided to go to bed. I stayed in my chair, and watched the fire die away, not feeling particularly out going enough to do anything else. I sat there, staring intently into the pit, until the last of the dying embers took its leave. I was left alone in darkness, alone with my consciousness. Thoughts and questions were resounding in my head from the book that I had read.

At Chain's End

The beach is where I found it, lying there, knowingly awaiting my arrival. The beach, although I'm not sure how far I've actually gone, seems far away and distant. I can't see much across the distance behind me, it seems like a blur how the horizon just stretches out, the sky meets the land, or maybe the sea, I can't tell anymore; like I said it's a blur now. Didn't think to measure the distance either, though I knew it could of gone on forever it didn't much matter; maybe because all I was concerned with was what was at the end of this.

I never thought that place would be the beginning of a journey. My wife suggested it as a way to end some of the stress in our lives, a vacation. I couldn't understand why she would want to get away. Why would anyone want to leave the city? It has everything you need, anything you could want, and you can have it within two minutes or you'll get it free. I didn't understand what going away from everything and anything would accomplish. Whatever you're looking for the city had it, and you could always find it for a better price at one of the other thousands of stores. What could we look for out there to end stress that we couldn't find in the place that had it all?

The city was where my entire life had happened; I was born there, began school there, made all of my friends there, and climbed the occupational ladder there. Never in my life had I ever spent a moment thinking that I would ever want to leave, or if I left for any reason, ever finding something better.

The first home my parents owned was a small apartment, the usual way couples start off there, and from which some never leave. A home surrounded by other apartments and other towering buildings. The memory that will always resound in my mind is the amount of people. It's amazing how many people you can cram into a small area. People bustling everywhere, apartment buildings, stores and the streets were alive and crawling with people. When we eventually bought a house in the suburbs, we could still see the skyscrapers in the distance. We were still surrounded by people; although when one has grown up used to the suffocation of close quarters this 5 square metres of grass they called a back yard, and the metre and a half of space between our house and the next seemed to be an incredible amount of space. My world consisted of metal, cement, and fibreglass; man made fabrications of greatness. There was little natural beauty to speak of; grass was a weed to be controlled and manipulated. A means of bragging, or of shame when compared to the neighbour's vibrant and luscious patch. The few measly trees were to be found at the park, and the only home grown flowers that were to be found were small boxes and planters.

This vacation seemed important to her though, so I went along with it. She wanted to rent a cottage by the sea for a few months to really get away from it all. She really meant get away from it all; there was nothing there. Instead of tall impressive towers, busy sidewalks, and wide-open highways, there were trees, weeds as high as my waist, and narrow dirt roads. Instead of convenience and competition for lowest cost, every thing was rustic and simplistic. Or was that just my interpretation of it all? I'm not so certain of what I thought anymore. In order to be politically correct, what I thought was only true to myself, and what everyone else thought was the truth for them. So if I was the only one thinking it than how could what I thought, or anyone else thought for that matter, be the truth? Instead being able to admit that what or how I thought could have been wrong, it was just what I had believed to be true. Well you can forget political correctness, I can see clearly now that I couldn't see beyond my industrialist mind, couldn't understand natural beauty, what I thought had been twisted and clouded by ways of political correctness. My mind had been corrupted from all of the years of subjection to that way of life.

The Chain

On the beach lies a chain
Made of large and thick metal links,
it extends into the water slapping at the shore.
The chains are, at first, clean and smooth,
making it somewhat easy to grip.

Tugging on the chain proves useless
for it does not give way
it must be grounded to something solid

Hand over hand
I begin to follow it into the tide.
The links were easy to grip,
but are becoming slimy and slippery.
I could go back to the shore,
but I wonder where this chain will go.

The waves crash around my head,
jolting my body this way and that,
but the chain does not budge.
As long as I can hold onto the chain,
I will not be swept away.

The ocean floor has disappeared
from beneath my feet
I continue to pull myself along the chain.
I cannot see yet where it ends,
or where it will travel to get there.

I can see the large waves approaching,
and I am certain there are more beyond those,
the waves almost continuously beat against me.

There are times when the waters are still.
Then the creatures come close to the surface.
They swim around discreetly,
I feel like their prey.
They nip at me,
frighten me,
but can never wholly consume me
as long as I hold on to the chain.

I can’t quite conceive what would happen,
if I were to let go.
And I cannot follow the chain back to the shore.
The end of the chain seems to have followed me,
almost as if I hadn’t pulled myself along at all.

I feel tired,
and I am a great distance away from that sandy beach,
I must have done it myself.
How else could I get this far?

Onward I haul,
fighting with waves,
attempting to ignore my fear of the creatures.
Onward I move
further into the sea,
to discover where this chain has chosen it’s ending.