I took off my shoes before going down the hill. I wanted to feel the sand on my skin. This is what I do when I feel tired in a way that sleep and some music are not enough to counteract. It's a personal ritual. I walk on the sand until I find the perfect spot, and then I lie down on it. I stay there, completely still, for as long as it takes. Sometimes ten minutes, sometimes up to six hours. I close my eyes and pretend. I pretend that the sand I feel on my skin is an illusion, that I too am nothing more than a lump of sand. An unstable construct, like a castle that a child would build haphazardly, and that the tide is destined to drown before noon.
I took off my shoes before going down the hill. I let the sea salt fill my lungs, and began to walk, as I had done hundreds of times before. And then I stopped. For a few seconds, I stood still, trying to determine the nature of the object that had interrupted my walk. Solid, and cold. The day was sunny, but it was cold. When metal strikes a fragile sand construct, it shatters into a million grains. I looked down and saw, half buried in the sand and the other half sticking out like a spike in the skin, a revolver.
I'd never seen a revolver in my life, not up close at least. I took a few steps back. I was afraid. But my curiosity defeated my fear. I approached it again and held it in my hands. It was heavy, and still cold. I couldn't believe how cold it was. I lifted it up and looked at it from every angle, the sun and the clouds reflecting on its metal like a mirror. I wondered who it belonged to before I found it.
"Too much poetry has been written about spears and swords. The revolver is too young for its greatness to have been sung in song."
Perhaps to a bandit, some romantic outlaw who lives outside the boundaries of society and returns to it periodically only as a predator. He feeds, and then wanders off again. But probably not, there aren't many of those anymore, if there ever were anywhere but the movies and the pages of books.
It probably belonged to just some soldier. It was handed to him along with his khaki uniform, he had no say in the model of the weapon, nor the purpose of its use. He had no say in his being sent to this coast. Perhaps he dreamed that holding it in his hands, like the spear of some distant prairie ancestor, he was a protector. But he probably didn’t, for his revolver ended up buried in the sand of this coast. I wondered what kind of orders he had been given. What things he was asked to do that led him to abandon it here. Was he asked to kill?
No matter how long I held it, the revolver remained cold. The veins in my hands swelled and I could hardly feel my fingers. An instrument of death. Who knows whose dissident's body was torn apart by its bullets. How did the soldier feel when he saw the blood flowing from the body? I thought of the blood, and the metallic smell immediately drowned out the saltiness of the sea. I could no longer move my fingers. My skin was now rigid iron. I let the revolver fall to the sand where I found it.
I inhaled deeply until my lungs throbbed with pain, but the smell of blood was still there. Maybe I was wrong, I thought, maybe the revolver didn't belong to a soldier. With that thought my lungs calmed, and I tasted the saltiness again. I took the revolver in my hands again, with gentle movements, as one handles an heirloom. Perhaps it belonged to a revolutionary, an idealist, a Carbonaro. Not an instrument of death, but an instrument of liberation. Some young man or woman who left home to fight in the name of high ideals. What could have driven a man of such fortitude to renounce his revolution? Perhaps nothing. Perhaps he lost his life in the process, it was his own body that was broken and his own blood that was spilled, and his fellow fighters buried it on the shore to honor his memory.
"The age of the revolver is now".
Like a child play-acting as the hero of his favorite book, I pointed my revolver at the dunes and the clouds, and pretended I had the same fortitude. I wanted to stay there longer, but it was getting dark. Sleep is not enough to rest me, but that doesn't mean it isn't necessary. A few days later, I returned to the shore, but the revolver had disappeared. The sand had swallowed it whole, and with it any clue to its owner's identity. It was a tiresome dilemma, probably best that I am now free to stop thinking about it. After all, it probably just belonged to a bandit, a brute of a man who breaks down the doors of houses in the small hours of the night to take what he wants by force. I'm going back to the coast today. I need to perform my ritual. The tedious days have been getting longer lately. I will close my eyes and pretend that the sand I feel on my skin is an illusion. I will be nothing more than a lump of sand, and the tide will drown me.
About the Author:
Lucas Papadimitriou was born in Thessaloniki, Greece in 2001, and is a write of short
fiction. His work has been published in some of the most prestigious literary
magazines of Greece, such as Hartis and Frear, and in their pages he has developed
a unique voice that blends psychological intimacy with symbolic and surreal imagery
inspired by a wide range of authors such as Italo Calvino, Kenzaburo Oe and Comte
de Lautreamont. His first collection of short stories, titled ‘’And Other Stories’’, is set
to debut in late 2024.
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