The Rashomon Effect

by Karen Schauber

Pelican Beach Resort – January 3

Matteo T.

In the morning, we leave our hotel room early to go down to the beach for a pre-dawn dip. The air unusually salty and sticky-sweet. The surf shorn like a crew cut. As the thin shimmer of sun settles on top of the water, we see the bodies bobbing in the foam. Blood flowing like watercolour paint. Dark Jurassic shadows weaving figure eights just below the surface.

*****

Belinda S.

I arrive at the beach with umbrella and blanket, floppy sun hat, and spf 60, and plop the kids in the sand with their jetson-coloured beach buckets and shovels, and we settle in aways down the shoreline, me with my beach book and a glorious view of the Belize oceanfront. Darcey screams, ‘Mommy Mommy, I see a dolphin and there’s another one.’ I don’t want to get up, we just arrived, but her shrieks are insistent. The rogue wave tossing the bodies up onto the sandbank. I only wish I had seen them first; the kids won’t easily forget this horror…

*****

Bruce R.

The party lasted into the early morning, the drinking and drugs flowing. They ventured down onto the beach, we could hear them singing and laughing, wading knee-deep. Soon the screams. It’s unusual for Carcharodon carcharias to hunt in shoals at night, so close to the shore, they said. The hotel called it a tsunami. The island publicity said otherwise. We left a bad review, of course.

BIO: Karen Schauber’s flash fiction appears in 100 international journals, magazines, and anthologies with nominations for Pushcart, Best Small Fictions, Best Microfiction, and Wigleaf Top 50. She is Editor of the award-winning flash fiction anthology The Group of Seven Reimagined: Contemporary Stories Inspired by Historic Canadian Paintings (Heritage House, 2019), curates Vancouver Flash Fiction, and is a seasoned family therapist. Read her at: https://KarenSchauberCreative.weebly.com.