And then Zoe sees it, a thick line across the water, a deep black-green and everything beyond it
shadowy. The line is creeping closer.
“Going to be a doozy when that hits,” says Hanna.
“How long do you think we’ve got?”
Hanna chews the skin around her thumb. “Maybe 10 minutes,” she says, “but you’ll have the usual
warning before then. I’d get them kids home.”
“Yeah,” says Zoe. “Or leave them here.” She half-smiles at Hanna, who doesn’t smile back.
The warning strikes soon and sudden, out on the horizon, sheeting down. It sears and crackles and
Zoe counts her own heartbeat 1, 2, 3, before she sees the burnt yellow of the thunder roll out towards
them. The air shakes so that she can’t catch her breath. Angie shrieks, water spilling into her wellies.
“I’m stuck! My feet are stuck!”
“You want to get her out of there,” says Hanna, loud enough for Angie to hear. “Get herself burnt
to a crisp if the water catches light.”
Angie starts crying and Zoe turns, angry. “That’s rubbish,” she spits. “That’s rubbish, you’re just
trying to scare us.”
“Believe or not,” says Hanna. “Here it comes.”
And there’s the sheet of light and the rolling orange heat of noise and, abruptly, that dark line, a
million slaps echoing, almost on them. There’s Angie, wailing mute, caught in the mouth of the monster
with the water rising round her boots as if the rain could add to the sea level and the ghosts of jellyfish
drifting around her. Ben teeters at the edge of the dry, panicked.
Zoe reaches her just as the rain does. Grabs her and pulls her up and out of her wellies as the sea
Françoise Harvey writes short stories
and poetry. Her work has appeared
in Bare Fiction Magazine and in the
poetry anthology Furies. She is based
in London, but grew up on the Isle of
Man, where she spent a lot of time on
the beach. There were jellyfish.