The Last Look ~ A Short Story

It had been forty years since the last time her eyes had fell into his gaze, and this time, it was permanent. The woman’s eyes filled with tears as her body began to tremble and convulse in shock. Visions of past times began to overtake her; her perception soon became clouded. Her breath ran hot as it left her sultry body into her bitter surroundings.

Standing waist deep in the frigid Pacific Ocean her skin washed pale, and her clothes sodden. The overcast sky kissed her fading life goodbye with the sweet caress of an afternoon drizzle. A storm churned ominously off in the distance, while her heart thundered for the final time.

Collapsing into the feral waves, the ocean sang a rapturous hymn welcoming her home once again. Her eyes stayed locked with his as her final breath was drawn from the salt tinged air.

For years she patiently waited to once again meet his gaze, the gaze she had longed for, for too long. Their eyes were acquainted in flash of light many years ago when she was young. But godlessly she was ripped away from his angelic arms and heaved back into the arms of loneliness.

Crazy is what she was called. ‘No man lives in the sea’ they would say. Yet she knew she wasn’t mad or disturbed, she knew the love that the darkness possessed. Every day for years she would walk out into the sea and wait for the man to show again. But show he never did. After decades of waiting and watching, her thoughts grew old and restless. The mocking voices of her youth began to sound true making her cease the daily visits into the pond.

Locked away in her room for years, she longed to know the truth. The world around her changed, but she never did. She never went to church nor prayed to the lord, for she knew that if he was there, he was not what they claimed. No gracious lord rested above for her, only the man in the sea.

Crazy? Maybe, but she never stopped believing in the man in the sea. She knew his eyes, and she knew his face. It was young but wise, it was a father’s face. Now that hers was older and turning grey, she no longer believed in what she has seen that day. She only watched the sea foam churn from the comfort of her creaking rocking chair.

Some days she would walk outside and feel the sand between her toes, but never would she walk close to the water. She’d look at the shells, comb the beach, listen to oceans breath, but never would she grow close enough to let it touch.

Though today when she heard the knock on her door, she knew what was coming, and she knew she couldn’t stop it.

In one last seemingly senile woe, she ran. She ran hard and fast out the back and to the sea. Her heart nearly stopping at the piercing feel of the water rinsing against her feet for the first time in 30 years. Pushing through she trudged out into the waves, letting the wind sting her skin and whip her hair across her face.

The grey of the sky reminded her of that day, the day she met the man of her dreams. His kindness, his warmth, his eyes, now all a distant reverie she thought she’d never live again. Looking up into the clouds she relished in the thought of the last touch they shared when she was just a child. His strong hands intertwining with her own. His beating heart sheltering her from the cruel world she would come to know.

Drifting her gaze back down from the clouds she saw what she’d never thought she’d see again. As if he had risen from the dead, he stood before her in perfect clarity. Glowing with divinity, his eyes greeted her as they had many years ago. As she collapsed into the waves he reached out and enwrapped her in his arms, pulling her close to his chest. The material world seemingly slipped away from her in the wash of a wave, and all she could see was the eyes of her loving father.