Monsters in Broad Daylight

Isn’t it odd the tactics parents use to win an argument. For instance, walking out the door knowing that an eight-year-old boy was too vulnerable to the dark corners of a home, to a balaclava intruder, to smoke coming from the kitchen, to the monsters in broad daylight, to not want to follow his parents out the door and feel safe. Or for ten-year-old Peter, the fear of collapsing on his own from the lung disease that was consuming him.

 

Only moments ago, Peter’s Mum said, ‘I’m sorry, Peter, but when we get to the beach you can’t swim in the sea, or run around with other kids. It will start one of your coughing fits. You will stay under the pink umbrella at all times. Did you hear me?”

 

That stupid pink girlie umbrella, thought Peter. He stomped his feet and yanked his shoe laces in all sorts of directions making them tangled so he couldn’t get up and leave with mum and dad - making them wait by the door until they caved in. Peter said, “You always say to grow up you gotta be independent and meet and play with other kids, Ma.”

 

“Yes, but not today, Peter.”

 

No, not any day. Because as mum, dad and my doctor always say to me, ‘you’re not like kids your age. You’re . . . special.’ But Peter knew they meant ‘you’re going to have restrictions unlike other kids because of your horrible lung disease.’

 

Peter could see mum was gritting her teeth and dad was marching on the spot, eager to top up his tan. They too, had put their lives and jobs on hold while they carted Peter up and down from the hospital for months on end. Now, they just wanted to make the most of the week they all had off before Peter had to go back for more treatment next week. So neither mum nor dad were going to stand there and spend the morning arguing with Peter about what he could or couldn’t do at the beach. He would follow them, or he wouldn’t.

 

So mum and dad headed out, walking at a slow pace waiting for the door behind them to open and shut. But Peter tried to hold firm. Sitting in the shadows of the bottom step until that shiver crept up his back and the shadows began to consume him and the fear of coughing to death alone overwhelmed him.

 

He ran outside. The sun-drenched street with its neat bungalows and manicured lawns was empty. His parents had gained a strong lead on Peter. To catch up, he tried to get his weak legs pumping faster, deciding they couldn’t have gotten that far ahead. But he couldn’t gain too much momentum by running as he had to stop and cough up mucus every couple of houses. I’ve never coughed up mucus before . . . It’s always a hard lesson when this disease progresses.

 

He reached the beach after a spluttering stop-start hour full of coughing and choking, but there was no sign of his parents. His heart skipped a beat. And then almost stopped. There was no sign of the beach either. The wooden decking that usually led down to the dunes and sand had been replaced with wooden boards like those you would see around a construction site. The images of the wooden decking, the dunes and the sand had been painted onto the boards. All along the coastline were more boards, painted with a true-to-life scale of the beach and the people who populated it. It was like an artist had painted what he had seen on the beach just before the boards mysteriously appeared like fog on a cold winter morning. In-built in each separate board along the shorefront were small circular speakers playing crackling, recorded sounds of waves washing the sanded beach. What if they’re trying to cover horrible, sinister noises behind the boards. No. Come on Peter. That’s just stupid.  

 

He tried to wash away his worried thoughts by walking the coastline looking at the boards like he was in an art gallery trying to see if he could spot a particular painting. The particular painting he was looking for contained a pink umbrella and two mid-thirties parents. If I find them in one the paintings, it might mean they’re just behind it on the beach. Then maybe I can find a gap in the boards and join them. But as he got further along the coastline he heard, above the manufactured sounds of the speakers, machines cranking, and creaking, with drills searing. 

 

The rising sounds of industrial hell gave Peter the feeling the postcard perfect paintings of a sunny smooth sanded beach full of happy families had changed completely since whatever machines, or possibly robots arrived there. 

 

However, Peter’s thoughts soon hit the brakes. His attention swerved to an elderly man sitting on a beachside bench staring vacantly at the boards. The man was struggling to take deep breaths like he had been on a long exhausting walk. His puffy snow white hair and soft facial features made him look like a granddad who would greet you with tickles and a pinch of the cheek, and he had a fully stuffed hamper next to him. He must have lost track of people he loved too. 

 

Peter said, “Sir, e-excuse me. Do you know what’s happened here?”

 

The elderly man looked at Peter straight in the eyes as if he knew him and said with a hoarse voice, “They’re all undergoing treatment.” 

 

“Who are?”

 

“ . . . The healthy ones.”

 

A sharp surge of anxiety shot through Peter, “W-What are they having treatment for?”

The man’s eyes became glazed and distant, “To live forever.”

 

An image of all those healthy beach goers receiving genetic enhancements from giant robots came into his head. The sudden cold loneliness overwhelmed him. The cranking, creaking, and searing he heard from behind the boards now seemed almost demonic. The old man told him of how the paintings showed the scene of how the beach looked just before the blacked-out trucks drove onto the sand with gigantic machines on the back of them and lab-coated scientists pulled the painted boards up in a matter of minutes.

 

“I tried to get onto the beach to see what was going on, but they refused me entry. And of course, I asked why.” The old man nodded at Peter like Peter had just said something he agreed with and said, “Us ill ones cannot be fixed, dear boy,” the man’s eyes suddenly became distant and vague like something had possessed him, “We need to be analysed like test tubes so God

will know what will work better next time.”

 

He backed away from the man and marched off without reply. Not wanting to hear the next doomed statement to come out of his mouth.

 

To take his mind off the strange exchange Peter analysed more wooden boards along the coast. He hoped that when he came across the painting of his parents sitting on the beach, they would be standing next to it on his side of the boards. They would be waiting for me and they’d tell me that when the industrial sized machines turned up they said no to the treatment to live forever as it didn’t include their beautiful boy. ‘All we want is you, Peter. That’s all we ever wanted’. He hoped.

The dusk light settled in. I’m sure it was midday only an hour ago. The winds started blowing through the dunes. The landscape to his left took Peter’s attention away from the boards. And the sight spread a chill across his body. There were skyscraper sized factories with hills of baby clothes and cots set alight at the base of them. It was like witnessing metal churches incinerating their bibles. Kids with frail hair and pale skin in soot covered robes stood by the burning hills, waving to Peter. Their hair blew off their heads and twisted and contorted in the air like they too were being burnt from the inside. Peter hurried along and locked his focus on the wooden panels. 

 

As he neared a bend in the panels - where the corner turned towards the pier - Peter caught a glimpse on one of the boards of a pink umbrella stuck in the sand. He halted, squinted, and saw mum in her blue swimsuit and dad in his blue swimming trunks. They were both giggling, holding small toy shovels as they dug into the sand. A blonde-haired boy Peter did not recognise dug with them. The boy was also giggling. He also looked like a healthy and obedient little child. Mum and dad looked so calm and relaxed, and even, relieved. Relieved it’s not me digging in the sand next to them. 

 

Peter’s throat closed a little, he spluttered a cough and clenched his whole body to stop the anger from erupting into a scream. All Peter had wanted was for his parents to return to him, but now he questioned why?

 

I guess now I know what they really wanted. A healthy boy.

 

Peter stood there for what felt like an hour but was probably more like fifteen minutes while he just waited for something to happen like the boy who had lost his parents in the shopping mall and was waiting for a friendly old lady to help him. But Peter was alone. He knew there would be no friendly old lady. He reassured himself (like he always did when he received further bad news about his illness). Come on Pete, you can do what you want now, no parents to stop you, aye? So he walked around the bend in the panels and headed down the empty pier, brushing away thoughts of his parents laughing and playing with another child and all of them queuing up by a giant metal conveyer belt ready to receive their new robotic hearts. Instead, he focused on how much he always loved the pier. How it was the thing he loved most about the beach, with its giant swimming pool and massive slide. He was never allowed to go on it of course. It was always ‘too unsteady’ or ‘Peter, look at it, its blowing in the wind for goodness sake’. But who’s to stop me now? As Townes Van Zandt said, ‘it’s easier than just waitin’ around to die’.

 

He climbed the ladder leading up to the slide and from the top he could see back along the empty pier to the road but he still couldn’t see that stupid beach. The wooden panels surrounding the beach were a lot higher here. Probably to stop people like me from climbing up the water slide and seeing. 

 

At the end of the pier near the road he noticed a black van had pulled up and a man in a lab coat was dragging a metal trolley in his direction. It’s alright. He’s just a stranger. I’m no use to him. I’m not a ‘healthy’ one. Peter returned his attention to the slide, noticing how high up he was at the top of the opening, how the chunky white cylinder snaked this way and that. A jolt of excitement spiked him. He shot down the slide like a kid who didn’t have a care in the world. Like a kid with their whole life ahead of them.

 

The slide chugged like an engine for a few moments before steam billowed from the top of the slide like a factory chimney. At the bottom of the slide, of what more resembled a ‘conveyor belt’, a test tube full of clear liquid slid and plopped into the water. The lab coat man looked down into the pool and plucked the tube out of the water. He stuck a white label on it and wrote: Number seven.

 

Number seven was ready for testing.