The Housewife’s Dream

The middle-aged woman wandered up and down the ragged beach, a place so forlorn and uninviting, that others, even locals, often refused to go there. Her bare feet pressed into the blackish sand as the waves crashed in to the rocky shoreline.

He had driven her there, and now he watched helplessly as she rushed about in her grand madness and hopeful giddiness. Some how she knew, she always knew and she had told him and this was the day.

“I’ll finally learn how to make perfect cucumber sandwiches, and wonderful teas, and flavorful biscuits,” she stated gleefully.

“You already know how to do that,” he pleaded, “You don’t have to do this.”

“Oh, but I do, its always been my dream,” she said.

Finally, she disrobed, dropping her dowdy house dress in the surf and stood quietly, head lifted to the overcast sky, arms away from her naked meaty sides and stout legs slightly apart. She was waiting.

Then it came, that eldritch thing with tentacles and wings and leathery skin and a multitude of eyes. It took her within a menacing claw and tenderly drew her to the churning, chilly Pacific.

“Wait for me,” she called back, a happiness in her voice.

“Okay,” he called back, less enthusiastic.

“Promise?” she asked.

“I promise,” he answered.

Then she was gone, taken beneath that those vulgar dark waves and from this upper world. He stood near where she last been, hands in his jacket pocket and head hanging down, chin on his chest.

He tried to cry, but found he couldn’t. Instead, he felt something akin to relief.

With a heavy sigh he turned, dragging his feet, glancing behind twice, making his way to his waiting car. Once there he looked out over the raging gray sea, mist rising and disappearing beyond the crags they tumbled on.

Then a thought struck him, “Perhaps, I shouldn’t have made that final promise.”