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I

The Baleen whale casts a blue shadow over Morecambe beach. If you should straddle up beside it, bucket in hand and start poking at the mass of bulging flesh about its belly, you’ll find it to be much tougher than it looks. An old man with a mouth of white plastic tells you and all the gathered children that the whale got stranded in shallow tide and died where it lay. It’d been alive for a thousand years, he remarks with a smile. It’s early morning when I see the whale. A week later, decomposition and moving tides unite to return what’s left to the secrets of the sea.

II

A bridge that leads out of a drive to drop into the courtyard of a school is never a good idea. Any loss of life is tragic but the loss of young life especially so. My mother always said that the bridge crossed a railway track and carried on for some miles before pulling up beside the school. She would say that. She says there was a gate and no-one died. She’d say that too. Well, the gate I remember, at least, but the bridge; that led into summer and she ran red lights in a seed of mustard-metal to meet it head-on. I can’t begin to estimate how many children died during our trips to school. I haven’t asked and nor would it be right to do so.

III

Information on Worm Kingdom is not forthcoming. All I know is they leave their mark on the dark surface of the beach. Over a cup of twenty sugars in cold water, the relative merits are discussed with Adele. “I think they’re building something, something that requires collecting material from the open air”. “That’s ridiculous!” she butts in, “Utterly ridiculous! If they’re collecting anything, it’s more likely to be intel.” There’s a creaking of the floorboards above, a floor that belongs to a man I only ever see in passing. “Do you believe in ghosts?” Adele whispers. I feel my neck ice over as it drops below zero. “I believe in lots of things. Like football. Do you like football?”, stirring my tea slowly, no longer able to blink. The footsteps continue up to the door that would lead onto the steps that wind down to the room and then stop. Outside, a lone firework splits the sky and a dozen dogs chase its lonesome howl. There’s a sand-castle collapsing in my throat. I’d been to Worm-Kingdom once before and I’d be going back again.

IV

Sylvia fucking hates Jeffrey. He made her poor and sucked her heart out through a straw. She lost her figure when his seeds grew lopsided out of her womb. She lost her future when he dug a pit out of what was left. It’s heartburn that broke Jeffrey in two. When all’s said and done, it wasn’t the straps or wires that did for him, but the desire to see what was crawling in the reeds behind. It moves at relative speed, you know; the past. Relative to your own heart. Of course, hearts don’t move like that; they either beat or they don’t; and Jeffrey’s had been beating fast his whole life.

V

I caught the sky squeezing into night and shut my eyes, afraid I’d guess the length of days it takes to begin again. On the way out, we pay our fines. Suzy says I will live on and die old in her heart, the same boy she sees now; while Scotty’s Dad mentions in passing a butcher who keeps a girl in his basement. My memories may be corrupted but I can still think for myself. I think back to the whale, by now broken down into liquid matter; brain and tailbone become the same, equal parts salt and brine. If the world’s really a stage, then all exits lead to the sea.