this excerpt, like others, is supposed to be placed in the middle of a full story. it assumes the audience knows various facts about the main character. however, without supporting context, this may look odd.
The ripple of the waves of the beach against the shore was soft. The moon watched over the water, shining down upon it like a spotlight and reflecting as a bright streak all the way to the soft sand. It was dark, and some scattered clouds fogged the sky, almost invisible against the inky black night. Yet the ocean waves remained ever so serene, a beautiful dance of dark inky blacks and greys and the shining white seafoam. The sound was not quite rhythmic, yet ultimately soothing to the soul nonetheless. Everything sat steeped in vibrant greyscale.
At the far end of the beach, alone, Madeleine stood.
He’d hardly changed his clothes from earlier that day. His button-down, usually neatly proper, was unbuttoned in certain areas and torn in others. Dried blood stained it around ripped spots from earlier that day, oftentimes accompanied by a bit of bulk underneath the cloth where bandages wrapped around loose limbs. Bandages wrapped with uncertain, tremulous hands, quite in need of bandaging themselves. But it was water under the bridge. He did not care. It did not matter. The dried blood on his hands would wash away on its own. He couldn’t bring himself to do so, anyway.
Madeleine watched the ocean waves with careful consideration. There was a certain darkness to his blue eyes, one quite reminiscent of the sky just before a thunderstorm. No longer was there fascination with the waves. His fascination was, instead, replaced with malcontent. He shifted his weight from one leg to the other restlessly, never once lifting his watch from the waves as they folded over each other, grasping at him.
He took a couple steps towards the waves, and the malcontent in his eyes turned into bittersweet fear. He smiled and gently nodded.
“It’s high tide,” Madeleine muttered to nobody but himself.
He took a couple more steps toward the water and the bittersweetness in his eyes began to evaporate. By the time it was completely gone and leaving fear behind, he was glancing at the skies, ripping away from the ocean and watching the clouds float about, completely ignorant of the scene below them.
The ocean beckoned towards him, holding its arms out. Reaching for him with its waves.
Madeleine looked back at the ocean, ignoring the skies now. He continued to approach the waves, paying no mind to the way he had begun to shake.
Reaching the shoreline left him almost breathless with the way his heart rate had sped up. The ocean, in all its tranquility, simply watched. And for a while, Madeleine simply stared back. Unconsciously, he traced lines over the places he’d been injured previously that day. Feeling the bandages to ensure they were tight enough. Then, he moved onto his scars that had already healed. The ones on his face, then the ones on his hands, and then the ones on his arms. Running tired, stained fingers over the ridges of the white scar tissue -- a sure reminder of his past struggles.
Madeleine slipped off the sandals he had worn that night and carefully stepped into the sand, and then into the waves. The cold ocean water of the night sent shivers up his spine. He did not care. He pushed onward, walking directly into the waves.
The tremor in his hands grew.
Not long after he’d stepped foot into the ocean, and barely even far enough into the waves to reach his ankles, and he was already shaking. He glanced from side to side, up to the moon, and back to the beach behind him. Panic shone through his eyes, yet he advanced anyway, as if in rebellion against his own emotions. One hand fumbled with the shirt sleeve of the other. His breath became shaky.
Madeleine walked forward nonetheless.
Soon, tears formed in his eyes, threatening to spill over.
His expression quickly turned from fearful to cloudy. The tears that had flooded his vision fell onto his cheeks, and he choked on a sob. He brought a shaking hand to his face, dragging it across to dry his tears.
Then, sickness. He shut his eyes, letting more tears fall, before choking back another, gagged sob. His eyes opened and a sudden wave of nausea overtook him, doubling over on himself and vomiting into the waves.
Startled, he took several steps back, wiping at the corners of his mouth. Then, the realization of what had happened seemed to settle in, and he sobbed even harder than before.
His cries hung in the still night air for no one but himself to hear, nothing but the echo of his own melancholy to comfort him.