Bait & Switch - @LadyHazmat

Taken a couple weeks off from The Angry Hourglass. Here's this week's return to the ring.

Bait and Switch

The poison had been much sweeter than Gene had anticipated. The mayor had promised that the pint would at least be fifty percent high octane vodka, but the solution has been so treackly, that he had a hard time believing there was any alcohol in the mix at all.

He tried to concentrate on the receding tide in front of him, specifically the remaining post from the pier his father had told him about. The fishing platform had been knocked down well before he was born, back when people were still brave enough to harvest food from the sea. The single post phased into three posts and he knew that there indeed had been alcohol in his drink. His vision continues to dissolve the beach sunset in front of him.

On the beach though, his book was useless. Gene wanted to read this volume of poems as he waited for the poison to seep through his body, but he couldn’t find the focus he needed to even make sure he was holding the paperback right side up.

Of all the people no doubt watching him from a safe distance, he sincerely hoped the Mayor had the best view. It had been his scheme after all, and the man needed to ultimately be the one accountable if this didn’t work. The pool of applicants for this year’s harvest had been smaller than ever. Parents turned a blind eye to their teen’s promiscuity if in ensured they wouldn’t be in consideration when it came to the yearly harvest. Gene, was more in love with the ruins of the library than any girl he’d met on the island, so when the yearly cull identified the sacrificial virgins, he was one of the few to step forward.

They’d tried using a non-virgin in the past, and lost the fishing pier and scores of the population in the monster’s retribution. Despite a lifetime in the ocean, the abomination could smell the difference between the two. The tide had receded to the post and Gene’s destiny emerged from the ocean. He clutched his book and hoped the poison would be enough to kill the thing.