Message in the Bottle

1 - Under the Stars

I was burying my own feet in the sand when I saw a clear bottle floating on top of brown seaweeds. I ran near to it, picked a long stick behind me, and pulled the seaweeds.

The sun was setting faster, clouds were rolling by swifter, and the surface of the sea was breathing colder. My father said I had to go home before the night falls.

I sat down near the water and picked out all the dirt around the bottle. It was familiar, my father had a lot of them in the house. The only difference was father's bottles contained drinking alcohol, this one was empty, except from a rolled paper inside. The orange sun was completely gone, so I walked home fast bringing the bottle with me.

When I got home, my father had started his do-this-before-sleeping-or-else-i-am-gonna-die ritual, which was smelling my mother's clothes and drinking half bottle of alcohol and staring at my mother's sole picture on the wall and finally, hitting the sack before seven in the evening. I had no choice but to prepare and eat my own dinner, watch some cartoons alone from 7:25 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., read myself a children's book that was left open on the kitchen's floor, and then sit beside my already-sleeping father. I watched him snoring like a cow.

Whatever he became, I still loved my father. After I brushed his messed-up hair, I walked quietly into the kitchen. I went to the scullery where I had hidden the bottle. It was placed behind the flowerpot my mother bought a year ago. I held the bottle tight because it was slippery. I popped out the wooden bottle cap, and as I was trying to get the paper using my ring finger, it slipped through my hands, and was broken. I heard my father groaned and thought he would hit me because I woke him up, so I picked the rolled paper and ran outside.

It was my first night sleeping on the beach, under the blanket of stars and the illumination of the moon. In my hand, an unread message, was waiting for me to be read.

(To be continued...)