Found On The Beach (Patreon)

Trevor had really been hoping that his son would come with him for his evening stroll across the beach, but Noah had entered that reclusive teenager stage where he just wanted to stay indoors and play whatever the latest video game craze was.

As such the forty-three year old single father had come to the beach accompanied only by his trusty metal detector, which had spiced up many of his previous evening walks. He’d found some fascinating stuff over the years, including a number of old coins and other artifacts that he’d gone on to donate to the local museum. Noah had refused to come with him then too. At the very least Trevor was glad to hear that his teenage son was just as antisocial when he was staying with his mother too; he was thankful it wasn’t anything personal.

The beach was quiet when Trevor finally arrived. The sun was setting over the shoreline in the distance and there were only a few couples still walking along the sand for a romantic evening who would no doubt pay him no mind as they went on their way. Trevor was glad there were no college kids hanging around for an evening of drinking on the beach - he’d seen it before and they were always loud and obnoxious. He could only dread the day that Noah turned into one of them, although it was hard to imagine his introverted son becoming a cocky meathead like the ones who always prompted Trevor to roll his eyes.

As he started to move his metal detector over the sand, Trevor forced himself to remember all the things he was thankful for. He could all too often get wrapped up in negativity and that never helped anyone achieve anything. He was living comfortably with a good paycheck and had a son that was his pride and joy, whether Noah wanted to be or not, so it didn’t seem as if there was much else he could possibly ask for.

The gentle evening breeze rolled over him as a cool wave while the setting sun cast his surroundings with a deep orange glow like something out of an art gallery painting. He still wished Noah was there to enjoy the beautiful scenery with him, but teenage boys needed their space - he knew that from his own experience growing up.

A sudden outburst of high-pitched sound ripped the middle-aged man out of his thoughts. His metal detector had picked up on something buried in the sand and any miserable thoughts distracting him from the reason he was even on the beach were gone in an instant.

It didn’t take much to dig through the sand and find what had caused the detector to flare up, but Trevor was certainly surprised to discover that it was what appeared to be a seashell, only crafted out of metal and glittering as if it was coated in diamond. It was incredibly light to the touch and a tap upon it seemed to suggest that it was hollow too. Just what the hell was it?

With no immediate answers but his curiosity certainly piqued, Trevor tucked the strange little object into his pockets and continued with his leisurely stroll down the beach. As he did so his mind naturally travelled back to his son and the disconnect between the two of them. Trevor was a naturally extroverted person while his son was the opposite and he couldn’t help but wish that they could find some common ground.

Little did Trevor realize that as that particular thought passed through his mind, the small trinket in his pocket began to pulsate with a bright light.

I bet he probably has no issue talking to guys his age, he thought to himself, prompting the shell’s light to grow even brighter. As it did so, a strange occurrence began to occur, as the years seemed to drop away from Trevor’s body: the lines on his face smoothed out, his skin healed from the years of damage and the areas that sagged such as his stomach and under-arms toned up to leave him with a much trimmer physique. In just the space of sixty seconds he had gone from being easily identified as a man in his forties to somebody who could easily have passed as twenty, if not younger!

We’d probably have more to talk about if I knew about video games, Trey continued on, blind to the physical transformation he had just endured. Even more if I was actually good at playing them too.

Just a few moments later though and each of those thoughts seemed ridiculous. Of course he knew about video games, he played them enough! He was always keeping an eye on what the most popular games streaming on Twitch were and wasn’t shy about spending a bit of extra coin to make sure he had all the latest releases and any DLC he could get his hands on! He could even remember having long gaming sessions with Noah and even kicking his ass at a few games, then giving him shit for being a sore loser. Those evenings were some of his favorite recent memories.

Maybe if his mother and I were still under the same roof… This time the shell in his pocket began to heat up, finally alerting Trevor to its strange behaviour. Fishing it out of his pocket and holding it delicately between his fingers, he inspected it for a moment, taking a note of its almost hypnotic glow. He was totally fixated by it and as he looked into it, it was as if the shell was somehow looking directly into his soul too. Woah, that’s pretty trippy, man.

A sudden wave of calm washed over Troy as he settled into both the physical and mental changes that the strange shell had provoked. All of a sudden he felt the compulsion to pull his arm back and throw the shell out as far towards the sea as he could manage. Although he couldn’t quite identify how it had helped him, he somehow knew that the next person who discovered it would also find its presence beneficial to them. Thankfully his ongoing experience of being a second-string quarterback on his school’s football team meant he had a pretty good throwing arm and he saw the shell disappear beneath the waves with a final shimmer of impossible light.

With the shell out of his hands, Troy was left alone with his metal detector and suddenly felt incredibly confused about why he had one in the first place. Why would he give a damn about finding buried trinkets on the beach? He was pretty sure he had just come out to stretch his legs before heading home to play some games with his twin brother, much to their mother’s chagrin. As he began walking off the beach, Troy dropped the metal detector into the first trash can he could find and fired off a text to Noah: omw home now. load up street fighter, i feel like kicking ur ass bro! Maybe he’d use his fake ID to buy some beers on the walk home and they could really make a night of it.

Their mother often complained that raising two eighteen year old boys was a stressful job, but at the very least she was glad that they were the best of friends rather than being at each other’s throats. That would have made being a single mother to twins much more difficult. Thankfully for her, Troy simply couldn’t picture a life where he and Noah didn’t see eye to eye on everything!