The beach was wrong. The light bent differently near the water, like a mirage with purpose. Pensacola’s sky—usually mild and glassy—had turned the color of old bruises, with a sun that hovered just a little too still, as if watching.
The waves didn’t roll. They stared, flat and crimson. Not the violent red of blood, but the pale, watery hue of something remembering pain.
A man stood barefoot at the shoreline. Pale skin. Shaved head. A barcode tattoo peeling just under his left ear. His hospital gown flapped in the wind like a flag signaling surrender.
A plastic motel key hung around his neck on a lanyard that said CONFERENCE 2019 in a color that no longer existed.
He didn’t blink. Didn’t move. Dozens—no, hundreds—of crabs surrounded him, forming a perfect half-circle, claws raised, like they were anticipating a sermon or a verdict. He didn’t acknowledge them.
He whispered:
“It’s happening again. But I wasn’t born yet last time.”
Then the tide inhaled.
The sand beneath his feet softened. Folded. Then disappeared.
He didn’t fall.
He slid — not down, but inward. Into something deeper than water.
He woke up in a Pensacola motel bathtub filled with what looked like melted freezer ice and blue Gatorade. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, flickering to a tempo he didn’t recognize. He exhaled and coughed up a shard of what looked like crab shell.
The television was already on, playing static. But in the middle of the static was a symbol: a crab drawn in overlapping spirals, mirrored over itself, shifting in and out of phase.
He stood slowly. His feet left wet imprints on the tile, but they weren’t normal footprints. They looked like hands. Small ones. Grabbing, grasping.
The mirror across from him didn’t reflect his face. It showed a version of him curled up in a corner of a different room, screaming soundlessly at a wall made of writhing crabs.
He stepped outside. The air hit him like a memory. There was a saltiness to it, sure—but underneath, it carried something older. The motel parking lot shimmered in the heat. But the heat wasn’t natural. It hummed. Pulsed. Like a vein.
Across the lot, a black SUV idled. The driver’s side window was down.
“You’re later than expected,” said the woman inside. She wore sunglasses, even though the sky was dull. Her coat looked government-issued, but the patch on her sleeve bore no flag—just a single crab outlined in thread-of-gold.
“Do I know you?” he asked.
“Only in timelines that have already collapsed.”
“…Which one is this?”
She didn’t answer. She just tapped the seat beside her.
He got in.
They drove toward the pier. The road glitched once—just a hiccup—but it was enough to see the sign for Scenic Highway 90 briefly change to Loop Point Alpha-Delta. Then it corrected itself. The radio came on without a touch. An old love song played backward.
“What am I?” he asked.
“You’re a contradiction. A failsafe created by accident and unleashed on purpose. Someone used you as a clause in a treaty they were afraid to break themselves.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you don’t have a past. You’re a ripple designed to look like a person.”
They drove the rest of the way in silence.
The pier was empty.
No gulls. No wind. The boards beneath their feet creaked like something ancient and wooden remembering its shape.
At the far end, an old lawn chair sat folded, resting beside a snapped fishing pole. There was a ring burned into the wood — about four feet wide — scorched with a symbol made of salt, blood, and what looked like dissolved film negatives.
He stepped into it.
A crack appeared in the air. Not a sound. A fold. Reality twisted as if trying to cover something it wasn’t proud of. His skin rippled. His eyes dilated. Something shifted behind his bones — not in him, but parallel to him. Like another version was trying to fit into the same space.
And for one horrible moment, he saw them all: every Declan who had ever existed. Clones by different names. Failed templates. Discarded echoes. Each one spinning in a spiral. Screaming. Reaching.
One of them reached back.
He blacked out.
When he opened his eyes again, the sun was gone.
The sky had split in half, one side stuck at sunrise, the other in a long-forgotten midnight.
The pier was covered in crabs. Every single one faced him. Every single one was still.
They began clicking.
One click.
Then two.
Then three — the pattern ancient, rhythmic, and undeniably intentional.
He didn’t speak. There was nothing left to say. He walked to the edge, barefoot, and stepped off.
But he didn’t fall.
He rose.
And above the ocean, suspended in the Crimson light, he saw a shape forming — massive, symmetrical, familiar.
A crab.
Not made of flesh.
Made of memory.
And it was smiling.