I Eat Sandcastles for Dinner by Chandler Gates

Sean Benham CC




I Eat Sandcastles for Dinner

     I sweep dry forest hearth up into mounds with my palms—sandcastles of dust and pinestraw—and then smooth it out, patting it back into place. I do this over and over until my breath slows to a steady rhythm. I imagine all the dust of dead creatures that lived before me clinging to my skin, burrowing in the ridges of my knuckles, seeping into my pores and entering my bloodstream, imbuing me with their memories. A thousand cells melted down into evolutionary lore.
                                                                                                                                     ***
     That's why I knew to run when I heard the metallic click of the window latch. Why I bolted from bed, flinging the bedroom door wide in a single breath. Why I tore down the hall, out the back door, slipping on the last porch step until my bare feet hit the wet grass, striking it away in a sprint for the treeline. Phantom breath slipping down the back of my shirt, tracing my spine wrapping round viselike,  stabbing icy fingers into my stomach. 
                                                                                                                                     ***
     Dad’s back.​ He's at the window. Or he's coming around the house now. Maybe he's right behind me, hiding in the trees, waiting for me to pop out like a rabbit from the den so he can chase again. I thought I had a long start, but what if I couldn't hear him over the sound of my feet slapping the earth and my heart beating against my eardrums? Or maybe it was someone else playing the drums, some forest demon watching the hunt, chanting for the end.
                                                                                                                                     ***
     I made it about a mile before my lungs began to burn and the stitch in my side felt like it would burst, threatening to spill all the things I promised the guidance counselor I would not swallow onto the forest floor. My stomach a ripped-open bag of trash. Grandpa’s oversized ARMY t-shirt I wore to bed hung down to my knees like a nightgown and kept sticking between my clammy thighs as I ran. The humid summer air hovered above eighty degrees even after midnight, and the cold sweat made my skin feel slick.

     I stopped running when I tasted lighter fluid on my tongue, regurgitated from the cartridge I swallowed a few hours ago instead of the pills mom set out when she came for her weekly visit. The long green-white pill and the triangular-white one were probably still where she left them, on my nightstand in that silver seashell-shaped dish she’d picked up at the local Goodwill. The BIC lighter was at that point capsizing in the sea of my stomach, sending tiny plumes of lighter fumes like emergency beacons as it battered against the icebergs of dice and dominos. An assortment of knick-knacks swirling in the undertow of paperclips, hairpins, and applesauce sludge.

    That’s when I hunched over behind this large pine tree. One hand clamped to my mouth to keep from puking, the other gripping the sturdy bark in the dark, not warm or cold but just there, bristling under my touch. Stomach acid rippled out to my toes, and I envisioned a trail of wet footprints, stomach juice leaking from my toenails, leading him straight to me. I couldn’t keep from vomiting. All the items dislodged like little plastic seeds and white liquid dribbled out of my mouth, a long string extending from my lips to the ground like an umbilical cord until I cut it away with the back of my hand. What would grow from the seeds I spewed, a filing cabinet, an office depot?

    Through the glass, his face had looked distorted. I’d glimpsed it over my shoulder as I dashed from the room. That always leering smile slipping from his face, the teeth falling cracked from his mouth. As if he’d been flattened and gathered up again. Like if you were to push applesauce around on a plate to the shape of an apple again, over and over, until you’re the only one left at the dinner table.

    I'd told them he would come, the parents of my mother. But they'd brushed me off like always, said, where he’d gone he couldn’t come back. I started to wonder if they hoped he would come, pull me through the window like a fox in a chicken coop. And then they wouldn't have to be called down to the school every few days, wouldn't have to have alternating bi-weekly meetings with mom and the counselor, check-ins with DFACs. They wouldn't have to keep a lock on their stationary supplies and hide sharp objects or explain to their church members why their fuck-up of a granddaughter got arrested for shoplifting a pregnancy test. 
                                                                                                                                      ***
     I flex my fingers in the dirt, pushing and pulling it toward me, like little mounds of applesauce. I wonder how it would taste if I swallowed it all. 

​


Chandler Gates (any/all pronouns) is an emerging writer working in the film and media industry. Their most recent work can be found in FRUITSLICE: A Queer Quarterly. They are currently writing a debut queer horror fiction novel, experimenting with poetry, and committing art crimes. Chandler's creative work across film, writing, and photography can be found on their website https://chandlergates.myportfolio.com/.


​
Anti-Heroin Chic is a sponsored project of Indolent Arts, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit fiscal sponsor. Please consider making a one-time tax-deductible donation.

Donate