The Shore Thing
an excerpt

The pain in her left arm was searing and the discomfort in her right was nearly as painful. She knew she couldn’t hold on to the railing much longer. Though only weighting in slightly north of a hundred pounds, the weight of her body being solely supported by her two arms was pushing her towards her breaking point. Looking for support, she kicked her bare feet against the rock wall looking desperately for a foothold to no avail. Her skin wind-battered and scrapped stung in the sea breeze. Her fingers clawed the railing trying to get a firm grasp of the sunscreen-slippery metal. Looking up she could see the glass peaks from the beach house’s grandeur and knew this would be the last time she ever wished for something more from her wretched life.

She wondered to herself where this business of one’s life flashing before their eyes right before they died came from, because as her hands slipped from the metal bars of the railing all she could see was the gray-blue water and craggy cliffs. It wasn’t a fixation on the past but rather the present that Annabelle envisioned right before that sickening splash.