Pavement warmed his bare feet on his way home. You don't wear shoes on a minute walk to the beach when it's seventy degrees. A hundred feet of sun beaten road is nice, but the quarter mile from the next public beach access down began to scorch. That was the best way to avoid the black pit of death. Now he was jogging down the road concentrating on getting off it, not daring to tightrope-walk the yellow line for reprieve like he did as a child.
Back by the house, separated from relief by those last hundred feet, he paused to hop from one foot to the other in place and decided to head for the top of the stairs. The remnants didn't look like much from four stories up, but that vision wouldn't go away. Sand was starting to blow over it some. A couple was walking down the beach close to the cliff. He waited to catch their revulsion as they passed by so he could call them up to the platform to commiserate over it. Something felt wrong, and he wanted to know he wasn't imagining things.
They kept right on walking.
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