Ghost Crabs

by Wilson Koewing

Adrien Stachowiak

I left the reception afterparty and wandered out to the beach for a smoke. The full moon pooled soft light over the ocean that trailed a narrowing path back to the breakers.

I lit a Spirit and listened to the waves.

The sound of shouting and music from the rented house was dulled by the wind. I heard people splashing in the pool and a couple’s giggling grow fainter in the darkness as they snuck away down the beach.

“Hey, man,” Jack startled me. “What are you doing out here?”

He’d taken off the tux jacket and lost the tie.

“You and Rae still aren’t talking, huh?” He continued.

“How’d you figure that out?”

He lit a smoke and a silence lingered.

“Remember when we used to chase ghost crabs out here as kids?” I said.

“How could I forget?” He laughed. “We terrorized the damn things.”

“Your kids will be chasing them before long.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” he slapped my back. “Hey, I’m glad you’re here. I know you probably considered staying home.”

“I wouldn’t have missed it.”

I sensed his smile in the dark.

“All right,” Jack said. “I best get back in and make sure these heathens don’t tear down the house.”

I walked down to the shore and flipped on my little keychain flashlight and shined it at the sand. The tide was coming in and the waves nearly reached the dunes. When the water receded, the ghost crabs skittered on the in-between appearing to float.

Rae was only the most recent entry on a long list of women things hadn’t worked out with. Our months-long back and forth whirled around another fella she’d been hung up on and occasionally went to when she got drunk or mad at me.

I shined the light around. Two tiny ghost crabs scampered toward the surf.

Connie and Bella were short-lived. Connie moved to Jacksonville because she thought that’s where the shuttles launched. Might has well have claimed she was running off with an astronaut. Bella had drawn a map of all the places she wanted to visit on a cross-country road trip before we met. One day she got in her car.

I spotted a big crab, shined the light straight down and it froze, blinded.

Ash really got the train rolling when I lived in New Orleans. Gave up drinking for her. She shared some tough stories from the past. We got so close she took over two drawers in the dresser for when she decided to sleep over.

She filled one with fuzzy handcuffs and lingerie and whips; a wild child.

I believed she might have been it for me.

Then what started as one martini at the Bombay Club became no telling how many and I was in the bowl of the French Quarter trying to claw my way out with the rest of the rats.

I assumed she’d let me get away with one slip up, but that wasn’t the way she was constructed. When I stumbled home at dawn, her drawers were empty.

More ghost crabs appeared up the beach at various distances like on a chart, but I’d seen enough.

I headed back toward the house and lit another Spirit before going inside.

At first, I thought I’d imagined it; Rae’s ghostly voice slicing through the wind. Then I turned and there she stood in her bridesmaid’s dress, make-up smeared and barefoot. Clear by how she held her hand on her hip that she’d had a couple more than a few.

“Josh,” she said in her slow drunk voice. “This is dumb. Let’s have sex under the stars.”

Before I could answer she was scuffling forward through the sand with that pout on her face that got me every time, placing her hand in mine and dragging me down to the shore.

As we searched in silence for a dark and hidden place, I sensed the ghost crabs all around me, but without the flashlight their figures were impossible to decipher against the sand.

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Wilson Koewing is a writer from South Carolina. His work has recently appeared in Pembroke Magazine, Ellipsis Zine, Ghost Parachute, New World Writing, (Mac)ro(Mic) and The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts.