Travel Notes:
“Hey look,” he said, but I’d noticed it already.
Down on the stretch of cobble beach across the street from the flat, a crowd had gathered. A young blonde woman swung suspended, all in black, odd at this time of day, and this time of year, on a hot beach in Nice. Someone had her hands, someone else had her feet. They looked ready to toss her into the crashing crystal blue waves of the Mediterranean.
But they didn’t. She writhed towards another person lying pinned on the rocks, her screeches echoing up to the little balcony where we stood.
Barely clad seniors, tanned and sagging, swarmed around the young man on the ground, who wore only dark skintight pants.
“What are they…?”
An old man swung a flip-flopped foot, making contact with the boy’s ribs. The boy strained against the many elderly arms pinning him to the rocky surface.
A stout woman in a yellow one piece and a big floppy hat bent towards him, yanked something away from him and raised it up towards the sky in triumph.
The ring of onlookers shook their heads, spat slurs at the boy, told each other what they’d seen.
Police finally arrived, and shoved the boy around a little more before allowing him to stagger across the street. The bedraggled girl in black followed, yelling at him as he yanked on his ripped shirt. He weaved through waiting cars, flipping them off.
The two disappeared around the corner in a flourish of blaring car horns, shouting and the slightly concerned gaze of the police.
BIO: Monika Moore: I have been writing most of my life, but only recently decided to pursue writing as a career, and have just completed a Master’s in Writing and Publishing at DePaul University. Prior to this major shift in my career, I was a community college geography instructor. I have traveled to more than a dozen countries, but I have only recently started writing about the places I’ve been.
Wanderlust 