The Sea of Lost Time
The seaside town in this story by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a smelly, unpleasant place. With every incoming tide, the ocean brings garbage and rotting fish. Many people have moved away; the town is dying. Things change when a local man, Tobias, notices something different about the sea breeze. It smells like roses. Weekend visitors begin to arrive. There is music and dancing again. One of the visitors is a strange foreigner with bags of money. He gives it away to people who ‘do things’ for him, and one day shows Tobias the secret of what lies beneath the waves.
You know that a story which begins It’s a hot day and I hate my wife is not going to end well for one of them. In this story by Charlie Fish, a bored couple sit down for a “friendly” game of scrabble. As the competition intensifies, the man notices something strange. The words the couple put down on the board seem to be coming true in the room around them. To test the theory, he puts down the letters Q-U-A-K-E. As the ground begins to shake, he realizes too late that his wife has made the same discovery.
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