It all started a lifetime ago… in a place called Glass Shard Beach, New Jersey. The beachside town’s name preceded its reputation, its shorelines covered in the razor sharp, glittering remains of broken beer bottles. Scattered among the glass, a diligent child might occasionally find a shard of quartz or another translucent mineral, but regardless it’s recommended that one doesn’t dare romp along the shore barefooted, least they slice the bottoms of their feet raw.
This was the warning delivered to a young Stanley Pines every time he and his twin brother left their apartment to spend the day at the beach. Predictably, he ignored his mother’s words entirely. He liked feeling the rough gristle of sand between his toes, and a little glass wasn’t about to scare him away from that pleasure. Since, wasn’t glass just superheated crushed rock anyways? He wiggled his bare toes in the wet sand, watching as the horizon over the ocean became darker and darker, the sun setting behind him.
“Hey Stan, come here,” his brother called, waving at him from the underside of the docks, right where they jutted out from the busy boardwalk. “Have you seen this?”
He pulled himself to his feet with a grunt, and traversed the perilous dunes with a studied precision, nimbly hopping from one safe spot to the next. Tonight he hadn’t stepped on any glass at all, at least not yet. Finally, he reached his brother, who stood next to a large pile of rubble. Rubble. Oh boy, he knew where this conversation was going. He crossed his arms, feeling a chuckle bubbling up inside him.
“That’s a pile of rocks,” he stated glibly, watching his brother’s face closely.
“Yes, and there’s markings, perhaps even runes on them,” Ford exclaimed, picking up a chunk of rock and running his fingers across its smooth surface.
“Ford, come on, I know you like your spooky conspiracy theories and everythin’, but,” he said with a heavy sigh, picking up a split piece and bouncing it in the palm of his hand, “we all know there’s no such thing as rock people.”
His twin shook his head, winds of denial stirring around him in the air. He knelt next to the odd crumbled formation, squinting at the rubble through thick lenses. He splayed his fingers, all six, across an unusually smooth section of the rock, and deep down Stan knew this was indeed why Ford found himself so invested in the theory of unusual creatures and anomalies in the first place.
“No, no, no, look, really look at the curvature of this,” he said. “It looks like part of a shoulder. It’s buffed too smooth to be a mere coincidence of nature.”
“Okay, so,” Stan shrugged, “maybe it’s just a statue, y’know? Somethin’ from town. Kids steal stuff and smash it on the beach all the time.”
Ford rose to his feet, desperation reflected in the width of his eyes. He held the broad shoulder piece to his chest, mouth pressed into a thin line. “I know what I saw this morning, Stan! There were two of them, fighting near these docks-“
“And I’m tellin’ ya’, it was still pretty dark. I’m sure what you saw was just two large guys duking it out, all right?”
Stan grabbed the edge of the dock, used a stray nail sticking out of the post as a foothold, and boosted himself up. He swung his other leg onto the wooden deck. “Listen, Sixer, I think your theories are real interesting, okay? They’d make really good stories, I honestly think that.” With a grunt, he used his hands to push his full body weight onto the dock, letting out a breath of relief when he was settled. “But you can’t just yell it to everyone you see, else they all gonna think you’re crazy.”
He offered a hand to his brother. With a huff Ford declined, opting to climb up the stairs a few feet to their left. When he met up with Stan on the dock, the teen was cradling his foot, prodding at callused skin.
“Youch,” he muttered, and as he took his finger away Ford could see a small spot of blood. “Should’ve known the nail was a bad idea. Welp, I’ll patch it up when we get home. You ready?”
Ford nodded, still carrying the chunk of rock. “I’m not crazy,” he said quietly, taking one last glance at the stony formation on the shore. “I know I’m not crazy.”
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