August turned on his heels in the wet sand, and he ran.

His backpack, still filled with stones, threatened to pull him off balance as he scrambled over dunes and weather-beaten vegetation. He couldn’t risk slowing down. “It’s not real… It can’t be real...” August repeated to himself between heavy breaths.

Reaching the road and navigating through the neighborhood streets, he arrived outside a modest home perched on stilts. Many homes near the water were elevated to protect from high tides and hurricanes. The wooden remains of similar homes, long abandoned after meeting that very fate, flanked it on either side. August ascended the wooden steps to the house, meeting a front door illuminated by a single porch light. He entered and locked it behind him, letting his back slide down the door until he hit the floor with a thud.

“It’s late,” came an old, familiar voice. It was Grandpa Nick. He was sunken into a threadbare recliner beside a bottle of bourbon and carving a small wooden figure with a pocketknife. Grandma sat close by on a floral-patterned couch with a book in her lap. This was a common place to find them, day or night. The home was made of simple, wood paneled walls and mid-century furniture stained brown by previous decades of cigarette smoke—when smoking indoors was still a socially acceptable practice.

“I must have lost track of time,” August lied, closing his eyes hard.

“School tomorrow.” It was spoken in Nick’s casual, to-the-point manner.

“You wouldn’t believe—“ August was cut off by Grandpa Nick.

“This is a teachable moment,” Grandpa Nick interjected without looking up from his wooden figure. He had shelves of the things. Many were soldiers, but it was also common to see tigers, bears, dinosaurs, and other beasts. Whatever shape appealed to him in the moment. “When you are to be home by dark, you will be. Understand?” Grandpa Nick’s voice was firm this time.

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“Where were you?” Asked Grandma.

“The shore,” replied August, still catching his breath.

“What were you doing out there?” Her tone held a hint of concern.

August choked, the truth stalling in his throat. He wasn’t sure if what he had seen had been real at all. Perhaps it was just another waking dream, he thought. It was an affliction that had plagued August before. It wasn’t a disorder of any sort, he believed, but sometimes he found himself daydreaming. His imagination could get away from him—images of other worlds, strange creatures, and the like. Sometimes it felt almost real. At some level, he believed it to be a way for him to distance himself from the mundanity of his current reality. His own little private escape.

“You can tell us in the morning,” said Grandma in a clear bid to calm August down. Then she gave her best reassuring smile. She shot a glance at Grandpa Nick, as if to insist that he go easy on the boy. August knew that look. It was how democracy played out in their household. Grandma was the one who was happy to take him in when his parents were gone. She was always there to let in the bright yellow sun. And to August, she was the sun—the only light and warmth he had.

Grandpa Nick was nothing like her. He was all crooked up in knots. They say he was like that because he was drinking, but August knew it was because he was dreaming. He kept thinking he’d be someplace else one day, so today he’d rest, today he’d do his work, but tomorrow he’d be somewhere else living big. So he stayed and rotted in Cape Joy until there was not much left of him. And if there was someplace where he could have gone, it didn’t want him anymore. Not in the wicked state he was, all used up, tar stained, and wrinkled. He hung with the hoodlums, the drunks and swindlers—slinging whatever they got their hands on. He was more honest than the rest of them, sure, but he was okay dipping down low once in a while, because he still believed he was going places. He never did realize low was the only place he went, and it’s where he stayed.

August didn’t pine for some fabulous future like Grandpa Nick. Kids like him that grew up in Cape Joy never amounted to much, and he knew it. He had no direction, no plan, no future. Without a rudder, it’s hard to steer.

August retreated silently to his room, and his grandparents had no protest. It was a small, cluttered, space. Music posters covered the walls, dirty laundry hung over a chair, and a barely functioning laptop sat half open on a hand-me-down desk, leaking just a bit of muted light into the otherwise dark room. Kicking off his shoes, he crawled into an unmade bed.

He wasn’t certain if the creature would still come for him. He turned over and looked out the window. It was high enough off the ground that no normal person could reach it, but this wasn’t an everyday intruder. He stared toward the window, vigilant of some visitor from another world. He stayed like that for hours, until his heavy eyelids overwhelmed him.

High above August, his bedroom window, and the modest home on stilts, dark clouds began to gather. They appeared suddenly, as if manifested out of a dream. And as he slept, the storm of the century awakened.