Tidal Wave

Like me, he was visiting this national attraction with great frustration and apprehension, although I had no idea why. He was an awkward and uncoordinated man. So much so in fact that he nearly knocked me into a jagged rock (on accident) and then apologized profusely. I told him it was quite alright and immediately pitied him because I felt strangely aware of his sorrow. It was clear that he was disoriented and his only aspiration was to re-live his sadness. That's when he began his horrid tale about her. He never looked at me directly. From what I could see of his eyes, they were dark and tired. It almost seemed like whatever it was that had affected him had conquered his very soul. I executed an intense stare, but he showed no recognition that anyone was even around him. It was like he didn't care if anyone was listening to him or not. All he wanted was to release his story from his lips and let the words escape into the dry air. It occured to me that he possessed a rare form of eccentric strength. The kind that materializes from an immense loss, and I knew at that very moment it was her I saw in his eyes. Another elderly man who was with him smacked him hard against his right hip with a cane, in an attempt to jolt him away from telling his story. Despite the rush to inform, he still hesitated a great deal, although his words sounded forced by some raging internal disturbance. I think a large part of him wanted his words to latch tightly to the corresponding memory and to depart into the early evening air, never to be remembered again. “She was… she…” he choked up, “she was… devoured.” It looked as though the memory was devouring him inside out. I shifted, uncomfortable on my feet. “What seemed like hours of struggle lasted only minutes. Time was the accomplice to her most ultimate betrayal…death. Every single moment I look back, I realize the clock conspired against her life at a horrifying speed...” I gulped hard as he shifted his defeated exterior mask down towards the canyon below, showing very little notice to those around him. I lifted my right hand to my heart and looked down at the ground. The poor man, the poor old man. He kept talking and had not recognized my gesture. “…But it was the ocean that… murdered her. That vast beast swallowed her… with such strength that even her raging battle for life was no match. All I did was watch, helpless, as she came to terms with her… greatest failure.” A tear descended from his pink, leathery cheek and splashed upon the dry, reddish dust, sizzling toward its own non-existence. I tried not to focus on it, but my imagination tricked me into thinking that the now-absent tear was somehow trying to perform a reenactment of her described annihilation. I shuddered and felt my own body generate fictitious spikes that engraved the back of my neck. “That was the last time I ever saw her…”
Poor old man, I thought again and again. I wondered how he had failed to notice that the young girl was stooping beside him all along and now was weeping profusely and most likely all in vain, because he didn’t sense her presence…
...and because on that very terrifying day that he described happened years ago, she had witnessed the ironic actuality... he had become nearly deaf, totally blind, and unconsciously crazy when he was beaten by a massive tidal wave.