Beach detritus. You always hope you’ll find Aladdin’s lamp or the corner of a buried treasure chest when you comb the beach. But there is always just beach detritus. And people’s garbage. People can be so disgusting. That’s when I saw it. Lying there amongst the mostly empty food containers and wrappers. A gold ring with a diamond.

The diamond ring glinted in the sunlight. A special ray of sunshine had hit it just right so that I was the only one who could see it. I walked, nay ran, to it. After all these years of beach combing, had I finally found a treasure worth keeping? I moved the wrappers and food containers (Did they have food in them?) away from the my prize. “Come to me, my precious.”

I was just about to grab it when I realized that there was something inside the ring. A finger! Oh no. A detached finger! The horror. But then, it moved. And I saw my great folly. The finger was attached to a hand, which was attached to an arm, which was attached to a body. And the food containers were not garbage, which was why many of them still had food in them. It was somebody’s picnic. I had stumbled upon somebody’s messy picnic. And somebody lying amongst her own garbage. Or perhaps she had just been resting her hand on the ground near the wrappings. Leaning on her arm as she talked.

She noticed how close I was to her hand. She shouted, “Joey! Get that crab away from me!”

Joey laughed as he shooed me away. “It looked like he wanted your ring, Sophie.”

I obliged Joey and slinked away. He thwarted me this time, but he would be back. And I would be waiting. Waiting amongst the beach detritus.

[Note: There is a sequel called Again Amongst the Beach Detritus.]