I was at the beach, soft light dappling my skin as the sapphire blue water lapped at my toes. I had just stopped after an exhausting run, my breath gloriously rasping in my lungs as I lay there on the shifting sands.
There was a rock nearby. It was a large rock. Might have fallen off a cliff at some point and floated here. Or maybe someone had seen it and brought it here, placing it here as a warm stone to battle against the tides and for tiny children to giggle atop of. Maybe the seagulls atop it now were giggling with their loud chirps.
Or maybe someone had chiseled a face into it at some point, or a treasure map, or a sleeping dragon.

I lifted my arms up and back, lazily stretching them before letting them fall to the crinkly sand. The gulls swooped over the ocean, darting in and out, wriggling fish in their sharp mouths. The waves teased my toes, retreating quickly with each pass, all the while humming a sweet lullaby I can't place. The gulls' cries stabbed into the humming, mimicking the waves with a higher register, twisting their own song from the sleepy waves, making it impossible to open my eyes.

I felt a tiny stirring from my throat, vibrating from deep within my chest. I was humming with the waves and the gulls and the wind. My airway shook like strings on a harp, the soft toon too quiet for me to even hear. I didn't know if I was humming some long forgotten lullaby, or if I was even making a smidge of noise, but the feeling eases the rasping in my throat, and my eyelids grew heavier-

The gulls cries rose like a wave, trying to drown out all others of the world. The soft calls becoming shriller, as if they were fighting over something.

The waves seemed to turn, from playful and teasing to thrashing and harsh. It beat against the rock, digging into the embankment, leaving deep ruts behind. It splashes over my feet, leaving them soaking and cold and aching, and retreated back into its self. Farther and farther, as if it had another island to lap at.

The caws of the gulls went off key, becoming deeper and sharper. I turned my head up to stare at the gull on the rock nearby. It was staring at me. Its mouth was wide, wider, growing-almost looking frozen in time. Its small neck didn't strain at the harsh noise that emitted from its throat. Its kind brown eyes brightened and reddened, the irises swallowing up its pupils and continuing to swallow its face, the red light glowing brighter.
Everything began to darken; the birds feathers, the sand, the mirrored sky-lake, all of it being swallowed by the stone growth. All became dark as it swallowed the sky-the sky that looked like it now had ribs.

Had it swallowed me? Was I in its stomach now? To be hardened and frozen in dust forever, to be broken and kicked away.
The screeching grew, the gulls cry now like a warning siren, telling the sky, the ocean, the sand to flee.

It was too late for me.

The redness remained, burning my eyes and the screeching siren tearing through my ears.
I shifted, trying to block the burning, twirling lights, to smother the crying wail.

And it all began to fade.

The beach returned.

The rock was back.

The sky mirrored the slow ocean.

The gull sat there, preening its feathers.

Everything was fine.