the mind of yurie kiri

In the ocean off Moonlight Beach, Mark waited for the perfect  wave. He loved to surf at night. There were no other surfers, the waves  were just as good as during the day, sometimes even better, and the rising  full moon bathed everything with incredible beauty. 

Mark felt his board being sucked backwards by a large wave. He leaned forward and paddled hard to match the coming wave's speed. The slope steepened and he thrust his board forward then leaped up and rode it toward the deserted beach. 

"Yesss!" Mark yelled. "Yahoooooo!" He cut back and forth then turned down the steep face of the big wave. It was a much larger and  steeper wave than he thought but he rode it gamely. 

Suddenly he felt the nose of the board dig into the wave's curving face. The board stumbled and he fell off head first. He tried to dive but ended up in a belly flop and hit the water hard. The massive wave's strength pushed him down further and deeper. 

Mark held his breath under water as the wave tumbled him around  like an old tennis shoe bouncing in a washer. He rolled on the bottom of the beach and tried to push up but in spite of his flotation vest, the rushing water held him down then rolled him over again and again. He started to black out then he caught a glimpse of the moon's light through a fleeting clear patch of foamy water.  

He relaxed, trapped where he was beneath the pressing waters and  thought about death. It wasn't so bad, he thought. He didn't feel any pain,  all he had to do was relax and he could sail up to the moon like a puff of  smoke. He imagined himself as an astronaut then he thought about his  mother. 

"Mom!" he tried to cry out but couldn't; he only swallowed salt water and gagged. He struggled some more then passed out as another wave pounded over him. When the rush of the wave finally subsided,  Mark's unconscious body floated up to the surface where it mingled with a  huge tangle of seaweed slowly drifting towards the almost deserted beach.  While Mark and the seaweed floated towards shore, a woman’s naked  body fell into the surf where it could drift away.  

Jessy woke up, covered with dirt. She sat up choking and shook the dust off her face. "What happened?" She stared around at the distorted, twisted shapes of her silent friends. It looked like a bomb had gone off right in the middle of their circle and created a small crater about a meter across while tossing everyone about like rag dolls. "Wake up you guys!" she cried,  wondering what kind of horrible thing had caused the explosion. She couldn't remember anything; her mind was a blank and her ears were ringing. 

Jessy looked around at her friends lying still on the ground and wondered how long they all had been unconscious. It was pitch black outside and the occasional meteor still streaked across the sky but her whole body hurt and her head was throbbing. She thought about trying to stand up but she felt too wobbly to try that so she stretched a hand out towards Sally who was now lying half under Don's heavy body.  

"Hey wake up!" Jessy said as she touched Sally’s limp body. She grabbed Sally’s wrist and searched for a pulse on Sally’s cold wrist. Was Sally dead, had she somehow been killed by a blast? What would cause such a thing? Did someone do that just to rob them?  

"Shit!" Jessy said, suddenly feeling a lot worse. She couldn’t tell if Sally had a pulse or not and she wished that she knew better about how to take one. She dropped Sally’s limp wrist and looked at the others then wondered if everyone was dead. Don was on his back, on top of Sally, but his eyes were closed. Marty was face down in the dirt. Bill and Mary were lying together face up like nothing had happened except they were silent and unmoving; their eyes were closed and they were covered with dirt. Were they all dead or asleep or unconscious? 

The struggling monk stopped next to the stone altar, in front of a  large hemi-spherical rock which seemed to be quivering as it sat on top of the piled stones. The chanting suddenly stopped along with the heavy  bronze bell, throwing the deep cavern, surrounded by incense mists, into a  tomb-like silence. All of the monks in the cavern became as still as if they  had all stopped breathing at once, but they kept staring at the altar with the quivering rock. 

Suddenly the lone standing monk brought the paper wrapped lump closer to the hemi-spherical rock. Drops of sweat upon his shaved head  glistened in the candle light as he attempted to shake the odd shaped lump  off of his tray and onto the hemi-sphere without touching either object.  Finally he tilted and shook the tray which caused the small lump to teeter  on the edge before it could drop on to the larger piece below. 

The small lump leaped towards the hemi-sphere like it had been  drawn in by a magnetic or electrical attraction rather than by gravity. The  paper wrapping on the lump burst into bright flames for an instant as the  small lump was absorbed into the hemi-sphere, making the hemi-sphere  larger and causing it to rock back and forth violently, chattering on the flat  stone altar. All of the monks fell down and pressed their faces into the  ground as the hemi-spherical stone teetered and chattered atop the altar in  the dimly lit, misty room. 

Nakayama stood hidden in the shadows and watched as the monks  cowered before the strange display of power contained in the rocks. A  grim smile played across his face. "The monster's power is certainly  growing..." he said quietly to himself as he turned away.