Neverland

• Thomas Khoo, Grade 12
• Short Story
• 2010

The man with long hair and a long, unkempt beard tangled picked up the conch shell and smiled. Childishly. Giggling, he held it to his ear, eyes widening as he heard the sea. It whirred in his ear and spoke to him in the only language he understood, the syllables of waves on a sandy shore. A bird laughed behind him. Dropping the shell, he ambled towards the bird sitting high in the hardened branches of the coconut tree. The waves rolled in. Rolled out. The shell bobbed on their foaming white hair, carried out to sea. Tomorrow, another shell would arrive and the man would listen at its mouth again. Long ago, he had imagined that the voice he heard caught within the smooth white shell bore a message…but expectation had evolved to hope. And hope had died.


The man’s naked shoulders were pocked and freckled from the sun. Dark hair covered his chest and arms, hiding the leathery skin that had been beaten and whipped by the salt of the sea and the merciless sight of the sun for thirty years. Rough hands were gently placed on the sand, careful not to disturb a single grain. A child’s eyes in a man’s face carefully drew lower until they could see the tiny crab that blended almost invisibly into the sand. It took a few steps sideways: six legs rising then falling. Up. Down. Stop. Then the crab sprinted. Too late. Fingers that didn’t know they were no longer pudgy squashed the crab into a mouth which didn’t realise it had grown teeth. Crunch. Crunch.


As the sun rose, sailing across the cloudless sky, the man retired to the shelter of a small grove of coconut trees surrounding a clear pool of water that shimmered and rippled in the breeze. He leant above it and looked into its mirrored surface. A bearded face with sunken hollows in the cheeks looked back. He stuck his tongue out.


Under the sand at one corner of the pool, the man reached down into the sand and emerged, holding something. He held it up to the light. The tattered, bruised teddy bear looked down with no eyes. Its one leg waggled back and forth as if it were marching. One. Two. One. Two.


The man didn’t notice the ship that had landed on the shore. He didn’t notice the elegantly coifed captain in his navy blue uniform proudly displaying the gold stripes on his shoulder. He didn’t smell the cologne the captain had used or the aftershave he wore on his chin.

The captain saw the man though and took in his nakedness, his skin, his hair and the bear he held.

Then silently, he boarded ship and sailed away.


The man put the bear down a while later and turned to watch the waves in their perpetual movement. Up. Down. Up. Down. Thirty years had passed; still he was a lost child. No one had come to his rescue.