They were piled on the rocks, fifty or more, a spread of jelly fish cradled in stone, their little pulsing bodies translucent against grit, we could see sand through them. They glistened, stranded, we thought they’d been washed up, one enormous wave that took them there, how else could they have arrived in such a pile, gathered in drowning, the sun bleaching them into nothing, whatever becomes of a jellyfish once all the sea water and jelly is gone. We stood over them wondering how to put them back without hurting them, without them hurting more. I’d read recently of a boy who could pick them up with his hands, something confident as with nettles, but I didn’t remember how. We thought about buckets and spades, maybe we could save some. And then we saw the children with sticks and the mother pointing and the father standing guard, his green shorts belted, his legs and glasses firmly planted, his grey hair to the neck, arms folded, face set. We saw how his children stood at the water’s edge their spears lifted, how they stabbed at the sea and shouted. How they carried each méduse dripping from the waves, its tendrils hanging, how they threw them to the outcrop of jagged edge and heat. We walked away saying how can people do that and I thought of all the times I’d said silence is complicity. I turned back. My children said afterwards my French is fluent when I’m angry. I think I was more upset, but they can have their story. They were watching. I was in it, this contra-ton on the beach, sunshine and parasols, a sparkling air which started with Excusez-moi, monsieur, ce n'est pas bien de tuer des méduses comme ça but I never got the chance to say the next bit, s'ils sont là on ne nage pas because the fury from monsieur green shorts, glasses, grey hair to the neck was instant. The words had hardly left my mouth. It was as if he was expecting them. Both barrels at me: he was on holiday, he can do what he liked. He arched and leered and took two steps back and opened his arms and raised his voice and people turned on their towels, looking over bronzed shoulders, and I said I was free to speak. Of course I walked away, that big man with his children taught gleefully to kill, that they have more right than another, their dominion assured by the stance of their father, the collusion of their mother. I only had to say my piece. Know that I had said it. I thought later, he’s in pain to be able to watch so stonily those jellyfish pulsing quietly to their death on the rocks. He doesn’t realise we’re one. Les méduses will return. There are more of them. His children will pay.
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Thank you. Thank you for being the person with the courage to say what we were all thinking. You’re a superhero and a great writer
Merci! Merci! See something, say something. I only wish someone else followed by another someone else had also gotten up to say something. It’s so heartbreaking and utterly disgusting that they let their kid kill a living creature.