The mob carries pitchforks. They carry shovels. And torches. So many torches. What will the mob do with all of these torches? We do not know. 

One man seems to hold aloft three torches, but, when we squint, we see that what he holds is, in fact, a candelabra, which is either a relief or, somehow, much more disconcerting. 

We can’t fathom the mob’s plans for this fire, these gardening utensils, all this makeshift weaponry. But especially the fire. We’re oceanside, after all, no driftwood in sight. No kindling for funeral pyres. No stakes at which to burn a scream-spent corpse. Not much wood at hand to set ablaze is what we’re getting at. 

The mob drools. It slavers. Its eyes are bloodshot, wild, wide. Wide and ready to witness the heinous acts the mob is ready, oh so ready, to commit. 

Why this mob? Why has it come to our shore, our quiet seaside town? We do not know. 

The mob is not zombies. Neither have we reached world’s end. We’ve merely reached the conclusion of a lazy Monday afternoon, rain on the horizon, 30% chance growing to 50% overnight. 

Except that, with the arrival of the mob, the laziness has been sapped from the day. The sun has set. We stood in the surf to watch the sun go down, then turned to find the angry mob trampling the dunes between the ocean and our town. 

There are wild sea oats in those dunes, one of us points out—endangered, protected by state law. The mob is undeterred. The candelabra’d man picks an oat from the sand and clamps its long stem between his teeth. 

The mob is growing restless. They holler, stomp, their motivations unclear. 

“We’re hungry,” the mob offers, at last, and the mob parts to let a few of us through. 

The few of us let through make sandwiches: ham and Swiss; grilled cheese for the vegetarians; for the vegans, PB and J; for those with nut allergies, J; plus, of course, an assortment of gluten-free options. 

The mob demands its crusts cut off, so we return to our houses to remove the crusts. Sandwiches uncrusted, we return to the beach. We are a peaceful people. We leave our knives at home. 

We don’t expect the mob to offer thanks, for what is a mob if not a mass incapable of thanks, a gathering that cannot be made happy, a hydra that will not disentangle until each head sees the thing it’s done, and, seeing, becomes, again, a head capable of thought, of feeling, an ache at the back of its throat at the sight of what it’s just dismembered, disemboweled, a sight that reminds the head of its own fragile humanity and the impossibility of escaping said humanity, except by way of death or mob, and no mob lasts for long. 

This realization, it is ours, not the mob’s. The mob has yet to disentangle. 

Perhaps they will—disarm, disentangle—before the need sets in to disembowel. We who stand on the beach sure hope so, though, in truth, few of us believe we’ll wake tomorrow in our beds. 

The mob dispatches its sandwiches. It does not ask for more. It does not offer thanks. 

The mob is not uniformed or color-coordinated, which makes it even more mob-like in appearance. One man appears to have joined the mob fresh from baking, apron loose and flour-dusted at his waist. A McDonald’s employee, burgundy-clad, hunches over the sand, her visor backward, examining a shell that’s washed ashore. A man in full zookeeper getup picks his teeth with a reedy pitchfork tine. This seems risky, but at least he’s left the rare sea oats alone. 

Then, the zookeeper—satiated, sandwich-fed, teeth cleaned—clears, rather dramatically, his loud zookeeper throat. The baker tightens his apron strings. The McDonald’s employee, whom we hoped was maybe just an admirer of shells, drops the shell she’s been admiring and, from her pocket, produces a revolver, which, the way she holds it, seems a gun this woman’s used before. 

We’re not sure we care for this turn of events, this weaponry’s evolution from makeshift to made-to-kill. 

A murmur arises. We could run, but where? The mob is circling, creeping, closing in. We could swim, but this is dusk, the sharking hour, and we do not want to die by being food. We could ready ourselves to fight back, but, then, would we not become a mob ourselves? 

Perhaps we are a mob already. Though this thought raises questions: When does a mob become a mob? When does the hydra gather all those heads? Is it the moment weapons are gathered? Sooner? At the riling? Once bloodlust has set in, or once bloodshed has begun? Or is self-defense not mob-like, but heroic? Or, if not heroic, necessary? Or, if unnecessary, at least excusable? We do not know. 

We only know we stand at water’s edge, waiting, torches and pitchforks closing in. 

We wait, and, somewhere in our waiting, a child cries. The cry is short, stifled. Impossible to tell whether the cry has come from us or from the mob. Yes, even children join the mob, which grows, is growing, closing in. 

The cry silences us, all of us. Silences the mob, the surf, the break of waves. Silences the sky. We’re talking a heavy, all-encompassing silence that, like, mutes the moon, furs the horizon’s razor edge. 

The cry, we think, will be the thing that saves us. For weren’t we children, once, all of us children in our mothers’ arms? Weren’t we young? And what is childhood if not proximity to innocence, to love? 

The cry is a promise—the world will miss you when you’re gone—a promise we believe, a promise that might move the mob to reconsider the revolver, the candelabra in its hand. 

The cry does not move the mob to reconsider the revolver, the candelabra in its hand. The cry is all the provocation the mob needs. There will be no more stalling, no more sandwiches or shells examined on the beach. As one, the mob charges, screaming, trampling the sea oats, wrecking the dunes on its way to the water’s edge. 

What drives the mob forward? 

Some say ignorance, some pride. Mob coming at us, eyes grown wider in their widening, torchlights brighter in their brightening, we say what drives them forward is the warmth of other bodies, side by side. Easier to do as those beside you do. Easier to raise your weapon than to ask what weapons, risen, really mean? Easier when every question circles back, when questions might be used to question you. 

Easier to join the side inclined to win. 

And while a wise man once said love slays fear, it’s also true that fear can fuck love up, can bottle love and fling it out to sea. 

The mob descends. 

And now gas cans emerge. 

Now rope. 

More torches lit. 

The mob does not tarry. And though they may wish to postpone what they will feel at seeing what they’ve done, they do not wish to prolong what comes next any more than we wish for it to be prolonged. 

Soon we will light up the night with our writhing. Soon we will shatter the silence of the sky. 

And, for a moment, the mob will feel better. But only for a moment. Then, as each member of the mob becomes an each, each member will feel much, much, much, much worse. 

And now the hands are on us. Now gas is poured. 

“Last words?” the mob asks. 

A torch waits to be lowered. 

A match waits to be lit. 

And because there is nothing, really, to be said, nothing to prevent what happens next, no way to prod the consciences of those who will soon see and weep, untangle and disperse, forevers rent by what they’ve done—though not before what will be done is done—we say nothing. 

We don’t cry out. Don’t sing. Don’t ask the mob for one last cigarette. 

Neither do we look away. 

No, in those, our final moments, we do what we were put on Earth to do. 

We live.