Beneath the Above

A Crab. Gulls. No Pants and No Answers

This is a story for the May 2026 edition of Maryellen Brady 💗📚 ‘s World Building Event in Millcreek Village.

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Something was screaming.

Everywhere. Sharp, tearing, relentless—like metal dragged across glass, each shriek replicating in a detuned mimicry of the one before it.

Jack didn’t open his eyes.

If he didn’t move, didn’t engage, there was a chance—small, but real—that whatever this was would resolve itself without requiring his involvement.

It did not resolve.

The chorus deepened. One voice became many, overlapping, arguing, rising and falling in waves with no rhythm and no intention of finding one.

His voice came out dry when he tried it. Not hoarse—just not there. He swallowed. Immediately gagged, spitting and sputtering, expelling whatever his mouth had been holding in reserve. He ran his tongue along cracked lips.

“Would you please,” he said, “SHUT UP.”

The screaming only grew bolder, as though his objection had been mistaken for encouragement.

He rolled his head, cheek pressing into something coarse. Grainy. Warm. A thought bubbled up unbidden—sand. It made sense, without making any. Morning followed, less confidently. His memory confirmed it with a vague shrug and the caveat that the answer presumed time was still behaving itself.

Another scream cut through the rest, close and insistent.

Jack forced one eye open.

Light stabbed in. Shapes wheeled overhead—erratic, jerking arcs against a sky too bright to look at directly. White. Gray. The mechanical repetition of wings.

Gulls.

He shut his eye and considered his options. Kill the gulls. That was the first one. Wring their necks, one by one. Direct and efficient.

He let the idea sit for a moment.

Then let it go.

Too much work.

Something else moved at the edge of his awareness. Lower. Rhythmic. The slow, deliberate rush of water arriving, touching, retreating. Again. And again. Each surge reaching a little farther before it gave up.

It lapped cool against his hand, and for a moment—one short moment—something in him unclenched.

Then it reached his face, and he was breathing it.

He pushed up fast—too fast—and the world tilted hard. He got one arm under himself just in time. His stomach lurched and he rolled. Then he was on hands and knees, retching up salt water—bitter and warm on the way out—his throat burning like he’d swallowed a handful of wet sand and followed it with broken shells.

He stayed there, breathing through it. Letting the world settle.

The gulls persisted, relentless and indignant. He felt the rush of air and the occasional brush of wings beating above and around him.

Then something tapped his hand. Light. Precise.

He didn’t react.

It tapped again.

“I’m busy,” Jack said.

A pause. Then—snip, snip.

He opened his eyes.

A large crab stood beside his hand, one claw raised, as if mid-gesture and waiting for acknowledgment. As Jack watched, a gull dropped out of the sky in a straight, fast line, committed and certain. The crab didn’t look up. It simply stepped aside in one precise lateral movement, and the gull hit the sand where it had been and bounced, confused, into the surf.

They regarded each other.

The crab tilted its body, slow and deliberate, and pointed down.

Jack looked, blinked, and looked again, in case the first look had been mistaken.

It hadn’t.

No pants.

“Wonderful,” he said, and let his head drop back into the sand.

The crab waited.

Another gull came in low and fast, skimming the waterline. The crab pivoted, caught the bird’s momentum with one claw, and redirected it neatly into the retreating surf. The gull emerged several feet away, sputtering, with the expression of something realizing it had made a significant miscalculation.

“At least I know this is a dream,” Jack said.

“And upon what,” said the crab, “do you base this assessment?”

“My dreams are always pants optional,” Jack said.

The crab considered this with the gravity it apparently deserved.

“That,” it said, stepping sideways—again, without looking—as another gull committed to a decision it would not survive with dignity, “is either a profound statement about your unconscious mind, or a deeply irresponsible attitude toward socially acceptable attire.”

A pause.

“In either case,” it added, lowering its claw, “it does not reduce the awkwardness of this situation for me.”

A fifth gull circled high, wide, evaluating risk.

The crab watched it. Patient. Unconcerned. “That you believe this is a dream,” the crab continued, “is a conclusion I have observed many visitors reach.”

It shifted its stance.

“As I tell all of them: the absence of pants is not a reliable indicator of the dreaming state.”

The gull approached, then losing its nerve, withdrew.

“I have encountered any number of pantless individuals in circumstances of undeniable reality—shipwrecked men, mystics, one gentleman from Peru with a canoe-related mishap—and not one of them was dreaming.”

A beat.

“Though most expressed a preference for it.”

Jack didn’t move. Didn’t open his eyes. Didn’t question the gulls or the talking crab.

The surf rolled in, covered them both briefly, then retreated.

“You’re leaking,” the crab observed.

Jack looked down. Salt. Sand. A few shallow scratches. A thin line of blood tracing the crease of one knee like it was following a map to somewhere less interesting.

“Oh, blood,” he said. “For a second I thought I was in serious trouble.”

The crab was quiet for a moment—not the quiet of something with nothing to say, but the quiet of something assembling what it wanted to say in the correct order. It redirected a gull into the surf with the absentminded efficiency of a man flipping a light switch.

“You recently regained consciousness on a beach you cannot identify,” it began, measured, precise. “You forcefully expelled sand into sand. You are without pants, without protection, while actively bleeding from multiple sources of unclear origin.”

A pause.

“You are also engaged in conversation with a crab who is, as you have seen, conducting a successful campaign against a superior aerial force—”

Another gull failed spectacularly.

“—and yet your face holds the expression of a man waiting for the bus.”

It leaned in.

“I am not asking this to be unkind,” the crab said. “I am asking with genuine curiosity.”

A slight tilt.

“What sort of life have you been living, that this is the face you make?”

Jack watched the horizon. Considered the question. Did not rush his answer.

“A strange one,” he said.

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Most of the gulls gave up and found somewhere else to be.

The beach was, for a short spell, peaceful and quiet.

“Where am I?” Jack said.

The crab was still for a moment, in the way that suggested it had been waiting for this and was now deciding how to proceed.

“Of all the questions available to you,” it said at last, “you have selected the most common one.”

A pause.

“This is not a criticism. It is—well, it is a criticism, but a respectful one. Observational.” It shifted sideways, adjusting its position by a fraction of an inch. “Humans orient by location first. You wake, you panic, you look for a word you can attach to the ground beneath you. A name, a coordinate, something you can say out loud as if saying it stabilizes the rest of the experience.”

Another pause.

“It doesn’t, of course. But it feels like it should, which is often sufficient.”

Jack squinted at it.

“It is the correct question,” the crab continued, lifting one claw, as if balancing something invisible. “It is simply not the right one.”

Jack let that sit.

Then—”When am I?”

“That,” it said, “is the one almost no one thinks to ask.” A pause. “Which is telling, in itself.”

A lone gull dipped lower. The crab raised a claw without looking, and the gull corrected its approach independently, with the quiet dignity of something pretending it had never committed to anything.

“Time,” the crab continued, satisfied, “is generally treated as a corridor. Straight. Directional. You enter, you proceed, you exit, ideally in the correct order. It is not a corridor. It is a system—a messy one, with loops, backflows, stagnant pockets, and occasional instabilities.”

The surf rolled in and retreated.

“You arrived here through one of the less stable sections,” the crab said. “So the question of when becomes—” It hesitated. Tilted forward. “—flexible.”

Jack watched the water.

“That still leaves the most important question of all,” the crab said, quieter now.

“Who am I,” Jack said.

“Yes.”

“I know who I am.”

“Do you.”

“Jack Vale,” he said. “I’m Jack Vale.”

The crab made a small, thoughtful motion with one claw.

“That is a name. Useful thing, names. Portable. Social. Comforting. Humans are very attached to them.” It leaned forward. “But do not mistake it for an answer to the question.”

Jack said nothing.

“People gather identifiers the way shore birds gather bright scraps. Names. Histories. Occupations. Preferences. Injuries. Desires. They stack them carefully, arrange them, defend them.” The claw moved again, tracing an invisible shape in the air. “A display, essentially.”

It paused.

“No. Not a display. Displays are at least honest about their purpose.” Another pause. “A nest, perhaps. Though that also feels incorrect. Nests are functional. Deliberate. Built for survival.”

The crab’s eyestalks angled toward him.

“What most people construct is closer to decoration. An arrangement of reassuring fragments designed to imply coherence.” A beat. “Performative, if you prefer a less charitable term.”

Jack frowned.

“You say your name like it resolves the question,” the crab continued. “But if I removed the name, would anything essential disappear? If I replaced it with another, would you become someone else? Probably not. Which suggests the answer is either incomplete… or you have mistaken the label for the thing itself.”

The lone gull made one more speculative pass. The crab didn’t acknowledge it. The gull corrected itself independently, veering off with noticeably less dignity than before.

Jack was quiet for a while. Then—

“Do I need to ask why am I? Or can we skip ahead to the part where you answer the first question?”

The crab went still.

“That,” it said at last, “is the most interesting thing you’ve said so far.”

Its antennae twitched once before settling.

“Most people cannot resist the urge. They arrive here—pantless or otherwise—after surviving whatever catastrophe delivered them, and within minutes they begin demanding explanation. Why me. Why this. Why now.” It made a faint clicking sound. “As though the universe maintains a coherent filing system and they are entitled to review their case folder.”

Jack watched the surf creep closer and shifted farther up the beach.

“The question has ruined more people than famine, war, or the specific humiliation of loving someone who has quietly decided to become a stranger.” A pause. “Not because there are too few answers. Quite the opposite. There is an endless surplus of why.”

The crab angled one eye toward him.

“Everyone has one. Usually several. Religion provides them wholesale. Politics manufactures them industrially. Lovers improvise them. Parents inflict them on children before the children develop adequate defenses.” It clicked softly again. “Most are wrong. Worse, many are comforting.”

Another wave rolled in.

“The useful answers—the rare ones with actual structural integrity—almost never arrive when demanded. People stumble into them sideways, years later, while attempting something entirely unrelated. Buying fruit. Burying a dog. Standing in line for soup. The universe, for reasons that remain irritatingly consistent, appears to prefer ambush over revelation.”

The crab gave a small shrug.

“The fact that you are attempting to avoid the question suggests either unusual wisdom…” It paused. “Or a lifelong commitment to denial. In practice, the distinction is often academic.”

Jack considered that and stood up.

“So,” he said. “Again. Where am I.”

The crab studied him for a moment longer than seemed necessary.

“You are in the Beneath,” it said.

A beat.

“Beneath the Above, but above the Beneath that lies below. And below that Beneath, another Beneath, though that one is less hospitable and not currently relevant, so we will ignore it for now.”

Jack stared at it.

“Above the Above you came from, there are additional Aboves. This continues in both directions.”

A small shrug.

“Endlessly, as far as anyone can determine, which is to say, not very far.”

Jack looked out at the ocean.

“This particular Beneath has a beach,” the crab added. “Not all of them do. You are, in that respect, fortunate.”

Jack nodded once.

“And my pants,” he said.

The crab considered that.

“Did not survive the transition,” it said. “Textiles demonstrate poor interstitial resilience.”

A pause.

“And yes,” it added, “for reasons no one fully understands, trousers are disproportionately affected.”