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[un]dertow

THERE stood a house on the edge of the town. Abandoned and painted a bright hue of red, it beckoned the trio of fools as the descending sun cast a cold shadow over their heads and its derelict shingles. A crying silhouette against a white, blood-splatter sky—whose clouds were deceptively spangled with streaks of finest gold and silver—it called to them, enticed them...

Jesse Cosay shut the book with a resolute slam, its covers coughing a clap! through the whispering gills of the copious sheets. A lock of hair floated over his face, knocked askew from his ear by the force of his entrénial. Setting the tome on his lap, he replaced the strands with a casual brush of his hand, yet his momentary negligence of the tomb enabled its papery plexus to splay!

This grotesque efflorescence was met with a spell of indifference from Jesse Cosay, who sought to resign the fluttering words to their cage once again. Only a singular page caught his eye—nay, a phrase: ( dare i say it? ) a raw thought: laid bare: ( —stripped! ) of cloth, cūth, and context! It flickered across Jesse's gaze, folding back into [un]furling, storied sea; leaving upon his lip a thin film of salt, and [un]der his eye, the crest of a Wave: