A Day at the Beach

Between her struggles, she paused to consider how she had arrived at this moment. Her money had bought her the mansion, one much larger than she would ever need, as well as this private beach. The public beaches were so filthy and crawling with rabble...and their terrible offspring. Here she could do as she pleased, even taking a walk in the nude, and never have to deal with any of her inferiors.

Little did she know that a sinkhole had been forming under the beach, turning a large swath of it into quicksand. She had cursed the forces of nature as she had initially taken the first unwitting step into the mire, thinking only of how her calf had been covered in the muck. She would have to return to the house, possibly dirtying the floor. The servants were still busy cleaning from one of her notoriously bawdy parties from the previous night, and a little mud on the floor wouldn't hurt anything. The lowly laborers would be occupied for at least a few more hours.

Only now was the true danger of her situation becoming apparent to her. She had read that real quicksand will not suck a person under as in the movies, but that once they have sunken to their chest, they would be buoyant, and could gradually work their way out. Much to her alarm, she was finding this to not be the case, as she continued slowly to disappear under the mud. Even more distressing was the fact that the tide was beginning to roll in. She knew the approximate times of the tides on her beach, and high tide was less than an hour away. She could see from the tide marker that once it reached that level, if she could not extricate herself, the water would be several inches above the top of her head.