A Day at The BeachIf I wasn't so worried about the tide it would be surprisingly peaceful being sand. Despite the fact that I couldn't inhale I could still smell the salt of the ocean. I felt a bit of myself trickle down to the beach, which was the only movement I had done for hours. The moon wasn't quite full but it still provided enough light for me to see the beach out of the corner of my eye. I'm not sure how I was able to do that since I wasn't able to actually move my eyes, but that didn't stop me from watching the waves as they slowly climbed the beach, smoothing the sand, and washing away the shadows cast by the footsteps that had been left over from everyone else who had long since left. The soft hiss of the waves lapping at the beach usually was one of my favorite things to listen to, but were now my principal cause of anxiety. I really didn't want to know what would happen if I washed away, but I was worried that unless I was rescued I would soon find out. This was not how I had planned on ending my day at the beach when I had arrived earlier that day.When I came to the beach everything had seemed perfect. Some light clouds had covered the sun, but the sand was still toasty and it felt fantastic between my toes.As I planned what to do next I looked around to see where my sister Kris had gotten to. She's a couple years younger than me, but in all honesty probably quite a bit smarter. Not that I'm stupid. In fact during school most of my classmates would consider me the person to ask if they had questions. Though mostly that was because I worked hard to learn the material and get good grades. My sister on the other hand was one of those people who seemed to naturally excel at everything without trying.I finally spotted her jogging over to me from a group of guys she had been talking to. My sister and I were almost an investigation in opposites. While I would probably be described as on the awkward side of tall and the heavy side of athletic, my sister was around 5’ tall and didn’t seem to have an ounce of fat on her. While I was wearing a conservative one piece my sister was showing off much more skin than I would ever consider revealing in a light blue bikini. Pulling to a stop she declared, “Hey Liz, we need to enter the sand sculpture contest. I was just talking with some boys who are doing it and one of them is really cute. I want to impress him.”“I don’t know if I could be that much help; I’m not that artistic, and besides I was hoping to go for a swim.” I said without much hope of getting out of it.Kris glared at me and with a low voice whispered, “Elizabeth, I really want to do this and I need your help. Now come with me.”When my sister gets an idea in her head she is almost unstoppable. It's usually pointless for anyone to argue with my sister, but for me I didn't even have the opportunity to do so. I felt my necklace activate as it started forcing my feet to follow my sister.---My sister had given me that necklace two years ago. I was laying on my bed listening to music when my sister knocked on my door.and peeking in said, “Hey, I’ve been working on something and I want to show it to you. Can you come to my room?”As I stepped around the the piles of clutter in my sister's room she picked a small black box up off her desk and handed it to me, “This is for you, I cast some of it myself.”Inside the box was a golden chain necklace. It was very simple with the only irregularities from the small links being a pair of larger loops to either side of the center three links, the clasp on the back and a very small metal plate attaching the clasp to the necklace. It was rare that my sister got me anything except for Christmas or my birthday, and the necklace did look very nice so I tried it on.As soon as I had taken my hands away from the necklace my sister almost shouted, ”Stop moving except to breathe. Don’t say anything.”I froze in place my arms stuck mid way down from clasping the necklace, exactly where they had been when my sister told me to stop moving. I tried to ask Kris what was happening but my lips were locked together tight.“Ok, Lets see. Arms at your side. Feet together. Stand up straight. Eyes forward.”Despite my protests, I felt my body obey my sisters commands. My arms slapping to my sides and my heels clicking together. Even my eyes were stuck looking just past my sister.“Oh, we are going to have so much fun with this. Now I want to make sure that this isn’t just you faking it. What’s something you would never do? Let’s see… “ she said as she pulled out the halter top, hat, and mini skirt witch costume she wore the Halloween before last. “You gave me all sorts of grief for wearing this to that party. Change into it,” she said as she tossed the costume down at my feet.With a flash of hope I reached up to remove the necklace, but before I could reach the clasp I heard my sister say “Stop.”“That was a close one. Let’s try this again. Liz, change into this without taking off the necklace, and then back to your soldier pose.”My body immediately started changing into the costume she had given me. I wanted to pull the necklace off as I lifted my shirt, but whatever hold my sister had over me would have none of that. When I had finished putting on the last piece of her costume I was left standing there in a too small and ridiculous outfit as my sister walked around me poking me with her cold finger in my exposed back and watching me wobble back and forth as she admired her work.“It looks like everything is working as promised,” my sister smiled as she walked back in front of me and picked up a small booklet from the table. Opening it she read, “OK, cast hair of the owner into the link, have the target put on the necklace, Here we go. Hierarchy of commands. According to this I should be able to give you different levels of commands.”“Now this is the root command and it will supersede all other commands unless I specifically say the new command supersedes it: If your life or the life of someone else is in danger you may stop obeying any commands that you need to for the express purpose of saving that life. By ‘life in danger’ I mean actual physical danger or significant bodily harm, not ‘oh I’m so embarrassed my life is over’ type stuff, and you are to attempt to deviate from my orders as little as possible when you do have to ignore them in a life or death situation.”“These next orders are just below the root command. Don’t take off that necklace, let anyone else take it off, or let anyone know about what it does, or in any other way about my control.”“I think that covers it but I want to have a chance to think about it more before I give you back control. Still its pretty cool isn’t it. I’ve been working on learning magic. I’ve done well with several spells, but with a lot of them they are supposedly a lot easier to cast on a person. A rock from the garden is easy to get a hold of but spells consider it to be just a bunch particles since it doesn’t really have a spirit keeping it together, but with your help I’ll really be able to start practicing. So what do you think? You may answer in a quiet voice.”“Kris, this is really weirding me out. I’m starting to panic. If you needed help practising, I would have been happy to help you, but being stuck like this really frightens me.”“Don’t worry, you’ll be fine. I just couldn’t take the chance of you telling people about my magic. I want to keep it a secret for now. Oh, that reminds me you can’t tell anyone about my magic. Besides you might have gotten creeped out after I started practicing transformation spells on you,” my sister said as she started messing with my hair.I tried to turn my head to glare at her but but try as I might my neck stubbornly refused to listen to me. Suddenly I heard a car pull into the driveway, and two pairs of shoes get out and start walking towards the door.“Dang, Mom and Dad are home, I wanted more time to make sure I hadn’t left any loopholes. Quick, walk into my closet.”My feet turned and I found myself walking towards her open closet door. I was able to make myself turn around, but I couldn’t stop myself from entering.“Ok, stay here and stay quiet. I’ll cover for you,” my sister said as she pulled the clothes that had been blocking the door out of the way and started closing it on me.“You're not covering for me, you're kidnaping me,” I silently shouted as the doors hinges groaned and with a final thud closed sealing me in darkness.I heard my sister walk out of her room and down the stairs “Hi Mom, Hi Dad, how did the errands go?”“Great, we got some Thai food on the way back to share with you. Where’s your sister.”“She went out with some friends. She said that she would be back tomorrow.”“Thats too bad, but we’ll put some in the fridge for when she gets back.”I was stuck up there all night listening to my family eat dinner without me. I kept wishing they would call to check up on me, but I was known as always being the responsible older child so they didn’t even think to call me.After a couple hours of listening to them watching TV I heard my parents head off to bed, the sound of their feet going right past the room I was silently stuck in. After that my sister opened the closet door and whispered to me, “Sorry I had to leave you up here. I want to make sure that I don’t leave any loopholes with my rules, so I’m going to sleep on it. Since I told them that you were with friends I can’t risk you going back to your bed tonight so you can just stay in here. They should leave before ten tomorrow, which should be the best time to have you ‘come back.’”I ended up being stuck in that closet till 1:00 pm the next day, and since then, whenever my sister told me to do something that horrid necklace that she gave me made sure I did it.---So when my sister ordered me to come help her make a sand sculpture I had no choice to follow her as she signed up and lead the way to our space on the outer edge of the contest area.We started piling up sand and I was actually having a little fun despite the fact that what I really wanted to do was go for a swim. We packed the sand into the rough shape of a person, but I’m not particularly artistic, and my sister had no practice with sand or sculpture. While someone might have been able to guess that it was a person we had sculpted, the crumbly and lumpy statue definitely wasn’t going to impress the judges, or the boys that my sister was interested in.“I know what we need,” my sister announced. “Liz go lay down next to the sculpture. A model will help me make it look better.”Since we were working in an area that had previously been underwater the sand wasn't nearly as warm as the spot I had initially picked out when I arrived at the beach, but it wasn’t too uncomfortable, and I admit I took some pleasure watching my sister struggle with her sand sculpture.After the arm she was working on collapsed for at least the third time, she drove her arm though the pathetic remains of her sculpture and sat down with a hough, “This isn’t working.”With as little a smile as possible I replied, “I could have told you that but when you set your mind to something the only one who can get you to stop is you. How about we just enjoy the beach.”“I’m not giving up yet, I just need to think for a moment.”I really wanted to get up and do something else at this point, but my sister had ordered me to stay still and model for her, so until she gave me permission I couldn’t do so much as lift a finger or turn my head. Luckily the light clouds had kept the sun from being uncomfortable, and I was able to open my eyes and look at her, “Would you mind if I got up now. I would like to do some of the stuff that I was actually looking forward to doing today.”“Not yet. I think I have an idea. I don’t know the right moisture for the sand to make a sculpture but the other contestants do, I might be able to use a spell to copy them, but there’s no way I will be able to do it with sand already on the beach. There’s too many grains for me to grab them all with a spell, and at this point, I wouldn’t be able to finish a good sculpture in time anyways, so instead maybe I could… ” At this point my sister who had been talking quieter and quieter started to whisper.Looking up at the clouds, I tried to ask her what she was thinking but I found myself unable to talk. Panicking I realised I wasn’t breathing either. My sister had transformed me. Unlike some other times I could still feel my arms and legs, despite the fact that I had no way to move them. Paying close attention I was sure I didn’t feel solid, but rather like I was just barely holding together. Of course I didn’t need to feel that to realise that my sister had turned me into her sand sculpture.She looked over standing just above my head and said, “That should be perfect. This will definitely get the guys attention. You just stay here and look pretty and I’ll smooth out the sand where we were working so no one will be able to tell that you aren’t my original sculpture.”For the last fifteen minutes of the contest Kris milled about the area pretending to work on me while she waited for the contest to finish. When the judges finally came over she put her hand on her hip and asked them if they had ever seen a better sculpture.One of the two female judges complained that it wasn’t very creative, but the male judge said that it was actually quite unique. Everyone else had tried to make something big and complicated but there was something nice about the simplicity of my sisters “sand sculpture.”The final female judge got real close to me before calling the other judges over. Holding her pen uncomfortably close to my eye she started to point out details to the other judges. “Look at the details on the eyes here. She didn’t just stop at pupils but did the iris to, and if you look at her skin, you can almost see the pores. Then take a look at her swimsuit it's almost impossible to see with the size of the grains but somehow she has even added stitching to it. The composition might be simple but I have never seen this much attention to detail.”After the judges a bunch of beachgoers passed by to ogle me as I laid there in the sand. My sister had went off to find the guys she was interested in soon as the judges left, and I could just make out her leading the boys over, practically pulling one of them by the arm.When they arrived about half of them looked a little disappointed.“It’s just a girl laying down. We did a dragon.”“I think it looks good. A dragon is easy because no one knows if your proportions are off. A person is much harder to get right.”“I think her proportions might actually be off.”“No she is just taller than what most guys are into. If you take that into account she looks fine. “It’s nice to see someone do art of someone do art of an average looker rather than a super beautiful and exaggerated model.”“I don’t know if they are that tall they shouldn’t be that thick. I think I can see some abs on it.”By this point I wanted to storm off leaving them in a cloud of my dust. Too tall. Average! THICK! If my sister would release me I would show them thick.Of course my sister wasn’t paying attention to that she was asking one of the guys where they were planning on going next.“We were actually about to go grab a bite to eat. Would you like to come with us,” replied the one with the sandy blond hair that my sister couldn’t keep her eyes off of.”“That sounds great,” my sister said as she turned to go with them leaving me lying there on the beach.At first I thought I was lucky to be at the edge of the sand sculpture contest. I was able to watch all the people to my left doing everything that I had hoped to do when I came here. My opinion about my placement changed however when one of the beachgoers running to catch a frisbee stepped on my arm.I felt my arm around my elbow and a small piece of my stomach give way under the pressure of his foot as my sand flowed around him, and then was flung into the air when his foot lifted back up as he lept over the rest of me.>>As the sun started to set and I felt my body start to cool, I wondered if my sister was going to come back for me. She had a habit of leaving me behind when it was convenient for her. Up till now the worst had probably been when we went to the department store.It was less than a year after my sister got the necklace on me. I had moved into my own apartment but visited my family often. We had just arrived at the store to look at clothes, when she informed me that she was going to return the jeans she was wearing and use the credit to buy something new.Looking at her I raised my eyebrow and asked, “And how do you intend to do that since you didn’t bring any other clothes with you?”“Oh, that’s simple I’ll just borrow your skirt.”“No your won’t. I need it.”“Don’t worry no one will even notice. Now give it to me.”I tried to resist but I felt the necklace take control of my body and pass my skirt to my sister.“I’m going to go to the changing rooms to put this on, but before I go give me a sexy pose.” my sister ordered.Hating every minute of it I put my hand on my hip and shifted my weight doing the best pose I could.“Perfect, and there. Now you’re a mannequin. No one will care if you don’t have a skirt on now. After I return this pants I’m going to do shopping. I’ll be back to get you later.”I sat there waiting but before I had even finished the I’s on my list of how I was going to kill my sister after this (icebox, iron maiden, insects) employees started turning off the lights and lowering the gates over the store entrances.I sat there though the whole night.The next day I was moved to the underwear section since apparently that's where they thought I was supposed to be, and had my clothing changed.It wasn’t till the fourth day that my sister finally arrived. Looking around she whispered to me, “Sorry I got caught up shopping. I met some friends and didn’t realise that the store was closing until it was too late. The next day I had a date and it would have been weird to walk to this side of the mall from the movie theater, and yesterday between the new tv show that came out, and all my errands being on the other side of town I wasn’t near the mall.”It's a 15 minute drive from our house! I silently shouted.“Now, I just remembered this morning that tomorrow is our cousins birthday, and after buying the outfit for my date I’m a little strapped for cash. I also realise that considering what you are wearing you probably don’t want me to change you back right now, so I think I found the perfect solution.”Kris gave one last look around and pulling a skirt and t-shirt from he purse threw them around my neck. Chanting under her breath she pointed her finger at me and I saw her start to grow taller. As the display I was next to started to tower over me I felt myself start to fall backwards and with a little click my back hit the ground. My sister’s massive hand reached down and wrapping its huge fingers around me lifted me up to chest height. She bent my arms up and fixed my t-shirt and skirt.“Madalin is going to love you. I just need you to be my gift for her until I get paid next week and can buy a replacement to switch you out with. Actually I already have plans for that paycheck, so maybe the week after that.”--Of course when she had turned me into a mannequin despite my embarrassment and my boredom I had still been relatively safe. As a sand sculpture I didn’t feel safe at all.After the guy with the frisbee stepped on me there were some people who took that as permission to touch the same place. As there fingers traced along the edges of my damage area I would try to shiver as it sent small cascades of sand falling down off me.Worse than the people were the seagulls. When you can move they don’t seem scary but stuck there unable to shue them off as they landed on me they were terrifying. I could feel their talons digging into my soft body and their pointed beaks were far too close for comfort. Luckily for me the sand I had been turned into didn’t have anything edible in it, but still, if I never see a seagull again, it will be too soon.Eventually both the people and the birds left the beach, but instead of being able to relax, I was filled with dread. The moon was rising, and with it I knew the tide would soon be coming in and all I could do was pray that my sister would come back before it consumed me.This is about the place where you came in. I had been laying here listening for hours the tide was finally coming to take me away. My sister has always been able to change me back in the past whenever she turned me into something, but I didn’t know if she could do it if I am scattered over half the beach.Then I finally felt it. My ankle was wet. As the hissing tide rose up towards me again I felt a piece of my foot fall off and swirl in tiny eddies as the water retreated back down the beach. Again and again the edge of the sea came up shimmering in the moonlight, taking little pieces of me and spreading them out over the beach.Just as the water was reaching my hips I spotted a shadow walking towards me over the beach. With a mental shout of joy I recognised the thin figure as my sister. Looking over me with a scowl she turned around and walked up the beach to one of the garbage cans. Reaching in she pulled out a soda cup and brought it back over to me.With no warning she scooped up about half my face and a good portion of the beach with the cup, before she lifted me up and started walking back towards the hotel we were staying at. Being in three places was quite disorienting. A small part of me was staring up out of the sticky soda cup at my sister’s scowling face, but the majority of me was still on the beach. The largest part was still what was left of the sand sculpture but that was quickly breaking apart and being spread out by the tide.Now that I was less worried I had a chance to appreciate the feel of the water carrying all the little pieces of me. Moving in and out lifting me up and then setting me down it felt like breathing. Spread out over so much of the beach I felt like a small part of something massive, and despite my constant motion I felt like I was part of the beach, immovable and solid.Finally my sister started speaking to me pulling my attention to the part of me in the plastic cup.“That guy was a jerk.” My attention quickly shifted from parts of me being tossed around in the tide to the part of me that was being tossed around in the cup as my sister started gesturing wildly while talking, ”I mean he acted so nice and interested and then I find out he is already in a serious relationship, who does that. Leading me on like that. I should've changed him into trash and thrown him out.”I listened to her rant all the way back to the hotel, hoping she wouldn’t lose too much of me as she swung my cup around. Finally she walked into our room and dumped me out in the middle of the floor. I felt my grains cascade down into the carpet fibers as I poured over myself. I was now in 5 places. A small misshapen lump that was all that was left of the sculpture I was, a thin layer that was being constantly swept over the beach, the bits of me that had fallen out of the cup as my sister walked back here, the lump on the floor, and the bits that were left stuck to the dried soda in the cup.My sister took a piece of chalk out of her bag and spent several minutes drawing some type of symbol around me. Then she raised her arms and with a short chant I was suddenly in just one place again.Sitting there on the floor covered in sand I almost had a panic attack. As sand in the tide I had been feeling and moving so much that turning back into human almost felt like I had gone numb and the shock of going from sand swirling about in cold water ocean to warm flesh made me feel like I was boiling alive. Sitting there in shock from the loss of feeling I noticed that my mouth was coated with sand, ironically that was one thing I didn’t notice when my entire mouth was made of the stuff. The feel of that sand in my mouth tasting just slightly of mountain dew gave me something to focus on and slowly I started to get used to being flesh and blood again.“I’m pretty tired,” my sister yawned as she turned and walked towards the bathroom, “so I’m going to head off to sleep. Clean up the sand that you got on the floor before you go to bed.”