{"id":25377,"date":"2025-02-18T13:19:40","date_gmt":"2025-02-18T18:19:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/?p=25377"},"modified":"2025-02-18T13:19:40","modified_gmt":"2025-02-18T18:19:40","slug":"the-man-on-the-beach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/the-man-on-the-beach\/","title":{"rendered":"The Man on the Beach"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"position: relative; padding-top: max(60%,326px); height: 0; width: 100%;\"><iframe style=\"position: absolute; border: none; width: 100%; height: 100%; left: 0; right: 0; top: 0; bottom: 0;\" src=\"https:\/\/e.issuu.com\/embed.html?backgroundColor=%23e1e1e1&amp;d=february_march_2025&amp;hideIssuuLogo=true&amp;pageNumber=96&amp;u=portlandmagazine\" sandbox=\"allow-top-navigation allow-top-navigation-by-user-activation allow-downloads allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-modals allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox allow-forms\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\">By Will Hodgkinson<\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><span class=\"s1\">I <\/span>don\u2019t know how long I have been following the man on the beach. And I don\u2019t know why I am following him. But reasons no longer matter\u2014if they ever did. It is enough that we are the only two people on this beach, alone together in the white mist which has erased the outside world.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\">Outlined black against this whiteness, he remains the sole constant of my perspective, as permanent in his motion as I am. We move in tandem, he a hundred yards ahead: the quarry, Mr. X. Me striding behind: the hunter, the murderous stalker, the grim detective, avenging his partner\u2019s murder. I adopt each of these roles in turn, then shed them one after the other. None fits. Playacting cannot justify our chase. It has become its own justification, its own base arithmetic, one stride matching the next.<\/p>\n<p><em>Read the full story in the digital magazine above.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-25378\" src=\"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Fiction.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"536\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Fiction.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Fiction-980x513.jpg 980w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Fiction-480x251.jpg 480w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 0px) and (max-width: 480px) 480px, (min-width: 481px) and (max-width: 980px) 980px, (min-width: 981px) 1024px, 100vw\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New Fiction by Will Hodgkinson<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25379,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,112],"tags":[1494],"class_list":["post-25377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-fiction","tag-february-march-2025"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25377"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25377\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25393,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25377\/revisions\/25393"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}