The Beach Journal

Through the format of one man’s daily journal entries, The Beach Journal documents one young man's time living in self-exile in a cave on a deserted beach far from civilization. Throughout the story he makes only vague references to some sort of catastrophic disaster that’s befallen the human race, which has forced him to remain here. As days turn to months, the protagonist grows to be more aware and concerned of his surroundings and slowly finds things to occupy his time, whether he seeks them out or they simply force him to take notice. He explores deep into the cave that he resides in, he samples wild plants in the hopes of having a hallucinatory experience, a body washes up on the beach at one point, and over the course of the five hundred days he overcomes injuries, crippling fears, and natural disasters. At the same time, it is possible that he begins to go mad, and with the journal as the reader’s only window into this world, we are not sure how much of what he writes is even true.