#hippiewells

The sun hung low over Sunnyside Beach, turning Lake Ontario to molten gold. The boardwalk behind Wells was alive with the easy drift of late 60s summer, laughing voices, radio music spilling thinly through the air, the smell of cigarettes, weed, and lake water all tangled together in the fading heat of the day. But out by the shore, where the wet sand cooled beneath his bare feet, it felt quieter. Far enough from the city to breathe. Far enough from everyone else to think.

Wells sat with his guitar across his lap and a dog-eared notebook beside him, one page already crowded with scratched-out lyrics and half-finished lines. He had been chasing the same melody for what felt like forever, circling the same chords until even they seemed tired of him. Every time he thought he was close to something real, it slipped away. Too obvious. Too shallow. Too pretty without meaning.

He played the progression again anyway, fingers moving automatically over the strings. A soft, sun-warmed sound rose into the evening air and disappeared beneath the hush of the waves.

“No,” he muttered to himself, shaking his head.

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, staring out over the water. Behind him, the city still existed in its usual weight of streets and expectations, but here at the lake it felt farther away, blurred out by the breeze and the light. He wanted the song to sound like this moment felt—open, searching, a little lonely, but beautiful for it. Something honest. Something bigger than the usual noise.

Instead, all he had were fragments.

He picked up the notebook and looked at the latest attempt.

I want the light, Crossed out.

I hear the sky, Crossed out harder.

Wells laughed under his breath and let the notebook fall back into the sand. “Brilliant,” he said dryly. “A real poet.”

He strummed once more, softer now, then let the chord ring until it dissolved into the sound of the water. Around him the beach was beginning to turn amber and violet. Couples wandered the shoreline. A group farther down the sand passed around a bottle and laughed like the whole evening belonged to them. Somebody had brought a blanket, somebody else a transistor radio, and the music drifting over from that direction sounded dreamy and far away, as if it had already started leaving the ordinary world behind.

Wells watched them for a while.

Then, slowly, he reached into the pocket of his faded denim jacket.

He had not meant to use it so soon. Maybe not at all. It had been more of a possibility when he’d come down to the beach—a small paper square tucked away like a dare to himself. A way past the wall if the wall refused to move. He turned it over once in his fingers, looking at it in the last wash of sunlight.

Maybe that was the problem. Maybe he was still trying to write from inside the cage of everything he already knew. Same thoughts. Same doors. Same careful limits. Maybe if he stepped outside them, even just once, the music would finally find him.

He sat very still for a moment, feeling the breeze move through his hair.

Then he placed the tab on his tongue.

For a while, nothing happened.

The lake kept rolling in. The gulls still cried overhead. The guitar still rested warm against his thighs. Wells played a few more chords, slower now, watching the light drain lower and lower across the surface of the water. He almost convinced himself he’d imagined the whole thing.

Then the sound changed.

Not louder. Not stranger, exactly. Just deeper. As if the strings were no longer making music alone, but pulling it out of the air around him. The note lingered longer than it should have, shimmering faintly. Wells frowned and played it again.

This time he could have sworn the water answered.

He lifted his head.

The sunset had become impossibly rich, as though someone had turned up the color of the world by hand. Gold deepened into yellow so bright it seemed to glow from inside itself. The violet clouds above the lake stretched longer than clouds were meant to stretch, curling like brushstrokes across the sky. The breeze against his skin felt warmer, then cooler, then warmer again, each shift carrying its own rhythm.

Wells sat motionless, his hand resting on the neck of the guitar.

A laugh escaped him, small and disbelieving.

“Well,” he murmured.

The notebook pages fluttered though there was hardly any wind now. The crossed-out lines no longer looked dead on the paper. They seemed to pulse faintly, like they were waiting for him to come back and hear them properly. Even the city behind him no longer felt heavy. It felt distant. Softened. As if Toronto itself had stepped back to let something else come forward.

Wells strummed again, and this time the chord bloomed outward in color.

Not metaphorically. Not in the poetic sense he’d been trying and failing to capture all evening. He could actually see it, warm yellow spilling through the air like a ribbon, rippling out over the sand and across the edge of the water. The wave that answered it rose with a shimmer of impossible gold, and for one strange, breathless second Wells had the overwhelming sense that the lake was listening.

His pulse kicked hard, but not from fear.

From wonder.

The world around him was beginning to loosen. The shoreline no longer felt fixed. The sky seemed to open wider with every breath he took. Somewhere behind him the distant beach music stretched itself into something brighter, stranger, almost playful. The ordinary rules were slipping, quietly and completely, and Wells could feel himself slipping with them.

He looked down at the guitar in his hands, then back out at the glowing water.

The last thing he saw of the real world was the sun melting gold across Lake Ontario.

Then the yellow began to spread.

To be continued...