The Various and Important Dangers of Ohio Beaches

The Various and Important Dangers of Ohio Beaches

1) They will not let you stay on the beach at night. First a man will make an announcement, the very minute slash second that the sun goes down he will say "The beach is now closing." If you do not leave the water immediately, first they send a patrol in a sand buggy with headlights careening down the coast towards you. If you refuse to come in from the water, the frogmen are deployed from the base underneath the lighthouse. If you positioned yourself correctly at the far end, you have ten minutes to hide. The frogmen have underwater propulsion packs. If you manage to get out of the water undetected and into the treeline, your best bet is to head for a high tree. See #2.

2) Night monkeys. All Ohio beaches are infected with night monkeys, a particularly hostile and territorial type of squirrel monkey. During the day they are benign and dormant, but at night they are vicious defenders of their nest, and have no aversion to eating meat. Once they start to swarm, you are out of luck. Even if you drop out of the tree, they will continue to pursue you, dozens at a time. Your only mercy is that these vermin are slower on the sand than up above in the foliage, so make for clear sand. But then of course, frogmen. Enslavement in the salt mines has to be better than being eaten by monkeys though. I think.
3) Death by rocks. Swallowed up by the rocks. Cut and poisoned by rocks. Beat to death under the water by rocks. Seduced into the rocks' worldview, which includes suicide as a viable way to get out of paying taxes. Tripped by rocks and hurled face first into the wooden picket fence. Accidentally eat a rock and have really good digestion for a few years, but then die because you ate a rock. Accidentally eat a rock and don't die, but then go on a talk show and later get your own TLC show as the girl who eats rocks, be unable to live with your fans constantly sending you baskets of gravel, die on a cocaine molly binge drowning in a kiddie pool in your backyard naked.

4) Pirates. Vagabonds. Marauders. Dogs. All things that travel in packs and want to eat your intestines. Pretty easily avoidable though.

5) Kidnapped by shadow people and forced to breed with them, in their attempt to make their species take corporeal form. Shadow people have barbed genitals, like cats. Also they only drink lake water for sustenance. When a shadow person is born, it chews it's way out from utero. To protect yourself from being taken, never engage a shadow person in funny little dances or miming for your friends. Always carry a torch with you. Don't let them get behind you. Travel in groups.

6) Yeast and Algae monsters. Banished most of the year to the deeper parts of the lake, these terrifying blooms of filthy nasty toxic teeming bacteria are sentient and naturally mean. On very hot days, they like to swim inland to bask in the radioactivity of our dying sun, and this is when you must watch out for them the most. Have you ever had a yeast infection? Now imagine a fully body yeast infection. Or bleeding from your eyes. Or developing alien strength, speed and gills. Never eating solid food again because your body produces energy by photosynthesis. Their tentacles reach deep under the water, to grab at your ankles, and all it takes it one open hole in your body, a cut or your mouth or the inside of your eyes, and you're infected. Done for.


7) Sand Sharks. Sharks that live under the sand and eat your spare change, flip flops, blankets, wallets, tshirts, bikini bottoms, also your piggly wiggly little toes and your feeling of well being. Their teeth are rounded like herbivores, but their jaws have the force of giant construction machines, and you can hear them coming by the grinding of their molars and the shaking of the dunes.

8) The Illusion. The thing that happens when your mind refuses to accept that you are not at the beach all the time, and will not function in any other mode. You may be at the office, but you are at the beach. You are in bed, but you are at the beach. You are standing in line at the DMV but you are at the beach. The flashes of disassociated sun will get more and more frequent, until the afflicted slips into a permanent beach coma, where they are unable to stand upright, and may actually sunburn without exposure. Sometimes you will hear them humming in their dreams, a back and forth tide sound. When you stand in the ward surrounded by them, it becomes an actual wave, sshhing and swooshing on their tongues.