Cordelia Thorne had always prided herself on rational thought, which made her current predicament all the more unsettling. The Palm Beach Bungalows had seemed like paradise when she’d booked her retreat---pristine white sand, crystal waters, and charming thatched-roof cottages dotting the coastline like scattered shells.
The first night, she’d awakened to find sand in her bed, though she’d showered thoroughly before sleep. The second night, she discovered her own footprints leading from her door to the water’s edge, though she had no memory of walking there. The strange thing was how the prints seemed to change as she followed them---human at first, then gradually elongating, the toes webbing together in ways that defied anatomy.
By the fourth day, Cordelia noticed the other guests had begun to change. Their skin took on a translucent quality, almost luminescent in the tropical sun. They moved with a fluid grace that seemed unnatural, and their conversations had dwindled to soft, rhythmic sounds that reminded her uncomfortably of waves lapping against coral.
The elderly groundskeeper, Joachim Kestrel, warned her on the fifth morning while tending to the impossible gardens that seemed to grow overnight. “The bungalows choose their guests,” he whispered, his weathered hands trembling as he pruned flowers that pulsed with their own inner light. “Been here forty years, watched them come and go. Some leave. Others… adapt.”
That evening, Cordelia found herself standing waist-deep in the warm ocean, unable to remember walking there. The water felt different---thicker, almost sentient. Below her feet, she could sense vast structures, geometries that hurt to contemplate. The other guests stood around her in the water, their faces serene, their eyes reflecting depths that had never known sunlight.
As the tide pulled her deeper, Cordelia understood with crystalline clarity that the Palm Beach Bungalows were not a destination---they were a gateway. And she was no longer entirely herself, but something wonderful and terrible, ready to welcome the next unsuspecting guest to paradise.
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