Stavanger Bay "-- you look like somebody just walked over your grave.”

It had been six days and four hours since he'd last imbibed. There was still a swagger to the way the man moved across the sandy beach, weaving one way and then another, until he stopped to stare at the open sea. The sky was emblazoned with transitional plum-to-inferno, which had him squinting.
Hunched there with nothing but the writhing tide as company, the ragged cough that seized the man's lungs was almost imperceptible by comparison.