More ideas from receipt paper

Strange events at a beach in Brighton hit the headlines. It is Christmas, there is cold wind blowing. A father and child walk their dog. The father is lecturer in physics in a local college. He explains to his son how time travel might work. They pick up something odd and see a lot of odd anemones and fossils on the beach.

The next day, local papers report the washing up of abnormal amounts of seaweed and fossils. This all immediately attracts the attention of fossil and pre-historic enthusiasts. The fossils themselves are curious but experts do not attach much value to the flotsam.

Story focuses on child who starts school who takes the piece of fossil to school for a “show and tell”. But at the end of the day, he pockets it – it’s a private item after all.

For the next seven years, the small beach in Brighton continues to be a site of some commotion. Year after year, there is more seaweed, more curious objects being washed ashore. First come the depressions in the sand, then the fog and then the stones.

The piece of fossil is named Luke and Luke talks to the boy over the years. It (for it has no gender despite the name) tells the boy of the wonders and horrors of a far off world where sea creatures drift the universe like cells in primordial soup. It tells of crazy clusters of black holes and how sometimes these creatures become so depressed, they disappear into one. It tells the boy of how the creatures are dying out because a strange disease which is inherited. The boy wants to meet the parent-creature which Luke is a part of. Segments are scattered all over the UK and even over the globe, collected and pocketed by people who visit the beach.

Then one day, it all gathers pace, bones, flesh and mucus start to appear in the air on the beach. The place is cordoned off. Investigation teams are called in. All manner of people assemble and camp out at the beach. There are the classic "doomsday" lot, the odd hippies. The child stays away from the beach, from all of it.

Christmas day, seven years on, the creature finally materializes. It is a victim of time-travel gone wrong. It is dead when it arrives and has been so for a millenia. Luke's voice grows weaker and weaker as that date approaches and on Christmas eve, says goodbye to the boy forever. That small alcove is now overgrown with seaweed. The boy's father has landed a post at a university in London, the boy has broken up with his first girlfriend and started a job at a small cafe.

Life goes on.