Page 17 - WTP VOl. X #6

pened. My hands scooped up the orange jug, and
I went to where the sea pulled and pushed at my kneecaps. “This one’s for you Ellis.” I bailed the words out to sea. Behind me, I could feel the mothers begin gathering their children, ushering them away. “So good she’s been to me,” I continued, “To Ellis’s health! A long and wealth-ridden career to her!” I popped the cap and let it loose.
I drank. Long. Hard.
I swallowed two thirds of the puddle. Then, I fell. The first sensation was purple. Waves of purple washed red behind my sealed eyelids. Salt—mos- quito larva?—flamed up my nostrils and bloated my belly. I sank through quicksand, pulled, sucked through a straw. Down, down. I saw my nerves like electric veins curl and snap along my neck, torso, toes, the ends of my hair. Soon I’d be with Janey
at the bottom of the pitless puddle. So close then. If I reached, our fingertips would touch. The red shadowed into a deep wine color.
Hands, firm, knowing, rose me. Up! I surfaced and my lungs hijacked me in guttural coughs, deep and retch- ing. Ellis’s arm cinched my waist. We were neck high and yards from shore. She was there. I didn’t know what to believe. She crawled us up the beach, drag- ging against the waves. The water sucked us back by the ankles.
She beat my back with a fist. I puked. Chunks of toast and salt water puddled under me. I spit sand and grit until bruised flowers blossomed and vanished in the periphery of my vision. I lay back. Ellis lay too.
The wind fell dead out of the air around our star- fished bodies. A cloud stopped on its course across the setting sun as waves tugged the shore like a sheet out from under us. Above the rush and fall of the sea
I thought I heard a church bell call somewhere down- town. I knew then that if I could think and send Janey a thought, wherever she was, I would think I loved her. Ellis’s hand gripped my wrist, hard.
“Why this?” I asked the sky. “You slipped,” Ellis said.
Brokaw is a Philadelphia-based emerging short fiction writer. They hold a Bachelor of Science from Arizona State University, and an Associate of Arts from Glendale Community College. Their work explores the convergence of periphery worlds: the speculative, the lyrical, and the non-binary.
“Iswallowed two thirds of the puddle.
Then, I fell. The first sen- sation was purple. Waves of purple washed red behind my sealed eyelids. Salt — mosquito larva? — flamed up my nostrils and bloated my belly.“
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