Wilts
Wilts saw the ocean for the first time when he was twenty-six. Thank you, he said. We were on the Oregon coast where a waterfall was coming off the cliffs, landing on the beach and running through a spiderweb of trenches to the shoreline. The sun had set and what was left of the light had turned the waterfall, and everything really, the rocks, the sand, us, the ocean, translucent and purple. Thank you, thank you, he said, breathing like he wasn’t sure he would ever get to do it again. I half expected to turn around and find him facedown making angel shapes in the sand, like he was talking to God, or the earth or something. I hoped he wasn’t talking to me. I wanted to be with Teo, riding around on Aprhi’s shoulders in the shallow, taking selfies. I didn’t want to be credited with whatever Wilts was experiencing. I ignored him, but he kept saying it. Thank you. Thank you for bringing me here. He was never going to last. It was always like this with Wilts, we’d be doing something normal, like getting gas or watching an ambulance tend to a car wreck, and Wilts would experience some profound depressive episode. It was nothing to be jealous of, but there I was. I wanted to push him over into the sand, fill his mouth with it.
Man, thank yourself, I said. You pitched on gas too.
Side of the Road Somewhere
Two AM, shady back corner, some Seattle parking lot, this couple walks by, guy with lines shaved in the side of his head, parachute sleeves of a bomber jacket shining like paranoid tinfoil in the streetlight, screaming, You fucking slut, you fucking bitch, keep walking I kill you! His sleazy, weasel-y voice stacking up between the red brick, making like a peacock, house of cards, while the chick stays a couple strides ahead taking prissy, poodle steps in heels and a dress, into a darkness, a darker darkness, shade, a shadow, off the main road onto a side road, into an alley, while the guy keeps slogging after her, You bitch, you slut! Until she stops dead in front of some shoehorn sports car, a red Lamborghini or something gross like that, Waya think you’re gunna do? she says, hands fiddling in a disco ball purse and face like she might just pull something. I’ll leave ya a smear on the concrete, guy says, palms out glistening, like he’s expecting something, like they’ve done this a million times. I show ya how ta be nothing, he says, but the chick just pulls a set of keys, glittering the same as the purse, and drops ‘em in the guy’s hand, like of course this is how its gunna go, then tippy-toes around to the passenger side and they both somehow manage the car’s guillotine doors, and the thing starts up like a space craft and whips out the alleyway and I’m there begging, pleading, needing, just flip the thing, man. Hit a pole. Show me what a dead arm looks like hanging from a smashed-out window. Give me something.
Corey dreams of financial security and total ownership over his time, but instead of realizing those dreams he writes fiction, lives with animals, and is about to have a child. You can find some of his stories through his twitter @coreylofsatwit. But those publications are few.
Back Patio Press 