From the Empirical Archives: Globster by Laura Elizabeth Woollett

Globster

Laura Elizabeth Woollett

Originally published in the December 2012 issue of Empirical

It is a pebble-grey day. We step out of the inn and onto the greypebbled beach. The air is cold brine, gusting our hair. We grimace against it. Our arms are linked, our feet heavily shod. There is no one else on the beach, save the silhouette of a fisherman and someone’s Newfoundland dog.

We came in the middle of down season, and have since lost track of time. Claude’s watch stopped on the first day of vacation. Neither of us would be able to say whether it is morning now or afternoon. We wake every day in a brown-shadowed void. The bed linen is heavy, and has a stale smell that is neither his nor mine. Every day, awakening in that void, my throat is rimmed with despair. I want nothing more than to sleep it away, to lose the whole day in sleep.

Then there is the sickness. It rises in me like a cold sea wave.

Claude has murmured hotly into my ear. He has told me that we are in this together. My conch has been filled with the condensation of his words. Never, ever, did I imagine I’d love a man called Claude.

The Newfoundland is sniffing at something up ahead. Its tail beats the air, a coal-blackened duster. “Perhaps we could get a dog,” says Claude.

We approach the dog. It remains intent on the thing that it is sniffing. The thing is pale, water-bleached. It spreads across the pebbles like a pile of vomit, something choked up by the sea. The smell of it is dull, putrid: a smell of living flesh, reduced to its most shameful elements.

I am still thin, beyond suspicion. I look young and thin in my big coat, almost young enough to be Claude’s daughter. The thing inside me, surely, amounts to much less than the mouthfuls of pale vomit that I have issued into the toilet bowl, morning after morning.

“Barkly! Barkly!” a woman calls the dog from the cliffs above the beach. It continues to nose the glob, the carcass. Claude squeezes my hand and tells me not to worry, that it is probably only the remains of a squid or whale, washed in from the sea.

I do the only thing that I can do; I vomit. It forms a foamy layer, like frogspawn, on the surface of the water. I think that the sea must be full of such waste.

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Flash Fiction Friday: Billy Wants To Return His Gift

Billy Wants To Return His Gift

Bill Dock

For sale: One glass Christmas plat for santa. We put cookys on it. He ate sum but not all. Caruts too, for Rudolf. He forgot to give me the pikahcu game I wanted. I told him twice, at the mall and on the corner when he was in disguise in black skin and had a sine. Ether hes dumb or what daddy calls a sumbich. I sell the plat then I buy the game. If not, I break the plate and leave peeces in the fireplace for nect year. Then hell remember me. Evin with boots.

Flash Fiction Friday: Cheating Boyfriend's Bicycle

Cheating Boyfriend's Bicycle

Audrey DiPlacido

For Sale: Classic Cyclocross bicycle, custom built three months ago by the cheating bastard I hurled out of my life last Saturday. Included are new cross wheels and tires; the frame and all parts have been uniquely painted by that cheating bastard. This is a 2012 Custom Project Bike (photo attached) built for the prestigious Cross Vegas competition. The right side is a corrupt sapphire blue and the left is scandalous red; there is a silver skank stripe down the middle to separate the two colors and all lettering is shaded to give the deceitful appearance of mud splatter. Preferred sale would be piece by piece i.e. hubs, rims, cranks, derailleurs, cranks, stem, saddle spokes, etc. All offers considered with special consideration going to those willing to pose/post the break up of this bike on You Tube for my ex’s cycling team to view!

From the Empirical Archives: Street Corner Bequest by Cake!

Street Corner Bequest

Cake!

Originally Published in the June 2012 Issue of Empirical

Later, I would remember this place just as I would her breath on the back of my neck. We always got along so well, perhaps it was our collective predisposition to being unhappy, perhaps it was because all we had ever known was nurtured by vice and daring: wilted gratification. But we were still young then at the height of our youth, before her cancer, before collapse. The orange glow of the street lights buzzed behind us, illuminating our halos. White noise spilled over the viaduct, and we basked in its waves of calm. And now, years later, I cannot recall it exactly as it was, simply serene beyond anyone; who upon trying to recreate these moments of industrial tranquility, could begin to conceive. I inhaled a hit of nitrous, held my breath and looked to the sky, feeling her next to me, providing salvation like evening prayers.

Exhale, and again.

I gratified my ego there amongst the docks, amongst the sea gulls, the drunks. The child within me giggled with delight as my grimy surroundings transformed into a sparkly playground of fleeting bliss. We sat there, motionless, allowing ourselves to be rocked into periodic sleep by our only constant friend - the Seattle city streets. Desolate on a Monday past midnight, we smoked cigarettes. She turned to me, flushed in rosy artificial light, and said: “Load me one.” Smoke rising from her fingernails, she looked away; as an

afterthought, she added “No, load me a double.”

I laughed sincerely, stating: “I was going to anyways….”

And so I did, and she did as I had done, both of us hopelessly lost in the oceans of our heads. We were beautiful. We were the essence of 21st century youth; doomed and elegantly degenerating, lowering ourselves into our graves dug by hypnotic media, manic preapocalyptic supermodels starving for culture, substance. Passion. We wore it in our hair and stitched it into our clothing. And our guises of combat boots and fairy wings effectively deterred the drunks and tweakers who moved amongst the shadows. Everywhere we went, heads turned and eyes followed our flowing skirts around corners, up escalators. We danced through crowded rooms of rambunctious sanctity as little wisps of seemingly innocent bliss, often stirring sophomoric woes of those who neglected to see the divinity within us. Her and I, sitting on the old park bench, overlooking concrete and childhood, waving goodbye with each empty nitrous canister we emptied into our souls.

Forever, goodbye. And so we sat together alone, and asked ourselves questions: of life and love, where we were going and where we were from. But we never did find any answers, just options. And so, we sat, welcoming each artificial breath as we would a second chance at ignorance. Graciously, she rocked herself steadily to the beat of some internal struggle. We laughed, we talked, we loved. We were all each other had really. Save some external vice factory, dripping fulfillment down our welcoming throats. It was beautifully imperfect, disastrously miraculous. Searching for validation amongst the stars, what very few I could see, I exhaled and gratified my ego there amongst the docks, the drunks, the gulls.

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If you are a writer and are interested in writing for Empirical, check out this link to find out how to submit.

Flash Fiction Writing Prompt

In the spirit of encouraging writers to write and readers to read, we are starting a new tradition here on the Empirical blog. Each month we will have a writing prompt, and from this writing prompt we will select the best one and post it on the blog for all the world to see. 

There are, obviously, a few rules:

1. This is flash fiction, keep it short. (Less than 1000 words)

2. Seriously, short is the name of the game; the shorter the better. 

3. Try to keep it light while being substantive. 

4. No limitations on genre, but it must be about the prompt. 

Well, without further ado, here be the first official Empirical blog writing prompt:

Write a humorous holiday listing for an eBay auction. Include the history of the item you are selling and why you are getting rid of it.

Send your submission to dan@empiricalmag.com!