The Salt of Fries

Sir Laridae of the Gulls

I’m surprised the water hasn’t been able to take her away by now. The high tide usually swallows everything whole under the moon’s command. My contemplation is interrupted though. She’s staring at me as if I am an animal, a murderer, or something like that.

“What did you do with him?” she screams. The veins in her throat are pronounced while the sound rips through her windpipe.

I smile and say hello. I don’t think she expected it because she seems so shocked to hear me. This makes me wonder why she even asked anything in the first place. But, what do I know?

She didn’t seem to have much strength to argue. Her lips are splitting, chapped by the white hot sun. Leg mangled, gnawed by the crevice in the rocks. Her red drips onto the stones staining them pink. My brethren worked hard to put a nice layer of white upon them. Their shit makes these jagged boulders smoother upon our webbed feet. It’s just a preference thing I guess.

I float up to her, propelling my body with webbed feet. She wheezes as I float before her and then, as the waves rose, she gargles, spits, and coughs.

“What’s fucking happening? Why am I still seeing this shit? Where’s John? Where the fuck is John?

Diana

“It’s not that I don’t wanna do it,” I say combing my hair with my fingers. The bleached strands are tinted orange from the falling sun. “Because I do want to. It’s just that, well, you know. I’m…I just want you to feel what I feel, see what I see. Just do it with me. All of it with me.”

John stands in front of me, his thick arms crossed, looking at the ocean from the cliffs. He’s just a black form. “Diana, I don’t do drugs, just beer. I don’t like that hard stuff.”

“I know. I know babe.” I lean against his red muscle car. “But it will open your eyes. You’ll see what your soul sees.”

“Let’s just do it. But, none of that other crap,” he turns to me. The shadows are sharp on his face as he steps forward. A seagull flies overhead.

I step back sitting onto the hood, slowly crossing my legs. “Come on babe, just a taste and I’ll do whatever you want. We can do that thing that you’ve always wanted to do.”

John slicks his hair back, pauses, and sits with me on the hood.

“So you’ll do it with me?” I bite my lip and smile.

“Yeah.”

John

I see two fleshy dolphins leaping out of her chest. Their tails are still attached to her soft pink skin. Bodies wiggling. Fins flapping. Diana jumps on them, gripping their dorsal fins. They are her chariot. Flying gracefully, they weave in and out of the technicolor palm trees that drop from coral clouds. The dolphins dive with her into bubbling sand and leap out right in front of me splashing out fireworks. The shimmering sparks cascade upon me, but I can’t feel the searing. The ashes drip down my arm as thick globs of translucent paint, twinkling with squiggling sparkles. Every drip that falls sprouts up flowers: African Moons, Angel Wing Begonias, Blood Lilies, and Birds of Paradise.

I chase her, but not her. My large hands scoop up the sand but it fizzles out. I want to get her back, but I don’t. I’m really chasing dolphins. I want to grab their pink rubbery skin. Lick rosey eyes. Suck on their muzzles.

My clothes peel off of me, falling as pedals. It helps me run faster, unrestricted. Two pedals, one atomic tangerine and unmellow yellow, burrow their tips into my back. I flap them as I run. Fresh dew beading off. I was flying into the ocean, after her.

Sir Laridae of the Gulls

I heard a wise bird say something about how the world is salt. Humans have a lot of salt he told me, point four percent. Salty beings. I mean, it does come out of them through their sweat. That’s why they eat so many fries, to replenish what they lose. I wonder how much salt has come out of her. Maybe that’s why Lot’s wife became that pillar. She had so much salt that she became salt. I want to ask this girl on the rocks if she looked back as she fell off the cliff. If she’ll become salt because she did.

Diana

I look for the dolphins John saw. It seems that they slid off of my chest after it happened. Slipping into the ocean, the fleshy things jetted through the sea leaving me flat chested. My body lies twisted on the rocks. My fucking leg is pinched in a crevice. His body is on the other rocks. The jagged ones. The ones touched by the waves, covered in shit. Bright white.

My poor love. Sweetheart. Highschool romance. Naked on the rocks. Pink seeps into white. The sky’s also pink, swirling. The ocean’s also pink. No, red. No, Amaranth. I wait for John to spring up but he doesn’t, for him to turn his head but he can’t. His penis is all I notice, limp resting on his thigh. It’s pink turning white, sizzled by the sun.

But as a wave splashes over and recedes, his phallus begins to caw and wiggle. It thrashes, tugging, thrashing, and tugging, trying to free itself from his body. It must be the drugs, but I can only watch as it turns white, white with a yellow tip. The tip splits down the middle; cawing louder as it did.

Feathers sprout.

Wings flap.

Balls flatten into webbed feet.

They slip as they pushed against his inner thighs, scraping the skin leaving gashes dripping red. It flops and pushes and flails. A wave splashes over his body, the rocks completely submerged. I crane to see him. Where is he? I need to see him.  The sea sinks down. What’s happening? No body for a funeral. Nobody. He’s gone, eaten by the sea. Only A seagull floats to the top and is bobbing with the waves.

Sir Laridae of the Gulls

Oh you jumped? I ask her. She didn’t answer. Her mind was flying, so much so that her body couldn’t stay grounded. She became an action, not a place. Flight but only for a few seconds, just seconds. Humans always wish that they could fly.

Soon her salt will fill the sea. It’ll be harvested, sprinkled over fries. The leftovers thrown away and then scavenged by me.

It’s a cycle.

I’m rather fond of humanity. They have this messy habit of leaving perfectly edible things: half eaten hot dogs, melted candy bars, stale fries. Some things are dead while some are trash. This girl may be both. People are both.  But food is food. It’s a practical thing.

No one has come to get her.

No one’s looking.

No one will.

Strange bunch these humans are. They leave me perfectly good things, perfectly seasoned things.