Boats Against the Current

ISSUE #20

It's been almost three months since the night you took a ride in that flying car. None of your friends will believe your story — to be fair, you're not entirely sure it happened either. Out of nowhere, a gaunt boy with shock-yellow eyes pulls up in a Cadillac Fleetwood that ends up taking off like a Boeing on a runway? What the hell? Did he have jaundice? It could have been a dream. It was finals week, after all.

In the time since the incident, you've graduated from college with a degree that makes you a great person but not an especially employable one. Your parents run the Seahorse Inn, so you moved back to Jacksonville Beach to run the front desk while you figure your shit out. Gulls in the morning, crabs at night, dirty beaches crusted with Mountain Dew and Marlboro Golds. Paradise isn't much when you have to clean the toilets.

One night after closing up, you pass the abandoned marina on your way home. Faint at first, a strange roar rolls in from over the ocean, like the calving of a glacier. You stop to scan the horizon. It keeps growing louder until it's almost too much to bear. Suddenly, a flash of light, and the noise has stopped. Where there once was darkness now sits a giant peach-pink speedboat. It's glowing like the shapes that dance on your eyelids when you rub the sleep away. The name on the side reads "Coast Malone"

"Get in, loser," I shout from behind the wheel. The sailor's cap serves as my halo, the Hawaiian shirt my billowing wings. With my hook-hand, I hold the wheel; in my human one, $300 cash. You approach, and step onto the deck.

Moments later, we're speeding over the waves, each one bouncing us a little higher. Soon, I whistle like I'm summoning a sheepdog. The horizon reveals a wave the size of a Ferris wheel. I gun straight for it.

"Hold on!" I shout over the roar of the engine, "I bet you can guess what's gonna happen next!" I cackle maniacally, and we hit it full-speed. We soar straight up, into the star-streaked sky, Armstrong and Aldrin in a speeding yacht-rocket, aiming right for Andromeda and the Great Beyond.

Finally, we slow, but instead of falling back to earth, we level out. 8,000 feet above the Gulf of Mexico, I take my hands off the wheel.

"Good to see you again," I say as I go to the cooler, "you like sequels?" I come back and hand you a Stella, smiling. "I've upgraded." The boat is flying itself. I sit back, kick my feet up.

"I made this playlist just for the occasion."