For the month of April, fellow author, Thea Atkinson, @theapatra is streaking through 30 blogs and flashing us a piece of fiction. I offered her a space today so she could expose a piece. My blog will be back to normal tomorrow. In the meantime, enjoy and follow the links at the end to see who she flashed yesterday and who she will flash tomorrow. Feel free to leave a comment to let me know if you enjoyed the streak, and you are welcome to tweet it or share it on Facebook. You can also follow the chain through twitter with the hashtag #blogstreak.

Green Means Gone

By Thea Atkinson

http://theaatkinson.wordpress.com

His hair was lank and his eyes were sunken. This was the man who, according to Charlene, would rock my pitiful world? Wherever she was from, paste seemed to be her preferred complexion type in male accessories. I looked him over. He looked away, fiddled with the stem of his beer bottle in a way that made me think he had other problems besides his looks.

“I’ll have a sex on the beach,” I said to the barkeep, then cringed when I realized I’d used the word ‘sex’ within earshot of my blind date. Sure enough, his head cocked to the side and his thumb made a subtle stroke down the side of his Coors.

“So, how do you know Charlene?” I asked him, deflecting the energy I’d pumped into the air.

He lifted a narrow shoulder. “Just around.”

“Around,” I repeated. Around Neptune maybe. Charlene was a mite more than simple strange could ever encompass as a description.

“How do you know her?” The words had a weird edge on them, and I figured the best thing I could do in answer was shoot back the drink. I had no plans to see this boy again; he didn’t need to know Charlene was my sister-in-law. Almost Sister-in-law. Never to be sister-in-law.

He waited for the burn to subside before he pressed me more.

“So,” he came close enough that I could see the albino hairs on his chin — the fluff better known as cheek fuzz in a male wooing puberty with a bouquet of only near-complete hormones. “How do you know her?”

“How old are you?”

He did his best to square out his shoulders. “Old enough.”

“Well,” I said, looking around the bar. “Old enough to pass without I.D, anyway.” I plopped down the shot glass and looked hard into his eyes. “And that’s good enough for me.”

I half-expected him to protest when I grabbed his hand and pulled him into the puddles of people doing their best to look nonchalant on a Saturday night. Everyone wants to look as if they don’t give a sweet fuck, but everyone else also knows you don’t pull out the FUBU gear unless you’re serious about getting laid.

And I’d about had it with the bullshit surrounding the whole Chinese checkers game of the dating marketplace. I’d had my escape in the form of six feet of testosterone and the best hands I’d ever felt on me.  Had. He was two months lost now. And I didn’t care if this peach fuzzy boy was a virgin, was gay, was sixteen years old –I was going to get laid.

I wanted to screw the grief straight out through my own bodily fluids. Orgasms were a much better outlet than tears anyway — and Steve — bless his immortal soul, couldn’t give them to me anymore. Not anymore or ever again. I felt my throat convulse.

“What’s your name, Coors?” I shouted to the left, sidestepping two girls wearing neon mouth pieces as a means of getting noticed.

“Chuck,” he said. “Hey, has that girl got green teeth?” He pointed to a cluster of barely legal girls next to the dance floor.

I pushed at the Ladies room door. “Yes, Chuck. She thinks she has a better chance of getting noticed — and getting laid — that way.” The place smelled of urine and old woman perfume. “Those girls don’t understand that green is the color of infection.”

We were halfway in, then. Two girls at the sink saw us enter and clipped up their lipsticks with such deliberation I wondered what they read in my face. I kept talking, trying not to think about anything except sex–not love–in a stall.

“They forget green is the color of mold.” I told him and glared at the lipstick girls until they pushed past us.

I caught sight of myself in the mirror, clinging to Chuck Coors, thinking of screwing him despite the fact that he looked even more dead in the light than he had in the dark. I saw his rotten teeth, the nails that looked as if he’d been digging graves on the night shift, and I realized Charlene understood something about me, about what I needed, that I hadn’t until just now.

That I needed to fuck Death.

April 21: Debra Martin

http://twoendsofthepen.blogspot.com

April 23 Vivienne Tuffnell

http://zenandtheartoftightropewalking.wordpress.com/