This flash fiction collection was originally published in Issue 40 of Metaphor Undergraduate Literary Journal.

1ST PRIZE IN THE WSU DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH WRITING & DIGITAL MEDIA CONTEST FOR PROSE

DESTIN-Y

By Christina Anderson

My friend Shari, the one who’s been dancing the Al Anon two-step for the past year, tags me in this post from our local tourism board. “Save Destin! Bring the tourists back with a new city slogan.”

I text Shari:

-Isn’t it enough that I give these people my body? Now they want my thoughts, too?

-Melodramatic much? You’re a bouncer, not a prostitute.

-Everyone’s a prostitute in a tourist town.

I rub a finger along my most recent scar. The bastards got my face, right on my temple. The gash healed fine, but the skin is still puffy, white, and numb.

-Fuck ‘em. I would rather watch the whole town burn than get stuck at another Spring Break blitzer. Let Trampa babysit America’s degenerate college kids for once.

-Lucky’s Rotten Apple is offering a whole year’s worth of free wings and beer to the winner.

***

I take a swig of my drink and a crack at these slogans.

Destin, why not?

Destin, just don’t ask “y”

Destin Manifestation

Add Destin to your Manifest

Destined to infest your heart

Are these terrible or just shit? I’ve written weirder things on a sticky note before. Maybe the plague is meant to wipe this place off the map. More importantly, why don’t they sell Four Lokos in a forty ouncer?

***

So a few minutes later I’m parked outside Lucky’s Rotten Apple with one flip flop on the board of my moped when Jimmy barrels down on me with this shoebox. It’s one of those middle school projects, a diuretic, or something, the kind where you peep through a pinhole. He says does this seem Destin-y to you? I say I dunno what exactly Destin-y is. He says yeah you do. I scrunch my mouth up and gaze under the lid. It’s a goddamn masterpiece.

There we are, two grown men in a parking lot staring into this banged up New Balance box at a perfect replica of everything that Destin stands for.

Is this colada scented, I ask. He says yeah, I got a spritz from my mom’s purse.

***

Besides Shari, who’s already saddled up at the bar top when we walk in, the place is desolate. Jimmy’s got the diuretic tucked under his arm like the nuclear football. I still can’t believe how realistic those seagulls are. And the broken bottles on the beach? Masterful.

Shari’s got one of those tiny putt-putt pencils and she’s scribbling furiously on a stack of coasters. Some of it is slogans, some’s statistics, and the rest looks like her grocery list.

JC, Jimmy’s cousin and the second-best bartender in town, has my pint ready for me before I even sit down.

This is what our town is about, I say, holding the beer up to eye level. Symbiosis. Everyone just getting everyone else without having to wade through all the image bullshit.

Shari says I’m stretching it. This town is about fun, she says. Just… not fun for us.

Jimmy says that one gets his vote for most soul sucking slogan.

Shari says she’s just getting warmed up. She asks did we know that Mimi Barnes came up with a vacuum that polishes gunk off sand? Originally it was meant for Deepwater Horizon oil oopsies, but apparently it works for disinfecting, too. She says she saw them hoovering up the sand on the beach last night. It’s clear and clean and sharp as glass. There’s a slogan there somewhere, stuck between my teeth, she says.

I say no need, Shari, It’s already over. I wipe foam off my lip with the back of my hand. I say Jimmy’s got it all summed up.

***

We take turns blowing into the authoritarian crazy straw strapped to Shari’s steering column to get her car started. Shari drops off our collective works at the fake lighthouse that serves as tourism HQ. Fifty four coasters, my sticky note, and the diuretic. We wait three weeks before we hear anything back from them.

***

Those assholes kept the diorama!

***

This time Shari’s car gets going on the first blow.

Jimmy storms into the tourism office and demands they give us back our intellectual property.

I stand by the door with my arms deadbolted across my chest and my best come fuck with me look in my eyes.

The woman at the information desk clacks her venom green acrylic nails together, battle-ready. Shari jabs her putt-putt pencil at the monstrous woman, punctuating her sentences with the miniature stake. Shari says we’re still here, and we want what’s ours!

The woman scuttles off, presumably to get our things, or the cops.

***

Some numb nuts from out of town wins the contest, so no one even gets the fucking wings. I swear when my stimulus check clears I am moving to Ohio.

Seek & Seek

She found no solace crashing in her bed of hypodermic needles. Needless to say, it was a sore subject for her.

Hurricane Party

A hurricane walks into a bar.

A bar staggers into an adult store.

An adult store shimmies into a Tapas joint.

A Tapas joint cascades into a bike kiosk that rolls into the two-lane highway across the beach from the motel breezeway where you’re hunkered down because Erika locked your cheating ass out.

A hurricane just keeps walking.