Dash in the Blue Pacific Read Online Free Page B

the coming months and years, shame that would haunt his
conscience late at night. He considered confessing, but there was
never the right time when Sarah might understand his loneliness,
might not turn and leave forever. He had betrayed her on the night
they’d first met, and there would be no forgiveness if she
discovered he’d maneuvered over her partially naked body, then
shifted her hips. In a total breakdown of his moral self, Dash had
gently touched her shaven parts with trembling
fingertips.
    “ I love you,” Dash said, his voice
quaking.
    “ I love you, too,” he made her labia
respond. Then he turned her puffy lips into a smile and kissed them
goodnight.
    * * *
    Dash puckered his cracked lips, tasted salt. He
determined he was floating chest deep, legs prickly numb, arms
folded over some kind of soggy cushion. His face throbbed, was full
of needles when he pressed a cheek into his forearm. He could
barely force one eye into a blurry slit. It was sunset, or maybe
sunrise. An orange ball was out there, low on the horizon. His
stomach was shit, abs strained as if he’d been throwing up all
night. Yeah, that was it. Some part of him made sense of the
situation, and relief settled in. He was in the Omega pool,
experienced enough at drinking himself into oblivion that he hadn’t
relinquished hold of the cushion. And while dumb enough to wind up
in the deep end, he’d remained at least one beer shy of
drowning.
    It took mad skill.
    On Earth, as it is in Heaven.
    Dash heard the flapping an instant before the
bird found his shoulder. It was a hard landing, and the damn
thing’s nails dug in while finding its balance. The cushion dipped
and a cold wave splashed over him. It was salty, stung his barely
open eye. Maybe it was the Kappa chicks’ pool, since they owned a
parrot. Yo, ho, ho, and a barrel of rum, vodka, and Everclear. His
stomach lurched, and up from the darkest depths of his belly came a
wet burp that sent his companion airborne with a squawk.
    It was a seagull, not a parrot. He could
recognize a seagull’s complaining voice from a mile away. Maybe it
was the Omega pricks’ pool after all. The guys were pigs with their
trash, driveway dumpsters attracting gulls year round. They’d been
threatened with losing their charter for all the garbage fanning
out over campus.
    He tried pulling higher up onto the cushion,
but wasn’t able to kick his feet. Both were shoeless and swollen,
neither ankle wanting to flex. He willed his right knee to bend,
but was distracted by a new flurry of wings and braced for another
impact. There were more gulls this time, some landing on his back
and shoulders, others on the cushion near his face.
    Words erupted in a dry croak. “Get away,” he
said, shooing with one hand, sensing yellow beaks about to pluck
out his eyes and snip his ears. He’d witnessed their work, an Omega
gull once prying open a can of pork and beans and nearly fighting
to the death with others over every morsel. Dash shrieked when
something caught his pinky, began to twist. He jerked his hand,
nearly losing purchase on the cushion. He scrambled back up by
rocking his shoulders, then buried his face and hands, hunching
forward to protect both ears.
    “ Fucking Omegas,” Dash shouted into
the soggy cushion. “You guys are fucking slobs.”
    His tongue had grown fat, made it a struggle to
swallow. He hoped the bastards lost their charter and their house
burned to the ground with Dicky and his goons still inside. He’d
cheer when the dumpsters erupted in flames, raise a beer from his
soggy cushion, and toast the embers.
    Gulls poked at his neck, tasted his hair. He
feared for his earlobes, rocking his head back and forth to present
a difficult target. He stopped only for peeks at the enemy, who
seemed to mostly bicker at one another, hopping on orange webbed
feet instead of coming in for the kill.
    Dash was dizzy when the sun dipped into the
horizon and sent the world into blackness. The cushion