painting

Rachel Forrest is a a painter based in San Jose. Her work can be found on her website.

Stella and the Fratboy

by Clyde Always

Once upon a time, in a rip-roaring party town set by the sea, there lived a stunningly beautiful siren named Stella.  Stella had shimmering sapphire eyes and shapely long legs and soft flimsy skirts and her armpits she never would shave (though she would shave her head down one side).  She lived in a battered and clunky Westphalia van with an old mandolin and an overfed goldfish named Fatty, who was never content with a sprinkle of fish-flakes, but instead, had developed a rather insatiable appetite for human flesh.

Now, it so happens, that one sweltering April afternoon, Stella had parked her van on the beach, positioned between the frozen margarita stand and the tiki-torch emporium and there, she sang out some notes while strumming away on the old mandolin, emitting over the scene of sun-bathers and surf-waders the most eerie and bewitching music, loud enough even to drown out the incessant robotic donkey-braying coming from the dub-step DJ booth.  Right away, a small crowd of funnel-clutching fratboys gathered around Stella, all swaying in their saggy board shorts and grinning and chuckling and flexing their pecs at her.

“Hey, boys…” Stella sang out at them with a tangy rasp in her voice, to which, they all replied in unison,

“Spring break bro! Whoo!”

She beckoned one husky and meaty, shaggy blond surf-jock into the van and looked on in grisly delight as Fatty devoured the boy in a single, gulping, schlorping swallow.  She then poked her head out of the window and called out a coy and sinister,

“Who’s next??”

The ‘bros’ all fought like wild dogs to the front of that line, pushing and shoving and punching and biting each other, until the strongest amongst them had elbowed his way right into the jaws of the goldfish before he could even say “duuuuude, what the fuuucccckkkkk!”  And so, it went, one after the other until Fatty was so engorged that he’d shattered his fish bowl and flopped out onto the floor, straining his gills and coughing up puka-shell necklaces.

Only a single fratboy remained, so Stella tried luring him in with a wink from her eye and a pucker from her lips but he stood there, frustratingly motionless, just stroking his flawless washboard six-pack, when suddenly, there came from the beachful of revelers, a giant, collective, blood-curdling scream, as a tsunami rose way in the distance and out from the depths of the ocean came the stark silhouette of a horrible, hideous, tentacled sea-monster!  Stella eyed the fratboy in the midst of this chaos but he showed not even a single sign of panic, in fact, he snapped his fingers twice, manifesting out of thin air a heavy and hefty golden trident — crusty with rubies and pearls, and then, with a few clever flicks of his wrist, he used it to cut the roof off the van as if it were merely a can of sardines. Then Stella looked on in horror as poor Fatty was gutted alive, releasing the hoards of spring-break-party-bros, all of whom ran for the hills, shrieking like ten-year-old girls, and then the fratboy tossed the carcass of the goldfish over his shoulder and the monster gobbled it up like sashimi.

Then the sea fell calm, and the monster retreated back into the deep, and Stella grumbled miserably at the sight of her mangled Westphalia van, until, this sea-faring demigod of a fratboy whistled a shrill ‘♪♫,’ summoning out of the foamy surf a chariot drawn by two-winged sea-horses, which swept Stella and himself off of their feet and into the air and over the choppy, blue waves, and for perhaps, the first time in her life, Stella felt kind of weak in the knees, as at last, this mysterious suitor finally spoke with rugged charisma and looking her longingly right in the eyes, he requested politely and oh-so-succinctly that Stella-the-Siren… ‘show him her tits.’

Clyde Always, for the promotion of bliss, writes and recites his own blend of tall tales and clever verses, as well as creates assorted works of surrealist beauty.