FICTION: Blowholes and Beaches by Tristin Profitt

The whale was already dead by the time Martin and Sandy had reached it, and the rotten stench had beaten out the salty air for smell supremacy. They circled around the beast and stopped at its tail.

“How sad,” Sandy said. “How come no one tried to save it?”

He told her how sometimes it wasn’t just a matter or saving. He said that sometimes it’s just inevitable like a boulder rolling down a hill, and as he said this he made a tumbling motion with hands. “You just can’t do anything sometimes,” he said.

Sandy placed her hand on the mammal’s drying skin. It felt somewhat rubbery, not like a bouncy ball but more like a fisherman’s waders. She held her hand there on the flesh for much longer than she wanted, but she was unable to pull it away.

“Let’s get back to car,” Martin said. “This smell is making me nauseous.”

“Race you to the top,” she said, and before Martin could question she was already scaling the tail. Her body felt small on top of the beast, and she was reminded of the linebacker she had dated in college. How she felt like she was on her own private island when she mounted him. Then she looked back at Martin. He was as thin as she but a bit shorter. She thought he looked rather like a dwarf scaling the back of a giant orc.

Sandy beat Martin to the top. It wasn’t really much of race, but she took the moment as a victory by thrusting her arms in the arm and extending both middle fingers towards her fiancée’s small gnomish head.

“Fuck you, Martin,” she said. “Look at you! Your tiny arms and legs—your little baby arms and legs had no chance. None. I am the queen of the whale!”

Martin took no notice of her comments, but asked that get off the creature and return to the car. Sandy stared coolly into his eyes. She sat down near the whale’s blowhole and slowly twirled her index finger around the opening.

“You should really work out more. There’s nothing to you,” she said. “Just the outline of a man. A sketch.”

Martin flexed his bicep and Sandy let out a wicked laugh. She told him of the linebacker she had dated. She told him how she felt like a doll in his arms, and that she missed that. She said that to her he, Martin, was her own doll. Martin stood atop the whale and let Sandy get it all out of her. He made no comments until she had finished her rant.

“You have no tits,” he said. “And your ass? What ass? I used to date this one girl with tits like the moons of Mars. And now I am engaged to you. The woman who was once mistaken for a wooden plank and almost made into a deck. But I love you.”

“You want something big? A nice big, supple girl? Then here. Take the whale.”

Sandy stepped away from the blowhole. Martin looked down at it, then at her, then at his belt and undid it. He stripped down to nothing. And stood over the whale’s spout.

“Is this what you want?” he said.

She grabbed his face and kissed him. They made love atop the whale’s head as the sun licked the ocean’s skin