Ocean Stories

By Jude-Marie Green

Thee short stories from the ocean, spanning science fiction, music, tall tales, and singing whales.  

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jude-Marie Green
• Release date: Nov 18, 2016
• ISBN: 9781540184023

Jude-Marie Green

Jude-Marie Green has sold stories online and in print anthologies for the last decade.  She writes science fiction, mostly, with occasional forays into fantasy worlds and situations.  She is a graduate of Clarion West Class of 2010, the premier science fiction writers seminar.  Currently she helps with the Speculative Literature Foundation to foster the art of science fiction writing.

Book preview

Ocean Stories

By

Jude-Marie Green

Contents

Endless Summer

Previously published in Electric Spec Online

Ole Stoney

Previously published in 10Flash Quarterly Online

Luigi’s Song

Previously published in For The Oceans, an anthology

Stories copyright by Jude-Marie Green who asserts her moral authority.

Cover photograph by Jude-Marie Green (Imperial Beach, California, 2013)

Endless Summer

We all go down to the sea, Annie, Duane, and I.  Annie surfs.  She digs on the big waves and the small waves, but mostly she likes the sand and the water.  Duane goes for the scenery, as he calls it, and he gets as turned on from the guys pumping iron and glistening with oil and sweat as from the blonde perfect women in bikinis wearing roller blades.

You never watch them, Kim, he says to me.  You should check out those muscle beach guys, you could get lucky.

He’s joking.  I hope.

I like the scenery too, but my view is up.  The hot sun beats down on me, slantwise in the morning and edgewise in the afternoon, and I keep that boiling star to my back.  I’m looking for the things that fly.

Yes, the seagulls and sandpipers are adorable in a clumsy way, but I’m not a bird watcher.  The bright-colored kites spin, buffeted by the salt wind, and I stare at them, but they aren’t the main attraction.  I look for the planes; well, sort of planes.  I search for the other things.

Duane and Annie make a joke of it, say I’m searching for flying saucers, but I look for points of refracted light coruscating off the fins of a cigar-shaped rescue vehicle.  My people won’t send a whole ship; they’ll send a small snatch and grab job.  I hope they’ll send one.

Duane brings me a soda, sloshing ice, and plops down next to me on the sand.  I blink the sundogs out of my eyes and take the cup with a lotion-greased hand.

Seen anything green yet?  He smiles at me lopsided.  I’m not attracted to Duane, but sometimes I want to brush the coarse mane of sunbleached hair off his forehead.  When he smiles at me like that, I want to touch him.

Annie, I say, joking.  Her surfboard, one of the stubby ones, is green and white, and she wears those colors under her black neoprene bodysuit.

Yeah yeah, he says, then sucks on his soda.  The air rattles through his straw.

We both look out at the breakers where Annie and a dozen other surfers are lined up, waiting for a good swell.  We can just make out their dark silhouettes; Annie is the small one near the middle, because that’s where she always is.  The sun burns out any identifying details and leaves the surfers democratically identical shadow black silhouettes.  The people on the beach who care will be wowed by a good ride, not by the rider.  A swell develops behind the line and some of the surfers begin to paddle.  Annie isn’t moving; she’s waiting this wave out.  She probably timed the swells and knows a better one is