ON THE MULTITUDE OF DISTRACTIONS TO BE ENCOUNTERED WHILE MAKING LOVE TO THE CAP DE L’HOMY PLAGE

ZEROTHIAN FLIRTATION

onto the yellow beach. The soles of your bare feet are leathery, but the sand caresses with its silicon warmth. A frisson of sexual anticipation commences in your calves, expands through your hips and settles in your stomach. A portion separates from this mothership of sex like a discarded rocket booster [1] and descends to the obscure outpost of your groin. Ahead, the flat ocean, glinting, crystalline, endless. Above, the immense aureate sun. The soft warm breeze that carries particles of sand to be captured by the erect oil coated hairs on your exposed body and

DISTRACTION 1 (THE AUDI A8)

looks best in bright metallic colours preferably silver this is true and

DISTRACTION 2 (THE USS SCORPION) [2]

Commander Francis Slattery was utterly gripped by Echo. He’d picked the book up months ago and had promptly forgotten about it. Ready for another duty tour, he suddenly remembered the book and threw it in his pack at the last minute. Wow. Josh was having a real tough time in New York. A little English jockey way out of his depth. And that monkey... “Captain to control room”, burbled the intercom. Damn. Just when it was getting really good and

FRONTAL DOCKING MANOEUVRE

pushing into the sand which gives only slightly, away and away, yielding only partially of its deep time. The portion of sexual excitement that descended your stomach and docked in your groin is manipulating your senses. The portion of sexual excitement (coloured dark red like a second liver) in your groin begins to enlarge. And your senses enlarge. You enlarge also, but you will never attain a surface area equal to the beach and

DISTRACTION 3 (THE GERMANIC TRANSGRESSION)

then two Germans walk coincidentally past you. You know they are Germans. How do you know? You don’t know, but you know. They are Germans. Germans. Germans. Two (2). Two (2) Germans. One (1) German female. One (1). The other female also. Two (2). Both sexually attractive. Both wearing German swimsuits. One orange, deeply so. The other blue, lighter than the sky. The German with the blue swimsuit lighter than the sky and carrying in her left hand a German parasol, as yet unfurled. Her name may be von Braun. In her right hand nothing, fingers partially extended, sand flowing from the tips. The German wearing the orange, deeply so swimsuit has a small German backpack in her right hand. Note: in her right hand, not on her back. The way of the not so young and

DISTRACTION 4 (ECHO, THE NEW DICK FRANCIS NOVEL)

ex-jockey turned actor Josh Anderson lands in New York to meet his agent about a part in a new film. Unfortunately, this is September 11th 2001, and Josh’s agent is killed in the Twin Towers atrocity. With time on his hands, Josh sets out to discover who was behind the attacks, aided by an autistic howler monkey called George and

DISTRACTION 5 (THE AFRICAN CONVERGENCE)

yet although overhead of Dar es Salaam is the same sun, it is an altogether bigger sun, plated in copper not gold and lower, more swollen, and the ocean although filled with the same origin of water is warmer and of a different hue, being less blue, but instead green, like the Colorado River at most times of the year, or the Ganges in summer, and within this same different ocean, at the point where (if viewed from a satellite in geostationary orbit) it fuses with the land are dark skinned people bathing, like and not unlike these people in the same different place to the north and

DISTRACTION 6 (NEW YORK CITY, 9/11)

Josh moves towards the bar. The barman is weeping, his tears flowing onto the stainless steel surface, overwhelming the stacked and folded beer towels like a swollen river of mercury breaching a line of multicoloured sandbags. Josh wonders and

ORGASM

beneath you the beating heart of the ocean is muffled by the gentle sighing of the ancient sands as they writhe softly beneath your pulsations and

DISTRACTION 7 (THE GERMANIC NON-TRANSGRESSION)

then two (2) Germans don’t walk coincidentally past you and

DISTRACTION 8 (CAP DE L’HOMY PLAGE)

it’s a gorgeous day, even for mid September. One handed, Josh steers the big Volvo into the car park, terminating with an affected French insouciance next to a battered white Peugeot. The heat sucks at the air conditioned chill of the car. From the top of the wooden steps, the flat ocean, glinting, crystalline, endless. Above the immense aureate sun and

ZERO

THIAN

FLIRT

ATION

Towel and book in hand, Josh walks

down

the

wooden

steps

onto

the

yellow beach

[1] Stock NASA Apollo footage, circa 1969. On the monitor, a five fingered flare as the Saturn’s second stage ignites and the astronauts are thrust closer to heaven.

[2] USS Scorpion. A Skipjack class nuclear powered attack submarine. Sank in mysterious circumstances off the Azores in 1968 with the loss of all crew.

by Dan McNeil ©

Dan McNeil is a UK writer producing short fiction, reviews and art.  His first story was translated, and published in a German science fiction magazine.  Thereafter, his stories and reviews appeared in a variety of print and online publications, including Antipodean SF, Bewildering Stories, Fantastic Metropolis, Ink Magazine, Laura Hird’s Showcase, Mad Hatter’s Review, Outsider Ink, Redsine, Sein und Werden, The Short Review and Word Riot.   New work is appearing shortly in Alienist Manifesto and Antipodean SF.  His website is www.dan-mcneil.com; you can also follow him on Instagram and Twitter.