Van’s Friend in the City
Kari Larsen
After Cam found out about the cult that worshipped him, Van brought things to her attention with less reserve. Cam enjoyed how he stayed Van, no creature pronged with sinister new spines. They went on vacation together in the city, where he bought her opera gateau and said he had a friend from childhood named Cassie.
They found her in a cool, white building on an empty street. Cassie had a couch and an open fridge and was slender, white and wet. She told Cam it was the fashion to be slathered in solution that did not get absorbed by the skin and hair but left one slick and gleaming like the newborn Venus. She applied the solution to a smaller girl. Both of them smiled uncontrollably. A blast of eye-watering air hit Cam when she closed their fridge. They smiled, glowed, kept their hands running over each other, talked and giggled faintly, freely, like they had done before Van and Cam stepped in, would do so after, even though their eyes were fixed on Cam and Van with the timorousness and completeness of beams of light. Van bashed into the doorjamb. The smaller one said a prayer to him.
Kari Larsen’s chapbook, Say you’re a fiction, is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press in the summer of 2012. She is an assistant editor at Anobium Books and ISMs Press and production designer at Seven Kitchens Press. http://cold-rubies.blogspot.com.
