"Gina controls the entire world," Jack said, drumming his fingers on his surfboard, the fiberglass and the nothingness inside making a hollow, eerie sound. "When she's with us, there are no reefs we can't conquer, no waves too big. But when she laughs..." He shivered. "Everything that happens is because of her."
The wind picked up, making palm trees bend and leaves sough in the warm, tropical breeze.
"That's bullshit," Lance countered, tossing his cigarette butt into the fire. "I make my own luck. There's no way I would have made it here, had I waited around for fucking Gina to have a good day." He retrieved a pack of Lucky Strikes from his pocket and flicked his lighter. "I'm gonna win tomorrow and I'm telling you: it'll have nothing to do with her."
Jack jumped to his feet and spun around, getting a 360-degree view of the trees, sand dunes and water that surrounded them.
"Don't question her."
"Jack, get real. She's a fucking bird."
Jack's eyes widened.
"She's not a bird," he whispered. "It's what she wants us to believe. Christ, Larry, you know better than this."
Larry sucked on his cigarette.
"Looks like a goddamn bird to me."
Jack's eyes wandered from Larry to the palm trees and back to his friend again.
"How can you seriously believe we would have been what we are without her? Five years ago you couldn't even ride a boogie board. And now, Bali, Aussie land, Maui - we owned them all."
"That's goddamn right, dude! We owned them!"
"You know it would have never happened without her. The minute she smells your cockiness, it's all over."
Larry shrugged and looked down at the now considerably shorter cigarette in his hand.
"I need to get laid tonight. D'you think Gina could take care of that?"
Jack's terrified response drowned in Larry's laughter. One final puff of the cigarette, and he flicked the butt into the fire.
It happened so quickly neither Jack nor Larry had time to react. The fire exploded into a wall in front of them; an inferno. The flames caught the tops of the palm trees, the grass underneath them, their clothes, their hair - their entire habitat. The only creatures on the island that survived were the ones airborne.
They didn't find the remainders of Larry's body until minutes before his start time. Gina laughed.
Kajsa Wiberg is a freelance writer, translator, and horse trainer. Her stories have appeared in The River Walk Journal, Long Story Short, Prose Toad, Chick Lit Review, Flash Shot, and Insolent Rudder, with forthcoming publications in Shred of Evidence, The Rose and Thorn, and Aoife's Kiss. She is a script reader for Blue Cat Screenplay and a book reviewer for Eclectica. She lives in Cardiff-by-the-Sea, CA, where she's at work on her second novel.
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