Rockaway Beach, fiction by Nick Kolakowski
W hen Jonsey said the five of us should pool our money to rent a place on Rockaway Beach for the summer, it sounded like a cool idea. He’d found a glorified shack off Beach 98th, so weathered by the sea air that you could stick a pencil through the wooden walls without much resistance. But at least it was cheap, and we could spend three months surfing in the morning and smoking weed all afternoon before heading off to our respective night shifts. That summer, I worked as a hospital orderly at St. Vincent’s, down in the Village. You might think that spending most of your waking hours stoned would make you terrible at such a fast-paced job, but believe me, it was a necessity for staying upright and functional in that red chaos. Especially if, say, a Martian got you in a vicious headlock and threatened to break your neck like a wishbone. Which is exactly what happened. It was a sweaty Friday in August and I was looking forward to a weekend of nothing but waves and sunburns and a sof...