Sean E. Britten

I’ve always been inspired by music (I know, super original!) and music has always been a part of my writing. Way back in the days of burnt CDs, my mates and I used to put together CD mixtapes and I came up with the idea of a series of short stories based around pieces of music. Mixtape is all short stories sharing their titles with different songs and inspired, to various degrees, by their lyrics, artists, and vibe.

Currently Playing: Everclear – Santa Monica

Los Angeles is burning, brochacho. Ever since Yellowstone went boom, seems like half the world is burning. Nothing to do about it but hit the waves.

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It’s snowing in Santa Monica. Least that’s what it looks like but the snow is all grey and it turns the sand grey and the city grey, and it don’t melt when it hits the water so it turns the waves grey too. And you catch some of it on your tongue it tastes like you’ve been licking a freaking ashtray. Because it is ash, you know? Because everything’s burning. Tinsel Town is Tinder Town and Malibu is Maliburned and the City of Angels looks more like some hot-ass corner of Hell, brochacho.

We push out past the breakers and watch the world burning. Half the country is on fire since Yellowstone went kablooey and the other half ain’t looking so good either. Turns out there was this totally giant volcano waiting under Old Faithful like a ticking time bomb. Like a ticking nuclear bomb, Broppenheimer. And it wasn’t like the movies. When it blew its top, there was nothing nobody could do to stop it.

You remember when you were a kid and you thought if you just kept paddling you’d get to China or Australia or somewhere else? Joey looks out across the Big Blue, well, I guess the Big Grey now, like he’s seeing all the way to the next shore.

Everywhere is somewhere else, Brohammed, I say to him.

You know what I mean, bro. Somewhere else. Maybe somewhere better. Somewhere where none of the problems you were having at school or with your stepdad or whatever mattered. Where it didn’t matter who you were because people would just accept you and you could surf all day and eat fruit right off the trees and sleep on the sand.

Problems we got back then probably not so much on the problems we got now, no bromo.

Pretty Vinnie woke up dead. We all have to wear masks whenever we go outside, even on our boards. Breathing things like house painters used to use and goggles too because there’s all this bad juju in the ash. But some of it sneaks in anyway, sometimes, and people get to spitting up blood and dying. So we wrapped up Pretty Vinnie with some rocks and stuff and laid him out on his board and paddled him out past the breakers. He’s not the first dude we’ve had to bury at sea. There was Bobby, and White Mark, El Tigre, and Tonya and Slick, and Black Tonya, and Chum, and Sweetgirl, and Golden Boy. There’s not so many of us left now, bromaldehyde. Joey says a few words and so do some of the others and we bury him under the waves.

No point in wasting a trip, so we do our best to shred some waves on the way back to shore. Pretty Vinnie would’ve wanted it that way. Most of it was chop, the surf gods aren’t smiling on us today, but a few swells sat up nice and cherry. Maybe those ones were Pretty Vinnie’s doing. We had to get beachside before the mean green machines full of armymen did one of their daily fly-bys.

Regular as clockwork those army guys. You could set your watch to them, Brolex, except none of us wore watches or fitbits or carried phones anymore. We covered our tents or little shacks in sand and trash and hid under them then watched the choppers cross the sky. Loudspeakers under the green machines’ bellies told us that Los Angeles was under mandatory evacuation. All residents had to mosey along to an extraction point or risk getting nailed to a wall.

Nice try, war pigs, but we’ll take our chances. After Yellowstone went terminal, everyone had to get out of the way of the fires or turn extra crispy. People were being taken as far as Canada and Mexico, but they were burning too.

They won’t keep looking for folk much longer, Joey says. They’ve got a war to fight.

Who are we going to war with, Broseidon?

Who have you got? It’s, like, mankind’s nature to destroy itself.

In the nature of volcanoes to fuck shit up too, I guess.

We’re going to war or America is going to starve, bro. All that ash is going straight up and it’s staying up. No sunlight, bro. No sun, no plants. No plants, no animals, nothing to eat. We’re all going hungry. We’re going to be fighting over scraps pretty soon.

Damn, brotein shake, what are we going to do?

Us? We’re going to surf.

Dawn patrol, every morning. With no electricity, we got up with the sun to make the most of the day. What little sun peeped through the clouds. Good thing we had our wetsuits because the days were getting cold. The waves were still cherry though and we didn’t have anything else to get to.

When we needed food or beers, we went poking around in the nearby buildings. We had to avoid the armymen, and other folk getting busy living or getting busy dying. We tried checking out the pier but the merry-go-round broke down permanent-like and none of the carnival games are open, broswana. We did find a dispensary down the way that still had some sticky icky in the back room. We had waves, and we had enough to get by in those days, and we had some good times even.

But even if we wanted to avoid war, and avoid fighting, and avoid other people, the world came for us instead. Surf nazis. Or maybe just the regular kind. Or maybe just some other bad hombres that had been watching us and wanted our stuff. Didn’t waste time with asking either, probably because they didn’t just want our stuff but chicks as well. Guns opened up and tore our little homes to shreds. We didn’t have any way of fighting back. Me and Joey managed to make it out, and ran for it into the night.

When we came back for the dawn patrol, the others were all RIP. Taking a nap on the bloody sand, or just gone, baby, gone. Maybe Joey was right. Maybe people were just made to destroy each other. We just wanted to be left alone and they couldn’t even do that.

What are we going to do now, Brobocop?

I told you, bro. We surf.

That morning, the water was glass. Well, dirty glass, but we did our best. The city was still burning. The world was still burning. It was just the two of us out there on our boards, in our suits and our masks and our goggles.

I made the best I could of some mush. When I looked around though, Joey wasn’t beside me anymore. I finally spotted him a long way, his board just a little white dot out on the grey.

Joey? Joey!

He was too far out to hear me anymore. Broheim wasn’t turning around and was too far away for me to catch him. It’s okay though, because I knew just where he was going. China or Australia or someplace else. Someplace better.

I’m going to hang loose for a little while longer. Going to hang right here. But I’ll hook up with Joey eventually, sooner or later.

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Sean: Happy news in my world this week! My wife and I have introduced a new member to our family, our brand new, hot of the presses, first child, Zoe Rae Britten! She was born at 9:20am on November 5th after an intense 24 hours at the hospital. My wife, Tess, did an incredible job giving birth, I’m so proud of her and Zoe is just such a beautiful little thing. Banging this out before I go back to the hospital to visit them today as I scheduled this actual story well over a week ago to make up for the fact I figured I’d be a little preoccupied!

Santa Monica was one of the first ideas I had for this Mixtape series. As I’ve mentioned, the whole idea was inspired by the mixed CDs my mates and I used to put together way back in the day. I think Santa Monica by Everclear might have actually been the very first song on the very first of those CDs and it’s always had a great vibe to me so it was a natural addition! But it took me a while to find the right ‘in’ to actually write the story, I sort of started it and gave up a couple of times before finding the right tone.

Next Track: Peter Tosh – Stepping Razor