Corniche Splendor

You’ve spent ten thousand years at sea, a jinn on a rock, hurling lightning bolts like mighty javelins into the sky and unleashing the roar of thunder from deep inside your fire belly, no one ever witnessing the majesty you are capable of. Enough’s enough, you say, one day. You’ll go where humans dwell and find for yourself something to give all this noise meaning. 

†

Calvin Klein—Calvin Klein—Calvin Klein runs like a ticker tape ribbon around the girl’s curvy hips and though she catches you watching her in this empty changing room at the trendiest new hot yoga studio in Dubai, soapy bubbles at her feet, she doesn’t stop running the comb through her wet hair. You meet her eyes in the mirror, two buttons of silver like a cat’s at night, and then turn so she can admire the fine muscles on your back; when she does you feel that buzzing x-ray on your skin. 

There is a cafeteria by the sea, you say, still looking away from her, if you’re in for a ride. We can order juices and stay in the car.

I’ll drive, she says, and holds up the keys to her Mustang.

†

She takes a final sip of what was labeled as a fruit smoothie on the menu but is an ice cream shake, really just canned orange juice blended with soft serve vanilla plus twisting streams of strawberry sauce dripping down the inside of the plastic cup. Corniche Splendor. She licks clean the green straw, fingers the Bulgari serpent at her throat then tells you it’s just like drinking in the sunset, her chapped lips two wet chewed-up raspberries from the cold. Aaliyah sings as you stretch your legs out, pulling up your black abaya to let the orange spill of light kiss your bare skin. 

The sun is weak and trembling in the desert winter. How many sunsets have you downed? you ask her, just as the giant neon orb begins its oily slippery drip drip drip into the Gulf where little mouths open up on the surface of the water full of lurid stories about women making love to the Arabian Sea. You let these ghostly whispers into your ears because how else will you learn? Closing your eyes you see the pictures: wild, witchy things brown from the sun knee high in the creamy froth, the gentle slide of ruby pearls down the inside of their beautiful legs and frantic snake-like baby fish at their ankles lapping up those droplets of blood. You open your eyes as she flicks her cigarette out the window and begins to pull your strings, wrapping you around her pinky, turning you from a girl into something to light a fire from. You lean your arm out and let the breeze glide through between your fingers. Far too many, she sighs and always the wrong type. What about you?

I’m new to the game, you say, stirring the juice, yours being an avocado smoothie with honey, maraschino cherries and yes, that’s right, soft serve vanilla. You are one of the Bedouin natives now, gulping—like them—any number of sickly multicolored confections, mixing cornflakes into cups of cardamom chai, or crushing packets of spicy chips onto grilled cheese sandwiches, your eyes never far from the peaceful waves. You’re a seaside cafeteria whore now like no other, switching your own body, your face and what lies between your legs, driving late nights, trying everything on the menu, the girls and the boys, devouring them in their Armadas and big GMCs, swallowing all their salty threads in between smoothies with trippy names—your favorite the Zendaya and Tom duo combo, two shakes for the price of one—and chicken clubs with extra hot sauce. 

I’m here to taste all the flavors, you say, and she places her hand on your breast. How much time have you got? she asks with a keen earnestness in her bright eyes, her cheeks turning red as the sky because you’ve blown a heat into her and even that little bit of air between the two of you is burning up. Ten thousand years, you say, twisting the end of the straw. Is that enough time?

At first she laughs, then sings along to Aaliyah and you take her hand and tell her to quit with the jokes. I’m a shapeshifting creature of smoke and fire, you say, your body flickering: boy, girl, boy, girl.

I knew it all along, she says. Your breath’s too hot for a human.

How much time have we got? you press her.

I have a week, then this, she points to her crotch, becomes a boy’s property. My cousin. He has a Porsche dealership, I couldn’t say no. Baba said I had to.

I’ll make you mine, you say, one way or another, your eyes shimmering the color of amber, and just as amber holds still a fossil in time, your eyes hold this, this picture of the girl. 

†

Possession is easy—you are the groom now, the one with the Porsche dealership, it is your wedding night and your bride lies on her bed of rose petals, henna vines creeping down her soft brown hands and up her soft brown ankles. She is an animal spirit encased in a malleable clay, with an insatiable hunger, like you, an unabashed consumer of all earthly delights. You take her head into your hands, clutch the black hair and ask her what game the two of you should play. She lays her fingers between your legs. I’ve never been keen on boy-parts, she says. So be it, you say, and wave the manhood away to reveal the orchid she desires. 

Anything else? you ask, like the supreme granter of wishes you have always wanted to be. 

She rises, drops her silk to the ground and stands before you a Botticelli Venus of the dunes. After this, a late night drive, she says, her hands squeezing her own breasts. Fries, a club and some juices by the sea.  

© 2025 Raja’a Khalid

Raja’a Khalid is a Saudi-born, artist and writer from Dubai with an MFA in Art from Cornell University. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net and her fiction has appeared in publications such as Yalobusha Review, River Styx, Strange Horizons and elsewhere.