Notes on Camp[ing]

Random examples, which in part represent the canon of Camp[ing]:

* “End-of-the-World” billboards
* Alex Jones’ Infowars
* The wife’s picadillo plate
* Eschatological sex

While we would agree that No. 4 is as as good a way to end it all as any, we give you the stories below to keep you entertained. At least until the next prediction, that is…

– You tell them how she blew it up fairly recently when she spoke of a new desired vacation, inflated it early for the next trip, but how you two never deflated it. You know, when they seem to pity you as you tell them these things, the caretakers, that they realize as you finally did, some sooner than others, that this job, the job of you, has been easy for a reason. It’s not a sick old incapable man job, as Glen told the agency. No, Glen lied. He works, but you are special to him. – Heather Fowler in Used Furniture Review

– This would be so much easier if either one of us could find someone else as awesome as either of us, I say. I am half undressed on the bed. Or maybe I am half dressed. It’s hard to remember which. Yeah, you say. Good luck with that. You are standing near the window. You are putting a shirt on or taking it off. You are so far away. You are the closest you’ve been in months. – Elizabeth Ellen in Barrelhouse

– He had them on. The lucky underwear. The boxers Val wore the night he predicted Kansas would take the NCAA Championship and won $1,567. The night before he met Jessica. – Deborah Prum in Imitation Fruit

– Gold buttons on a military coat. Anna Wintour approved. Boots: good ones, hammered leather, almost to the knee, laced in the front, black. Stockings with no runs, barely visible below a red skirt. Saks was three blocks away. Laura Ashley was out of business. Our style betrays us. – W.F. Lantry in THIS Literary Magazine

– The gauze, constricting, shrouds his hands. He would that they would meet, moving beyond the lifeless clasp which whitens the knuckles. No amount of false tears can melt his yearnings to his words, which fall in a litany of useless entreaties. He repeats phrases, runs down lists, enumerates names to eat time away, but the clock ticks baroquely on the inert invocations, as his eyebrow twitches to its every movement. Time progresses, with God but slowly. He sweats with anxiety and steels himself for death whilst his life is robbed. His precious moments simper on, but he is girt only for abasement. – Erik Knutsen in Eunoia Review