Category: Fiction

Time to Talk, Ramona Hester

…When they were young they would refer to him amongst themselves as dadimiz, our father, yours and mine. Now there was nobody who shared this man as father. Nobody who shared her mother. Nobody to call her sister. They had lost a measure of themselves when Mehmet had passed away. This was one more slice cut from still raw skin…

This is part of a longer fictional work set in Central Asia exploring the experiences of an extended family as they respond to the devastating consequences of childhood sexual abuse.

Ibrahim stubbed out the cigarette and finished his bowl of tea. He had been reading yesterday’s newspaper and he now folded the thin edition in quarters and laid it down on top of a pile of its predecessors beside the telephone. Then he padded into the bedroom and began rooting around in the top drawer of the cabinet for a better pair of socks. In doing this he was obeying his wife. If she were not already out on an errand she would be reminding him to change them. Even if it was just a visit to the bazaar she would be telling him, ‘And what if you meet someone and they invite you into their house? Are you going to sit on their sofa drinking tea and making small talk with holes in your socks? Those holes will be talking louder and faster than your mouth ever could.’

He peeled a sock off, sat up and pulled it over his hand. Positioning his fingertips at the mouth of each hole, he moved them about slowly, feeling the rim of each hole catch on the hoary domes of his fingertips. Three extra mouths like this would be useful. His own mouth had always been inadequate in the most important of situations. He had never been good at saying what he really wanted to say. He knew other men for whom this was not a problem. Not that they were able to speak more wisdom than he. Those men could speak camel shit and leave it at that. What control they held over their consciences! No regrets for things said or left unsaid. No room allowed for uncertainties which may give cause for pause. Men who lived their own truths and insisted that wife and family fall into step. Ibrahim had never been able to do it. In the years that it took his young wife to grow from girl to womanhood his marital situation had become clear. He was bound to a woman greater than himself. Fourteen years her senior, his headstart had at first masked this truth. He had spent the first few years trading on his life experience. But innate ability does not take much time to catch up, and he could only watch as she absorbed his hard-learned wisdom, mixed it in with her own unique insight and applied the result to a variety of opportunities that he would otherwise have shied away from. Yet his admiration for his wife had been embellished with silence. Ibrahim unfolded a fresh pair of grey socks that would cover the yellowing toenails and tough old heels of his feet to his wife’s satisfaction. Time to talk. He picked up his wallet from the bedside table, put on his shoes, coat and hat and shuffled his way down the stairs, out to the courtyard, and then down the busy street to the bus stop.

The white minibus stopped in front of him with a screech. The ticket seller pulled back on a rope and the accordion-like door folded into itself with a hollow clap. She was yelling the route number out the window like an automatic weapon, ‘Thirty-eight, thirty-eight, thirty-eight. Route thirty-eight,’ and Ibrahim responded obediently. Securing his hat on his head with one hand, he reached into the doorway, grabbed the thin metal pole to pull himself up to the vehicle from the pavement, then ducked under the narrow minibus entranceway and found himself a seat in the back row. There he readied his money. The ticket seller would do a round of the vehicle, collecting the paper fares in a large black clip and dispensing her fragile tickets from a smaller version of the same.

Miriam’s stairwell door had been jacked open with a brick and he could hear the conversation of electrical repairmen echoing down from a floor above. Ibrahim walked in without buzzing and began climbing the stairs to his daughter’s apartment door. She might not be home. He hadn’t called in advance to tell her to expect him. Truth was that he hadn’t wanted to tie himself into the arrangement. The only way that he had managed to drag himself this far towards the encounter was the possibility that it may not happen. If he had been unable to face the conversation today, if he had chosen mid-trip to shout ‘I want to get off’ from the back seat, abandoned his journey, crossed whatever road he was on and taken the next bus back home to his familiar silence, who would have known? He had not wanted to secure his daughter’s anticipation and once again be the father that failed to turn up.

At the door, Ibrahim hacked a wet, nicotine cough. By the time he had worked up the courage to curl his hand into a fist and knock against the hollow metal security door his daughter had opened it out towards him and he had to quickly shift backwards away from the out-swinging metal fortress.

‘Dadam!’ His daughter was in the middle of cooking something, decked in apron and a tight fitting headscarf to keep her hair out of the mix. ‘I knew that was you coughing in the stairwell.’

He lingered in the doorway holding his hat brim flat against his chest. Even though it was he who was coming to see her unannounced, she still had the advantage over him. She had her head cocked to the side, one hand on the door handle and the other on the door jamb. He should say something.

‘I’ve come.’ He lifted his hat from his chest in a small salaam.

‘Have you come?’ she was giggling at him. Then she swept the inner wood door wide open with one arm, lifted her other hand off the doorjamb and waved him into the apartment,

‘Come in, dadam. Come in.’

Miriam held his elbow while he slipped off his shoes, then she took his coat and hat and hung them by the door. The apartment smelled rich and sweet like wet flour.

‘Are you making noodles?’

‘Are you hungry? I’ll make you something,’ she said.

‘No child.’ He could feel her steering him towards the sofa, but he did not want to be the guest, ‘I want to sit with you inside. In the kitchen. I’ll watch, and we can talk while you work.’

He sat at the kitchen table while she washed her hands and then began kneading the dough. She worked with her back to him. He could see the muscles flex in her shoulders and back as she worked the mixture. She had grown up strong and capable like her mother. And she had married a good man, educated and kind. And she had borne Adiljan into the family. Ibrahim put a shaking hand to his lips. This beautiful woman was his only remaining child. He watched her alternately punch and fold the dough. Two children had gone, like buds snapped off the branch. Neither of them with the chance to marry and have children. Little Adiljan left living with the weight of the entire family resting on his fragile frame. Ibrahim pulled out his handkerchief to wipe his eyes. It had been his own little family that had been fragile. He had seen his wife’s fortitude and presumed that any babies she produced would somehow share the same level of resilience. As if a fainthearted disposition was something that only he could be afflicted with. It turned out that his son’s Mehmet’s courage was all external; formed from cigarettes, cars and alcohol. And Rahima’s was the false bravery that took her to places that, God help us, she should have rightly feared. So that in the end she feared nothing, not even God.

Miriam finished the kneading and placed the dough back into the bowl to rest. So far her father had been his usual quiet self. Perhaps he just wanted company and an opportunity to stop thinking about difficult circumstances. She moved over to the sink and washed the dough off her hands, taking time to clean the wet flour from around her fingernails. She would put the kettle on and cut him some fruit.

When she turned, her father’s face was dripping with tears.

‘Apla!’ She walked towards the first man in her life, pulled out a kitchen chair and embraced him as his shoulders shuddered in raspy sobs.

‘Kizim, kizim,’ Ibrahim called out to his daughter.

Miriam pulled him closer. She wanted to say, ‘I’m here with you,’ but which daughter he was calling for? Instead she leant into his torso with her full weight and offered him soft repetitions of ‘Dadam, my father.’ When they were young they would refer to him amongst themselves as dadimiz, our father, yours and mine. Now there was nobody who shared this man as father. Nobody who shared her mother. Nobody to call her sister. They had lost a measure of themselves when Mehmet had passed away. This was one more slice cut from still raw skin.

Miriam did not offer him the usual supplications to stop crying, or encouragements to stop thinking about it. He had come this way to her house and chosen to do here what he could just as easily have engaged in on his own. He had wanted someone to mourn with, and he had chosen his daughter. She rubbed his back and kissed his head as his sobbing eased off. Eventually he lifted his head from its bent position and sniffed the tears back up his nose in one noisy, wet inhalation. He rubbed his handkerchief across the bottom of his nose and wiped the back of each hand across his eyes. Just like Adiljan. How vulnerable her father was in this world. A vulnerability that Adiljan would never be able to outgrow.

‘Kizim.’ Her father raised his hand and stroked her hair. The cooking scarf had fallen back off her head. ‘What pitiful circumstances you have seen in your life.’

She lent forward until her forehead was touching his.

‘I wish it hadn’t been like this for you, kizim. I wish I could have given you a life without suffering. I wish it had all been different.’

‘Ay, dadam.’ She put her arms around him again. ‘These things come from God. They all come from God.’

Download a pdf of Time to Talk

Seeking Sky from Rooftops, Angie Rega

Lilly waited to hear Walid snoring through the thin walls before sneaking down the corridor to the back door. The tiles underfoot always felt cool no matter how high temperatures reached. She crossed the asphalt road, mounted the steep stairs that divided Noura’s front lawn like a metallic zipper and climbed the ladder leaning against the brick wall of her best friend’s house and waited.

The roof gently sloped to a wide channel off the eaves. It was full of debris and leaves. Lilly liked the way the dry mess rustled when she rested her feet in the guttering. She wiggled her toes, listening to the leaves crackle and waited.

Noura’s fingers with their badly painted and chipped nails always appeared first against the shingles. Then, the top of her head covered with a black scarf. When she was high enough she hitched up her legs and, sitting next to an expectant Lilly, pressed her hollow cheek next to Lilly’s round one.

There was a moment of silence as they gazed out at the scape of obsolete factories, second-hand car yards, and the stretch of highway that led to the city.  Freedom was the school holidays, on the rooftop of Noura’s home, where Lilly sat unnoticed by her mother’s string of boyfriends and Noura was free from her chore-abiding and obsolete law-abiding parents.

Noura crossed her legs. ‘Shall I? Again?’

Lilly snuggled in. Noura had started telling the story of the Owl Prince about a month ago.  A celestial Hercules saving girls from misery in the suburbs of a forgotten Sydney. Their Sydney was one without a harbour view, where run-down fibro houses lined the streets.

‘Tell me,’ Lilly begged.

And Noura began:

The Owl Prince

The Owl Prince is an aristocrat of the night who visits girls sitting on rooftops and dreaming of gentle love. He knows not of slapping and lewdness, nor of calloused large hands. He is a gentleman. He expends his energy swooping and circling the skies and asking rooftop girls: Would you like to learn to fly above everything and everyone?

‘Can you really do that?’ they ask him and, perched on the edge of the gutters, they spread their arms wide and imagine what it is like to feel the weight of air underneath them.’

‘Imagine if the Owl Prince did come and teach us how to fly!’ Lilly said but Noura shook her head and then broke into a smile.

Lilly hugged her bare, scraped knees up under her chin and rocked. Noura was born to tell stories and she was born to listen. This had always been the way of their friendship. Now Lilly wanted to tell a story: to have Noura need her, too. More than anything. She fumbled for the piece of paper she had scrawled the words on in her pocket and began:

‘Once upon a time before servitude was born,

And Angel Owls and Creatures of the Night freely roamed and the land was wild, all girls were trained in lessons in flight –’ she stopped mid-sentence.

Go on,’ Noura urged, poking her gently on the shoulder.

‘That’s all I have. I can’t think of anything else.’

‘Yes, you can, it’s easy. Just make it up. Like me.’

‘Noura, wouldn’t you love to learn to fly and flee from here?’

‘One day we will.’

A veiled Noura lifted her hands and in place of dirty nails with chipped polish, Lilly saw powerful limbs that gestured the flight of the Owl Prince. She giggled.

‘Do you think he’d protect us?’

‘Of course,’ Noura answered.

If only the Owl Prince would come and take me away from Walid’s sneaking hands. Or even take Walid away and leave me and my mother alone, Lilly thought. But then, she knew that another Walid would simply take his place, called Bruce or Barry or Mahmood.

They sat in silence; Noura’s arms were still stretched out like wings, her sleeves billowing in the night breeze. Lily tilted her chin up, letting the wind blow against her face, a short respite from the summer heat.

It was a fairy story, a make-believe myth they had invented just like the ones they told of giants fighting when it thunder stormed and the tale of frustrated artist Monsieur Verdante who threw his paint out the window in a fit of anger and made the artificial grass, artificial green.

But the next night Noura appeared, with henna markings on her hands and arms instead of the usual pen ink. She told Lilly her parents had bought her a ticket to a place that didn’t exist on a map anymore, to be married to a man twenty five years her senior whom she had never met. Lilly knew, then, that her friend was wishing for the Owl Prince to be real, too.

‘The Owl Prince’s castle lies behind the storm clouds. A sky heavy with winds and rains means he has bought his kingdom to your town. You must ride those clouds, fly into the thick of the storm, or you will get left behind.’

Noura laid her hands in her lap and they both looked at the patterns in silence. The henna had lost its vibrancy and now started to blur into the tiny crevices of Noura’s skin.

‘You’re fourteen! They can’t send you to marry some guy you don’t know!’

‘They can, Lilly.’ Mascara streaked Noura’s cheeks.

Lilly put an arm around her best friend. She looked up at the night sky, searching for very special storm clouds but the heat had made the sky crisp and starched.

It seldom rained in summer. The season was long and stifling. Young boys tried to fry an egg on the asphalt at the hottest time of the day.

‘Lilly! Lilly! Get your miserable arse back home now!’ The anger in Walid’s voice bounced up to their rooftop.

‘I’ve got to go.’

She kissed Noura’s wet cheek and scrambled down the ladder.

 

Lilly put salt instead of sugar in Walid’s coffee; her mother got angry.

‘What the hell did you do that for?’ her mother yelled. She threw the cup into the sink, sending a chipped piece of porcelain into the air.

‘I don’t like the way he touches me.’

‘Don’t be stupid.’

‘He told me to show him my tits.’

‘Stop telling lies, Lilly.’

‘You’re lying to yourself.’

‘Go to your room before I slap you!’ her mother screamed, but she grabbed for her menthol cigarettes instead.

Lilly stormed to her room and slammed the door. In the Banks’ household where the rules changed according to the latest boyfriend, words meant nothing. Actions spoke louder. She rested her forehead against the cold wall, and stared at the floor. What had once been her home, where she felt safe, was decaying around her. She noticed the dust that coated the edges of the skirting boards and the blinds was now visible to her naked eye even in the afternoon light.

She threw herself onto her bed and drifted into a state of half sleep, hearing them argue. Snippets of Walid’s defense – it’s just a game, she’s a lying little bitch, you know what teenage girls can be like and I saved you so much money by sanding the lounge room floor! Empty, weightless words that levitated and travelled with a gust of wind.

When the rhythms of her breathing slowed and sleep stood at the edges of her consciousness, she saw the Owl Prince perched at her windowsill. Was she dreaming? She could have sworn she was awake. He wore an owl mask over an angular, chiseled face and lifted his goliath arms, revealing the tawny feathers that sprouted underneath. Then, he took the north wind up, past the tops of the highest roofs and trees and ascended into the night air. A flittering and fluttering noise reverberated around the bedroom.

Lilly rubbed her eyes and stared at the posters of dragons and winged horses above her bed. Her grandmother had bought them for her twelfth birthday. She hadn’t seen Nan since Walid had moved in. Now they peeled from their corners, revealing the dirty white walls underneath. If she didn’t blink they looked as if they were moving, flying, too. She drifted back into slumber. Perhaps she should sleep forever.

When she woke, a few hours later, her mother and Walid were both asleep, the television in their room emanating white noise. She sat up and stretched, running her hands through her hair and felt a foreign fluffy texture.

A single tawny feather was entangled in her knotty hair. She gently removed it, brushing its softness against her cheek and trembled with excitement.

Yes.

The Owl Prince was real.

He had come for her.

Come for them.

She put the feather into her jean’s pocket and went to Noura. She knew her best friend would be waiting.

 

It was dawn and rows of lights iced the city with a white glow, making dreams seem tangible, real even. The city felt washed clean and hope dressed Lilly in its finest. The Owl Prince. Real. His feather in her pocket. She smiled at Noura.

‘I was wondering when you would come,’ her friend said and pressed her cheek against Lilly’s. Noura untied her headscarf, letting her long ebony hair unravel. Lilly thought the tresses hung in wings of raven black, exuding sorceress magic.

‘You look like a witch – a good one.’

Noura smiled and lifted her face towards the few remaining night stars and closed her eyes as if in a trance.

‘He did not touch me tonight.’ Lilly said. It was unemotional, reportative, factual. ‘I put salt in his coffee.’

‘At least when mine touches me he will call me wife.’

‘Does that make it any better?’

Lilly snuck her hand in her pocket and stroked the tawny plume. She decided not to tell Noura just yet about the feather, relishing its secret for a little longer. She wanted to surprise her, tell her at just the right moment.

‘One day, the Owl Prince will come,’ she said.

Noura shuffled closer, put a tight arm around Lilly’s waist and pointed to a large storm cloud approaching from the East. ‘Look, his floating castle is behind those storm clouds. You see, it never rains in summer, yet, he comes for us.’

‘When do you fly out to marry the old fart?’

‘In two weeks.’

‘Right before school starts.’

Noura stretched her hands in front of her; the henna now pale ochre, almost the same colour as her skin. With her story-telling hands she brushed the hair away from Lilly’s ear and whispered, ‘You must believe.’

Lilly tingled at the gentle touch of lips on the curve of her ears. How could her friend stay so calm when she was about to be sold to a man who could mistreat her; someone she didn’t know? She listened:

The Owl Prince watches Noura and Lilly and thinks they would make great flying companions…

Lilly dozed on Noura’s shoulder, dreaming of riding the back of her Prince of feathers, zooming past a bird’s eye view of her rooftop, bouncing from one cloud to another, riding into the vast shah blue of the night skies. Away from Walid and her mother.

‘Walid and I are getting married,’ her mother said as she folded the laundry. She didn’t look at Lilly but kept her eyes focused on the worn socks and underpants with frayed elastics.

Lilly waited, to see if her mother would look at her, acknowledge that she deserved conversation, dialogue, not just commands and statements. Half a minute passed.

Lilly marched to her room and slammed the door. She was not going to listen anymore.

‘You’ll have to get used to it!’ her mother yelled out to her. ‘You’re a big girl now.’ She turned the television up loud, competing with Lilly’s music.

Things were closing in. Noura would be gone in less than a week and she would be left here alone. She crawled under bed and lay there in the darkness and dust bunnies. She wondered how long she would have to stay there until her mother came in and saw her in silent protest. She never came. Soon, her muscles cramped and her neck hurt. Still her mother didn’t come. Lilly stayed in her room until they went to bed. When she went to the kitchen, she found a dinner plate with two lamb chops and mash inside the microwave.

That night Lilly was alone on the rooftop. Noura had been sent to her Aunt’s place for the evening. She stroked the single feather in her pocket and marveled at how she had woken with it in her hair. She spread her arms out wide and pretended they were wings. Her shoulders felt strong. The wind accelerated and blew her hair back off her shoulders and it flew. But when she looked down, her head started to spin as she rocked dangerously too close to the edge.

Should she jump? She thought about her mother. Her wiry mother who shook too much, smoked too many cigarettes and watched too much television. She would marry Walid. Walid, who chained his motorbike to the post in the car space and always tied the dog up, no matter how many times Lilly let him run free in the yard. Her mother would vow to love and obey him and he would tie her up, too. The rope of manipulation is a strong, coarse one, already Lilly feels its noose around her neck, tightening, each time he stood near her.

She would never obey any man.

Would you like to learn to fly above everything and everyone? She heard Noura’s voice in her mind. How would she cope when her best friend had gone?

‘I do believe,’ she whispered to the night sky.

 

Walid slapped Lilly.

It was the evening before Noura was to fly to her new home. Lilly and Walid were sitting at opposite ends of the sofa in the lounge room, her mother ironing in front of the television. He was watching the wrestling and Lilly changed the channel without asking. It was without warning, a cold, dry slap across the face. Lilly pushed him back. He undid his belt, brandishing it like a sword to threaten her. Lilly recoiled, back towards the corridor but the feather had made her cocky.

‘Mum and I always watch Family Feud.’

‘Walid!’ her mother pleaded. ‘Leave her. She’s just a kid.’

Lilly froze. An eerie silence fell between them as white and tawny feathers floated past the lounge room window. Walid slumped back on the lounge and Lilly’s mother continued ironing.

‘You can leave home when you turn fifteen,’ he said.

Lilly didn’t answer, mesmerized by the cottony tufts that fluttered past.

‘Did you hear what I said?’

The Owl Prince had come.

Lilly bolted. She dashed down the corridor and onto the footpath. Vapor rose from the asphalt and she could smell the humidity mixed with the promise of rain. A storm was coming! She ran across the road, the hot ground burning her bare feet and didn’t stop until she was up the zipper staircase and climbing the wobbly ladder to the rooftop. White and tawny feathers pirouetted in the air. She hoisted herself up.

On the other side of the roof, Noura stood dangerously close to the edge where the last row of shingles met the guttering.

She held a hessian sack, full of white and tawny feathers and was releasing them to the angry wind. They plummeted, swooped and circled like fragile birds taking their first flight.

Lilly’s mouth watered involuntarily and nausea churned at her stomach, wringing it tight.

‘Noura, where’s the Owl Prince?’

Noura’s were vacant; she stared toward the emptiness of the horizon and laughed. It was a tinkling kind of laugh, and echoed against the excitable winds.

‘I am the Owl Prince. Stories are all we have left. Can you see his turret in the storm clouds?’

The bile rose in Lilly’s mouth, coating her tongue. She saw nothing but clouds and weightless feathers. She shook her head.

Desperation swallowed Noura’s already hollow cheeks. She reached out her hand, her fingers outstretched towards Lilly.

‘Jump with me! Jump! You must believe!’

Before Lilly could decide, Noura leapt out into the empty air, grabbing Lilly’s hand as she passed. Lilly felt her toenails scratch against the roof tiles and was suspended into the night air of debris and dust particles that stung her face.

‘I do believe. I do believe. I do believe,’ Lilly prayed and the words curled up and whisked away.

A pressure beat inside Lilly’s skull. Her ears blocked. They were being taken up, further towards the fast moving charcoal clouds, towards the opening of the storm.

Thunder birthed a chasm in the sky and separated them. Lilly’s hand scrabbled for Noura’s.

‘Noura!’ she screamed but her friend was out of her reach. She watched Noura’s drop turn to a bounce as if scooped up in a net. Caught in this invisible web she bounced from left to right, up and down as feathers sprouted from her shoulder blades. Then it let Noura go.

Lilly gasped as her friend fell free, faltered, fluttered ….and then flew.

Lilly itched as if she had hives. She was caught in an unseen thread of silk wind and cold rain; Lilly spun inwards, her skin crawled as feathers poked through and her eyes watered as her eyelids furred. She jerked and flapped, and then flew towards Noura, their wings entwined to share their first joyous flight.

‘Tell me a story,’ Noura demanded. Her voice was calm as if she was born to do this.

And Lilly began,

‘Once upon a time before servitude was born,

When Angel Owls and Creatures of the Night roamed freely

and the land was wild,

 All girls were trained in lessons in flight

So when they ran up the rooftops to jump their lives away

They did believe in fairies

And did grow wings of fey.

Lilly flew upward. Noura followed. It was an impulse, a quick decision. An exhilarative rush surged through Lilly as she brushed Noura’s wings. Weightless, they picked up a wind current that blew west.

 

Download a pdf of Seeking Sky from Rooftops

Time Lost, Jamie Derkenne

‘Same old same old,’ said Julie, packing her day neatly into four words and using her sleeve to delicately pat the Madeleine cake crumbs from her mouth.

Stefan nodded to say he knew the stuck-in-a-hole feeling. Berlin had been like that. Balmain was becoming like that. He wanted to go back to North Arm, but he wanted company as well. Watching the crumbs part from her lips, he thought the company could be Julie.

Stefan had spent the last six months helping Helmut renovate a terrace. The job was done. Stefan had stopped paying him. Sydney was expensive. He had to get back. Perhaps she would.

‘Move up with me,’ he said, reaching for her hand. Julie said nothing, just stared at the crumbs, her hand limp in his.

‘Money is not a problem. I make good dough. And the valley is beautiful. The nature is quiet and green. People are so free there, not imprisoned by all this city Scheisse.’

Until recently, Julie worked for a Broadway chew n spew. To get the job she didn’t even mention the philosophy major. Derrida was slick, but so was constant grease. It was a job, that’s all you could say. She didn’t mind, apart from the money, when she got laid off. Stefan met her a few times when he bought munchies for him and Helmut. Stefan and Julie would talk so much that by the time Stefan got back the take-out would be cold, or eaten. After a few times, Helmut, his voice hungry and stomach sore, suggested he should get the take-out and Stefan get the date. Julie went out with him a few times. He adored her. When he said she could share his bedroom at Helmut’s house, she did.

Stefan was focussed, sensitive and a good listener. Nothing like Helmut. Helmut was a bit off the air, spending hours straightening bent nails and collecting old planks from construction sites. His terrace, a two bedder on the point road, was beautiful or would have been if not for the piles of stuff stacked everywhere.

Julie had never been up north. But the way Stefan spoke made it seem like a magical place, a place where you could unwind and breathe again. She wanted to go to Melbourne first, put a few things in order, then fly up. Stefan would meet her in Coffs in a few weeks time. Julie thought that Stefan was one of the few men she had ever met who understood what she was saying. The way he tilted and nodded his head when she spoke was proof enough, she thought, of the import he gave her every word.

Stefan lived in a small shed made from ripple iron stitched together with six gauge next to the river on Christina’s land. When he got back he realised there were going to be a few problems with Julie moving in. The shed was not an ideal home, though he knew of couples who lived in far worse. Anna and Ivan lived in an upturned water tank on the adjoining property and seemed OK. And then there were the Silk People and their teepees. Still, he could do better than a shed. He had saved up some money. Perhaps he could afford a shipping container.

‘I can deliver a 40 footer to you cheapo mate. In pretty good condition. There’s only one hitch.’

Stefan had gone into town to make some phone calls. This one sounded promising, Maybe he could afford it.

‘So what is this hitch?’

‘Full of ruined books. You find a way of dumping them, and the container’s yours with ten per cent off.’

Stefan had the 40 footer delivered from Coffs, and positioned exactly where he wanted it, on a rocky outcrop overlooking a small field bounded on one side by the Nambucca and another by a grove of camphor laurel trees. On its side in big white letters was written the words ‘Hamburg Süd’ which made him smile. It took him a while to work the door bolts loose. When he finally coaxed the doors open he found the container packed with boxes of water-damaged second-hand books. Thousands of them. He managed to stack about 20 boxes of books in the paddock before giving up for the day. He literally had a truck load of books to shift.

The next morning Christina knocked on his shed door. Stefan’s shed and container were parked on Christina’s land. She lived in the old homestead on the other side of a small hill. In return for living on her land, Stefan kept an eye on the fences, many of which had disappeared into the river now that it had changed course.

‘Stefan! You need to help me. One of the Charolais is sick.’ Christina was a thin bony woman with eyes like a Jersey. Her reason for living was to enter Charolais cattle into the Bowraville and District Annual Agricultural Show. Among the webs in her mahogany lined living room were festooned the red and blue ribbons of previous victories. She spent most of her days hoeing thistles and talking back to talk-back radio, which lived in one of her ears via a miniature transistor. Her talking back was always in the fields. People said she talked to her cows.

Stefan knew nothing about cattle, but Christina thought he did. Stefan’s father had been a doctor, and some of the common sense had rubbed off. He followed her towards the dam where a creamy white cow sat. Charolais were normally skittish, but this one let both go right up to her.

Stefan scratched behind her neck, the way cows like. The heifer looked dolefully up at him, and then vomited copiously, not bothering to move its body. The vomit was sludgy grey. Some of it seemed to have straight edges. Stefan sat on his haunches and peered at it. There was type amongst the goo. He thought he could make out a word. Recherche?

‘Seems to me she’s eaten something she shouldn’t have.” he said. “Probably she will get over it in a day or two. You should just make sure she has some water with a bit of molasses.’

Christina nodded.

‘I see your new container has turned up. Should be an improvement for you. By the way, you haven’t seen my radio? I’ve dropped it somewhere.’

Stefan made a corral out of star stakes and pig wire so the cattle couldn’t get in, and moved the boxes there. He spent the rest of the day stacking more boxes from inside the container. It was hard work. Spring was still some way off. The nights were cold and the mornings frosty, but there was bite to the daytime heat. By noon the air was damp and hot. Every now and then he’d break open a box to see what sort of books were inside. They were mostly novels, and a lot of self-help books. Sometimes he would come across a philosophy book, and if it wasn’t too damaged he’d take it inside, thinking it might be something for Julie to read. He also kept a few German authors, even though they were in translation.

He stacked about 100 boxes into the corral. Christina would probably evict him if she knew he had been poisoning her cattle with literature. Maybe he should just chuck the lot in the river. He shook his head at the thought. If the Bowraville Argus was to be believed, the river was already polluted enough downstream. He thought about burning them. Burning them made a lot more sense, as he was in constant need of firewood for his Aga.

He had shifted the Aga from the shed just the day before. The Aga was small and positioned right next to the door of the container. Any further in and the whole container would become an oven. Stefan used it to bake German sourdough, which he sold at the Community Markets. The Aga needed fuel that burned slowly, and evenly. Not too hot. He’d give the books a try.

As he worked he noticed the sick cow had come over to see what he was doing. She seemed better already, but wasn’t grazing, just looking at him and chewing her cud as he piled the books alongside the container. It was unnerving having the cow watch intently. It was like she knew what he was doing. Stefan put down another box of books, and using it as a stool, sat down and stared at the cow, catching his breath.

The cow made a noise like someone clearing their throat.
‘She’ll be no good for you,’ said the cow as it chewed its cud. Stefan stared back.

‘Was that you? Did you speak?’

The cow said nothing, but went on quietly chewing, its jaw moving silently sideways as if it was working up to say something.

‘I must be going mad. I would have sworn the cow said something,’ Stefan muttered to himself. The world was spinning.

‘My point is that you yourself don’t see what is obvious. I am talking to you. That is obvious. She will leave you. That is obvious. But on both counts you refuse to believe the truth of your own senses.’

Stefan stared slack jawed. Not only did the cow speak to him, but the voice was ethereal and beautifully modulated. A wonderful speaking voice, but one that sounded tiny and far away. It was like a man’s voice. It had a slight lisp perhaps, but one that was hard to detect, and probably a result of chewing while at the same time speaking.

‘You can speak!’

The cow languidly slid a thick blue tongue into one of its nostrils, flicked it around, and then continued chewing silently.

‘I heard you. You can speak!’ Stefan repeated.

‘But did you understand anything of what I was saying?’ the cow said.

This time it was Stefan’s turn to be silent.

‘You say she’s leaving, but how would you know? You know nothing of my relationship with Julie, nothing at all. You know nothing about me. And you have never even met her! How do you say you know these things?’

‘I know how these things work. I’ve digested quite a bit of human thought. And besides, why shouldn’t you trust me? I am a cow. Why would I lie?’

Stefan tried to ask more questions, but the cow remained silent. Eventually she sat down in the shade of the container quite close to where he was working. He watched her intently, but after a while she stopped looking at him, and closed her eyes for minutes at a time. Some time later, with some heaving and snorting, the cow got up, and walked slowly over to where the rest of the herd was grazing.

Naturally, Stefan said nothing about the talking cow to Christina. And he decided that it was against his best interests to say anything when he picked Julie up from Coffs Airport.

‘Are you sure you want to be here?’

Julie laughed. She wasn’t the least bit sure, but she wasn’t going to tell Stefan that. Stefan had worked hard to make a little home out of his new shipping container. He’d even managed to build a small deck overlooking a gully and the Nambucca where they could sit at night once the weather warmed up.

‘Such a beautiful place.’ She kissed him. It wasn’t the answer he was looking for.

For the next few weeks, things seemed to go smoothly. Stefan burned books in the Aga, using it to bake bread. He had come across a case of Thomas Mann, in English translation, which burned particularly well. It was strange how different books burned in different ways. Burning Nietzsche was next to impossible, even though all the books were completely dry. An entire case of DH Lawrence remained damp no matter what he did. Stefan had even taken to placing the books on the steel roof of the container during the daytime to help dry them, but after weeks Sons and Lovers not only remained damp but mold had begun to grow across the pages. He would have to dig a pit and compost them. For the most part the Aga was well fuelled and Stefan’s bread baking business boomed. He left the container doors propped open because of the heat. They lay in bed listening to the sounds of frogs and night birds, feeling the night breeze on their faces.

Life settled into a quiet routine. Julie seemed happy, forever saying how different the Nambucca was to either Sydney or Melbourne, but Stefan couldn’t get the cow’s words out of his head.

One morning he got up early, and put his gumboots and Drizabone on. The air was cold enough for breath clouds, and there was a thick frost on the grass. He walked over to the camphor laurel grove and looked around. It was still too dark to see properly, but he soon spotted the herd, their thick white coats giving them the appearance of ghosts in the gloaming. The entire herd, about twenty breeders, a few calves and heifers were sitting under a thicket of trees where it was a few degrees warmer than the open paddock. He trod carefully, his boots not even crunching the frost. They still sensed him. They all turned their heads his way to watch him come.

Even though they were Charolais, not one of them stirred or showed the least sign of agitation. Stefan got up so close he could almost reach out and touch them. He smelt their sugary breath. He realised he had no idea which of the cows was the one who spoke to him.

‘Which one are you?’

The cows said nothing. A few were chewing cud, but several more weren’t even doing that.

‘One of you spoke to me. I heard you!’

Some of the cows didn’t even seem to be looking at him any more, but through him, like he was invisible. It was an unnerving feeling.

‘You need to explain yourself. Why will she leave? What have I done? Why won’t you speak to me? It won’t happen, you know. I will leave her first.’

‘Stefan?’ There was a catch of concern in the voice. Stefan looked from cow to cow, trying to work out which one had uttered his name, realising too late that the voice had come from behind him. He turned around.

Silhouetted by a dawning sun pinking her ears, Julie stood at the edge of the grove, holding out a hand as you would if helping someone over a stream.

‘Julie?’

‘Stefan, what are you doing? Who are you talking to? Is Christina there? Are you talking about me?’

Stefan was silent for a few seconds trying to work out what to say.
‘No no. No-one is here. I was just checking on the cows. I was clearing my throat.’

Julie came closer, looking around. It was clear she didn’t believe him. Stefan knew he had to act. Far better for him to leave her then she to leave him.

That night, while they were sitting around the Aga burning some Günter Grass, Stefan told Julie she should leave. She burst into tears.

‘Look, we aren’t meant for each other. This is clear to me. It’s better we split now and remain friends than later on become enemies.’ The words sounded hollow.

Julie sniffed and patted her eyes with her sleeve.

‘It’s Christina isn’t it? I heard you talking to her this morning.’
Stefan opened his mouth to say he had been talking to a cow, but thought better of it. He nodded sagely. ‘Yes, you are correct. It was Christina.’

Julie’s face contorted in agony and she started sobbing once more. That night Stefan slept on the roof. The next morning he took her into Macksville so she could catch the Sydney Express. He offered to wait on the platform with her, but she said no. Her grief had turned to anger.

Later that night, alone in his container, Stefan started to feel bad about the whole situation. He would drive into town and try ringing her in the morning, but it all seemed so hopeless. Why had he done it?

After a few hours the moon rose. The container doors were open as usual, as he was baking for the Saturday markets. Unable to sleep, Stefan put on his gumboots and walked towards the camphor laurel grove. The moon was full and heavy. The light cast strong shadows across the fields. A flicker of shadow made him look up. A cloud, but perhaps not. Something that for all the world looked like Anna, skirts, boots and all, flying across its face as if on the zenith of a giant leap.

Stefan felt sick. Something was happening to his brain he was sure. Was he hallucinating? He wondered what he would look like from such a height.

This time he recognised the Charolais who had spoken to him. It was the way she was chewing her cud. She’d move her jaws from side to side for a few seconds then stop, then start again.

‘Why did you tell me to leave her?’

The cow looked up at him exactly the same way Julie did when she was asking him to explain why she should leave.

‘I know it was you. You told me when I was taking books out of the container. I know it was real. You told me.’

The cow swallowed and lifted its head as if to say something. Stefan waited. The Charolais, its head held high, bellowed so loudly that the sound echoed through the night. It was a cry of sorts, the sound a cow makes when it has lost its calf, or is calling for a bull. An elemental sound so loud and forlorn that for a second or two Stefan wasn’t sure if it was him or the cow making all the noise.

 

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The Riders, Helen Meany

Sister Veronica had a well-known knack for knowing if a student was looking at the clock, but Joyce Hocking stole a glance at the hateful face above the blackboard regardless. Still 1:47. Its hands had barely moved.  The nun continued to stroll around the classroom, hands clasped behind her back, hovering over the shoulder of each kid and their cursive practice. Joyce had only copied one line from the blackboard, and had also smudged ink down the side of her book. But instead of starting a new page, she pressed her pen nib down hard on the blotting paper and watched the blue ink blossom.

Under the desk, her left hand picked at the edges of the large scab on her knee, carefully selecting sections that felt sufficiently healed to yield without starting a new bleed. She let the loosened crumbs fall to the floor and then ran a satisfied fingertip over the soft new skin beneath, imagining it shiny and pink, and as smooth as the satin trim on a woollen blanket. She’d try riding her brother’s bike again when she got home. She wanted to show her parents she could do the deliveries for the shop like Arthur had before he’d left for boarding school in Rockhampton. Her mum had told her it was no job for a girl and besides; the bike was too big for a nine year old. And Joyce had clenched her teeth until she gave herself a headache.

Joyce hated Friday afternoons at the best of times, and this one had dragged on like nobody’s business. It was rare for anything to happen in Barcaldine, but today the 2pm train from Longreach was delivering The Rossi Bros Circus. This lot had never been to town before, not many had. Joyce had cried for a week after Sterlington’s Circus had a derailment and never turned up. But that was two years ago, and she had been thoroughly satisfied to learn they’d gone bust not long after. This time the principle, Sister Paul, had promised the school they could walk down to Oak Street and watch the procession from the station to the showground. It’s not every day you get to see elephants on the main street, she’d said.

A man with a pompadour, sweat stained singlet, and a cigarette balanced on his bottom lip, led the first one down the strip of dust that called itself a road. The brown elephant was adorned with tarnished chains that looped around its ankles and neck and it hauled a green windowless carriage with yellow lettering. Three more carriage-pulling elephants followed, their lethargic tread stirring up orange clouds. Standing in a ragged line by the road’s edge, the kindys jumped on the spot and yelped. Sister Paul clutched her bamboo cane in her fat red hands behind her back and leaned forward on her toes.

Joyce slumped against an awning post outside Morrison’s Hardware. Seeing the animals up close didn’t elicit the feeling she’d anticipated. They could have been goats and billy carts for the surprising disinterest she had in the procession so far. She decided the elephants didn’t look right. Their ears were tiny and their heads bumpy. Also, it wasn’t even a procession.  It was obvious they were just unloading all their stuff from the train and taking it down to the showground. She became irritated by the unwarranted interest the rest of the school, and the other locals who’d wandered out of the shops or pub, were showing in it. Some of her classmates had even joined the babies down the front and were speculating excitedly about whether the green carriages carried lions or tigers.

‘They don’t even look like proper elephants,’ she said to the post.

Brendan Byrne, standing a yard or two in front of her, turned just his head and curled his lip.

‘Nothing ever looks right to you, Hocking.’ His eyes flickered from her face. ‘Yuck. Your leg’s bleeding.’

She followed his gaze; a dark red trail had been painted down her shin from her disturbed scab and was now threatening her left sock. Joyce fought a wave of embarrassment before it set into familiar fury. Boys never cared if other boys had bleeding scabs or even spongy warts. She squatted, pulled out a blue checked handkerchief from the pocket of her tunic, spat on it and rubbed her leg clean.

She stood again in time to see two young women with thick eyebrows and bobbed hair each lead a grey pony past the group of school children. The pony girls chatted to each other, cotton dresses billowing around their knees, only acknowledging the onlookers with a constant wave of their free hands that Joyce soon realised was just shooing flies. A flatbed truck tightly packed with wooden poles and covered with oilcloth taupe, overtook the girls. The driver tooted twice as he passed the school children and the infants jumped up and down on the spot again. Another pony, led by a dark haired boy, passed. The boy’s eyes were trained on the dirt, but his shoulders were squared. His shoes were scuffed and the light brown limbs poking out from under his creased shorts reminded Joyce of grown-up footy player’s legs; lumpy and angular. They seemed at odds with the rest of him, which was like any other kid in her class. She decided he seemed about as thrilled to be participating in this activity, as she was to be watching it. Joyce couldn’t say why exactly, but it lifted her mood.

Joyce’s mum wasn’t fussed about missing out on the matinee performance, and didn’t want to close the shop even on a Saturday. Someone might need something. She needn’t have worried because most of the town were there anyway, along with Joyce and her dad in his Sunday best, already dust coloured and sweat streaked. Joyce had woken that morning, sure that the dull unease and general apathy she now felt about the circus would be replaced by something more agreeable once inside the tent, with a toffee apple in her hand. But there were no toffee apples. Instead, Joyce’s dad bought a bag of peanuts from a child in a yellow satin shirt carrying a shallow box down the aisle. His face was covered in streaky white greasepaint, red cheeks and oversized painted mouth, but Joyce could tell it was the pony boy. She smiled at him as he passed her dad the bag, but he was already looking past them for the next sale.

The air was thick with smell of peanut shells, sawdust, stale sweat and ripe dung. Joyce took to sipping breaths between her fingers clamped over her mouth. Clowns as tramps meandered and tumbled around the ring while a leathery faced man with white hair, seated on a box beside the ring, wrestled lurching, discordant accompaniment out of a large black accordion. Joyce’s dad chuckled at the clowns and clapped for the elephants, as the cigarette man, now in a sequined jacket, cajoled them to walk in formation, balance on a large crate, and in turn crawl under each other’s bellies.  When they left the ring the same man returned to introduce Lady Lana and The Beast. Then a woman in boots, jodhpurs and unflinching grin, led out a tiger on a rope.  The accordion fell silent, and the audience followed suit; finally, something thrilling and dangerous. The woman led the slow moving animal around the ring twice, then cracked a bullwhip to make the tiger lie down, roll over and stand on its hind legs. She threw it something to eat, took a deep bow and led the animal away. Joyce and her father exchanged glances as they clapped lightly.

‘I’d bet two bob that Lady Lana’s more dangerous than the tiger. What do you reckon Joycie Woyce?’

Joyce shrugged, disappointment settling in her belly like a lump of bread dough. ‘Are all circuses like this?’

‘Like what love?’

She slumped against her father and exhaled loudly.

The cigarette man strode to the centre of the ring. He introduced the next act, Little Jimmy Rossi, The Bareback Rider!

A white-faced figure in a yellow satin shirt rode out on a pony, left arm raised in greeting. Joyce sat up. The boy seemed suddenly larger, taller. One of the bobbed hair girls in a full, ruffled skirt, held one end of a long lead attached to the pony’s bridle. She stood in the centre of the ring, pivoting with the rope as the pony trotted the circumference. The boy climbed to his knees, balancing on a thick flat platform of blankets on the animal’s rump. Then he leapt to his feet, standing erect, arms outstretched. Joyce inhaled sharply and applauded in unison with the crowd. The lump of dough had disappeared, driven out by a pounding beneath her ribs. Everyone around them sat up, leant in, whispered astonishment and shushed replies.  With face paint blanketing his expression, the boy raised his hands, and in one swift movement planted them on the pony’s back and flung his feet into the air. They hung there less than a second before he bounced back to a standing position. The crowd sucked in oxygen as if collectively winded, and cheered. The applause continued as the boy performed the handstand three more times. On the final attempt, he wobbled on landing. Joyce stopped breathing, exhaling only when the boy dismounted with a graceful jump to the sawdust. The pony continued on course and the boy took a running leap from the centre of the ring and pulled himself up onto the moving animal. He stood again, completing another two laps of the ring in that position. Then, as if satisfied that all eyes were upon him, or that his nerves were sufficiently steadied, he slowly moved to a half crouch, then promptly swung his arms up and forward over his head. His feet left the trotting pony’s back, and with knees tucked into his chest he turned a tight backflip. The boy’s feet reconnected unsteadily with the platform a full second before anyone in the audience had the audacity to clap, to make sure their brains had caught up with their eyes and confirmed they’d seen right. Or, in case he still fell. The boy regained his balance and dismounted from the moving pony, joining the girl in the centre of the ring for an extended, deep bow. The girl smiled, but the boy remained expressionless. Some townspeople stood up and shouted for more.

As he left the ring, Joyce thought how oddly small he looked once again.

 

Joyce felt restless. She didn’t want to work in the shop that afternoon. She wanted to take Arthur’s bike out and practice in the schoolyard, but her mum had made her wipe the shelves and sweep. Then she had to fill the fridge.

She’d left the circus with a curious unease that scratched at her insides. She didn’t even feel like lunch. Her mum had asked her how the show was, and she had no words.  Dad had answered for her.

‘…A bit disappointed I think darl.’

It wasn’t entirely accurate, but Joyce let it pass. She felt a strong desire to see the show again before they left, so she was keen to keep in her mum’s good book for the rest of the day. She knew that night’s show was out of the question, but if she aimed for Sunday’s matinee she might wrangle it.

Joyce had just finished sweeping the floor of the shop, forming the dirt and dust into a small pile to be swept up with a pan, when the jangle of the bell and thwack of the screen door made her look up.  The accordion man hobbled in using a cane, closely followed by the boy. Jimmy Rossi, The Bareback Rider. The man’s torso twisted awkwardly and stiffly at each step. The boy followed with the same straight-backed grace that Joyce had first seen on Oak Street. He glanced around the shop quickly and then lowered his gaze. Close up now the boy seemed older, perhaps even in high school. Without thinking, Joyce stepped behind the shelf of biscuit tins so she was out of sight.

Her mother appeared from the back room, slapping on a well-rehearsed smile for the stranger at the counter.  ‘Afternoon, how can I help you dear?’

‘Do you have the Vincent’s?’ The man had a stern, deep singsong accent and it seemed to catch Joyce’s mother by surprise.  The corners of her mouth dropped slightly, and with her forehead creased up, tilted her head slightly.

‘Ah…the headache powders?’

‘Yes.’  His reply was abrupt. Joyce watched with interest, knowing her mother didn’t take kindly to pugnacious customers.

‘Righto, then.’ She turned to a shelf behind her where the small blue and yellow boxes were arranged in a small stack.

She placed the box on the counter, ‘That’ll be six and six.’

The man paid and slipped the box into his front shirt pocket. He nodded once in acknowledgement and shuffled awkwardly out of the shop, the boy holding the door open for him. Joyce’s mother pushed the register closed with more force than was needed.

Joyce ran to the door and watched the pair as they headed down the street. The boy held the man’s elbow and helped to steady him as he walked. She lost sight of them so pushed the door and poked her head out. The boy was now alone on the bench outside Shakespeare’s Hotel. Without checking to see if her mother was watching, Joyce stepped out and several seconds later was outside the pub, the boy only looking up when she spoke.

‘Hello.’

‘Hi.’

‘I liked your tricks. My dad said you probably rode before you could walk. Did you really?’

The corners of the boy’s mouth pushed his cheeks up a little; he shrugged, and averted his gaze.

‘I just always done it. Me dad taught me.

‘Is that your dad, in there?’ She gestured to the pub doors and sat down next to him.

The boy nodded.

‘Why can’t he walk properly?’

‘He had an accident, when he was still in Italy.’

‘Is that where you’re from?’

The boy shook his head.

‘I’m in grade five. What about you?’ Joyce asked.

‘Grade?’

‘In school.’

‘Don’t go.’

‘Don’t go? The nuns at my school say that you have to go to school every day.’

‘Or what?’

‘Or Sister Paul will go over to your house and tell your mum and dad, and then when she finds you, you get the cane.’

‘Do you cry?’

‘A bit… not really. We also get it if we muck up too much.’

‘If you make mistakes?’

‘Yeah. I suppose.’

The boy picked at his nails, ‘What if you try really hard, but you still keep making mistakes?’

‘If you’re too dumb for school they just send you home for good. Do you live in a caravan?’

He nodded. ‘Do you live in that shop?’

Joyce shook her head, ‘In the house behind. How did you know it’s our shop?’

‘I saw you out the front sweeping.’

The door of the pub jerked as the boy’s father struggled to push the door open, using his walking stick while holding a bottle in a paper bag under his arm. Without a word, the boy hurried to his side, taking the bottle in one hand, the man’s elbow again in the other and helped him across the veranda.

Joyce stood, ‘See you later!’

The boy continued on as if he hadn’t heard, but his father shot her a look like a sharp stick. Joyce scowled back on reflex, but he’d already turned.

She watched the pair continue their laborious crossing of Oak Street, and it occurred to her that the old man had just been squinting into the afternoon sun.

 

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To Fall At Your Feet, John Elder

 …It was a beautiful sparkling morning and Marmie said she was going to the river to make a fire on the rocks and bathe herself in the shallows and pick some flowers and put them in her hair like she’d seen in the picture book and could we all just leave her alone for half the day. I started to follow her down the slope because I was six years old and lovesick with my mother…

To ‘Fall At Your Feet’ is a re-telling of the Persephone myth as a meditation on mortality, narrated by the Hades-like character who doesn’t rule the Underworld, but rather is a man who stops visibly ageing at the age of 50 at the end of the First World War and becomes increasingly fixated on the day-to-day dying of others. Here he is in his early childhood…

It was a beautiful sparkling morning and Marmie said she was going to the river to make a fire on the rocks and bathe herself in the shallows and pick some flowers and put them in her hair like she’d seen in the picture book and could we all just leave her alone for half the day. I started to follow her down the slope because I was six years old and lovesick with my mother. Sometimes if I playfully made a sad face she’d pick me up and talk to me and let me put my hand inside her dress and hold her breast which I still wanted so much but she said to stay with daddy. It was her birthday and she wanted to be a girl. I had a little whinge and turned away and tried to make the world a terrible place but it wasn’t. She said daddy wanted me and could I go to him straightaway please and she touched me on the face and I was more lovesick than ever. But I nodded and let her go.

Daddy had asked me to bring in a few small logs and watch for spiders but I remembered instead a sweet red hen I’d made friends with and wondered what she was up to. She loved me in the same way I loved Marmie. All I needed to do was say hello and she’d follow me around. I found her in the orchard where the trees were old. She was nesting the morning in a hollow where somebody was buried from before I was born. As soon as the chicken saw me, up she came and said hello and there was an egg all nice and brown and warm and not too dirty. I put the egg in my pocket and she made no complaint. I started off, walking in big funny steps, and we made a parade in and out of the trees. When daddy called from an open window to get those logs, my little friend followed me to the woodpile and when I was squatting down looking for spiders, she stood by my side and gurgled concern. She followed me back and forth into the house until daddy said to take her out again because he wanted the floors all clean. He was making a fuss and normally didn’t. I picked her up, the hen, and was holding her like my baby and daddy forgot about her. He showed me the socks he’d knitted for my mother and I said they were fine. Marmie was turning twenty today and she was feeling strange that no other people had ever come asking if she belonged to them. Daddy said they were being strange with each other. They were a bit mixed up because sometimes Marmie was daughterly more than his wife but not to worry about it he said. This wasn’t the way daddy talked any other day because he wasn’t a talker at all and because I didn’t know what to do I drifted into the small-child vagueness that sings unto itself and is lost to history. You only remember what you paid attention to in the first place and I was off in that fuzzy nothing place with my friend the red hen until daddy ran his finger and thumb along my arm and said there were Chinamen coming up the track and it was true. They were singing softly like a wheel sings he said. He had an ear for softness.

We went out to the gate and looked down the track and over the bridge came fifty or so Chinese men and women in rusty red suits and slippers. We’d had a few Chinamen working for us but these coming up the track were very proud of themselves. They were jogging along in two straight lines. A dozen of the men were built like tombstones and carried great clanking sacks. There was a bitter vegetable smell and what I didn’t know to be fish and some kind of sausage and other smells that made me drunk. The sweet red hen was restless and I let her down but she stayed close to my feet. Daddy and I didn’t talk. We watched the Chinese come up the hill and when they passed by every one of them turned their heads to say good morning and daddy nodded and I waved. And then they carried on singing like wheels. They were heading up the rise and we were walking back to the house when one of the women ran back and called out and smiled and sort of bowed and handed daddy an envelope. He put it in his pocket and told me to get out my town clothes and brush them off for the ceremony we were having that afternoon for Marmie. The sweet red hen followed me inside and daddy didn’t say anything about it.

At about four o’clock that afternoon the Chinese came back again. Daddy took me out to the gate and Marmie too. She was wearing the old straw hat in which daddy had found her on the day she was born. Half of the Chinese were carrying a cast-iron bed and they were singing a different song and travelling very slowly. Their song made me think of swallows playing over the water; mad as butterflies and impossibly happy was their tune. Propped on the bed was a very old woman. She was about a hundred yards away and one of the taller Chinamen held a brolly with an enormous canopy to keep her shaded. He had a paper fan in his other hand and was very busy waving the flies away. He was walking along sideways. Marmie had read in the newspaper about gay parties and she wondered if this was one of them. She was walking with her arms folded and then she dropped her arms and swung them like a child and sang in sympathy with the Chinese, and then she danced ahead of us, whirling away and then dancing very slowly, edging her way toward the bed. The old woman was arranged there on many pillows to be almost sitting up but well secured and she was looking around with a smile on her face from very long ago. Her face was heavily powdered to keep the sun from burning and the flaky whiteness made her look like a statue in a graveyard. Daddy knew this old woman from a homestead five miles away and he said let’s walk up to meet her. Her name was Mrs Alice Farnham. She might have been the oldest woman in the world daddy said and the Chinese were carrying her very carefully. If she’d been travelling by wagon, the track would have broken all her bones and up close I could see this was true. Marmie sometimes made me lovely animals she’d seen in picture books by arranging and balancing twigs together and Mrs Farnham was no better put together than those crazy twig unicorns and seahorses. Daddy got beside the bed and walked along as if there were no Chinese in attendance. He wasn’t being rude, he just didn’t know them. He was asking Mrs Farnham if she’d like to come to the house for a cup of tea or stay for dinner but it took a number of moments for Mrs Farnham to dig herself out of the long-ago world to say:

`They’re taking me to the train,’ and she thought it was very funny, in a confiding way, as if it was somebody else, some silly fool she’d once been friends with being carried along. I’d seen people visiting our homestead talk this way. I didn’t know what to do with it.

`Do you remember me?’ said daddy. He’d visited Mrs Farnham’s place a number of times some twenty years ago, while chasing down some men.

`Did you?’

 One of the Chinamen was telling Marmie that Mrs Farnham, famously old, had been invited to the grand opening of the Asphodel hotel in Melbourne. The Chinese had been sent to fetch her. They were carrying her to the town of Woodend, another twelve miles away, where they’d all take the train the following afternoon.

`I knew some good reverends but you wasn’t one of them, were you?’ said Mrs Farnham and daddy said no, he wasn’t a reverend and when Mrs Farnham looked like she might fly apart in confusion daddy said he used to do God’s work.

`You’re not the one who married me and Arthur,’ she said.

`Mainly in the funeral line,’ he said, and that tickled her.

`There’s nobody left but me,’ she said.

I’d never seen someone so pleased with themselves and bitter at the same time. She caught me staring and she was gone from daddy and everything that was going on. She was off somewhere playing with a doll and having her hair brushed and pinching hard the cheek of a little brother and making big eyes as to what could be the trouble. I’d seen other children engaged in such sweet warfare when we’d taken apples and eggs into Woodend and there was one little girl who I longed to see again who had spoken to me and teased me and chased me through the holding store and Mrs Farnham gave me the same sorts of feelings for here she was looking down at me, excited and stunned both of us, one child meeting another. We talked to one another with our eyes. Mrs Farnham wanted to take me somewhere to play and I wanted to go there and Marmie took my hand and pulled on it fearfully but I pulled my hand away and tried to climb on to the bed. Daddy said no and the Chinaman talking to Marmie suddenly crouched down and walked along with his backside stuck out, his face in front of mine, very serious like he had a stomach ache and sort of looking up at Marmie at the same time and saying how the Asphodel hotel had been carved from an immense hill of red rock and wasn’t that amazing. Every room was a great cave he said filled with ancient treasures. He’d been one of the carvers of the rock from the first day, him and a whole army of Chinamen. Marmie said people passing through had talked about it. It was already world famous said the Chinamen who then bid for daddy’s attention and asked if he might graciously accept the invitation to the grand opening on account of daddy, the great Pialuto, being a person of historical note and everybody would be so pleased to see him there.

`What invitation?’

We were all very startled, even Mrs Farnham, because Marmie, even when upset or angry, was painfully soft spoken, but here she was as strident as a hammer on an anvil. Daddy pulled the envelope from his pocket and handed it to the Chinaman and said he’d got another one in the post two months ago and he apologised for not writing thank you, no. The Chinaman was looking at the envelope in his hand like he didn’t know what to do with it and Marmie snatched it away, saying “well I’ll go then’’ and shocking to me was daddy shrinking away like all the water had gone out of him. He looked for a moment older than Mrs Farnham. The world wasn’t working properly. We were all travelling along very slowly, almost at the gate now, and there was the house and the orchards and goats and chickens, everything that was our life together didn’t seem to belong to us in that moment of nobody talking and all the earth turning in Marmie’s eyes like I’d never seen them. I wondered where we were travelling to if we didn’t go home. Daddy saw me worried and took charge in the strangest voice, as if he’d been drinking and crying in his sleep:

`You people can’t stay on the road tonight. You better camp here.’

…

An eel buttered the darkness and we spoke to one another as underwater creatures do. I was but a mollusc and it made no sense to say I was upside down. He bade me, the eel, to swim out to meet him. I had an idea of his whiskers and I can’t say why that is. He knew nothing of mothers and I knew nothing of whiskers. We were simpletons. When he grazed her belly, I felt him sliding by and there was a great shuddering and her hands were holding me and later she’d say, my mother, there he was eeling by and lo he was gone from both of us and there her fingertips on my knee. It made a little tent she said. She was sitting on the muddy floor of the river, the water bobbing her breasts and the light through the trees making sparks upon them. There was a great shuddering again, but the eel was gone to the darkness, it was all about me. A great creaking sound I would later hear on boats. So many sucking sounds if you really want to know. The apples fermenting in her bowels. My heart twice as fast and not so whomping. I may as well have been inside her heart. The tired river and the empty red trees sucked on one another and there was the pleading of the earth itself from long before my father and mother got me started. The ever-be drought had sucked the colour from the sky she said. And the river sighed. What does a river remember? I have begun to wonder, as perhaps Mrs Farnham wondered: if I travel on as I’ve been traveling, getting older inside and everything working beautifully, will my memories go back to before I was born?

 

Download a PDF of “To Fall At Your Feet, an extract”

 

The Time Machine, Elizabeth Robson

It was a very long time ago for some but not for all. She only married him for his horses, so she said. She was a girl from the city and he was a boy from the bush. She attended Art School and soon found her calling as a teacher and he bred horses and cleared the land.  They met by chance; a mutual friend, so he wooed her with his brash looks and country drawl. They were both young and impetuous and it wasn’t long before they were married. He sold his horses and took up cattle and wheat farming along the foothills of the Moonbi Ranges. She had dreamed of living a life on the land and she threw herself into that role. She reared children and fought fires and cried when the floods came and I never once heard her complain.

I push open the first door, step through and let it close, slow and heavy. I cannot open it now from the inside without a key. Once inside the vestibule I notice as I always do the marble-topped, side-table against one wall. It stands alone and looks rather conspicuous in this small space. On the wall above the table, is a small oil painting, or rather a reproduction, of Drysdale’s ‘The Drover’s Wife’. I like the painting because the woman in the foreground appears strong and determined as if she has made her decision and she will suffer the consequences without yielding. I have heard others speak of this woman as ‘sturdy and resolute’ against a world that shrivels and dies. In essence, the idea of survival through inner strength permeates the underlying significance of the image. As I study it, I realise what an interesting choice of painting someone has made. It says far more than words could ever do.

On the table are a visitor’s book and a china vase sprouting plastic flowers. I have never signed the book and for a fleeting moment I think about what I could possibly write within those pages. Maybe not the usual: ‘Had a lovely time, a most relaxing stay. Food was great and the company fabulous.’ I look at the painting and smile. Not today. Ahead is a second door, similar to the first. It too is solid and weighty. I step forward and turn the handle, lean into it and move through into a sun filled room. A warm rush of air with the scent of urine and antiseptic blanket me as I stand clutching flowers and a plastic grocery bag.

To the right are small clusters of dining tables. At one, two women sit facing each other, one holding a ragged, brown bear with a bright blue ribbon knotted around its neck. She looks as if she has been crying. A nurse places a small plastic cup in front of her and a glass half filled with water. The woman sits still then suddenly lashes forward with her hand and knocks the water and the pills onto the floor. The nurse mumbles something about the RN being called and bends to clean up the mess. The other woman seems oblivious to the scene unfolding in front of her and appears to sweep invisible crumbs from the vinyl tablecloth with her fingers. Neither speaks. A light glows softly from a large tank near where the two women are seated, and a big laminated sign is blu-tacked above it, reminding the residents not to feed the fish.

 To my left is an open area with windows running along one side, over-looking a grass and paved courtyard. Red and brown leaves fall from a Tallow tree in the centre of the lawn. A man is standing near a small clothes line. He bends and picks up a piece of clothing from a basket and clumsily pegs it to the line. He bends and repeats the action. After he has pegged several pieces up he begins unpegging them and places them back in the basket at his feet. He stops what he is doing and wanders off towards the high fence surrounding the courtyard and stands looking out. A gentle wind stirs his hair and leaves circle his feet. I wonder what he is thinking.

Inside, a horseshoe of upholstered chairs are occupied by other men and women, some dozing in the air-conditioned warmth, others peering as if seeing their surroundings for the first time. No one speaks. Words are lost here.

Mindful not to make eye contact, but smiling pleasantly, I search the room to see if she is seated in one of the padded chairs facing the huge, flat-screen TV, against the far wall. Images flicker vividly between ads as muffled dialogue and music penetrate the space. It is a Sunday and it has been a month since my last visit.

Towards the side of the room I see her. She is about my height but hunched and twisted slightly in the chair. Her hair is ruffled as if by some draught and her hands lie folded loosely in her lap. She is dressed in dark slacks and a light-blue, zip-through jacket, crimson slippers on her stockinged feet. She stares, not at the screen with its flashing images and droning sounds but out of the window near where she is seated. She has the look of an expectant child but something else has settled there – some sense of foreboding, loss maybe.

‘Hello. How are you?’ Pause. ‘It’s Liz.’ Pause. ‘You’re daughter, remember?’ Pause. Take a breath. ‘You’re looking well,’ I say, as I notice she has lost weight and looks quite drawn and pale. ‘Here, I brought you some flowers.’ She looks up startled for a moment, then wipes her mouth with a tissue. ‘It’s ok. You look like you could use some company.’

‘Where did you come from? Are the others here too?’ She sounds surprised and peers around me.

 ‘Nope, just me. Do you like the flowers?’ I dangle them in front of her face hoping she can make out some familiar-looking shapes amongst the oranges and yellows. She doesn’t look impressed but stares hard through the smudged lenses of her glasses. She points a shaky finger towards me.

‘Where did you come from?’ ‘How long did it take you to get here?’

I pull up a chair next to hers. I sit. ‘Not long. I came from Newcastle. It takes about an hour. I just came over to see how you were.’

‘You shouldn’t have come. It’s too far. Will you be staying long? You can stay the night if you like. You’ll have to find Bill. Do you know where he is?’ Questions are fine. It’s the answers I hate.

‘I’m sure he’s about somewhere.’  I contemplate briefly whether or not I should remind her that her husband, my father, died three years ago. ‘So, what have you been up to?’ A vacant, silly question really. I didn’t need to ask it to get the answer. What has my mother been up too? Let me guess, shall I? Sleeping? That’s a given and eating soggy, steamed fish and plastic mashed potato while sipping a thick, milky drink through a straw. Oh and how about the lashing out at staff and the few vulgar insults she tosses around when things aren’t going quite her way, especially at sun-down. She looks at me, curiously and asks:

‘How old are you, Elizabeth?’ Not unexpected. This is a question she tosses around every few minutes. In fact it’s a question she’s been tossing around for many months now.

 ‘How old would you like me to be?’ I smile at her but she frowns and sighs. This is the dilemma: if I tell her how old I really am she becomes upset because she has no comprehension of real time anymore. At the last visit she seemed quite content to think of me, her daughter as thirty-something. That could possibly make sense. It would mean that she was possibly in her early sixties; again, quite reasonable. However, time moves swiftly in this incongruent world and the lines have shifted once again. I must tip-toe very carefully. This is how the conversation will swing today:

‘I’m forty-seven.’

‘Oh, rubbish! You are not! How old are you really?’ She rubs her frail brow with frail fingers. I notice the chipped, pale pink polish on short, filed nails, obviously a favour from one of the staff. I smile to myself, thinking how horrified she would be if it were brought to her attention. She lived for her horses and cattle – no room for girly delights.

‘Okay, I’m twenty-five,’ I lie.

‘Twenty-five? Really? Oh.’ She looks at me and nods. ‘That’s nice.’

 

When I was twenty-five, my parents retired. My father had sold the farm and instead took up fishing with as much gusto as droving cattle.  Mum was content to end her teaching career and threw herself into her pottery and drawing. She was also an avid reader and enjoyed discussing the latest novel or Art Australia magazine that had recently arrived in the post.

 It wasn’t noticeable, not at first, but over time books seemed to take longer to finish and there was always some excuse about not finding the right glaze for a particular pot. Her studio became messy and she spent more and more time lying in her chair on the veranda, paper half read. I visited them both whenever I could but then came the phone call.

My father was scared and shaken, to say the least. He had never witnessed such hostility and confusion before. There were no obvious tell-tale signs. The piece of timber she wielded was her rifle and she meant to destroy whoever stood in her way. The valuable china and glassware on the side-board didn’t stand a chance.

When I finally arrived, the bruises down my father’s left side and the look of incredible grief in his eyes said enough. It wasn’t long before a diagnosis was made and for the benefit of both, they were moved.

 

I remember the shopping bag. ‘I brought you some more underpants and some singlets. You didn’t seem to have many, last time I was here. I will have to get someone to put some name-tags on them before they go astray in the laundry.’

‘You didn’t have to do that. You keep them. I have plenty.’ She dismisses the underwear with a curt flick of her hand and reaches for her walker.

‘Where are you headed, mum?’ I bundle the flowers and shopping bag under one arm and push myself up and out of the chair with the other.

 ‘I need to go to the toilet’. She hauls herself up on tremulous legs and looks vacantly about. Her spatial awareness is diminished now that she only has sight in one eye, and she frequently forgets that she can’t see particularly well out of the other.

‘Okay,’ I say, ‘let’s go to your room, then.’ I take hold of the front bar of the walker and begin to guide her through the maze of chairs and slippered feet and walkers and sticks. She pushes forward with great gusto and grumbles under her breath when she becomes snagged on furniture or unfortunate limbs that are left unattended by their owners. ‘Whoops! Sorry! Just hang on a sec, mum. Okay, this way – no, no, this way. That’s it. Turn. Turn! Sorry!’

Finally beyond the corral of chairs, we head down the corridor towards her room. The décor is soft and comfortable. We could be in any four-star hotel if it weren’t for the polished, timber hand-rails and brightly decorated name plates on the doors. We stop in front of an open doorway half-way down the hall.

‘Is this my room? But I don’t stay here do I?’ She looks worried and shuffles to a halt. ‘Where are we, Elizabeth?’ If there is one question I hate more than any other, it’s this one.

I try evasive action. ‘I see it’s nearly lunchtime. Bet you’ll get something good today. A Sunday roast, maybe.’

Head tilted, she looks at me and asks, ‘So how old are you?’

 ‘Twenty-one.’

 ‘And how old am I?’

‘Eighty-three.’

 ‘I am not! Tell me the truth.’

 ‘Okay, thirty-five’

‘Am I really?’

‘Yes. No. Look – let’s go in.’

The afternoon moves slowly, creeping its way into dusk as I sit in a padded chair next to the woman who is my mother. The light plays games with her hair; thin and white, it glows softly against the pallor of her skin. Soft, jowly flesh crinkles along her jaw and thin, dry lips softly part. Her eyes are closed as she slips in and out of fretful sleep. Soon she will wake and I will be gone. The demons that she fights in the witching hour of the early evening are not for a daughter’s eyes. These are monsters she must slay single-handedly.

I prepare to leave. I wave down a nurse with keys jangling on rounded hips and ask to be released. She smiles and says, ‘Thanks for coming. See you next time,’ as I slip past her and into the real world. When my mother wakes she will not remember that I have been there. She will not remember the flowers or remember my age and one day, in the not-too-distant-future, she will not remember me. I should feel comforted in the knowledge that for my mother, time does not travel forward. Life for her is a time machine that only travels into the past – her past, and she will grow more youthful as her body fails.

 

Download a PDF of “The Time Machine”

 

Primal, Alexandra Parsons

…The desperate wail of the alarm slammed Kaye out of sleep. Her heart rate shot up, pounding in her ears and her eyes snapped open to darkness. Her hand immediately went for the sword resting alongside her before her brain had even caught up...

This chapter is from a YA novel in progress — Primal.

The desperate wail of the alarm slammed Kaye out of sleep. Her heart rate shot up, pounding in her ears and her eyes snapped open to darkness. Her hand immediately went for the sword resting alongside her, before her brain had even caught up. It was catching up now.

The siren, she thought. Locke had hooked it up to the trip wires outside. Her hand gripped tighter around the scabbard. That means they’re here.

Light sprawled out from under the door and she heard movement in the other rooms. There was the creak of metal supports as people jumped out of bunks and then bare feet drumming down the hallway.

‘What’s going on?’ called her sister Serena on the bunk below.

‘I’ll find out.’

Kaye vaulted over the bunk railing and landed crouched on the carpet, sword in one hand. As she slid on combat boots and a leather jacket she heard the rattle of riot gear being taken down from the weapons room. Shotgun cartridges were being poured into trench coat pockets and she noted the familiar shink of a katana blade being checked and slid back into its scabbard.

‘Something’s up. I’ll grab our gear,’ she said and headed out into the fluorescent-lit hallway.

She spotted Jaik walking out of the weapons room, sliding home the magazine of his pistol. He looked straight up at Kaye with ice-green eyes, calm as a glacier. There was a similar sword to the one in Kaye’s hand on his back and a bow case slung over one shoulder. Kaye dodged a few people as they ran between them, heading for the front of the warehouse, then Jaik threw the case with her compound bow in it and she snatched it out of the air. Next came a quiver with a few dozen razor-tipped arrows in it.

‘What’s the deal?’ Kaye shouted over the still-raging alarm. Jaik had circles of fatigue under his eyes and smelt like gun oil. She knew he hadn’t slept.

‘The trip wires have gone out the front but no one’s turned on the floodlights yet. We’re blind.’

Serena came out of the room, still in pink pyjama shorts that had a picture of a kitten on them yawning ‘sleepy time!’ Below the shorts her pale skin was mottled with bruises. Jaik handed her a shotgun that looked oversized in her fifteen-year-old hands.

‘What about the rear night watch?’ Kaye asked.

‘They only had one radio working tonight and we can’t get through on it. We need to inform them and get those lights on.’ He quickly looked the two girls over. ‘The three of us is enough. Let’s move.’

Kaye nodded and in unison they ran down the hallway in the opposite direction to the human traffic flow.

Kaye burst out onto the metal catwalk that ran the perimeter of the warehouse. The sound of their boots clanging on the steel jarred the stillness of the night. It must have been 4am and the dark seemed solid and tangible before them, like black glass. They stood at the rear of the building, looking out at the concrete courtyard they had once used for strength and endurance training. Somewhere out there were the truck tyres, empty barrels, ropes and rusted kettle bells they had thrown around on sweltering, heat-shimmer days. Now Kaye’s night-vision was bleached out from the fluorescent lights inside and her pupils only saw flat black with a few silver speckles dancing in her peripheries.

The sirens cut off suddenly and everything went silent. A cold wind raised its hackles and nipped at the back of their necks.

‘Can you see anyone?’ Serena’s voice sounded like a whisper after the alarm.

There weren’t any other voices, although the night watch should have been making their rounds along the fence line, torches zig-zagging before their feet.

Kaye opened her mouth to call out to their friends below but Jaik raised his hand.

He spoke quietly, ‘Just listen.’

Kaye’s breathing was too loud in her ears. She took a deep breath and slowed her heart beat. She let her senses slide out in tendrils to grasp the shape of the world. A breeze slid over her flushed face and swept black the fringe from her eyes. The ends of her hair swayed across her jaw line and as the buzzing slowly disappeared she began to hear something else. Something that told her they were already too late.

A gentle sucking noise rolled towards them, something like marrow being drawn out from bones. Then Kaye heard the crunching of ragged teeth on finger joints and a low moan of primal satisfaction.

‘Holy shit.’

A scent crept its way into their throats, heavy and putrid.

‘How many are there?’

Kaye looked over the railing, narrowing her eyes into the dark and willing them to separate the shadows into real shapes. She smelt open wounds and the copper tang of blood. Then the moon slipped out from behind its cover.

There were a dozen creatures, humanoid but deformed with twisted limbs that spasmed as they moved. Their skin was transformed with pustules and disease-riddled flesh that hung from their bones. Kaye could smell their festering sores and unwashed clothes. Fresh vomit still clinging to their shirts. The hunched forms swung heavy limbs as they stumbled through the remains of the night watch, tripping over limp ankles as though they were tree roots. The night watch boys and girls were like marble statues, their eyes wide and gleaming in the meagre moonlight. Their pale child fingers still clutching toy blades.

To the left was the small free-standing space of the control room. The glass was broken and nothing moved inside. They hadn’t had time to turn on the lights, Kaye thought. The creatures must have crept in somewhere, suddenly materialising from the night to dig yellow teeth into turned backs. Kaye’s shoulders tensed involuntarily. She remembered that it had been Lara’s first watch tonight. The girl had been nervous over dinner, digging aimlessly into a can of tuna. Kaye had sat with her while they listened to the TrueLight radio broadcast at 7pm and told her how boring the rear night watch was. ‘Nothing ever happens, the hardest part is not falling asleep,’ she had given Lara a light punch on the arm. ‘Come on, we’ll have breakfast waiting for you when you get back.’

Kaye’s hand seemed frozen to the railing and now she prised it free, working blood into the fingertips. Disgust welled within her as she watched the creatures flop like leeches from body to body, taking careless bites from exposed throats and shoulders. A familiar heat was rising, warming her limbs and making her toes tingle. Slowly, she nocked an arrow and lifted the bow at arm’s length. The skull of a creature came up in the circle of her sight. But the moon disappeared again and the scene went black as if curtains had been drawn on the final act.

‘Goddammit!’ Kaye hissed.

 ‘We need the floodlights. We need to see what we’re dealing with. That’s the priority now.’ Jaik was aiming down his sights too. Back in darkness, they could only hear the occasional rip of skin from muscle or the pop of a socket joint being dislocated. But they knew the control room was only twenty metres away. And it had access to the gate, electric fence, siren and lights.

‘I’ll go,’ said Jaik.

The thought of anyone going down there made Kaye’s insides churn but she knew who was most likely to make it to that room.

‘No you won’t.’ She straddled the railing and looked over the edge. About four metres. Far, but not impossible.

 ‘What are you doing?’ Jaik said as loud as he dared. Safe on the catwalk, they were yet to be noticed by the creatures below.

‘I’ll be there and back before you know it.’ Kaye had always been the quietest in stealth training and Jaik reluctantly knew it. Kaye lowered herself down from the railing as far as she could. ‘Cover me’ she said, then let go.

There was a solid thump as Kaye hit the ground. She landed on something springy and uneven and her ankle gave way beneath her. She stifled a cry and fell to one side, jarring her shoulder. She lay still and hoped she hadn’t been heard. She held her breath. The nearest sucking sound went on uninterrupted.

‘Kaye!’ Jaik hissed from above. She could just see the outline of Serena and Jaik’s heads looking down, silhouetted by the stars. Kaye gave a wave, not sure if they could even see it.

The smell was stronger down here. Like being locked in one of those old abattoirs they had toured in school. The scent held a dampness to it, a liquid quality that seemed desperate to drown you.

Kaye gave her ankle an experimental circle. It twinged but moved freely. Probably just soft tissue damage, she thought. No breaks. Kaye’s hands searched out around her, fingertips running over the concrete and feeling between the cracks. They found the still-warm, sticky stump of a leg. Her hand jerked away and bile rose in her throat. That’s what she had landed on. Kaye rose slowly, hoping her arrows wouldn’t jostle together. The control room wasn’t far, a five second walk any other day, but Kaye forced each movement to be smooth and quiet. Her leg muscles ached from the constant, controlled pace. Halfway there and she could see the glimmer of broken glass in front. She kept her eyes on the courtyard, scanning for any hint of movement towards her. Barely four metres away she could make out the dark shape of a creature crouched over a body. The gravity of where she was washed over her and she longed for the safety of the catwalk. Every centimetre closer she expected a creature to suddenly sniff the air, turn and fix its pale eyes on her before releasing a guttural howl and causing a  stampede towards her. But they didn’t.

Kaye’s hand met the rough concrete wall of the control room, slid over it and found the door handle. She used it to steady herself before squeezing through the open space, and suddenly she was inside. She breathed out her tension. The smell was claustrophobic here, reminding her of science classes except without the sterility of white gloves and scalpels. The light switch was on the dashboard near the windows, she only had to step over the black lumps on the ground to get to it. In the dark her mind gave those body bag masses gaping clown mouths and hollow eyes that followed her. Kaye’s boots squelched into the wet carpet as she stepped between the shapes. Her hands roved over the walls, found the dashboard and slid over chunks of broken glass. Finally, her fingertips found the switch – just as a hand shot out and gripped her leg.

Kay screamed, she couldn’t help it, and thrashed her leg as though spiders were swarming up it.

‘Kaye, where are you? What’s going on?’ Jaik shouted and Serena was screaming her name. Ravenous things were beginning to move outside. The concept of the floodlights cut through Kaye’s panic and she flicked the switch. White seared into the room and through squinted eyes Kaye saw the bodies strewn across the carpet. Half of one was moving, swiping at her feet. It was a boy from the night watch except now his mouth frothed and his eyes were completely white. He had been torn across the waist and his entrails dragged horridly behind him. Kaye jerked her leg away and kicked out, heel cracking against his jaw bone. Then the sword was in her hand and she swiped it down and through the meat of his neck. He flopped motionless to the ground like the others.

There were gunshots cracking repeatedly and guttural screams just outside the window. The creatures were lumbering towards the control room and now Kaye could see them fully illuminated. Weeping boils, sagging skin, festering gashes and everywhere the same colourless eyes trained on her. Kaye side kicked the door closed and slid the bolt home just before a fist smashed through the window. Kaye backed up, dropped the sword and brought the bow up. She let an arrow fly and it cut clean through the glass and into a creature’s forehead. Then there were eight arms cramming through the windows, swinging wildly like tentacles. An arrow shot through a sunken cheek bone. Another went through an eye socket. Kaye kept clear of the blood, pushing far back into the room. Bullets were raining down from Jaik and Serena on the catwalk. The bodies were piling up on the other side of the window but some  rose again, riddled with arrows and bullet holes. Beside her, the door was thumping. Kaye eyed the bolt that held it there, straining against the wood. Her hand went for another arrow and she could feel there were only a few left.

‘I’m almost out!’ Panic made her voice break. Kaye sent one of her last razor tips through a jaw bone and followed it with one to the jugular. Her back was at the wall. There was a crash and wood chips exploded from the door as the bolt gave way and a creature barged through. Its eyes locked on Kaye and it lurched forwards. She grasped the last arrow, placed it in the rest, but her fingers fumbled at the string and it fell away. Kaye saw the blood-tinged teeth of the creature, too close. Gangrenous arms stretched wide to embrace her. She dived under its outstretched arm, rolled and picked up the sword, then spun and cut through its torso. Before the body parts had even hit the ground she was sprinting through that door, dodging left as shots exploded overhead. There was a stampede behind her and bullets flew searing past her ears. She couldn’t look back. The ladder to the catwalk was a few strides away. But there was the bow in her left hand, the sword in her right, and no time to slow down. Kaye threw the sword up to the catwalk and simultaneously leapt for the ladder. Her shins smashed against the rungs and she started to haul herself up. Hands were snagging at her boots. There was a death grip on her right ankle. Kaye’s fingers were straining to hold on as they tried to drag her back down into a tangle of desperate limbs and teeth. Then Jaik and Serena grasped each of her arms and pulled her up onto the catwalk, far away from the hot rancid breaths and clawing fingernails.

Kaye put her back against the cool wall and breathed great shuddering breaths. Serena was hugging her, smelling like clean sheets and sleep, and Kaye loved it. Kaye rolled her head to the other side where Jaik was still kneeling, looking furious.

‘That,’ he said, barley controlling himself, ‘was fucking stupid.’

Kaye waved a vague and exhausted hand, ‘Floodlights on.’

‘You’re an idiot!’ He snarled.

Serena had her arms wrapped tight around Kaye, who gave her a few pats. When Serena looked up through the chunks of her black fringe Kaye felt sick.

‘Sorry Serena, I thought it would be fine.’ She gave her a proper hug back.

Jaik got to his feet, leaned over the railing and shot each of the creatures down. One shot, one kill, and the steel was back in his eyes. He picked up Kaye’s sword and handed it to her. ‘You’re not supposed to throw around a sword like this.’ Then he walked away and went down the ladder. As Serena and Kaye sat there, sweat turning to ice on their necks, he double-checked each kill and put a bullet into every one of their dead friends so they wouldn’t have to die twice. The shots rang out, one by one as their breaths plumed out white in front of them and dissipated into the grey air.

‘How did they even get in here?’ Serena asked. ‘The night watch is always quiet, everyone knows that.’

The rear courtyard had the best protection with high fences, good views and a gate that could only be operated from the control room. Only long-time members had a key to that room. Normally the team had so much warning from the trip wires that they could easily pick off parasitic strays from afar. Kaye had been doing it for weeks.

‘I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense.’

Jaik came clanging up the ladder, ‘I was told there was a small breach out front. There wasn’t meant to be anything back here.’ They looked across the silent courtyard, blood was now spidering across the concrete and filling up the cracks. ‘They were really taken by surprise.’ The sky was lightening, spreading hesitant fingers over the horizon and leaving the night behind.

‘We should talk to Locke about it,’ said Serena. ‘He can figure out if there was a breach or something.’

Kaye pushed herself up, sore and stiff, and quickly circled her blade to flick the gore from it. She wiped it down and put it away. Jaik opened the door to the warehouse and Serena walked through. Before Kaye followed she looked back and saw their old training grounds, now awash with blood.

 

Download a PDF of “Primal – Chapter 1”

The Tin Man, Leigh Coyle

Usually, after I said ‘good morning’ we stood politely smiling at each other until our business was complete. Today, she stayed behind in the shadows and invited me in.  I had to hurry to catch up with her as she walked down the hall.  I said to her back: ‘How are you?’ because that’s what I would have said to her face at the door.  She didn’t answer me.  Her bare feet made sucking sounds on the floor as I followed her along. The hall was dim so I couldn’t see much, which frustrated me as I’d often wondered what was in there. One of the rooms opening into the hallway must have been her bedroom, but I never found out which one. 

Then we were in the kitchen, which was disappointingly filthy and cluttered. My hands wanted to find a sponge to clean the dirty dishes on the sink. Still facing away from me, she pointed to a table and chairs and filled up two glasses with tap water.  I sat down and put my tin on the table.  When I rested my elbows on the plastic tablecloth, some crumbs stuck to my skin so I sat back and straightened my tie.  Ants made a line on the wall.  My nose searched out an odd smell. A radio wasn’t quite on the station.  I crossed my ankles under the table, counted the circles on the lino and divided this number by five.

When she turned around, the bruises revolted me – blotchy purple and yellow half-moons under her eyes and at the edges of her mouth.  They didn’t match her dress.  She looked older than the last time I’d seen her; that sudden aging which happens when you don’t see someone often, although she somehow looked younger too. I stared at her trying to work this out, while she sat down opposite me and sipped at her water.  You’re not supposed to stare.

I said: ‘I need to go to the toilet.’  I couldn’t think of what else to say, especially as there was still beauty in her face. She said: ‘It’s just down the back stairs and to the left.’  I must have looked worried, because she also said: ‘I’ll look after your tin.’ There were six stairs, so I went up and down twice. Outside, I breathed in and out a lot and didn’t go to the toilet.  Her garden was horribly muddled, like her kitchen.  If I’d had time, I would have found a hoe and done her edges.  I wondered whether I could leave by the back gate, but she was clever by keeping my tin.  There were fourteen pots with dead plants in them.

I went back inside and sat down at the table.  Her dress was loose at the top so I could see her breasts rising each time she breathed in. I stared at them instead of at her face.

‘And you’ve been well?’ she asked. ‘Busy?’  As if nothing was different.  The skin on her chest gathered in the centre and made a dark triangle. She said:  ‘It must be hard for you. Particularly now.  People are such mean bastards.’

I nodded three times quickly. ‘I’ve been pretty busy,’ I said.  I drank some water for something to do, turning the glass around when I noticed greasy marks on the rim. She tried to smile for a moment, but her lips went flat over her teeth. I heard a noise coming from another part of the house and my fingers gripped onto something sticky underneath the chair.  I could tell she wasn’t bothered about the sound, the way she kept twirling her hair around her finger. I wondered whether I could ask to use the toilet again.  A cat came into the kitchen and tried to rub itself against my legs.  I kicked it away. Her glass was dirtier than mine.  It disturbed me how she sucked away at the germs. She had seven matching cups hanging from a hook, plus one on the sink which was a different colour.

Then she said: ‘Come with me a minute. I want to show you something.’ I got my tin and she led me away from the kitchen back along the hall and into the doorway on the right.  This room was dark purple like her bruises.  It suited her better, but it wasn’t her bedroom, because in it there was only a purple couch, a table with a lamp, some white screens and ten wall photographs in frames.  The people in the photographs were laughing at nothing, except for a baby all by itself who just looked startled.  I sneezed four times on account of the cat, or maybe the dust.  There was a mirror on the wall too.  In it, my face looked small and pale like it was far away.   She left me standing there while she went through a door at the back of the room.  In there, was a dark rectangle, until she turned on a light and I could see her bending over, hair flopping forwards.  I kicked the cat again and it made a squeezed noise. She came back carrying a large piece of paper, carefully like it was valuable.  ‘Come closer, into the light,’ she said.  I put my tin down onto the table and stood beside her near the lamp.  I’d never been that close to her before.  She smelled like cinnamon and cat. I could reach her breast and grab it if I wanted to. ‘See what I took of you?’ she said.

Under her pink thumbs, stretched out on the paper, was a photograph of me waiting at Central Station.  I was standing beside the fourteenth light pole from the end, in the brown pants I was wearing now and my white shirt and tie, holding my bag in front of me. I looked bored, like I’d been waiting forever.  I was narrow like the pole and the camera looked down on me. I wondered if she’d taken the photograph from the sky, from the back of a bird.  People had left a circle around me, not standing too close. I hadn’t noticed that from down there.  I started to count them, but she put the photograph down on the table, next to my tin.  She reached for my hand and tried to hold it.  She said: ‘I love your face.  I want to take more.’

All I could think about was the slitty eyes of the cat and her breasts. I felt dizzy.  I said: ‘I need to go to the toilet,’ not out loud, just inside my head.   My hand was in hers and it was rougher than I’d imagined, scaly, not moist. My suit pants felt too tight and that wasn’t right.  She leaned in closer so her bruises seemed to cover more of her face.  I wanted to press them.  Again, she stopped her smile part-way saying: ‘Ouch.  The surgeon told me not to do that.’

Then the doorbell rang; a shrill sound that scared off the cat and made me think of the other noise from before.  She looked at her watch.  She said: ‘God. Is it that time already? Sorry.’

She dropped my hand and I grabbed my tin and held it to my chest, feeling my heart beating into it. I followed her back up the hall.  I imagined that each doorway was hiding other parts of me I would never see. I counted my footsteps trying to understand.  She opened the front door to a bunch of white lilies spiked with a handwritten sign which said: ‘Looking Better Already!’ and three giggling women pressed into her with kisses and penetrating voices. As I slid past them and the sick smell of flowers, she pushed some money into my tin.  Without laughing, but in a pleased way, she said to the women: ‘Just doing my bit for charity, but we’re all finished now.’

 

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Direct Line, Lauren Armbruster

‘Could all persons with a Green Card please proceed to Gate number Ten? I repeat, Green Cards to Gate Ten,’ the disembodied voice said, its instructions echoing around the cloud filled arena. Green Card Number 62498365-2Alpha stared at the trait selection card in her hands…

This is the first chapter of a young adult fiction novel (in the making) which explores the contention between fate and free will. Temperance Broadfoot begins life with a special gift. One given to her by an accident at birth. Temperance has the power to communicate with Steve, the all-powerful Creator of Life. In her quest to find her place in the world and become the person she want to be, she finds that having a direct line to the big man upstairs is not as useful as it sounds. Especially when the decaying world she lives in is looking for a scapegoat.

‘Could all persons with a Green Card please proceed to Gate number Ten? I repeat, Green Cards to Gate Ten,’ the disembodied voice said, its instructions echoing around the cloud filled arena. Green Card Number 62498365-2Alpha stared at the trait selection card in her hands. An A4 puce coloured card; empty boxes and nothing to show for her time so far. She had not really been listening to Steve the Creator or any of the other orientation seminars, and now realised that her inattentiveness may be the start of her downfall. She glanced furtively around at all the other faces. They were all shiny and new, like polished belt buckles. On her left stood another Green Card. Her honey coloured hair seemed attuned to the light emanating from the luminescent stars above and below her. Her green robes flowed behind her, as she stood still gazing, ethereal, at the centre of the arena. Alpha stared, envious. Honey blonde began to take steps towards Gate Ten, which appeared like a sentinel on the far side of the arena, huge neon numbers flashing above it.

‘Um, excuse me…’ Alpha began.

Honey blonde turned. She had penetrating blue eyes that glowed like sapphires. She smiled like liquid, lips melting into the softness of her precise chin.

‘Do you…um…I mean… Hi first,’ she stammered. ‘…and then do you know where Gate Ten is?’ Alpha began, grossly aware of her lack of finesse. Around her bustled other bodies, Greens and Blues, all moving like waves from the orientation buildings on the far northern end of the arena. Around her now she could make out sounds of white noise taking on voices:

‘I think I’m going to put in for Generosity…’

‘Oh no, you want Ambition, trust me my boy.’

‘…who would want Greed?…Selfishness?’

‘I think Seductive might come in handy Down There, know what I mean…’

‘Ha! Compassion! As if… ‘

‘Hello?’ said the voice closest to Alpha, ‘I said, it’s over there, in the far south western corner. Can you see the numbers?’ Honey blonde was pointing, seeming to take on the form of an archaic Roman statue. Her selection sheet was neatly folded in her palm. All filled in with neat crimson ticks and circles.

‘Oh thanks. I ah, it’s all a bit weird you know.’ Alpha failed to mask the awe she felt building within her. She nervously touched her hair remembering with disgust the red dirt colour framing her pudgy pudding face. At the Nationality Rounds, she had pulled out Irish Australian. She had been pleased, but it was now apparent, in the wake of this transcendent blonde beauty that perhaps the crown of red hair sprouting from her skull like maniacal thought bubbles was not the best start to this Life thing. If there was one thing clear to her at this point in her existence it was that Steve, despite what he has told them all a moment ago, had not created every being equal.

‘I’ll go with you if you like, I’m a Green Card too as you can see.’ Honey Blonde offered her hand to Alpha, ‘What’s your number? I’m 05005Zeta, but just Zeta will do, I’ve not met another Zee so far, but then I’ve only spoken to you and that Blue over there.’ She pointed to a Blue who was slapping other Blues roughly on the back. His black hair and almond-shaped eyes suggested he had plucked Korean of some kind from the draw. Lucky for him, Alpha mused, tucking her unruly curls behind her ears.

The two began walking together in no particular hurry and almost immediately the conversation turned to the next round of selections. The final round was to be free of Steve’s influence. Alpha was beginning to feel more certain that this was his way of ensuring all care and no responsibility. She peered at her card again, noting the heading in big chunky lettering ‘Free Will’. She would now need to make the final choices that could make or break her whole life. She recalled now, the first educational film she’d been shown, merely hours after her conception. The large theatre had seated a million or more. There has been speeches from alumni, those who had returned from Life and a whole bunch of boring orientation information, most of which she had successfully tuned out. In the final educational seminar, they were all shown the one and only film of Steve. Lulling back on a sun lounge, wrapped in a white terry-toweling robe, he grinned confidently from behind his oversized sunnies sipping some kind of blue drink complete with a bright pink umbrella. Suppressing hysterical laugher from behind his shades he warned that all choices would have direct and severe consequences after Birth.

‘Some choices can be altered by where and how you might be born, but for the most part, the qualities you choose, will stay with you throughout your whole life. So choose carefully’ he said, before disrobing, sculling down the beverage and diving into a crystalline blue pool. Alpha had heard that this pretty boy had only ever really worked a week in his whole life, so it was really no surprise that he had obviously very little interest in the whole process.

‘How much longer do you have?’ Zeta asked Alpha, interrupting her from her thoughts.

Alpha checked her Casio. The hands seemed to have moved rapidly from her last check. ‘Holy Crap, I am due for Birth in fourteen minutes! I thought we had days to do this!” Her heart began to quicken in her chest, the rhythm of a fast moving train. Her head spun. She showed Zeta her watch. Zeta flashed hers back; she had been here a lot longer but still seemed to have hours left. ‘Why is yours going so slow? I don’t get it!’

‘Ok, you need to calm down and remember your training.’

‘Training? What training!’ Alpha stared in disbelief as the minute hand began to speed up. She noticed that the blood in her was draining rapidly to her feet, she felt faint, the seconds ticked rapidly and just when it was all about to go black, a searing pain echoed through her cheek, resting somewhere in the back of her brain. Zeta stood before her open palmed, a look of serenity on her face.

‘You hit me!’

‘I had to; you were going to lose all your time panicking. You have to just calm down, remember what they told us in orientation. Time is relative. If flies when you are excited and anxious and slows down when you are calm or bored. Did you take in nothing?’ Zeta said.

‘Not really, I tried to listen, but it was all so boring.’ Alpha felt the hot sting on her face and glowered at Zeta. Zeta sighed and swiftly grabbed Alpha’s card from her sweaty palm.

‘I see your problem; you were allocated Impulsiveness and Impatience as your two allocated qualities. You are going to have to try and balance that out with some of the other traits before you get Down There or you are probably going to be back here before you can blink’. Zeta roughly flicked the card back to Alpha. Alpha held her card steady examining the information noticing that there had indeed been several qualities already greyed in.

‘I though we got to choose everything?’ she implored.

Zeta sighed. ‘You really didn’t pay any attention in orientation did you?’

Alpha had no time to answer before Zeta’s watch began to chime. The overture from The Nutcracker Suite began to play from her wrist and both girls looked at it curiously. Steve’s grinning head appeared suddenly on the watch face. ‘Hey. Look’s like someone is about to be born! You better cruise on over to Gate ten my friend and remember, don’t eat yellow snow!’ The transmission ended and they both looked at each other.

‘Well, looks like my Birth is about to happen. Maybe, I’ll see you sometime Down There. I think now that we met up here, we are supposed to find each other again Down There.’ Zeta’s excitement seemed to enhance her beauty even more. Her blue eyes twinkled as she leant in and gave Alpha the tiniest of kisses on the cheek. She smelled of strawberries and summertime and although she promised they would meet, Alpha knew instinctively that Life for her would probably be very different.

Alone again and watching the passing crowds of unnamed individuals, it was painfully clear how little she had prepared for this. Around her, people seemed to be charming and confident. She contemplated just throwing the ridiculous little card away. What good was free will if you were too stupid to figure out what to do with it, Alpha mused.  She sat herself down on the nearest cloud and sank deeper into her own distress, when from across the room, a Blue spotted her and began to walk her way. He was and older man, probably late forties. It was then she noted her youthfulness and recalled something about appearing at the prime of your life. This guy was obviously a late bloomer, she noted, whilst dismaying that her own existence seemed to peak at about fifteen, then gradually decline for the remaining years.

‘It appears to me, that you could use a little help.’ The man stood before her in his blue robe. His silver hair swept grandly off his face, the beginning of wrinkles teased the corners of his eyes as he gazed down at her full of heroic confidence.

‘I, um, I didn’t really pay much attention at orientation. I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m a complete spaz.’ She felt unreasonably obliged to give this man a full confession.

‘Nonsense, just tick in the order you think it best. Start with some Confidence to outweigh this natural Anxiety I can see in you,’ he began, reaching for her card brushing her thumb with his own mighty hand, ‘then see how you feel.’

Alpha poised her little pen and flicked her eyes across the grid until she found a row labeled ‘Confidence.’ Under each heading the scale went from zero to ten. Tentatively she put her pen on the number ten. A light orange mark appeared and she immediately felt better. In fact she felt great. As the tick formed on the ten, her heart pounded with a new sensation. She looked up sharply to this old man before her noticing with glee the deep trenches around his eyes, the wobbly paunch of his belly. ‘I feel amazing!’ she exclaimed. Beaming, she stood up and pushed past the old man who stood decrepit and wounded. She felt as though she was positively drowning in her own brilliance. The man frowned, he snatched the card from her grasp and held her by the shoulders.

‘Now, you should know better than that. Don’t start with tens. You can always go up, but you’ll feel gutted if you start at the maximum and then pull back. I bet you feel like a brand new penny right now, don’t you? Well, you have to remember that this is Life. Confidence is great but… are you even listening to me?’

Alpha could see his lips moving but registered nothing he said. He had, at once, become so boring. ‘Yeah, yeah, all I hear is blah blah blah old man.’

He grimaced. Then taking her card in his hand, and using his own pen, changed her ten to a four.

In seconds her newfound sense of self-amazement vanished. She felt like dirt. She glared at the man, overwhelmed by her own sense of failure.

‘I’m sorry I had to do that to you. But you can’t go around like that in Life. You have to find some balance,’ he said calmly. She hated him, she hated this process and most of all she hated Steve.

‘Ohhh, this Life thing is so much worse than I thought. How the hell am I supposed to choose who I want to be? I have no idea what this place is going to be like. What if I make all the wrong choices? What if I pick things that seem fine here, but are fucking useless Down There?’ Alpha slumped into an outcrop or clouds. They cushioned her fall, gently enveloping her. ‘This is all bullshit. I’ve got half a mind to tell Steve what a fuck up he has made with this whole…’ No longer had the words popped from her lips when a resounding sharp whistle cracked through her skull. The voice of Steve was like that: a half-tuned frequency, fingernails on a blackboard, the sound a shovel makes on concrete. She nursed her head between her knees and sobbed.

‘Questioning Steve are we now? He has a way of making sure you keep your complaints to yourself,’ the old man grimaced in sympathy. It had been a while since he had questioned Steve and his ears were still ringing with the memory.

‘I wonder if it’s the same Down There, you think Steve knows when you’ve got a gripe?’ Alpha mused. Her ears remained in tact. Questions about Life were not usually a problem, they did, after all, have the same destination.

‘I don’t really know. All I know is, you have about two minutes to make up your mind before you are called. I suggest you stop dallying, my girl.’ The old man held out his hand and helped her to her feet. He brushed her tears away with his finger and smiled warmly. ‘It will all be fine. Just pick three to five traits that you think will make you happy and then wait your turn. There’s no way really of knowing what it will be like for you. It’s different for everyone, or so they told us at orientation. If you had listened.’ He playfully knocked her chin with his knuckle, stood up and disappeared into the crowd. Alpha watched him go making a note of him. She hoped they would meet Down There and felt certain as he left that a part of her went with him.

Right. Think. She told herself resolving to make her choices and be done with it. She stared helplessly at the words: Piety, Humour, Resilience, Tenacity, Spite. There was no division between good and bad qualities and the ten-point scale, as she has just found, was not the easiest way to select. She flipped the card over in her hands again and reread the instructions of the front cover. The idea seemed simple enough, using a forty-point total, she was to select her personality for entry into the world Down There. Her survey card included over one hundred and twenty qualities to choose from which meant a whole lot of deciding. Trying to allay her panic again, she resolved to just begin ticking. She started with Passionate, four points, and suddenly the process seemed so much more important. She added a little Reluctance, six points, and then, after much convincing and debate, she tentatively rubbed them out. The combination of Excitement with Passion made her show four Blues and two Greens her card in a spin of jubilation, so she removed all but one point of that.

With ten points left unassigned, and debating the merits of being Flippant or Devoted, a panpipe version of a Bee Gees track began to play from her watch. ‘No, no, I’m not done yet!’ she gasped. The tune got louder and began to vibrate on her wrist. Suddenly Steve’s face appeared again, parroting the recorded message she had seen on Zeta’s watch. A baby somewhere needed a soul. Needed a Green Card. Frantically and without another thought she allocated her total points. She ticked Selfish, Greedy and Lazy as her first three, hoping that these would be helpful qualities. Tick by tick, she cared less about the process and more resigned to her eventual fate. Moments later, Doubtful of her future, pregnant with Wanting, and loaded to the teeth with Skepticism she hiked her way across the crowded arena to Gate Ten.

At the gate, an angel greeted her. She was chewing gum and looked bored. ‘I’m  62498365-2Alpha.’ Alpha said, examining the nonchalant figure.

‘Do I look like I give a shit,’ the angel replied, blowing a massive pink bubble that burst and slipped sheepishly back into her mouth. She grinned at Alpha and wordlessly nodded to a guard who stood a few metres away. Alpha contemplated asking this angel about the qualities she had selected, but balked after noting the absent minded way the angel began to stare at sections of her fringe. Taking the cure to leave, Alpha made her way to the bloated guard. ‘I’m 62498365-2Alpha,’ she tried again, hoping that this red-faced balloon may be a little more helpful.

‘That’s just super! Are you all ready to go?’ hje replied, his cheeks jiggling with the effort of speaking.

‘I guess so,’ she said.

‘And your soul mate, have you made a meeting spot in Life with them?’

‘My what?’ her eyes widened. ‘I’m sorry. My what?’ she demanded again.

‘Ah geez, don’t tell me you didn’t sort out your meeting place with your soul mate!’ he barked and pulled out a small two way radio. ‘Merv, we got another Green here that hasn’t sorted her SM situation. Copy.’ A crackled voice echoed indecipherable responses to which the guard responded with a wordless nod.

‘Look I’m sorry kid, but you ain’t got time to do nothing about it now. There’s a baby that needs ya.’ The guard paused, removed his hat from his balding head to wipe his brow and looked at Alpha with a rough mixture of pity and boredom. ‘Well, good luck Down There,’ he said.

‘Wait. You said I have a soul mate. What is that? What was I supposed to do?’

‘Look kid, I gotta lotta Births today, my back is killing me and my wife’s about to leave me for the schmuck over at orientation. I don’t have time to deal with your problems,’ he looked away, ‘Next!’

‘No wait! I only met two people here.’

‘Next!’

‘Please, I didn’t make a meeting place with either of them. Is my soul mate one of those?’

‘Next. Kid. It’s time. Adios.’ The guard waved her on, took her card from her clutched and in one swift movement, swiped his access card through some kind of reader. Alpha could feel her legs going out from underneath her. Her memories of orientation, what little there were, began to slip. She felt as though her whole body was imploding, sucking inwards and shrinking. She panicked and reached out for the only thing she could grab as she shrank further and further into what felt like a watery puddle. In one deft movement, she swiped the guards two way radio from his belt and descended into the puddle, the radio seeming to melt into her palm, disappearing somehow into her own flesh.

‘Steve! Help. I don’t know who my soul mate is! Steve!’ she cried into her palm.

But it was too late. Temperance Broadfoot, daughter of Angelica and Angus, was being born in a barn, somewhere southwest of Launceston.

 

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Playing Catch-up, Kylie Nealon

…Scout was standing in a crackly, dry space that she didn’t recognise. For as far as her eyes could see, there were tall, sparse eucalypts undulating gently, stretching upwards to a cerulean-blue sky…This was home, but definitely no home that she recognised…

‘Playing Catch Up’ is part of a novel-length YA work, set in the not-too-distant future.  Incorporating elements of dystopian and steam-punk fiction, the novel follows the journey of Scout, an Australian girl plucked from an ordinary life to attend the Dorsay Academy. The Academy is part of a global company involved in researching and harnessing ‘extra’ mental capabilities that have been emerging around the world.  Scout, along with her friends Lily and Conor, are part of this new generation where their talents could be used for good – or for darker reasons yet to be discovered.

 

Scout was standing in a crackly, dry space that she didn’t recognise. For as far as her eyes could see, there were tall, sparse eucalypts undulating gently, stretching upwards to a cerulean-blue sky. Blackened stubby grass mounds pushed up from the dusty ground. There was a slight breeze picking up the scent of eucalyptus and hot earth, making her stomach contort with homesickness. In the distance, she heard the faint sounds of cockatoos screeching in the trees. This was home, but definitely no home that she recognised.

The sun was beating down, searing the crown of her head. She tried to shield her eyes to get a better look at where she was, but found one of her hands being held by a small child. Not just any small child – her.  A much smaller version of herself with a confident grin plastered across her face. Scout dropped her hand and stared. Okay, this was weird.

‘Uh, hey,’ Scout said to her.

‘Hey,’ Mini-Scout replied, squizzing one eye up to better look at her in the bright sunlight. She was dressed in what Scout remembered as being her favourite outfit – jeans and a red Elmo t-shirt. She’d loved Sesame Street when she was a kid and that t-shirt was a prized possession. Seeing her smaller self was bizarrely strange and familiar all at the same time.

‘Why are we – you – here?’ Scout asked the small version of herself.

‘I’ve got a message.’ The little girl drew out the last word.

‘Yeah, ok,’ Scout drawled, ‘course you do. Because why else would we be standing in the middle of nowhere?’ She fought off an overwhelming urge to laugh.

‘I have!’ Mini-Scout scowled at her.

‘Ok, keep your knickers on. So, who’s it from?’ Scout was definitely finding this amusing. A small part of her brain registered regret at not having a smaller sibling to do this to in real life.

‘Who do you think? Mum, of course,’ the little girl shrugged, looking around.

‘Sure it is,’ Scout said. Of course, she thought to herself sarcastically. Who else would it be from?

Mini-Scout peered closely at Scout, not quite sure what to make of the eye rolling that this statement induced.

‘I can’t tell you here,’ she said. ‘Come on.’ She tugged at Scout’s hand, urging her forward.

‘Where are we going?’ Scout asked her. The small hand holding hers was hot and dry. The simple touch brought back long-forgotten summer afternoons of carefree bike rides around neighbouring streets, along with the dawning realisation of her ability to see the world in a different way to everybody else.

‘You’ll see,’ Mini-Scout said and kept walking. The ground between Scout’s toes began to change to a sandy texture, and she saw the tip of a sand dune rear up out of nowhere.

Scout followed her up the incline, puffing slightly. She watched as the little girl laughed joyfully as she ran down the other side, legs and arms akimbo and she found herself laughing as well by the time she’d reached the bottom. Her small doppelganger was waiting impatiently for her, feet twitching on the hot sand.

‘Hurry up!’ She grabbed Scout’s hand again, and headed towards the water. The tide was coming in and the shining water hurt her already sun-sore eyes.

They came to a stop near the shoreline, littered with seaweed and shells dumped in piles after a recent storm. Scout glanced around, seeing nothing and no one in either direction. The sea’s mercurial surface slithered around her feet, flashing fleeting images at her. She stared at them closely, only to see them disappear as quickly as they’d appeared. Frustrated, Scout turned her attention to the little girl in front of her.

‘So, how old are you?’ Scout asked her, crouching down to make eye contact with her, ignoring the silvery water around them. Mini-Scout was humming happily as she scooped shells together in the wet sand.

She looked up at Scout steadily. ‘I’m seven,’ she said. ‘You don’t remember being seven, do you?’

‘I guess not,’ Scout shrugged. ‘I don’t remember a lot of things. But that’s okay, I mean, who’d want to remember everything anyway?’

‘I do,’ the little girl announced importantly. ‘And I know why you have to remember now,’ she told Scout.

‘Why? Is that why Mum sent you?’ It’s just a dream, she told herself, dreams are meant to be weird. But if it was just a dream, why did everything feel so real?

Mini-Scout shook her head at the older girl’s stupidity.

‘Mum says you need to remember who you are,’ she said, suddenly sounding much older than seven. ‘She said to tell you that you’re going to have to be ready.’ Mini-Scout looked pleased, as though she’d remembered the message word for word.

‘Ready for what?’ Scout had no idea what the little girl was talking about.

‘You know.’ Mini-Scout scowled at her. ‘But you have to be careful.’ She sat back on her haunches, jeans soaking into the sand and waited expectantly. Scout couldn’t find anything to say, her mind racing to try and figure out what she meant.

‘You’re such a scaredy cat,’ she said derisively, dismissing her older self. From the distance came a sharp clap of thunder. The sky on the horizon had become dark, with clouds that resembled grey waves slowly waiting to crash down. The sparkly sea had turned a bleak grey, a waiting mass of menace.

‘I have to go now,’ Mini-Scout announced.

‘Wait,’ Scout scrambled to get up, tripping over piles of shells and tangling her feet up in seaweed.

‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘But you’ve got to promise that you’ll try to remember and go back to being us. Do you promise?’ she asked fiercely, holding out her pinky for Scout to shake.

‘I promise,’ Scout said solemnly.

‘Okay then,’ she said. ‘Bye,’ and began walking away, up over the crest of the dune. She waved once from the top before disappearing behind it.

‘Wait!’ Scout called out but she didn’t hear. The clouds had crept in closer, forming a dark ring hovering above her. The waves rose up and ropes of seaweed tightened around her ankles with a swirling tug, pulling her out into the cold water.

Quickly losing her footing, she fought back with flailing arms, reaching for the surface, only to be pulled down further into the dark depths.

Entangled in the malevolent swirls, Scout gulped salt water into her protesting lungs, choking. Panic started to set in, and her lungs burned.

Scout kicked hard, freeing herself of the seaweed, reaching the surface when another giant tug pulled her even further down. She was drowning. And there wasn’t a damn thing that she could do about it.

Come on, she screamed at herself, just keep kicking! Every muscle screamed for mercy. Not yet, dammit, she swore to herself, I’m not going to die yet.

Scout woke up gasping, trying to draw in deep lungfuls of air. The blissful realisation that she could breathe again helped to slow her panic. Her damp hair was mashed to her head and she hastily pulled her wet pyjamas away from her, trying to rid her body of the clammy, wet feeling that they were swaddling her. Come on, she told herself, you’re okay. Breathe in, breathe out. Swinging her legs over the edge of her bed, she rested her throbbing feet on the floor, enjoying the coolness of the concrete.

Glancing a little more closely, she noticed sand stuck crusted to her toes. What the hell? Before her brain could start processing this latest detail, there was a knock at the door, startling her. Shit! She caught sight of herself in the mirror opposite her bed.  Disaster zone didn’t even begin to cover what she saw reflected back at her. She grabbed a hoodie and pulled it over the saturated pyjama top, her skin crawling at the feel of the clammy cotton fabric plastering her body.

‘Hey, Hambleton.’ A muffled voice came loudly through the door, accompanied by another set of heavy bangs on the flimsy wood. ‘Come on,’ she thought she heard the voice mutter impatiently. Hunter, by the sounds of it. Great. The last person she wanted to see.

She swung it open, embarrassed, partially hiding behind the door.

‘Wow, you’re not really a morning person, are you?’ Hunter’s eyes ran a quick scan over her, taking in the full effect of her bedraggled, literally just-washed-up look.

‘I didn’t pick you for one, either,’ Scout replied, pulling the sweatshirt closer around her. ‘What do you want?’ He was taking way too much interest in how she looked.

‘We’ve been called in to some big-deal early meeting before breakfast. Everybody’s been called in to it – students, staff, pretty much everyone in Dorsay, I think. I’m just letting people know,’ he replied.

‘Wow, that’s weird. Okay, uh, thanks. I didn’t pick you to be the messenger type. Not really your thing, is it?’ She bit her tongue. Don’t keep him talking, she scolded herself. Just shut the damn door! She suspected that there was more to this seemingly altruistic act than met the eye.

‘Yeah, sure, whatever.’ It appeared that her curiosity had got his attention in some unexpected way, given the amused look on his face. He looked at her more closely, a slight smile ghosting across his face.

‘You might want to rethink the showering with clothes on, though.’ He gestured at her with a casual sweep of his hand. ‘I’m guessing that even in places like Australia, being fully clothed isn’t what most people do – but that’s just a guess. And maybe try to ditch the sand.’ He looked pointedly at her hands, wrapped around the door.

Remnants of the sand that she’d hastily wiped off her feet had clung to her fingertips.  Scout went scarlet and opened her mouth, but before she could reply, he got there first.

‘We’re in the Atrium in half an hour.’ He walked off down the hall and she shut the door with a sigh. This day was getting weirder by the minute and she hadn’t even made it to breakfast yet.

Half an hour later, Scout was standing at the back of the Atrium, Dorsay’s central meeting hall, properly showered and stomach grumbling. She caught sight of Lily and Conor sitting near the front and made her way over to them, plonking herself gratefully on the seat that Lily had saved for her.

‘So, what’s up?’ she asked them.

‘Dunno,’ shrugged Conor, ‘but whatever it is, it won’t be good.’ His gloominess reminded Scout of Eyore, always slightly down about the world around him, regardless of the time of day or situation.

‘Maybe it’s something awesome, like an overseas field trip?’ Lily suggested, her perkiness a deliberate contrast to Conor’s phlegmatic gloom. She looked perfectly groomed in her uniform, as always. Lily always made Scout feel slightly untidy and she found herself smoothing her hair surreptitiously in response.

‘Maybe they’ve flown in our parents for an early parent-teacher conference,’ Scout suggested. After this morning’s nightmare and visit from Hunter, a bit of positive news would be a welcome relief. Conor’s face darkened and he looked away. She glanced at Lily who shook her head very slightly. What had she said?

Stealing a glance back at Conor, he’d already begun picking viciously at the edge of a nail already battered, ignoring them both.

Boys, she sighed to herself. They were so bloody complicated sometimes.

The buzz in the Atrium was beginning to pick up. Glancing around, Scout saw that it had filled up with hundreds of the company’s employees from the surrounding compound. Though Scout and the other students had seen the elegant structure many times from their wing, this was the first time that they’d actually been inside it.

Everyone in the atrium was wearing differently coloured uniforms, the Dorsay logo displayed prominently over the top left sleeve. Scout felt pretty drab in her grey uniform, compared to some of the other uniforms clustered in the large conference hall, which ranged from dark blue to red, green and black. Somehow even though the style was exactly the same on everyone, the colours made them look exotic and vibrant by comparison to the students.

Her attention was brought back to the front of the room by a judiciously placed poke in the side from Lily. Before Scout could register a protest, Lily tilted her head to the front of the room.

‘Ladies and gentleman.’ It was Cerys Westwood-Jones, CEO, Dorsay’s equivalent of the Emperor in Oz’s Emerald City. Wow, that was unexpected, Scout thought. A huge rumour mill surrounded her and, though they’d gotten a brief overview about her when they’d arrived at Dorsay as part of their orientation program, she’d remained pretty much a mystery.

Westwood-Jones stood confidently up on the podium, calmly surveying them all. A woman of relative youth, she appeared to be a woman of tight control and confidence. Her uniform, unlike everyone else’s, was white. More Glinda the good fairy than Oz, Scout thought, wondering if that she could really be that obvious in her choice of colour.

‘Thank you for coming,’ she continued when the noise had settled down. Her voice was smooth with a slight huskiness to it, as though she’d been talking or arguing for ages before she’d gotten up to address them. She had that quality that made people sit forward and take notice of her, despite her relative slightness of build.  The energy seemed to flow off her and Scout found herself leaning forward, straining to not miss a word.

Westwood-Jones swept a smile over the assembled crowd below her. The weak English sun streamed in, bathing the room in light if not warmth.

‘As we all know,’ she began, ‘Dorsay has been at the forefront of scientific and technological advancements for over forty years. The best scientists in the world have undertaken our research and experimentation in human evolution and genetics. The next generation is here, ensuring that these advancements continue.’ At this, she swept a glance at Scout and the students who were sitting near her, lingering for a millisecond longer on Scout. ‘The progress that we have made in the last few years has shown us that we are on the brink of something spectacular.’ Looking at them all, she paused and took a breath. Scout couldn’t help but feel the defiance leaking out of Cerys’ mind, underpinned by a feeling of adrenaline, despite the tight clamp she was keeping on her thoughts.

‘The purpose of calling this meeting is to prepare you for our next step. The ultimate step for Dorsay. We will be launching Stage One of the Alpha Project.’

A collective gasp rose up from the hundreds of people gathered in the atrium.  Scout glanced at Conor who shrugged, looking as baffled has she felt. Lily, on the other hand, sat as though she’d expected every word of what she’d just been told. The pitying look she gave Scout told her that she and Conor were seriously behind the eight ball on this one. Just once, Scout thought, irritated, just once I’d like to feel as like I’ve got some idea of what the hell is going on around me.

‘I know that you will have many questions. Rest assured that the Corporation values your contribution to our shared vision.’ At this, Westwood-Jones shot a lightning-quick look in the direction of what appeared to be the Dorsay board, all wearing purple. Not a flattering colour for most of them, Scout noted, especially the short, sweaty man standing closest to the podium.

‘The next phase of Dorsay’s history will not only be challenging but immensely rewarding. For now, I will leave you in the capable hands of our Director of Strategic Planning, Will Taylor. He will be outlining our program over the next few days and weeks as we work towards the most important step that humanity will take.’ With that, she stepped down, nodded to a podgy, purple-encased man and exited through a side door, leaving behind her an increasingly excited crowd of people.

Before Scout could discuss any of this with Lily and Conor, Will Taylor stepped up to the podium and cleared his throat. The sudden silence that fell in the room spoke volumes about him. His expression was harder and more watchful than his CEO’s had been, and his tight collar made his florid face bulge even more, pushing his eye sockets into ever-smaller slits.

‘Good morning.’ His softly accented voice was at odds with the solidity of his frame.

‘Each company sector will have a follow-up briefing, immediately following this meeting. Your sector leaders will be able to answer any immediate questions that you have. This process will be taking place using clear guidelines designed to minimise disruption.’ He glanced around the massive room, enunciating his next words precisely. ‘This information must not leave the compound. Any leaks to the media or other organisations will result in swift consequences for the responsible parties.’

‘That’s all for now. I would ask that you now make your way to your sector meeting rooms.’ At that, the barely-held back murmuring broke into a surge of heated talk. Waves of palpable anticipation bounced off the walls.

‘Um, what the hell?’ Conor leaned forward to voice what Scout was also thinking.

‘I’ve got no idea.’ Scout confessed. Lily started to say something but was interrupted by the sound of mocking laughter coming from behind them.

Conor stiffened and Scout turned around to see her early morning wakeup call sitting with his elbows balanced on his knees, chuckling to himself as though amused beyond all measure by their ignorance.

‘What’s so funny?’ Scout leaned over the back of the chair and eyeballed him. What was this guy’s problem, anyway? She just couldn’t get a handle on his erratic mood swings and superior attitude.

‘I’m just not sure how you two made it in here. She,’ Hunter nodded towards Lily, ‘knows what’s going on. Didn’t you two do any research into the place that you were given a scholarship before coming? For two supposed ‘geniuses’, his fingers twitched in the air around that last word, ‘you’re working the ‘Dumb and Dumber’ angle pretty well. I’m really looking forward to seeing the pair of you get to grips with this.’ Still chuckling, he unfolded his lean frame and slipped casually out into the departing. Scout sat, dumbstruck. Did he really just say that?

‘Man, I thought I had problems, but that guy has some serious social issues,’ Conor said. ‘What’s with him anyway?’ Lily patted him on the shoulder.

‘Who knows?’ she said, dismissively. ‘Don’t listen to him, okay? He gets his kicks out of being an asshole.’ Scout and Conor burst out laughing, both shocked that something so crude could come out of someone who looked so perfect. Conor looked over at Lily, still smiling at her assessment of Hunter.

‘So, Lil, help out an imbecile. What’s Alpha One?’ he asked.

Lily sighed.

‘Please don’t call me ‘Lil.’ It makes me sound like I work in an East End chip shop,’ but Conor just shrugged.

‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘I think it kind of suits you.’ Lily grimaced.

‘I’ll explain what I know as we head back. But could we please not be there late and get shamed again by the mentors?’ Her plea was interrupted by Scout’s stomach rumbling loudly.

‘I’m going to need some breakfast if I’m going to get through these next few hours,’ Scout looked pleadingly at Lily.

‘Yeah, me too,’ Conor nodded vigorously.

‘Fine,’ Lily sighed, ‘but if we’re late, then you two can explain why to Chewy.’ Conor snorted in disgust.

‘We’ve been here three months and the guy still hates me,’ he said.

‘Yeah, might have something to do with the fact that you give him shit every time you see him,’ Scout said wryly.

Conor launched into his best Star Wars impression and the girls cracked up.  Scout realized that Conor wasn’t bad looking, once he relaxed a bit. Catching Lily’s eye, she blushed and shook her head. Lily laughed and stood up.

‘Enough drama for one morning, please! Come on.’ She pushed Conor to get him moving. ‘Let’s get out of here. You two are making me more nervous by the minute.’ They left the almost empty hall in search of something to eat, Scout heaving a sigh of relief. She didn’t think that she’d have a very good answer if Lily asked her about Conor. Come to think of it, she didn’t have a great one for herself, either.

 

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