My front door shut behind me and I stomped down to my Commodore in the driveway. Ignition roaring, I swore under my breath. The world could burn. I reversed out, changed gears and floored it along my tree-lined suburban street. It was 8 am. Breaking hard, I swerved to the gutter. “Need music,” I muttered. […]
The Quarry Journal
A journal of creative writing by students at Macquarie University
The Mystery, Lauren Ford
It was simple enough: click on the link, pay the money, and wait for the package to arrive. There was mild suspense: what would the documents reveal? What deep, dark secrets was the government releasing? Would I finally discover that my grandfather was a post-World War II Soviet spy who had generously been given asylum […]
Blue, Georgia Buley
The following is a true story. It happened to me, only a few weeks ago. Even now, it feels fake, like I’m rewriting a dream someone told me years and years ago. I work in a hotel in the CBD. Though there’s plenty of spooky stories attached to it – it used to be a […]
The Free Runner, Eva Matheson
Every teenager in my school wants to be a Free Runner. Everyone wants to be a celebrity, or they want the money that comes with the title, or both. Everyone, that is, except for me. “Move Cassie!” Mr Downs is yelling at me again. I glance down to where he stands on the stadium sidelines. […]
The Turtle and the Knife, Bruce Cherry
Sunlight rakes the kitchen as I wash leftover hummus bowls and glasses of flat beer tails. My head hurts. Tapping sounds from the balcony. Peter is out there, smoking. I know he’s upset, but today I don’t have anything for him. I am hung-over. The glasses are lemon fresh and I am rinsing suds from […]
Incident at Sushin, Tara Roberts
For the last two years of high school, my friends and I frequented our local strip mall sushi joint. We adored Sushin (a straightforward name that fit its suburban simplicity). In Murfreesboro, our town in the middle of Tennessee, eating sushi granted us a rare degree of sophistication—or so we believed. We loved the crunchy […]
A Nudge in the Night, Bohdi Byles
A ghost tour at a gaol, and my friend and I would be sleeping overnight in the cells. I could finally tell people I had slept in a prison. The tour was interesting, and a little bit creepy. The tour guide had actually been a prison guard back in the day, so he was telling […]
The Memory, Melissa Farrell
I have this early memory of my mother. We’re in the house where we lived for a couple of months before we moved to Italy, while my father was in Naples organising our new home. I must have been two years old because I turned three soon after we moved. This memory is like looking […]
Legs Off An Ant, Lachlan Marnoch
I remember that when I was little, maybe three or four, I found an ant in our bathroom. Because I was still a cruel, insensitive child with no understanding of empathy, I proceeded to pull all six of its legs off, one by one. I can’t remember whether my mother caught me or whether I […]
Speaking Plainly, K.J. West
What you need to understand is how much pressure a teacher is under. Especially a younger teacher. I’d gained my position through an interview with three middle-aged teaching executives; women whose disinterest seemed to compound with each stare over their outdated glasses. So I exaggerated. I told them something to make them lean forward and […]