W R I T T E N B Y J E Z Z

Venom in Black and Yellow

2007-06-20T21:08:00.000+10:00

They opened the curtains to reveal a gargantuan spider on stage. Each of its eight legs were chained and it tried to rear up, but its forelegs couldn't clear the ground and it crashed back down in a fall that shook the theatre. My pepsi cup was drained and the feature presentation was over, so I slipped out through the lobby and hailed a cab.

"Good show?" asked the driver.

"Greenlight district," I said, "Just north of Howe and Dylan. The show was alright. Rain much tonight?"

"Just eased off," he said. He was a black-skinned guy and was curled up over the wheel, too tall for the standard sedan cab. "Its a quiet night out, yeah? Cold, I think this sudden wind has put a hold on everyone's plans."

He spoke for a while, and my attention turned to the streets - couples clutched together by their forearms, wearing thick felt coats and scarves. Window displays were darkened and lined with thick metal bars. An orange-flashing tow truck was parked by a dinted hatchback. A woman walked by in a black dress with two bold yellow stripes under the bust.

"Stop for a second," I said.

"Huh?"

"Just stop, alright?"

The car pulled up against the curb and I got out, leaving a ten dollar note on the back seat. I hurried back along the sidewalk to where the woman in the black dress was walking in high heels towards the theatre strip.

"Jessica!" I called. "Hey, Jess!"

She turned around and I jogged towards her.

"Who's that... Kurt?"

"Yeah, it's me, Kurt - what are you doing here? Are you alright?"

"I'm fine," she said. "I'm staying at the Plaza. Just for a few nights."

"How's Toronto? Here, I'll walk with you."

"It's good," she said. "Not like it used to be. They pay me well up there, though."

"Glad to hear it. You're not missing much, same old freakshow down here."

We walked for a while, eyes low to avoid the passing headlights. The pavement was still damp from the rain and the wind was cold under my shirt.

"Here, you need a jacket? Cold night," I said.

"I'm fine," she said. "I'm meeting someone for dinner."

I grabbed her arm and stopped.

"Is it important?" I asked.

She turned around and we looked at each others' faces for the first time in a while.

"Is what important, Kurt?"

"Dinner. I haven't eaten." I gestured to the street. "I miss you, Jess."

"Don't," she said. "This is it. We're over, right?"

"What's a few nights?"

She turned, wrestled her arm from my grasp and kept walking. I followed a little behind her, and she stopped again.

"It wouldn't be right."

"It would be so right."

"I have plans."

"Cancel them."

Later that night, after we ate big meals at an organic steakhouse and spent hours drinking beers and cocktails, I undressed her in her hotel room. She shed her thin stockings and her black dress, a flimsy layer, and I sunk into her dark, warm places and clutched her thigh closely against my cheek. Her fingers crept through my hair and flattened themselves down my neck and the rain outside started up again.

Far From the Kitchen

2007-06-19T22:59:00.001+10:00

The instructions were simple: three tablespoons of salt, a cup of ash and seventeen ground tomato seeds, spread in a circle the width of your index finger. Ben made the mess on the countertop, between his cup of apple juice and the dirty dishes, and uttered the incantation as it was described on the printed email.

"Hexam lacunae disperse!"

At first nothing happened, but he knew it had worked when the circle of powder caught alight and the apple juice turned back into an apple and popped right out of the cup. It hit the roof and bounced once on the floor beside him. Quickly he took off his glasses and clutched them in his hand.

Vanishing feels strange, he thought. It's like waking up. However sure you were that you were in a kitchen, you're now even more certain that the kitchen was a vague hallucination and you're really lying on the white sand of a beach, the palm jungle hooting to your left and the waves crushing over a reef somewhere far to the right.

He stood up and brushed the sand from his back and shook his legs to get it from his trousers. He walked up to the edge of the dense plantlife and kicked aside a coconut. There was a path which led straight to the other side of the island.

"Am I stuck, then?" he asked aloud.

He circled the island. It took less than five minutes. He spent an hour breaking through the leaves and bushes until he was sure he'd stepped every step it was possible to take. The only interesting thing he found the whole time was a bean plant growing up a metal spike, its fat pods ready to be plucked.

"I'm stuck," he said.

After a while of lying on the sand, he realized he still had two dry tomato seeds in the pocket of his trousers. He quickly walked to the centre of the island, the point of the path from which he could see both sides of the sandy beach, and dug a hole the depth of his thumb. He dropped the seeds in, spat on them, and covered the hole back up with the dry dirt. For now all he could do was chew on a couple of bean pods and hope for rain.

"Cooee," called someone from the other side of the trees. "Anybody about?"

Ben ran across the island again, careful to not stamp on the freshly dug hole in the path.

"Hey!" he cried. "Help!"

"Ah! I thought I saw something land!" The grown-up was standing at the front of a canoe. He was wearing shorts and a patterned shirt and he had his hands on his hips. "Hello there kiddo! Come aboard then, there's not much to do here."

Ben waded out through the clear water and pulled himself up onto the canoe.

"You ready to go the the Crystal City, then? Or there's a hot meal waiting at the old McMahon's homestead, if you like farms, that is. Just let me know before we get to Spring Island because I need to change my course accordingly."

"I've never been on a farm before."

"Very well then, McMahon's it is." He moved the boat in broad strokes quickly through the water, jutting up and over the incoming waves at the perfect moment between breaks. Soon the water settled again, and it was a smooth and relaxing ride despite the ocean's growing depth.

"Look over there - a colossal sea turtle!"

The hump breached the surface of the water, its rock-like surface wide enough to be an island of its own. Ben watched it cascade back below the water.

"Hey mister, can I get back there? To that island?"

"Sure!" said the man. "I bring the ferry over once every year or so."

Ben smiled, and leant to scoop his hand through the cold water as they moved on towards a growing island in the distance.

The Cougar

2007-06-18T18:11:00.002+10:00

We walked along the river, my hands in my pockets and hers in woolen gloves, clutching my arm. We were looking at the logs, in rows and rows, being floated down towards the harbour. The wet, golden pine steamed, and the steam grew into the fog overhead. It was morning and we'd already had coffees, and the day was unplanned, our only course the packed dirt path underfoot.

"Did you speak to your Grandmother?" I asked.

"Yes," she said.

"Is she okay?"

"Still upset," she said. I nodded, and we continued our matching step through the wooded trail.

"Nice to be back here," I said. "You want to stop for a moment? We can sit on that log."

"Looks wet," she said.

"Alright," and we kept walking. The edge of the river curved and we followed it, lined with trees at some points and at others rocky slopes. Eventually our path rose away from the river and back into the dense pines.

"Did you hear something?" she asked.

"Yeah," I said, and stopped for a moment. "Just a bird, probably. Over there."

There was another sound of movement in the undergrowth.

"Sounds too big to be a bird..."

It was a cougar, and it came out over a fallen tree quickly and went for my leg. I kicked out and knocked it under the chin, but it got up quickly and jumped up at me. I fell over with the claws deep in my chest but managed to roll onto it. It was heavy and strong underneath me and it squeezed out, but Kelly kicked it under its belly twice and it vanished again. I rolled over, my leather coat pocked with holes and the scratches on my chest bleeding underneath.

"Oh god, oh god," she said.

"I'm alright," I said. I could feel the cold and wet on my back. "I'm alright. Give me a moment."

She fell down to her knees beside me and her face went red and she cried, eyes covered with her hands, and I wanted to hug her but the cat had taken the wind from me and I couldn't get up. I looked up into the pine branches and the grey sky and waited until my chest started to sting and Kelly put her arm under my neck and helped me up.

Such a Moment

2007-06-12T21:00:00.001+10:00

This part is the genesis, which could be skipped but is in fact essential. I'm not going to tell you why.

Curly-lashed Freida shoved up against him at the bar; she smiled and asked in her accent what he was having, with a nod towards the spirits rack. He was having beer but he said 'Gin'. 'Would you get me one too?' she asked. The child who was born twenty-years earlier (when the name 'Desmond' was scribbled on a piece of paper) could only flop open his wallet and pull out a note.

'My friends are boring to me, can I sit with you for a while?'

They went outside to a spot beneath an umbrella which would have been green in the daylight. It might have looked nice with the stained wooden table under it, and the wooden planks of the deck, and the wooden chairs.

'I like your shirt,' Desmond said to the horizontal pattern of red and purple.

'It's a sweater, you silly,' she said. 'I knitted it.'

'Then it's a nice sweater.'

---

Now you really have to listen!

Freida's mother called every second night, at that precise moment between 8:29 and 8:30. When Desmond moved in it was the second unusual thing he discovered; the first being the closed room he was not permitted to enter. The door to that room had a hole, straight through the chip-board so that only a flimsy layer of paint on the anterior side seperated the room's contents from the rest of the house. Desmond often had the temptation to poke his index finger through this fine layer but never had the courage in the face of the home's matronly regime.

'You can put your things in the other room. It has a window. You can paint in there, no?'

He liked to cook but it was not a home for cooking; the kitchen was so narrow that the counters almost met each other in the middle, and every cupboard with the potential to become a pantry was filled with clear tupperware containters with blue lids. Freida cooked in there occaisonally, vegetables hopping straight from plastic bag into the pan (sometimes a ribbony receipt would flit dangerously close to the stove's flame), and after dinner she would pack the leftovers carefully away in the abundant tupperware and label it for the freezer. In such a manner was the freezer packed, dinners stacked and labelled like library books, the fridge below home to only three expired mayonaisse jars and a tub of natural yoghurt.

It is easy to imagine that in such circumstances Desmond's artistic skills withered; after a haiatus inflicted by stunned confusion, he returned to his canvas to find that all he could paint was an orange stick-figure in a trapezoid boat. Over three nights he returned with fresh canvas, and when the fourth orange man appeared with its bracket smile he threw his paintbrush down in frustration. At that moment the telephone rang to pronounce the strange moment just before 8:30, a moment which, under the circumstances, seemed perfect for some fresh air.

'Dessie!' cried Freida, tilting over the chipped white railing, cordless phone clutched against her very heart. He stopped in the damp street and looked up to her. 'Will you bring me back a diet Coke?' He nodded and carried on along the asphalt.

Oh, what fate! But as he paid with three dollar coins for the cold bottle, ready to turn around on the mission of delivery which had cut short his adventure before it began, he wondered if it was all so bad; wondered if, after all, an orange stick-man was not a worthy companion - wasn't it his own creation? In that room with a window and an easel, with his suitcase still lying open and empty, what better companion could one have? All these thoughts he was having at a time he should have been having thoughts about the bottle-cap; which he twisted and opened in his vacancy.

The ramifications, you'll understand, were severe.

Entrenched

2007-06-10T19:52:00.000+10:00

There were rats in the trench from the second night it was dug. They bit holes in the sandbags and shat all through the dirt. The soldiers would grab them with fast hands and chuck them like grenades over the razorwire. Sometimes a rat would be shot in frustration and the guts would splash darkly against the packed dirt in a grim mimicry of the situation.

"You want one?" said Gill. He tilted his cigarette forward before lifting it into his mouth. The rat scuttled awat. "Stupid rat."

"Talking to yourself, Gill?" asked the Lieutenant.

"I'll tell ya, Muzz, these rats are a fucking curse. Smoke?" He passed a cigarette to the Lieutenant, who lit it behind his cupped hand. "Don't you think it's a bad sign?"

"Sign? They'll be dead by the weekend. Base is sending up ten kilos of rat sack. That'll be a sign."

"Looks like rain," said Gill. "Does it rain here?"

"Now and then."

"Christ, this place is going to be a muddy cesspit."

"Enjoy it," said the Lieutenant. "If we're driven out of here you won't even have a cesspit."

The rain came during the night, hard and constant. It didn't stop until eleven the next morning. The trenches had flooded to thigh height, the water coffee-grey, its surface filmed with old paper and rat shit and dirt. Gill waded through it, tired, his rifle held above his head in one hand, a bucket skimming along in the other.

"Hey! Gill!" Gill turned - Reggie, a tall, pale soldier was behind him. "Forget the bucket. We have to get out of here. Boss says we've got orders to retreat."

"Retreat? But we haven't even-"

"Doesn't matter. It'd take a week to drain this place and the locals would have us in a real tight spot if they got here before that. The front's withdrawing. Forget the bucket."

Gill glanced back towards the other side of the trench before he let the bucket go. It bobbed in the water. A rat paddled past it, claws flailing desperately, its wet, hairy body hardly able to keep above the surface. The soggy troops retreated in open-roofed trucks, leaving the crates of rations and beer hidden silently under the now still waters.

Much later, when the trenches had dried, the rats came back; scurrying along the empty corridors, they gnawed at deserted boxes and slept in hard-packed corners. For a long time the trench was this way, inhabitted by only the rats, wood, dried paper and empty buckets.

The Furthest Place

2007-06-09T23:23:00.000+10:00

Such white sands as footprints never before tracked across; such clear waters as were never swept behind in gliding strokes. A palm tree with lazy leaves framing the scene from abundant angles. And quiet; only the slosh of a hand in still water came when eyes were closed. Nothing else. This was a sand-circled hump in the azurest sea.

Our hero paces the island. His back dries behind him, salt stinging when he stops to pull on a shirt. He hums. Falls to his crossed legs. Next to his towel are sandy sunglasses which he puts on to stare at the flat horizon. This must be the furthest place, he concludes. Far enough, at least.

"Hello," he calls, and not a fish to hear him. He takes off his sunglasses. Lies back, and sleeps.

Thundercrack. He wakes up with his hands deep in shadowed sand - the sea-green bulkhead approaching fast. He takes his towel and glasses and trots quickly towards the framing palm and its dancing leaves. Hangs the towel over it. Wears the glasses again, then removes them. Folds his arms and jitters his leg. Lightningflash. It hits a swelling wave in the blackening sea.

A deeper shadow coats the shadowed island and our hero looks up to the sky; is punched in the cheek by fat cloudspit. The ceiling is pot-bellied and green still. Hail, he concludes. He goes to the ground and crams his neck under the curve of the palm-trunk. Across the ocean great waves break into white over unseen corals, but these lapping shores remain gentle. Gentle enough that he sees the sheet of bulletholes coming quickly closer. Hail, he concludes.

And all at once a hundred dimples in the sand; the tat-a-tat of blows to the palm trunk against his neck; the cold wind that creeps beneath his still-crossed arms. The leaves dancing now with a violent partner. Even the serene curve of shore is tugged and spread by heavy waves.

All around him the hail bounces. It bounces from the trunk, bounces from the leaves; bounces off his leg and bounces around the island. The white beads rest and seep into the sand. When the last bead has bounced and melted in its bed and all that remains is rain, endless skin-splashing rain, our hero stands. Stretches the towel above him and pads down to the push-pulling shore. Around the sand-hump's circumference.

He stops. Crouches. Rain still pattering on the covering towel. Resting in its crater, a hail-sized jewel. Glimmering ruby. He looks to the grey sky and it punches him thrice, thrice again, twice more. He looks back to the fallen gem and scoops it up along with its crater. Lets the sand seive between his fingers. The ruby rolls into the bowl of his palm. Squeezes it shut, forever captured.

Our hero stands. Looks out to flat horizon. Paces the island's circumference once again.

The Unworn

2007-06-08T21:22:00.001+10:00

The clock ticked, leaves of Jacaranda rustled outside, and Todd took off his jeans. It was a dark time, reminiscent of a blown fuse, and quiet too; the Essential Stevie Wonder having scuttered past its last song ten minutes earlier. The jeans unworn, Todd lay back on the bed and felt Wendy's hand slide through his hair and down to his cheek.

"Smooth face, smooth face," she sung.

He hummed. "Long day," he said. "Stay in tomorrow."

She pulled all fingers away except for the one tip which trailed down to his chin and then up to his lip. He flinched.

"Sorry," she said.

"Do you ever wonder..."

"Huh?"

"How easily we might not be here. We might be somewhere else."

"Where would we be?"

"No, I mean," he trailed off. Wendy's hand slid through his hair. "You and me. We might be different places."

"We're not," she said.

"I'm glad we're not."

From his hair, Wendy's hand crept again across smooth cheek and, leaping neck, it tugged limp collar, then circled button idly. Todd sat up, unbuttoned, and lifted the shirt from his shoulders. He stayed stooped at the end of the bed as the clock ticked. The motley cotton pile of discarded clothes watched from beside his feet.

"Put some music back on?" he asked.

"It's nice quiet," said Wendy. She pulled up and hung herself across Todd's back, her knees sinking the mattress. Balm lips left shapes lingering across his neck as he craned and cracked it. "You need to relax."

"Just a long day," he said. "I could sleep."

"Then let's sleep," she said. "Go brush your teeth."

"Yeah."

The sink-tap ran and clean teeth were sucked at and shone to the mirror; weak eyes squinted in the bathroom light for a brief time, before the house was returned to its fuse-blown state. Other silences were had in the gaps between words as the space between people was filled under cover of warm sheet.

new worlds

2007-06-07T15:35:00.000+10:00

I'll tell you, Son, I couldn't believe that there was a beach there. The rocks themselves were an exciting sight after three months - or was it five? of salt air and empty horizons, but to round those rocks and find a beaten but sandy shore! I was shackled but the crew had all moved to the starboard side, were hanging off it as if the meat had gone bad. When they'd sucked in their fill of land they couldn't pull our beast in soon enough.

That night, a way back from the beach in the low-lying scrub, we lit fires and danced. I tell you, the Captain even danced. The boys who were too sick to stand were propped up against logs and despite their weak bodies and pale skin they grinned and laughed. We all drank our fill of rum and didn't mind that the barrel was empty when it came time to carry on. For a few fleeting days we were neither crooks nor sailors nor officers but men glad for the warmth of a blaze and the crunch of grass underneath our boots.

None of us knew where we were, mind, and I'm not sure if it was I alone who harboured a fear of what lay beyond the dark undergrowth around us. A couple - Taylor and Gimmy - must have been braver than I, for the third night they vanished, leaving only the wrinkled hemp blankets they'd slept under. Who knows what they escaped to? Was this an island that they had stranded themselves on, or did they reach some foreign village? What great or dangerous new world awaited them? Son, I ask you never to leave your fate in the hands of a land you are blind to, because unlike the boundless sea, which is old and spiteful and as hard as any piece of rock, it can be commanded and mastered; its waves can yield great treasures. But earth is fickle and will decide what it provides before you have a chance to say yes or no.

So we carried on, to the great new land. I'll tell you the Captain's hopes were much greater than all of ours. He was privvy in his cigar scented cabin to some letter or past conversation which assured him our course was true and noble. He promised the low-lives like me, below the deck, coughing and cold, that even we would own our piece of the New World; that we'd need not steal chickens and bread for abundance of our own.

Chickens have nothing to do with it, Son. Land cannot be tamed; a chicken in the New World is a different animal to one at home. Whatever spell this place would cast upon our meagre stocks, whatever rot it would set upon our wood and whatever sickness it would inflict upon our mates, Son, I feared it, and I was right to. Or was I? If I hadn't feared I suppose those last moments at sea, as we set away again from that once joyous stretch of white-washed beach, might have been the last moments of peace I ever had.

Rice

2007-06-06T15:48:00.000+10:00

Jesse slid an empty coconut half to me over the table. There was a wad of rice in the bottom and I tilted the makeshift bowl to look at it. A mosquito buzzed around my ear but I didn't have the energy to beat it away. I just looked at the stodgy rice.
- Can I have water? I asked.
- There's none. I'll go to get more in the morning.
- I need water. Is there any left at all?
- No, Charlie, there's no water. Hear me? None.
- Well what's the God-damned point of boiling up this rice if there's no bloody water left?
- Forget it, okay? The rice is from yesterday. I didn't boil it, I heated it over the fire.
The mosquito buzzed and I lifted my heavy arm up over my ear to shoo it.
Outside the hut the bush creaked.
- I'll go now, I said.
- Don't be stupid, Jesse said. It's dark already.
- Well? I need water, I said.
- Please? She moved her hand across the table and onto my shoulder. You're still weak, Charlie.
- I know, I said. But I'm thirsty. I can't eat unless I've had something to drink first.
- Fine. I'll go.
- I didn't mean -
- I'll go, okay? Christ.
She brushed aside the thin curtain outside the bedroom and I saw her silhouette perch on the end of the bed to strap up her thick boots. She slipped on her jacket and then came back to where I was sitting with my head low at the table.
- You'll eat the rice when I get back, she said.
- Yes, of course.
She trod over the wooden floor heavily and descended into the dark night outside. Her torch beamed awkwardly into the hut for a moment and then her sound and light disappeared into the dense jungle.
I waited, listening. The mosquito buzzed about my ear again and I twisted and jerked my head until it buzzed away. A spot behind my ear was starting to itch. I folded my arms in front of me and dropped my head between them on the table.

I was woken by footsteps behind me, and I lifted my head.
- How did you go? I asked.
She said nothing.
- I'm sorry if I was short with you.
When I looked up it wasn't Jess but a stubbly-chinned man in a strange uniform holding a rifle against his chest. He stepped around the table and stared at me as he lifted the cocount bowl, then looked down at the rice. He grunted, spat in the bowl, and placed a thick dirty finger into the rice. When he pulled it out it was covered with the soggy stuff and he sucked on it, then spat again.
- What do you want? I asked.
He turned and pulled aside the bedroom curtain and looked in there. He didn't say a word. After he circled the table again he left the hut and was swallowed by the night.

I waited until Jesse came back, still too tired to move, unable to shoo the mosquito that buzzed around my ear.

Nicely Fielding

2007-06-05T20:27:00.000+10:00

"Stoic Earth is in the lead but here's Nicely Fielding... Nicely Fielding... Is it? Oh!"
The nailbiting finish to the race was heralded by the shouting commentator as onlookers brought their hats against their hearts. James missed it as he was in the bathroom, fucking a woman dressed in a tiny green dress, as she tried to keep the champagne in its plastic cup. It was a hot day and James was sweating in his open-collared suit and all he could think about as he pushed the slim woman back and forth against the mirror was about how much he wanted to lean over to run the tap for a long drink of water.
"Shit," she said, and hopped down. "Race is over. Let's get out of here."
"Sorry," said James. "Thanks anyway."
"What?" she asked. She grabbed his wrist - her hand was damp. "Come on."
"I'm staying," said James.
Three men walked in, shoving each other and grinning widely. One took off his pinstripe hat and stopped suddenly when he saw the woman. James leant over and turned on the tap. He submerged his face as the water poured coldly over his hands.
"Hey girlie," said one of the men. "Ladies is the other way."
The two others chuckled.
"Fuck you," she said.
"Woah, settle there, no harm meant." said the first man. James looked up as she pushed apart the three of them and left. "So, how's that, boys? Nicely Fielding, I knew he'd come through."
In the milling hall James stood for a few minutes. Drinkers bustled around him, all moving, waving white tickets in the air and laughing with loud heavy breath. James pulled off his coat as he started move, shouldering through the hordes until he came outside, the day hot, the air smelling of chip grease and Jack Daniels. The crowd thinned. He pushed through a turnstile and trodded between cars in row A, then row B, until he found his hatchback. He threw the jacket in the back seat but when he sat inside the car's interior was roasting and it stung his forearms when he leant against the steering wheel.
He retched heavily, his stomach uprising, the water flowing stinking through his teeth and pouring onto the asphalt of the carpark. James was dizzy and the vomitting made him feel no better. Soon his chest's heaves settled and his head began to crack with his heartbeat. There was no relief until the sun receded behind a cloud and even that brief curtain was shortlived.

In Flight

2007-06-04T21:53:00.001+10:00

You fly in and you realise you could be anywhere. The black spaces between the blinking lights and glowing buildings, HSBC signs and airport markers could be the palms of Honolulu; the parks and creeks of Sydney; the farms of the delta near Vancouver. The airport is much the same, and you lean in to drink cold water from a fountain, knowing where you are but imagining it's somewhere else. If it's a transfer, even better - the reality doesn't matter. You can be anywhere you want.

I open a foil packet of chips, tearing the packet carefully to spread it across the bar. A familiar chime rings in from a distant wing and an announcement is read in Japanese. I can only make out two words; O'Reilly, Bill. I'm Bill, but not O'Reilly. I have to listen again. She certainly said O'Reilly. The flight number is foreign as well, so I'm safe to return to my task of spreading the chip packet squarely in front of me.

Would you like a chip? I ask an old man wearing a hearing aid who's sitting beside me. I slide the square towards him. He looks at me, grey eyes behind thick glasses, then stands up, takes his book and leaves. I take a chip, crush it, press a crumb between my fingers until the oil has wet my fingers. I eat one or two.

Can I get another Heineken? I ask.

You hide from things, in the spaces between reality. The no places, like this. On the second leg I don't watch the movies or listen to the radio channels or read the thick book I've slipped in the meshing in front of me (between the in-flight magazine and the laminated safety sheet). I keep the television on the channel that shows you how far you are from your destination in three languages, the wind speed and your precise location above the Earth. Somewhere above the Middle East I figure it's the perfect place for an emergency to occur requiring an unplanned and violent landing.

Refreshments? Orange juice, tea coffee? asks the attendant.

Could I get a club soda, please? I ask.

Would you like lemon? she asks.

I wake up when my ears begin to pop and my chest tightens from the descent. People begin to remove their headsets and the attendant is clearing empty plastic containers on dinner trays. The air is heavy. I missed an omelette.

When you've broken through the soupy fog you notice something along the black river that places you in London. That building, round and green, tall along the south bank of the Thames. It would be nothing in any other city, just a tower, but here it's a monstrous egg - an abberation. You remember that Heathrow waits for you and the tube ride and the apartment in Chelsea and you wait for everyone else to file out and into the cold night before you grab your bags from the overhead compartment and say goodbye to the attendant at the front and thank-you to an airport employee in a flurescent orange vest.

Someone waits for me in the quitely milling group at Arrivals but she looks different, wearing a coat I haven't seen before. She smiles and I frown a little and look down but when I reach her I slip my arm into hers and kiss her on the cheek.

Can we talk? I ask.

Let's get you home first, she says. And home is what you get.

Dogs and People

2007-05-31T16:02:00.001+10:00

The guitar was on the concrete and its strings were broken, all six of them, splayed wires like feelers searching the ground. There was a low din coming from the amplifier and Jessica was coughing heavily, spitting, her chin wet with saliva and blood. When she had coughed all she could and the blood was smeared gleaming onto the collar of her black t-shirt, she sat back against the big humming box and started to cry. The garage door was still open, the wind blowing in carrying dust and dry leaves. A lady walking her spaniel stopped at the driveway when she saw Jessica crying. She dropped the dog's leash.

"Oh my lord," she said. The dog trotted inside and sniffed at a spot of blood on the ground. "Benny! Get back here Benny, come on!"

The dog licked Jessica's hand before she pulled it away and wiped her eyes.

"I'm so sorry," said the woman. She grabbed the dog by the collar and yanked him back from Jessica. "Are you alright, dear? Are you hurt?"

"My tooth," said Jessica. She turned her red face to the woman and opened her mouth with her hand on the gash across her bottom lip.

"Were you attacked? Who did this to you?"

"It's... I tripped," said Jessica. She looked away to the guitar, heavy and broken on the ground. "I was practicing."

"Come on, you can tell me what happened. Who did this? It's okay, sweetheart." She bent down, pulled off her wool scarf and put her hand on the girl's shoulder.

"Get off me," said Jessica. She swiped the woman's hand away. "Go away, okay? Forget it, I'm fine. It's none of your business."

The woman stood up. The dog was pulling away - it had noticed a white cat crossing the road outside. It barked three times sharply.

"You shouldn't put up with that," said the woman. The dog barked again. "You shouldn't put up with being hurt."

Jessica spat blood on the concrete. "Just fuck off," she said.

"Alright," said the woman. She took the dog by the collar and let it walk to the garage door, then took hold of its leash. She looked back to the girl once before she continued down the suburban street. The lawns were all mowed perfectly and the houses were big and well lit in the afternoon sun. There were a few heaped piles of fallen leaves along the street, and the next street was much the same.

When she reached the park she let the dog off the leash and it ran straight towards a couple and barked at the two pugs they were walking. The woman wrapped the scarf back around her neck. The young couple were laughing and had their arms locked tightly and the young man leant down to pat Benny. The woman watched and rubbed her bare, dry hands together.

"Come on, Benny," she said. "Come on."

Benny bounded back and the woman clipped the leash on and she left the wide park. The young couple left too with their pugs and the park remained empty as the bright afternoon turned into a rosy evening and the wooden benches there were empty and there were no dogs or couples until the next morning.

2

2007-05-31T15:10:00.000+10:00

Sorry for the delay. I'll continue, shall I?

Hoping That Cormorants Migrate

2006-03-09T14:43:00.000+11:00

Never before had I la’la’la’ed so frequently by the side of the road, the other days always the same and the bedrooms always the same and the beach the same. The cars are parked under the verandah but they are always in the same place and we don’t really have the keys. There’s a flower overhanging, purple jacaranda and I’m scared that soon I’ll be sitting and watching it turn brown and fall. The petals will slide down onto the windscreen and no wiper will push them aside, maybe not forever. Sometimes I sit and hold my phone like a tiny oblong television and watch as the digital minutes jump by and nobody rings to tell me to get in the car. Sometimes I wonder if my phone has a number, maybe it only rings after an octagram chant and a lit sparkler in a skeleton’s hand, a ritual I forgot to note in the email.

There’s a house somewhere that I’ve lived in before, but not in this country. It has hardwood floors and a fridge where nothing’s vegetarian. The freezer’s got coffee grains all through it but I can take the foil packets out if I want. It’s only around during the night and when I wake up. Other times it doesn’t exist, like trying to see from a point five inches above your hair. Nothing there. I can slip out and slip back in holding a plastic bag full of whatever and a ticket to somewhere else in my back pocket.

Here the walls are like a jail only I can see them from the outside too, even when I’m lying in the sand far away the walls are still waiting for me. The gum trees and banksias and other scrubs tangle up around me. Every window has at least a hundred sunlit leaves scraping at it and trying to get in. Sometimes when I’m quiet and I look out of the corner of my eye the wind has stopped and they hardly try at all.

I hope the sparkler ritual will start soon and my little oblong television will tell me to get in my car as I hold it and watch it and smile at it. Then the walls will fold down and the world of leaves will receede a bit and maybe that cormorant I see every day will leave for some magnificently filmed and well-narrated journey. Pasta will no longer be pasta it will be that pasta we had that time. The beach will be just as sparkling but my camera’s batteries will no longer be low and I’m sure I’ll walk that grassy headland to get a new frame of reference.

red onion

2006-03-01T22:57:00.000+11:00

I stepped through the supermarket's automatically sliding glass doors with two heavy plastic shopping bags in each of my hands. It was raining outside, but I was pleased; the warm night smelled wonderful. My evening was planned perfectly. I would take a short detour through the carpark to the liquor store, where I'd buy two large bottles of Tiger or Sapporo. Then I would walk home past the empty bus loop and through the train station. When I got home I'd open up the balcony doors to let the warm night come inside, then cook a simple stir-fry with beef and green chillis. I stepped off the curb sure of this.

"Hey, sir," I heard a woman say. I kept walking. "Hey, in the blue, could you do me a favour please?"

There was nobody else outside, and I was wearing a blue t-shirt. I turned around. The woman was standing with her back against the white brick wall of the supermarket. She was soaking wet. Her curled hair was sucking to her pale face. I noticed that her lower lip was cut and swollen on one side. She lowered her head when she realised I was examining her.

"Sure, what do you need?" I asked.

"I need you to," she hesitated, "I mean can you go in and buy something, buy a red onion for me?"

"Sorry, I really can't spare the change," I said. I didn't turn around and leave.

"No, just, here." The woman dug into the pockets of her shorts and pulled out a five dollar note. "Here, just buy it for me. I can't go in there, I can't, I can't."

"Just one red onion?" I asked.

"Yeah. A big one, maybe," she said. "Look, can you hurry up please? Sorry, I mean, I'm in a rush."

I walked back to where she was standing and took the note. She looked up at me quickly, then dropped her head again. She had dark crescents beneath her eyes. I couldn't tell what had caused them.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

"Yes, I'm fine." she said.

I nodded and walked back to the automatically sliding glass doors, now holding two heavy plastic shopping bags in my left hand, and two heavy plastic shopping bags and a five dollar note in my right hand. I was relieved that I only had to pass the paperbacks and magazines before I got to the fresh produce. When I did get past the paperbacks and magazines, I realised that fresh produce was really quite a large section. Within it I still had to pass the baked goods, the french loaves protruding like weapons from woven baskets; the tomatoes and mushrooms, propped up in green plastic trays and cardboard boxes; then the fruit - the bananas, the apples, the oranges. I then still had to round a corner of nuts, and only on that distant aisle, just this side of the potatoes, were the red onions.

It seemed a long way. I thought that maybe I should turn around, slip the five dollar note into the pages of a bestseller, and leave through the supermarket's other exit. I'd go home and cook my stir fry and drink my beer, and tomorrow some middle-aged woman would find a pleasant surprise in her new novel.

Before I had chance to act on the idea, I realised I was standing in front of the red onions. They were all quite small, and most of the bigger ones had attracted fruit flies, which hopped about on the onions' flaky purple husks. I didn't think too much about it though. I grabbed one and retraced my path through the fresh produce to the checkout, which was right beside the magazines.

I was careful to use the same checkout that I had used earlier. I declared my four bags of already purchased groceries, placing them on the rubber conveyor behind the lone onion. The lady was the same red-haired woman who scanned my shopping and took my money ten minutes earlier.

"How are you, darl?" she asked.

"Just forgot the onion," I said.

The woman weighed the onion and put it in a plastic bag. Twice she looked over her shoulder at the glass doors. I looked over my shoulder at the glass doors, too. You couldn't see the lady waiting outside from there. I gave the cashier the five dollar note and took back the four heavy shopping bags and the one shopping bag with the onion in it.

"Sorry, love, I should have just put the onion in with those," she said.

"It's okay," I said quickly. "I... No worries."

She gave me a lot of change and a receipt, which I crumpled up and put in my pocket.

"Thanks. Have a good one," I said. I left quickly, walking back through the automatic doors and once again into the night. It was cooler than before, and the rain had become a light spray. The woman, still soaking wet, was waiting against the wall. Her hand was on her mouth.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you" she said when she noticed me. I put down two of the plastic bags to give her the one with the onion. She took it without looking inside. "Is the change in there?"

"Oh, shit, sorry." I took the change and the crumpled receipt from my pocket and gave them to the woman. When she took it I noticed that her fingertips were bloody.

"Thank you so much," she said.

"No worries," I said. "Hey, I know I asked before, but... are you sure you're okay?"

"I'm fine," she said. "Don't worry about me."

She walked away through the carpark, and I waited until she was gone. I picked up the two heavy bags of groceries. I stepped off the curb. The rain was spitting at me, and I had no idea what I was going to do.

poultry

2006-02-25T02:24:00.000+11:00

i am poultry

like a bare chicken bleeding
where its last two feathers
were plucked

i am poultry

like an avian flu duck flat
body flat neck flat beak
in mud

i am poultry

like a flapping mad turkey
old and flapping feathers flying
flapping till it

doesn't flap

Robbers

2006-02-23T20:34:00.000+11:00

The gun nervously shook as it was pressed against the sweaty forehead of the grey haired man.

"Stand up," said the ski-masked figure. Dutifully, the grey haired man got up from where he sat on the toilet seat. His pants remained crumpled around his ankles. A short release of piss streamed down from between his legs.

"Shit, I mean, you could have finished," said the bandit, as he raised his hands and stepped backwards "Just do what you have to do. Quickly."

The man sat down, wiped himself and stood back up. He pulled up his pants and zipped up.

"Harry?" called a voice from outside the bathroom. "What's taking you so fucking long?"

"Nothing," shouted the ski masked figure. "Everything's okay!"

"What do you want?" asked the grey haired man. His red face swelled and dripped.

"You are the manager of the Mutual Bank on Georgia street, yes?" asked the face behind the black ski-mask.

"Yes," said the man.

"Excellent. Then you should know what this is about."

The sound of footsteps running up a staircase came from beyond the closed door. The two men remained facing each other, the ski-masked man pointing his gun at the other's chest. For a moment the two were silent. Then the door slammed open, and another ski-masked figure stepped into the room.

"Harry?" asked the new man.

"Yep, everything's fine, Trev." said Harry. "I was just about to tell Mr. Young here about what's going to happen."

"I'd like to know what you think you're going to do," said the manager.

"We're gonna steal your money," said Trevor.

"That's right, Mr. Young," said Harry. "In one hour, we're going to take you to your bank. You'll then assist us in making a withdrawl. So to speak."

"I... I can't do that," said Mr. Young.

"If you don't," said Harry, "We'll shoot your bloody kids. Trevor? The children are tied up downstairs, right?"

"Right," said Trevor. He smiled through the hole in his mask.

"No, I mean I can't do that," said Mr. Young. "The doors are locked and barricaded. They're on a timer... Not even I can get in. Nobody can get in. I can't get in."

"Bullshit," said Harry.

"Jesus, man," said the manager. "Take me out there if you want, but I swear to God, you won't be able to get in."

"That's not how it works!" yelled Harry. "That's not how it's supposed to work!"

Harry elbowed Mr. Young and pushed him against the white tiled walls of the bathroom. He lifted the gun to the man's head and pushed it hard into his forehead.

"You can kill me," said Mr. Young, staring at Harry, "But the doors aren't opening for you tonight."

"Fuck!" yelled Hary. He stepped backwards, but kept the gun aimed at the red-faced manager. He lowered his voice. "God damn it this isn't how it happened."

"What are you talking about, Harry?" said Trevor. "How what happened?"

"The movie," said Harry. "This isn't how it happened in the movie."

"Movie?" asked Trevor.

"Nothing, just. I dunno," said Harry.

"Harry, do you know what you're doing?" asked Trevor. "We still can get the fuck out of here."

"No," said Harry. "We're going to do this. We've got the kids tied up. We've got guns."

"What are we gonna do, but?" asked Trevor.

"We're going to rob a fucking bank!"

1

2006-02-22T21:43:00.000+11:00

This will be a place for my freewriting, I guess. Hopefully I'll have time to work on it every day.