 
Narrator Magazine

Blue Mountains/Central Tablelands

Best of the Best 2011

Smashwords Edition

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This year's winners

Spring 2010 Blue Mountains

People's choice judging

First prize—Zoya Kraus—Bright Spark

Second prize—Robyn Nance—The Liberation of Ted Farmer

Third prize (joint)—Elizabeth Diehl—Everything Seems to be Broken

Third prize (joint)—Greg North—Black Future

Summer 2010 Blue Mountains

Guest judge: Greg Bastian <http://www.gregbastian.com.au/>

First prize—Samantha Miller—Paris Match

Second prize—Joan Vaughan-Taylor—Fly a Kite

Third prize—Linda Yates—The Loaf of Bread

Highly Commended—Sue Artup—Daniel

Highly Commended—David Bowden—Opinions Vary

Autumn 2011 Blue Mountains

Guest judge: Diane O'Neill, owner Blue Dragon Books

First prize—Mary Krone—Scarred

Second prize—Aristidis Metaxas—Ticket

Third prize—Robyn Chaffey—The Wind at my Door

Highly Commended—Greg North—Stick It

Highly Commended—Christina Frost-Clayton—Knock 'n Roll

Winter 2011 Blue Mountains

Guest judge: David Berger, author, Letters from Paris

First prize—Aristidis Metaxas—Henrietta de Chook and her Totally Awesome Adventure

Second prize—Cathy Tanaka—Spin Me Round Sky

Third prize—Michael Burge—A Quick Fix

Highly Commended—Brendan Doyle—Ode to Tony

Highly Commended—John Ross —The Stranger

Highly Commended—Adrian Johnstone—A Wedding

Spring 2011 Blue Mountains

Guest judge: Lis Bastian, CEO Varuna <http://www.varuna.com.au/>

First prize—Linda Yates—Endings

Second prize—Alan Lucas—Faustus

Third prize—David Bowden—The Man who Talked to Animals

Highly Commended—Tony Dwyer—Selling Green

Highly Commended—Sam Miller—Vide Grenier

Spring 2011 Central Tablelands

Guest judge: Jenny Barry, BooksPlus, Bathurst

First prize—Rebecca Wilson—Treasures

Second prize—JE Doherty—Always the Children

Third prize—JE Doherty—The Dancing Suit

From the Editor ...

It's with an amazing amount of pride yet sadness that we bring you this first Narrator Magazine 'Best of the Best' collection.

The journey to this point has been fun, exciting, scary, revealing, but above all, rewarding. More importantly than that, though, we hope that it's been rewarding for you, our readers and contributors.

What started as a little seed of thought on 10 July 2010 is now being developed into an Australia-wide competition between states, and that's where part of the sadness comes. We have grown to know and love our regular contributors, and never cease to be amazed at the different works some of our contributors manage to come up with.

But at the end of the day, this was never meant to be a magazine for regular contributors. It is meant to be a showcase for lots of people, to help as many people as possible get a start in getting their writing careers going, and to present the best that we can in creative writing in Australia. And the only way to do that is to throw the doors open to a wider audience.

As you may have realised, the original plan was to release regional issues of Narrator, but in developing the Central Tablelands issue, we were sad to learn that this brought all sorts of administrative issues that we hadn't anticipated, so by the time it was released, we had already started planning to 'go national'. I thank all Blue Mountains and Central Tablelands contributors for their support, encouragement and understanding regarding the changeover.

We are very proud of the writings contained within this best of the best issue and we hope that we will see some of these authors again in the '2012 Best of the Best NSW/ACT'!

Jenny Mosher

December 2011

Caricature:

Jenny Mosher's caricature (above) by local artist Todd Sharp. For more info, visit <http://www.toddasharp.com/>.

Cover: 'Blue Mountains Welcome' by Karen Maber

Karen Maber is an Aboriginal artist living in the Blue Mountains, NSW. Her artwork celebrates relationships between people, place, emotion and spirituality. Her passion for art and the creative process is to encourage journeys of healing and a better understanding of our connection to each other and to our natural world through one's heart.

'Blue Mountains Welcome' was painted to welcome the many visitors to this land. 'Welcome' is much more than a word that is spoken – it is a word that is felt. Feeling welcome means we feel cared for and in return we trust that you care for this land.

For more about Karen, visit her website at: <http://www.karenmaber.com.au/>

**Treasures**

Rebecca Wilson

Hill End

First Prize, Central Tablelands Spring 2011

'Where d'ya hide the suitcases?' Her back is rubbing gently on the gritty clay and bits of rock are falling with the movement. His jeans are down and her legs are wrapped around his hips. 'I told you already,' he says into her neck, 'you don't need to know.' A loud thud bangs the ground above their heads. Twice. Three times. They look up to the edge of the steep creek bed, above the exposed tree roots and pieces of corrugated iron that hold the bank together. Roo. Just a roo. They pull away from each other. A large canvas bag sits at the foot of an old peach tree that has grown in the middle of the creek bed. She picks the bag up and throws it over her shoulder and it hits her side softly. 'Did you put the key back?' They both scramble to the top of the bank but he moves quickly, so she can't see his face.

'Did you put the bloody key back?' She wants him to turn around and look at her.

'I couldn't remember exactly where it was s'posed to go.'

'What?' He stops and turns to look at her, both of them angry with each other, for different reasons. He puts his face down to hers. Her voice is quivering and her face is red as she asks him slowly, 'So, exactly where did you put it, Jonno?'

'Shit! Jenna, we don't have time for this now. The job's done and we need to meet that guy in half an hour. Where's the goddamn 'cruiser? And give me the keys.'

She pulls the keys from the back pocket of her jeans. Her brown crusty hands slam the keys into his as she cuts him with daggers from her eyes. 'It's up near the old sale yards, like you friggin' told me.'

Silence. They walk separately, angrily, up the red road. Dust is picking up in the wind at the back of his heels and it blows back towards her as she storms behind him. He starts the car. The sun's reflection off the clay is alive with pink and purple that radiates indigo mist, they squint their eyes and lower their visors. He swings the 4WD around, stopping suddenly for the Eastern Greys that are heading to the empty grassy space that sits in the middle of the old mining town. They pass the pub and head out on the only road that takes anyone in or out.

He thinks carefully about where he put the key. 'They won't be onto me until at least next Tuesday anyway. Tom and Gail said they were definitely outta town 'til next Tuesday. And they won't go up to the cottage for a while, not 'til the next boofhead artist comes in anyway. They will notice the missing paintings though, it's just a matter of time.'

He looks sideways at Jenna and continues to think. 'We meet the guy, get the suitcases and make the deal. After that we're free. We'll be outta town before anyone notices a thing.' He lights a cigarette with one hand while the other holds the vehicle to the left as the sharp corner swoops and a sea of yellow and black arrows points the way around the tight bend at the top of the crest. And what about Tony? He'd better keep his end of the deal and keep his mouth shut.

'So, how did it go?' Jenna is calmer now, but not relaxed by any means. 'Did you get the bloody paintings or not?'

'Yes. They're in the suitcases.'

'Did anyone see you?'

'Would I be here driving the friggin' car if they had? For God's sake Jenna. I got the key, I got the paintings, they're in the suitcases and we're nearly at Sofala, so relax.'

They swing to the left in a hurry and he accelerates up the hill that looks down on the small village. He swerves off the road and behind the trees a red Mercedes waits with a pale, thin man at the wheel. Jonno walks over to the passenger seat and jumps in. They talk for a while and Jonno comes back to Jenna and whispers, 'You've gotta get in the car with him.'

'What?''

'Get in the car with him, now.'

'What the hell is going on Jonno?'

'Jenna, just get in the car so I can go get the suitcases.'

'No. I'm coming with you.' The man in the car beeps the horn.

'Jenna, what you don't know can't hurt you. Get in his car. And don't tell him a bloody thing.'

She walks over and thumps herself into the leather seat. They nod at each other.

Jonno drives quickly back onto the road and continues until he reaches a dirt track. He follows it until he has to stop to move the branches and rocks that he'd used to deter any visitors. He makes his way through the scrub, dodging trees in his Landcruiser until he reaches a small cleared area. Out of the car, he walks behind large rocks at the base of a hill, to an old mine shaft where he shuffles down the ladder. At the bottom, he uses his torch to recover the stashed suitcases. He pulls them up to the surface one by one, sweating. He chucks them in the back of the vehicle, under a blanket.

Jenna is leaning on the Mercedes, smoking a cigarette as Jonno pulls in swiftly, streaming light across her face from the high beams. Jenna walks over to him, her heart is racing. Jonno simply tells her to get into the driver's seat and keep the car running.

Jonno shows the man the contents of the suitcases and waits for the money. The driver indicates over his shoulder, where a small box sits on the back seat. 'Put the paintings there and take the box.' Jonno grabs the lid off and counts the cash. 'You do realise what scandal will eventuate when they discover these have disappeared, don't you?'

'What are you talking about?'

'These paintings are very well known, young man. They are considered national treasures, my friend. There will be a lot of heat on this, so lay low and don't do anything 'unusual', or they'll be onto you. I am offloading these this afternoon and washing my hands of the whole thing, you never saw me ... okay? Stick to the deal.'

Jonno tips the cash into the canvas bag and throws it behind him. He swings the suitcases onto the seat. The driver watches Jonno in the mirror, his hands on the steering wheel, poised to exit, fast. Jonno doesn't close the back door. The driver turns his head away from the mirror to see for himself what this man is up to. Before he can speak, silver cuffs have encircled his wrists and he is locked to the wheel. The pale man struggles and yells. 'What the hell do you think you are doing? What's wrong with you, boy? The deal is done! You want to keep those paintings and try to sell them again to someone else? You are a fool. Someone will find me here and I will tell the police every detail I know about you, you little cretin.'

'Don't worry grandpa, I just need to buy a little time. My mate will be along shortly to unlock you. Just don't over react and everything will be fine.' Jonno turns the radio on for the driver and closes the door, walking to his car with the money and the paintings. 'Drive woman, drive!'

***

Back in the old mining town, Tom and Gail have arrived early. Gail gets the dog some food while Tom talks to the guy from Sydney. She hasn't met him before. 'Why was Tom so insistent that he invite this horrid man, "Roland"? We weren't supposed to come back here until next Tuesday. And that bloody BMW that he adores!''

'Something to drink, gentlemen?' She pours them both a beer and says she needs to unpack and freshen up.

The men stay at the table.

'So what do you think you can get for them?' Tom asks.

'The problem is being able to get rid of them. They are very well known, much harder to offload.'

'If that's the case why the hell did I bring you here?'

'Now, now, Tom. I didn't say impossible, just a more limited market, my dear. And besides, I need to see them before anything can happen. You know how it works.'

'Let's go there now.'

'Gail!' he calls out, 'we'll be back in a while, I'm taking Roland to the cottage.' No reply.

At the cottage, Tom picks up the rock near the concrete path. Not there. 'Strange.' He picks up the next rock. 'There.' Relief. 'Jenna must have moved the key.'

The men make their way to the front door of the cottage with walls that whisper stories of art history. Through the old kitchen and small hallway, into the lounge. 'Holy shit, I don't believe it!' He runs from room to room, looking at the empty walls.

'My dear Tom, someone has beaten you to it!' Roland laughs arrogantly. 'I suppose I shall just have to enjoy your hospitality for the evening and then be on my way,' he says as Tom falls into the closest seat.

'This is disastrous!'

'I'll make my way back to tell your wife. Best that I'm not here when the police arrive.'

***

Gail sits on the couch in the cottage, holding her husband's hand while the constable asks a lot of questions. 'Who has access to the cottage?' The policeman tries to sound like he knows what he is doing.

Tom wonders to himself. Jenna? 'Jenna knows where the key is, she cleans here every time an artist has finished their residency. But she's so sweet. Couldn't be her. She wouldn't know how to sell them anyway? No ... What was the name of that artist who stayed here last June, Gail? That man, the sculptor. You know the one that was screwing all those young wannabes?'

'Oh ... Jeffrey?! Don't be ridiculous, Tom! I think your jealousy is twisting your mind! Darling, who else knew where the key was?' Gail asks her husband.

'Really it's down to Jenna and any of the artists that have stayed here. But Jenna? I doubt it.'

'Let's get her on the phone, get her over here, in case she saw anything suspicious.'

'No answer.' Gail sighs. 'Try the pub, she might be up there.' She dials and chats, hangs up. 'No, Cara hasn't seen her since yesterday morning.'

'Where the hell is she then? Try her mother's,' he snaps at his wife.

Again she makes a call. 'Rosie hasn't seen her tonight. Tom, that's not good. That's very unusual for her. I'm a bit worried now.'

***

Jenna drives flat out down the hill again. 'Pull over. I'm gonna drive.' Jonno gets in and heads the vehicle back to the small town from which they came.

'What the hell are you doing?'

'Okay Jenna, here's the plan. We can drop these paintings back. No one will know they were ever taken and we can piss off and have a good life for a while. Start somewhere new. If we head back now, we haven't really done anything wrong. Kind of ...'

Jenna sits silently. 'You've stuffed it all up. It's not what we planned, Jonno. We planned to sell them and skip. That guy will track us down or give us up to the cops and we'll be screwed.'

'Jenna, if we go back now, put the paintings back up, no one will know. Tom and Gail won't be back yet. We can take this cash, it's heaps of money and we can disappear. What's that guy gonna say to the police? "Sir, they took the money I was using to buy stolen paintings?"' Jenna sighs and silently nods her head.

***

The young constable of the town is quite excited by the case. 'Things like this just don't happen 'round here. This is a big case. This could be promotion material.' The policeman bids goodnight to Tom and Gail. He gets in his car and drives out of town but slowly heads off the road and lowers his lights. He can see Tom and Gail's place from where he is placed. He will wait and watch.

The ambitious policeman sees the couple make their way up the drive and head into the house. 'Who is the third person at the table through the window?' He calls in the vehicle plates. 'Dodgy. Roland Fischer. Never convicted but well known for "handling" things people need to "get rid of". Surely that is too obvious, to call me in before he has even left with the goods. Possible, but so risky.' The constable decides to stake the house out for the night. 'These snobs from Sydney won't take the Mickey out of me. A bust like this could be very good for my career, very good.'

***

The town is covered in a blanket of black, there is no moon. At the cottage, in the dark, Jenna can't find the key.' It's bloody gone Jonno, where the hell did you put it?'

'Under that bloody rock is where I put it ... shit! We'll have to break in.' Standing in the darkness he holds his jacket over the window and cracks it with a shifter. The glass makes high pitched clinks and he puts his hand through the window to open the lock. He jumps through the window and asks Jenna to pass the suitcases. 'Shit! I don't remember where any of these go, do you?'

'God, Jonno, you and your bloody ideas! Let me in, you'll have to turn the lights on so we can figure this mess out.'

'No Jenna, someone will notice.'

'Jonno, how the hell am I gonna put them back up in the dark?'

'Ok, but just a lamp!' They light a small lamp in the corner of the room and unpack the 'treasures'.

***

The constable outside Tom and Gail's is snoring in the driver's seat. Tom creeps slowly around to the back of the vehicle and puts nails into the tyres. Well and truly drunk by now, Tom is outraged that the policeman has been watching him. 'Son ... bitch. Treat me .... criminal, bastard ... teach him ...'

After committing his deed of revenge, Tom walks alone, stumbling over rocks and bumping into fences, lost in the dark, towards the cottage. Sobbing to himself, grieving over the money he intended to make, to get him out if the trouble he's in. Bouncing through the back fence, he thinks he sees a light. And now a shadow, two shadows, moving in the cottage.

'What the hell is this?' He shuffles drunkenly to the verandah and tries to see through the window, not too close, he's having trouble staying upright. He can't make out who it is but decides that he must act quickly. But do what? Run back to the policeman whose vehicle is now defunct? 'Shit! What have I done?' As he stands in the cold, panicking, he can hear footsteps. He flops down just below the verandah and watches a man come around the corner to the window. The man has a balaclava over his head and he stands very close to the window, calling out someone's name. Tom's not sure what he said.

From inside the dimly lit cottage Jonno exclaims, 'Shit! Tony! What the hell are you doing here?'

'That goddamn guy you left in the car is dead.'

'What?'

'You heard me, man, dead.'

'How did you find me?'

'Your car is across the road, idiot!'

'Awright, smardarse ...'

'Man, I went to uncuff him just like you asked. You musta gave 'im a heart attack. I'm not dealin' with that on me own.'

'So where is he?'

'In his car, mate, where d'ya reckon?'

'Jesus Christ!'

Tom is terrified. He must get help. He is moving as quickly as he can but he is like a blind kangaroo, knocking into things, grunting and puffing. His head is swirling with alcohol and fear. Back to the sleeping constable he tries to find his way. Tom can't see. His pulse is galloping, he thinks his heart will explode. He trips on rocks and his jacket gets caught on fence wire. He struggles, he's rushing. He pulls himself out of his jacket and it hangs, lonely on the wire, ripped and abandoned. He feels that he has gone off course, he can't get his bearings. He falls over and stays down. Tom is crawling now, so he can feel his way across the gravel, dirt and rocks.

***

Jenna, Jonno and Tony speed away from the cottage. The pictures are up on the walls. 'Maybe not how they were, but close enough.' Jenna thinks. They pull up at the red Mercedes. The two men pull and push the driver into the passenger's seat and Jonno takes the wheel. Jenna follows behind.

Out through the winding roads and along steep cliff edges they weave their way. They pull over at a clearing where the road ahead has a sheer drop that no vehicle could return from. The body is strapped back into the driver's seat, a heavy rock is placed on the accelerator. Jonno turns the key, releasing the brake as fast as he can and jumping away from the vehicle. The three of them watch as the car flies off the edge of the road and plummets through the air. They watch it destroy itself against the rocks until it ignites and booms.

***

The sleeping constable is nowhere to be found as Tom, on hands and knees, feels the earth disappear from underneath him. The missing ground is a shaft. He sails and bounces from edge to edge, too fast to even utter a whimper. The rock floor greets his body and the last air from his lungs is pushed with force and exits from the back of his throat with a grunting gush.

***

Gail is desperately worried about Tom. Lying in their bed, she knows he was drunk when he left but he should've been back by now. Looking out the window she can see part of the police vehicle from behind the trees. 'He is still there, for goodness sake! What on earth does that young upstart think?'

***

Jenna and Jonno drop Tony back to his car. 'Not a bloody word mate, to anyone, or we are all in deep shit.'

Jonno stares into Tony's eyes, Tony looks down, echoing his words, '... deep shit ...'

Jenna is at the wheel. 'Jonno, let's get the hell outta here. C'mon, let's go.'

Jonno hands Tony a big wad of cash, 'Tony, not a word mate.'

He nods. 'Not a word, Jonno. Not a word.'

Rebecca Wilson

Hill End

Henrietta de Chook and her Totally Awesome Adventure

Aristidis Metaxas

Katoomba

First Prize, Blue Mountains Winter 2011

Once upon a time in fair France there lived a chookette named Henrietta, who, along with her girlfriends spent her daily and uneventful life in a large Free Range Barnyard Henament far out in the Country. Henrietta was an average French Hen, dressed in a modest brown feathery Blouse, fluffy brown Witches Britches, a little red bonnet and Aviator Goggles. Why Goggles you may ask, well, she was known among the henfolk as a rebel and adventurer, that's why.

Her life, like the life of so many other chooks, consisted mainly of pecking corn, eating worms, laying eggs, running around the Barnyard like a mad ninnie, and occasionally going to the farmyard next door in order to socialise with the many handsome French roosters who would be hanging around all day playing cards and telling stories. At night they would fuss and argue as to who would sleep where and getting their hottie bottles ready in case there was a unexpected cold snap, even in high summer. Thus, a blissful life was lived free from worries or everyday concerns, with the occasional hen parties and the annual 'Tour de Chook' 1K endurance foot race around the barnyard, or perhaps the ever present floating anxiety of possibly being the next meal in the pot and avoiding being run over by Dolly the sheep.

One sunny day, it must have been late August, the daily ablutions were completed, all the girls had their dust bath, and it seemed the day would offer nothing more than the day before. Henrietta, feeling restless and bored witless, decided to explore the unknown territory, a place steeped in chicken lore since time immemorial, better known as 'The World Beyond The Gate', a space of the unknown and a land of mystery in the chicken universe ever since Henrietta was a little egg. The elders in the coop used to talk in hushed sotto voices about this land of the inexplicable and when pressed, utterly and totally refused to discuss the subject any further, which - Henrietta suspected, really meant that they knew absolutely nothing whatsoever about this place except that it was forbidden territory.

And so, with much trepidation but great determination, Henrietta set, (an act of complete heroism and an event to be recorded in the 'Chook Chronicles' for evermore), her right foot Outside-the-Gate. She paused momentarily, her left foot suspended in mid air ready to take the next step, (she was waiting for lighting to strike, or the great Purple Chicken from the sky to cast a thunderbolt at her and destroy her utterly and totally), but nothing happened. Crickets chirped, frogs croaked, birds sang, and nothing-at-all-happened. So, encouraged with her action of complete anarchy, Henrietta proceeded, step by step, to reach the other side of this, to her eyes, black 'Chickenland of utter voidness', which to us humans is known as merely 'Route 102'. As she was about to cross this vast expanse of black nothingness, there lurked, unbeknown to Henrietta, just a hundred yards down the road to her left, officer Marianne Le Clerc with her ever-ready and trusty radar gun in her sweaty hand, waiting for unsuspecting motorists to fall within the perimeter of the never sleeping eye of her aforementioned radar gun instant cash converter.

As Henrietta was about to cross-the-road, officer Le Clerc suddenly, due to an unfortunate lunch of bad Coq au Vin, developed an unexpected cramp in her right hand thereby contracting her trigger finger, and so releasing a torrential blast of radar beams down the road in the direction of our hen heroine. This blast, in itself completely harmless, was (due to the sweaty palm), supplemented by a temporary electrical malfunction in Marianne's radar gun, and therefore establishing a brief but effective link between her brain, the radar beam and the Henrietta's consciousness and instantly transmitting pretty much all of the contents of Marianne's accumulated knowledge into the mind of the chicken.

The blast caught poor Chookie right in the middle of her corpus callosum and instantly fused both halves of her brain together into one, everything went blue, black, green and purple, stars appeared in her inner vision, she experienced Satori and utter and complete N-O-T-H-I-N-G-N-E-S-SSSS enveloped her frail and gentle being. When she finally came to herself, Henrietta first checked that all her bits and pieces were still in place, and apart from the elastic having snapped in her Witches Britches everything seemed normal and yet, and yet

e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g was different.

As she returned home and stood outside the gate of her familiar nesting place called 'La Ferme', Henrietta suddenly, with a shock, understood that her mind, which had been until now been occupied with simple things like corn, eggs and survival of the fittest, presently realised that her world had become unfamiliar and w-i-d-e. Her mind was now filled with all kinds of insights, possibilities and knowing, things such as Vogue Magazine, shopping at Woolworths, Truffles, Abbey Road, Skiing at Aspen, Pantyhose, Plasma 3D TV's, Playstation 3, Oprah, where to get the best leg wax, Isosceles Triangles, Wikipedia, Bob Dylan, Google, how to apply mascara, decorating tips for Home renovators, Consumer Magazine, MasterChef, French Champagne, The Rolling Stones, Police Procedures, Pavlova recipes, Women's rights, Global Warming, Taser Maintenance, Chopin Nocturnes, volunteer work in Africa, who gave the best deals in frequent flyer points, save the Whales, when to rotate the tyres on your car, and all kinds of other wonderful and mysterious things than had been, until now, utterly and completely unknown to Henrietta.

Chooky was totally excited out of her wits (she even had notions of writing a book about her experience, she would call it 'Hen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance' and become fabulously wealthy and famous with a string of sexy Italian Rooster Boyfriends and living on the Amalfi Coast), she headlong rushed into the chook yard where her fellow hens were doing their usual daily hen stuff, stomped her right foot three times on the floor (and we all know how hard it is for a chicken to stomp her feet) and called out:

'Girlfriends, Girlfriends, listen to me, stop what you're doing, there is so much more to life than we know, there are wonderful things to explore, experience and to see, come, I have good news for you, I have seen more than you can imagine.'

Her fellow Hens stood dumbfounded, they listened to what she was trying to say, they clucked, but had no idea what on earth Henrietta was raving on about, none of it made any sense, they could not even comprehend what she was saying, their Hen minds had not been expanded to this new level of consciousness and it was all 'too far out'.

Sadly, Henrietta quickly realised that all her talking would do no good, nobody else understood what she had experienced anyway, and how could they, they had not been exposed to this mysterious and mind expanding power that she, through sheer accident, had been subjected to. And besides, what were they going to do with all this new knowledge anyway, how was it of any use to them, after all who ever heard of a chicken shopping for Perfume at Printemps or Gucci with frequent flyer point Platinum Cards or wearing pantyhose or appearing on the Oprah show as a celebrity guest, or writing a novel or Blogging on Facebook?

So, she thought 'twas a far better thing to keep her beak shut, her social life declined to absolute zero virtually overnight, days and months passed, the seasons changed, life returned to normal in the chicken yard, frogs croaked, birds sang, Henrietta was declared the resident nutter by consensus and someone to be avoided at all costs. Her fellow hens began whispering behind her back, young chicks with their fluff still on their heads would laugh at her and call her funny names, and so, Henrietta lived her life as an exile for a while, doing the best she could to be like the other chickens around her, but her life never was the same as before, no matter how she tried she couldn't fake it, too much had happened and she knew that she couldn't go back to the way things were. Not that she wanted to, not really, and the memory of her astounding experience of this other world and the feeling that something extraordinary had happened remained with her for the rest of her life. But just what it was, well, she sometimes cluckled to herself, it was her secret and she knew better than to talk about it ever again.

Henrietta eventually met and lived with a beautiful old Capricorn French rooster named Pierre the Philosopher who could quote Plato, had a wooden leg and was able to help her slowly come to terms with the mind blowing experience she had gone through. They both lived to a ripe old age, every Friday they would organize a soup kitchen for elderly crickets down on their luck and in the evenings, when sky was dark and clear, they would sit outside their little chook house that Pierre had built from an old discarded Apple crate, and watch the moon rise and the stars come out. Pierre would crow and Henrietta would sing 'Alouette'.

And the moral of the story? Well, Henrietta had to learn the hard lesson that the difference between a wise hen and a mad chook is that the wise hen knows when to keep her beak shut. m

Aristidis Metaxas

Katoomba

Bright Spark

Zoya Kraus

Blackheath

First Prize, Blue Mountains Spring 2011

Hello White Cockatoo

I've Been waiting for you.

My night was long, lonely and dark

Now here you are, Bright Spark.

I feel warm, joyful and light

When I see flashes of your yellow and white.

You have come to me every single day

Since the moment my sister passed away.

I KNOW you are her, she is you

That's why I love you White Cockatoo.

One day her heart stopped beating

Her time with life was brief and fleeting.

I feel scared and sad, that's the truth

But then show up and give me proof

A fallen feather, a mighty screech

A smile creeps in, you're both in reach.

My sister is free and with you now

Look after her, look after me somehow.

Now that I can see her in you

I KNOW she lives on, White Cockatoo. m

Spin Me Round Sky

Cathy Tanaka

Blackheath

Second Prize, Blue Mountains Winter 2011

Spin me round sky

On my heels, arms flung high

Sketch my form in moonlit dyes

And spin me round, spin me round

Spin me round sky

Make my feet of clay and stones

My legs of craggy, weathered bones

My belly form of wooded splendor

My hair of breezes, keen yet tender

Stain my hands heath black with night

Reaching out for endless light

Bejewel my fingers, one by one

And press my nose to stars that hum

Though my heart in trepidation

Echoes ghostly excitations

For hurrying spirits tremble still

And long dead elders haunt your hills

Becalm my mind with dulcet breath

Through the teeth of rugged depths

And raise your arms of ragged trees

To issue expirations to appease

For constellations gathered here

With breathless glimmer beckon near

And trembling, lilting harmonies

Charge this restless joy in me

So, spin me round

Oh, spin me round sky

On my heels, arms flung high

Etch my soul with midnight sighs

And spin me round, spin me round

Spin me round sky

Vide Grenier

Samantha Miller

Faulconbridge

Highly Commended, Blue Mountains Spring 2011

Monsieur Farfalu was bored. His lover had left him last week and he had finished his vin ordinaire the previous night. He was loath to start on his good wine, so he must go out into the village to stock up.

Taking his moto¹ from his back garden he putted into the local town to have a look around and buy much needed produce. As he drove along he noticed vide grenier² taking place outside the house of one of the mushrooms of foreigners that had been popping up in the last twenty years. He grunted as he passed taking in the two women at the stall.

Marina and Veronika had been at their stall since 6am sipping coffee and exchanging the desultory conversation of friends who know they will spend a whole day together and so are in no rush to make a gossip deadline. The stall was actually all Veronika's with Marina (a sporadic local) being drafted in to help and keep company. The coffee was good, the weather was fine and it looked like being a lovely day for it.

Being a Saturday all the locals were out in force. M. et Madame LeClare stopped to chat and snoop, but didn't really want anything. Some English people on holiday recognising a possible compatriot came over for advice on and directions to the local sights. A man approached looking at a set of four wooden folding chairs and asked to purchase them. He would check his house for the size and would phone Veronika to see if they were still available.

M. Farfalu backtracked on his moto, leaned it against a wall and approached the stall. Like the previous local, his eye was on the set of four folding wooden chairs and he was about to have a little fun. After not much thought Veronika had set a price of four euros each for the chairs with a combined price of €14 for taking all of them. M. Farfalu asked for one chair for only €3.

'If I'm to break up the set, I want my €4', said Veronika staunchly.

'Pah!' said M. Farfalu, getting into his stride, 'It isn't worth it for me.'

'So, don't buy it,' Veronika stuck to her guns.

M. Farfalu bargained back and forth enjoying himself immensely, but Veronika wouldn't budge. So off went M.Farfalu to do his shopping.

When Veronika was ready for lunch, she and Marina agreed to take turns for a break. M. Farfalu was in the area and saw his chance. He thought Marina was a fine looking woman and he was in need of a woman himself.

Sure enough, the coast being clear M. Farfalu wandered across to her and sat in the chair vacated by Veronika. Smiling his best smile and exuding the fumes of his time at the village bar, he offered her five euros for two of the chairs. Leaning a little back from him, Marina explains that they are not hers to sell and perhaps they are already sold anyway.

Disappointment etched on his face, M. Farfalu scans the stall. 'Do you have anything to drink?' he asks.

Mystified by this turn of events, Marina replies, 'No, this is a vide grenier stall, not a bar.'

'Ah,' he then says as if he has won a major point, 'then come to the village bar with me.'

With Marina declining this kind offer, M. Farfalu takes himself off to the village bar, humming to himself.

On Veronika's return, they discuss their recurrent visitor and decide that if he tries again for the chairs the price will be €4 for one chair, but he can have two chairs for €6.

M. Farfalu is down, but not out. Fortified by his next trip to the bar, he is ready to return to the fray.

'Two chairs for €5' he cries. 'You can bring them to my house, it's not far.'

'Of course, not,' Veronika says. 'This is a vide Grenier, not a shop.' She smiles and waves her arms dramatically at the items left on the stall. 'The price is €6 for the two chairs and you must take them yourself.'

'But Madam, I am on my moto. What would you have me do?' He pleads with a gleam in his eye, belying his attempts to look pathetic. 'How will you feel tomorrow, when you take up your newspaper to find I am dead by the roadside with the two chairs wrapped about my neck?' He gestures dramatically. 'Will you not then feel guilty and wish you had delivered the chairs?' Though M. Farfalu was very pleased with this visual, it didn't have the desired effect with both women stoutly declaring their lack of any finer feelings with regards to his safety in the matter.

The wind knocked out of his sails, M. Farfalu slumped a little, before sadly telling the women that he could get his van, but he really didn't feel like riding home and then driving back to pick up the chairs.

'What do you think is in it for me to drive to your village just to deliver two chairs for €6?' Veronika asked. 'It costs more than that in petrol and I won't be getting the chairs.'

M. Farfalu has another try.

'Oh, but I will give you a nice drink on my boat.'

'I don't want a drink,' Veronika replies.

'Cake then. I have just bought a lovely cake,' he offers.

'And how much did you pay for the cake?' Marina asks.

On finding the cost of the cake was the difference of the offer and the cost of the chairs, the two women fall about laughing.

'If you hadn't bought the cake you are offering us you could have paid for the chairs,' they say.

At that M. Farfalu perked up. An idea had so obviously implanted itself in his mind that Marina felt as though a light bulb should appear above his messy salt and pepper coiffure.

'It's too late now,' he says 'those chairs won't sell this time in the afternoon. You should just let me have them for €5 and deliver them to my house, or you will just have them left on your hands,' he warns.

Well, Veronika doesn't mind keeping the chairs and so after all this time, no bargain is struck at all.

M. Farfalu is pleased with his day. He has stocked up his supplies, had a nice drink and renewed his appreciation of the females of the world. He leaves with Veronika's address in case the chairs will fit under the shelf in his boat.

He smiles as he weaves away on his moto, Veronika's parting shot reverberating in his ears.

'Don't bother driving over if you aren't prepared to pay the €6.' m

¹A low cc motorbike or moped

²A vide grenier is a garage sale, as charming direct translation being 'empty attic'.

Samantha Miller

Faulconbridge

With thanks to my mother Marina for the original material that became this story.

Opinions Vary

David Bowden

Medlow Bath

Highly Commended, Blue Mountains Summer 2010

sun divulges

afternoon expectations

brute anxieties

blur

into birdsong

distant dog bark

sucked into the

sculpted spaces

of the valley

too much beauty

for sky to contain

molecules

hammer against true silence

clouds swivel

& cavort

your tears

mean nothing

to the gumtrees

Faustus

Alan Lucas

Katoomba

Second Prize, Blue Mountains Spring 2011

Doctor, you know

the way I am,

on this level, all things

are possible.

I will, as you have, always take

the underground,

and when we arrive Cerberus

will sniff at Hades gates

for our mortal sins.

Doctor, you also understand

how ancient images

are reimposed by modern

incredulity,

strangers are not met

for any particular reason,

and situations occur

within a similar context.

We know that Santos Vega

will always show up

for his contest with the devil.

The Christ was likewise tempted,

'ask for anything', he was told.

He refused, we do not.

Ode to Tony

Brendan Doyle

Wentworth Falls

Highly Commended, Blue Mountains Winter 2011

O Tony of TLC Auto Repairs,

may your business flourish ever more,

may the tooth fairy replace your top plate

with metallic finish white pearls.

O Tony, my heart stalled, I swear,

when the bloke at Waitara said

'I can see a thousand bucks there

just for the rust' and sent me

to the old Hungarian at Betta Batteries

who quoted me six hundred

for windscreen scratches,

welding and a brake pedal rubber.

But you, Tony, whom I had not seen for almost a summer,

welcomed me with your shiny smile:

'Is that door lock still working?'

and I knew your friendship had not wavered.

O Tony, when you handed over that pink slip

and said 'Eighteen dollars'

I wanted to win the lottery and give you half,

I wanted to replace all the seals on your Datsun ZX

and personally blacken the tyres,

but I just reached into my pocket

and gave you ten bucks 'for a beer'.

You'd made my day, my month, my year.

The Dancing Suit

JE Doherty

Eglinton

Third Prize, Central Tablelands Spring 2011

As Robert Benfield removed the lid of the old cardboard box, the card slipped out onto the bed covers.

Deceased Estate of Rupert Maxwell

$50.00

Robert didn't know why he was doing this. He had two left feet. He loathed dancing. As a matter of fact, he hated socialising. Beckett had talked him around again. How did he always manage it?

Robert glanced at the seven faces printed on the sheet of yellowing newspaper. They were all raven haired girls, similarly attractive, but definitely not his type. Blondes? In a pinch. No, Robert's tastes ran more to the classic Irish beauty, flaming red hair and a spattering of freckles. The mental image of Mary Willis made his cheeks burn.

'Perfect,' he said, laying the newspaper aside.

He fingered the suit lapel. Black tails complete with silk shirt—so white it shone blue under the harsh fluorescent lights of the New Haven apartment—a silk bow tie, vest and tastefully chunky cufflinks of onyx and gold. The suit had a slight musty smell and an almost invisible brown stain in the right sleeve of the coat but it fit like it was tailor made. He thought the tie would cause him some problems but to his surprise, as he looked in the mirror, he couldn't find any fault with the bow. Strange ...

His confidence soared. At nine o'clock this morning, he was ready to call Beckett and cancel but now, Robert couldn't stop smiling.

He smoothed back his sandy hair at the temples.

'To die for!'

***

Beckett stopped in mid conversation as Robert entered the hall. There was no sign of his usual hesitance; all the clumsiness was gone, replaced by a slow, confident glide. His shoulders were square, no customary slouch, his chin high.

'Well, well,' said Beckett. 'I hope you don't change into a pumpkin at midnight.'

Robert spun about, trailing a toe, sliding into a Fred Astaire pose. 'Not a chance, pal.'

'Where on earth did that come from?'

'I have absolutely no idea.' Robert didn't know if Beckett meant the 'pal' or the dance move. Either way, the answer was the same.

The string quartet took the stage and gave their instruments a final cat-screech tuning. For someone who hated dancing, Robert couldn't wait to get on the dance floor. He strode up to the first vacant girl he could find.

'Would you care to dance?' He asked with charm that surprised even himself.

'Why not.'

The cello sighed a slow bass as they took the floor. The viola and violins joined as Robert's hand slipped around the girl's slightly pudgy waist. They almost skated around the dancefloor; their steps were so smooth, gliding between the other couples like phantoms. Pachabel's 'Canon in D' built toward a crescendo of twirling satin on silk, ending in an extravagant dip with the final fading note. The girl was breathless but Robert touched his lips to her hand and was off to look for his next partner.

'Seriously,' Beckett said, 'Rob's got it for you, bad.'

'He's never even spoken to me,' Mary Willis replied.

'That's because he's shy.'

'Yeah, right!'

They both looked to the dance floor where Robert lorded with yet another partner.

'Around you, at least.'

'He hasn't stopped.' Mary sighed.

'Well, he's usually shy. I don't know what has gotten into him tonight. He hates dancing.'

When Robert saw Mary, a flush spread across his cheeks and he almost stumbled as he approached.

'Now, that's the Rob we've come to know and love,' Beckett drawled.

Robert's cheeks reddened even more. He was slipping further into his customary, insecure self. The cast of his eyes dropped and his shoulders began to stoop.

'H ... hi.'

Mary's quirky smile brought Robert's head back up. Her teeth were slightly crooked, but that small imperfection only heightened her appeal. Robert couldn't force his mouth to work.

'Told you he was shy,' Beckett laughed, slapping Robert's back.

'Would you like to dance?' Mary finally asked him.

At that, something clicked in Robert. He bowed with a flourish of hands.

'It would be my pleasure, Mary.'

'I thought you didn't like to dance?' Beckett joked.

'It's the suit,' Robert replied. 'I can't seem to stop.'

He took Mary's arm with confidence.

There are green eyes, and there are green eyes. Most were misty, more grey than green. Clarity was the best word Robert could find to describe Mary's eyes. They were sharp, gem-bright and clear. Robert was lost and he had never been happier. They danced and the music played on.

Robert caught a flash of dark hair for the corner of his eye. Mary was talking but he couldn't seem to focus on her words. He turned as the dancers reeled about him, his eyes following the girl with the long black hair and white carnation threaded above her left ear. His arm slid away from Mary and the tide of dancing swept them apart.

Something was nagging at the edge of his mind, but everything dissolved, the music, the crowd, Mary ...

A ball of anger and desire welled up from the pit of Robert's stomach. He cut through the dance floor like a shark. His face was serene, charming but a glint like shattered ice, hard and sharp, edged his eyes.

Mary stood with Beckett. They both looked on in disbelief as Robert and the dark haired girl with the white carnation and satin blue dress left the hall.

The girl was raven haired ... similarly attractive ... And something inside Robert burned.

***

Mrs Benford was annoyed. She was always telling Robert to turn off his light when he left the room. He didn't pay the bills. She saw the scattering of clothes on the floor and the box and papers strewn over the bed. If it wasn't for her, her son would be living in a pig sty. She scooped up the clothes and began stuffing the papers in the box.

One sheet caught her eye ...

Another body found

When will the killer strike again?

Under the pictures of the seven dead girls, the story detailed the atrocities they were subjected to before they died.

Mrs Benford shivered as she closed the lid on the box.

JE Doherty

Eglinton

The Loaf of Bread

Linda Yates

Katoomba

Third Prize, Blue Mountains Summer 2010

Melinda forged her way into the shop. People parted for her, instinctively moving aside, confounded perhaps by the contradiction she presented. She had the daintiness of delicate fine china about her and this sat at odds with the expression of blazing ferocity on her face. Usually meticulously put together, this morning she looked slightly awry, like a child who had stumbled into her mother's dress up clothes, teetering precariously, as she did now, on her high heels. Her red hair flared out behind her, which, to her, was just another source of irritation in what was looking like a ruin of a day, for she had not had time to perfect it before she left the house. Bad enough that she had to have that meeting with the senior partner in the law firm where she worked, guessing that she was about to be taken to task for some of her more questionable attitudes and actions, and, now this outrage.

The fragile order of her day, so necessary for her survival, already lay in tatters.

Keith, the shopkeeper, saw her approach. Sensing the oncoming storm, he recoiled slightly and braced himself. A placid and even-tempered soul, he was used to handling difficult customers. It was why he was so good at his job. He was not a highly educated man, but he was a reflective one and he liked to puzzle out why people did the things they did. His mother thought him a bit of a fool and a dreamer, with his head always buried in books, but he had a gift for seeing value and opportunity where others saw none.

He had served Melinda many times before and thought her beautiful, despite the down- turned lines beginning to etch themselves permanently around her mouth and a certain hard edge to her features. He thought she needed something to soften her a little. Children? Love? Could it be that simple? He had even wondered if he might be able to do some of that softening, for he could see a vulnerability hidden in that brittleness. It occurred to him that she might be difficult and high maintenance and might test his patience to the limit, judging by the way she sometimes spoke to people. His mother wouldn't like her. That much he knew. She would think him a mug or doormat and Melinda a bitch, and up herself. But, when she spoke to him, she was often funny and smart and he liked the way her eyes lit up when they smiled into his. It sometimes seemed to Keith that she was more like one of the people in those books he loved to read than anyone else he had met in everyday life. She had a shimmering luminosity about her. He'd read that word in a book once and looked it up. Luminous. The word rolled around on his tongue like some smooth precious stone. And it seemed to him that she had this rare gift, but that it was lost to her most of the time, or that it had been taken away from her somehow, perhaps by those who, not possessing it, wished to destroy it in others. People could be funny like that. And cruel. He was filled with a great desire to help her find a way back to it or restore it to her and maybe, if he were lucky, bask with her there in the grace of it. Or was this just another of what his mother called his fanciful notions?

But there was nothing smiling or funny or luminous about her this morning, as she slammed the loaf of bread down on the counter. She was all incandescent rage, seething contempt, and oozing venom. And was he imagining that she was swaying a little, her speech slightly slurred? Good Lord. Could she be tipsy? Keith felt a sudden snaking fear that his mother might be right.

'It is mouldy,' she hissed. 'How could even you manage to sell something in this condition?' She could hear the unreasonableness in her own voice as it hovered on the edge of hysteria and felt the familiar sting of humiliation that always accompanied one of her outbursts.

'I'm sorry,' said Keith, 'it must have been a mistake.'

'It must have been your incompetence, you mean. And now I am paying for it,' she snapped.

'You can have a refund, of course, or a replacement.' Keith's voice faltered.

'The refund won't fill my empty stomach, which needed filling an hour ago.'

People were staring, but Melinda was too far gone to regain control. She knew they would think, Keith would think, her reaction out of all proportion to the event. It had been happening all her remembered life. First they would look at her in bewilderment, then anger, then move away in rejection, abandoning her to her flood of overwhelming feelings, leaving her to struggle alone, engulfed and drowning in the tidal wave of her own unravelling. When she was a child she heard them muttering 'spoilt brat' under their breath, sometimes even bailing her mother up with comments like 'I can't stand people who don't discipline their kids'. And even when they didn't say it, she could read it in their eyes. Judgements and assumptions without ever wanting to know the why. And any explanation given, always seen as an excuse anyway.

Melinda snatched the new loaf of bread from Keith's hands and left quickly before people could see her start to jitter and make judgements about that, too. She needed to eat before it was too late. She could feel her blood sugars jaggedly out of kilter and her thoughts descending into chaos, her own body turning traitor as if in confluence with the rest of the world. Today was one of those days when she could be tempted to slide so easily into the embrace of that final, fatal coma that beckoned always, slyly, from the shadows, as soft and seductive as a lover's caress, more constant and true a companion in its ever faithful, watchful presence, than any other she had known. She sat in the car and ploughed into the bread, hoping it would raise her blood sugars in time.

She hated herself. She had done it again. She had a knack for it. She had alienated another person in her life and, this time, someone who mattered to her. Why did she never seem able to bridge that chasm between herself and another? Why could she not just have told Keith that she had diabetes, that it needed to be controlled by insulin, eating regularly and often, and she had not had time to stock up on food. That loaf of bread meant the difference between life and death to her, and her anger was her only protection from the shame she felt at being different, as though her illness reflected some fundamental flaw or weakness in her character. She had learned from bitter experience and instinct that the burning stake is never far away for those outside the protection of the herd and always there is the willingness of the mob to turn on those who are different.

How could she trust that he, so seemingly happy and normal, would understand the lifetime of losses that had gone into shaping her disordered self? How her health and people's response to it had laid her childhood to waste, depriving her of schooling and easy friendships, had made her always the outsider, feeling needy and clingy, at the mercy of her skittering emotions, frightened of the teachers and other kids who made fun of her sensitivity and lack of stamina. The doctors refused to do tests, telling her mother she just needed to be firmer with her or give her more TLC, depending on their bent, saying there was nothing wrong with her, that she was putting it on, a case only of motherly over-concern. Then, there were always the other mothers, thinking they knew better, saying 'Just leave her with me for a week and I will cure her.' By the time she got a proper diagnosis it was too late to undo what she had learned—that she was disapproved of, that she was a burden, that she was lazy, selfish, difficult, demanding, manipulative, irritating, that she did not really feel sick and was therefore a liar, that she was just doing it for attention, that she would always be left alone with her pain in an unsafe world, and called vicious when she lashed back at it.

Her mother, meanwhile, her only ally, driven half crazy with anxiety and grief, no longer knowing what to believe, slipped into depression and self blame, unable to help her, as she was losing her confidence and moorings and coming across just as unhinged as the professionals thought her to be. Even her mother seemed to turn on her at times, for bringing her into discredit, and her father, believing the doctors and friends that it was all to do with her mother mollycoddling her, gave himself an easy out when it all got too hard, moving in with her best friends' mother because 'they were normal'—a betrayal that surely confirmed her own worthlessness. It had poisoned all her relationships with men, her insecurity and bitterness driving them away, so fixed was her belief that anyone she loved would be taken away by someone else and she, conveniently, being the odd one, blamed for it.

She believed that she would always have to live with her fury at, and jealousy of, others who seemed to move with fluid ease through the world, knowing their place, their rightness, in it, while she looked towards the losses yet to come, like health, stability and babies to love.

No. Better to keep him out. And not risk the grief of losing Keith, too.

How could she expect him to understand or tolerate her? She had learned that she was too much for anyone, but did not know why.

She often felt herself to be on the edge of a terrifying abyss, heard the roaring force of its pull, and, being frightened, she frightened others. Sometimes this happened because she tried to drown out her fear by being angry and loud, as though she could make herself larger than the tug of this void. And sometimes it happened because her fear tapped into and found some resonance with their own and they sensed they might be sucked into the same vortex, especially if they were close enough for her to cling to. Either way, they wanted to get away from her.

Eventually, Melinda would come to understand this. But that epiphany still lay in wait for her future self.

Right now, it seemed to Melinda, as she sat in the car, that all her losses, past and future, were rolled into one big ball of pain that was as difficult to digest as the bread she had now swallowed.

Linda Yates

Katoomba

Stick It!

Gregory North

Linden

Highly Commended, Blue Mountains Autumn 2011

Although there's lots that I don't know,

I wouldn't say I'm dumb, or slow,

but one thing makes my anger grow,

around the silly season.

It's not the debts on credit cards,

not even flashing lights in yards,

or sending dimwits "kind regards",

or eating without reason.

There's one thing gets me going ape –

that's trying to use sticky tape!

Now as a concept, it's unreal –

you find the end and gently peel,

then cut it off and it will seal

your parcel like a beauty.

But can I ever find the end?

It makes me mad, I won't pretend –

It nearly drives me round the bend;

my language gets quite fruity.

It sets young hearer's mouths agape,

"That stinkin', bloody sticky tape!"

I find the end, hip-hip-hooray!

I stretch it out, to my dismay,

it splits and flies in disarray,

a piece wrapped round my finger.

I draw in breath, my nostrils flare,

I'm stressed and very near despair,

the tape rolls 'neath the fridge ... I glare.

I'll leave it there to linger.

My finger's weird out of shape

because it's wrapped in sticky tape.

Another roll is standing by.

The gleaming packet caught my eye.

I'll wrap this gift before I die –

won't let it win that easy.

This brand is number one, you see.

It's quality – now that's the key.

Just one thing that does not agree –

the smell. It makes me queasy.

And now the tape's stuck to itself!

I pry it round and whack a shelf.

As blood pours from my de-barked hand,

I swear at this expensive brand.

I simply do not understand,

why must it be that sticky?

And now I have to cut the stuff,

but will it tear? No. It's too tough!

I'll try my teeth, I'm in a huff,

and now it gets quite tricky.

I think I'm gonna bloody flip,

'cause now it's stuck down on my lip!

And now I can't cut with my teeth

'cause there's no edge to get beneath!

I rip the stay-sharp from its sheath ...

I'm not sure what I'm thinking.

The knife held in my cacky paw,

I place it by my quivering jaw,

then flick it upwards and, in awe,

a pink flash through my blinking.

Attempts to cut the tape-roll clear

have seen me slice off half my ear!

I scream in anger, then in pain.

This will be tricky to explain,

but worst of all, it's been in vain –

the roll of tape's still dangling!

I drop the knife, and where's it go?

No need to say, 'cause you all know –

the damn thing stabs me through the toe!

My body's copped a mangling.

I scream and swear and, what is that?

My ear lobe's picked up by the cat!

I try to hop and close the door.

I hear a rip and then, I roar.

The knife has nailed me to the floor!

Can no one hear me screaming?

The cat escapes with fresh red meat,

my ear drips with a constant beat

to swell the blood pool round my feet.

Oh, tell me that I'm dreaming!

'Cause now I'm stuck with no escape –

and all because of sticky tape!

Now spurred on by the pool of red,

attempting not to wind up dead,

I wrap the tape around my head

to stop my ear from bleeding.

From ear to hand, to stop the flows

the tape must go below my nose –

it smells as bad as siphon hose,

but seems to be succeeding.

So now I'm stuck from ear to nape,

to hand, to lip with sticky tape.

I take a breath and blink my eyes

and slowly bending on my thighs

I pull and wince and gently prize

the knife from toe and floorboard.

I carefully remove my shoe

and sock to see the gruesome goo,

all soaked with blood and spurting too –

a bonus for the scoreboard.

I'll have to get it closed up quick ...

a bit more tape will do the trick!

Unwinding tape down to my toe,

I wrap it round to stem the flow.

I go to stand and then, oh, no!

I should have stretched it longer.

Now there's no way that I can stand,

because this super-sticky brand

of tape won't tear and won't expand,

the pack says, 'Nothing's stronger'.

Now, where's that knife I had before?

No! Get some scissors from the drawer.

The tape that goes from toe to face,

it pulls my lip with every pace –

a modern Quasimodo case –

a look that can't be pleasant.

And now, I have one more complaint –

this tape that's causing my constraint –

its sickly smell might make me faint

and crush my unwrapped present!

And as I fall, I think one thing –

Mmm, next time I'll be using string!

Gregory North

Linden

A Quick Fix

Michael Burge

Leura

Third Prize, Blue Mountains Winter 2011

TO: dadandmum1067@hotmail.com

FROM: libbyloo22@hotmail.com

RE: Hi from school

DATE: August 27th 2009

Dear Daddy,

This is going to be a really, really long email because I have so much to say after your email last week. I can hardly remember all my questions, there are just so many. It was so nice to see you and Mummy at school Family Day. Fiona and Becka think you look like an actor off an American TV show, one of the detective ones. They get to watch it in the school holidays. I just shrugged because I didn't know what they were talking about, but you can probably be flattered by the comparison and not at all offended, the way they were going on about it, okay?

I think I understand most of your email, and I am glad you wrote. You and mummy looked so sad (or something) before you left. I knew you'd had a bit of a shock because of Uncle Brian being there.

It was the school counsellor who suggested I invite Uncle Brian to Family Day. She also said I should tell you first, but I didn't, and I am truly sorry for that, but I hope you will understand that I knew you'd say no or get upset and I wouldn't get to see you and Mummy properly on that day either. It's such a long time until the end of term and we have all the exams before that and I wanted to see my Daddy and Mummy.

I don't want you to be angry at the school counsellor. She's not one of those ferals or anything. She's really nice, and I want you to go easy on her if you complain. I told her about Uncle Brian last year, because of something we'd been reading at school. I'm not going to tell you what it was so you can't complain about it, okay? But something in it made me think about what you and Mummy told us about Uncle Brian, and I asked the counsellor to help me understand it. She took me aside and we talked it through, and now I understand better than I did before about Uncle Brian.

She told me something similar to what you said last year, and I want you to know I understand what you say, but I still don't think that means we can't see Uncle Brian. It's not fair really. That's why I rang him and asked him to Family Day.

I didn't think he'd come. I didn't think he'd even want to talk to me. He was very calm. The counsellor said he might be angry and that he might hang up on me, or be rude and aggressive. But he was nothing like that. He said it was a pleasant surprise to hear from me, and asked how I was doing at school, and was glad to hear I was doing Special English because he liked English at school too. He asked me if we'd done 'Pride and Prejudice' yet and I told him we had and we laughed about Mr. D'Arcy and how the girls were all so silly about him. Uncle Brian said he always thought Mr. Wickham sounded like much more of a catch. I have to say that gave me a bit of a shock, but I just laughed. Uncle Brian laughed too. There was a bit of an awkward pause, then Uncle Brian asked me if you and mummy had told me about him and his lifestyle. I said yes, we knew about it. He asked me if it mattered that he was the kind of man who liked Mr. Wickham instead of Elizabeth Bennet, and I said that I didn't think it mattered much. Uncle Brian then asked me if I was sure I knew what you and Mummy meant. His voice was a bit wobbly, like he was getting a bit upset. I asked him if he was upset, and he just said he was relieved more than anything else.

I got his email address and we've been emailing a lot since, so when Family Day came up again this year I thought I'd ask him to come along. Please don't get angry reading this Daddy. Please take some time before you just get angry again.

The school counsellor said that Uncle Brian might have a special friend who might like to come too. I asked Uncle Brian and he said no, his special friend (James) was not going to come to Family Day. He might come next year, but Uncle Brian seemed to think it best if only he came along the first time. He said you and Mummy have never met James. Is that right Daddy?

Kylie dared me to ask if Uncle Brian and James were going in the Mardi Gras parade, but I didn't want to ask anything like that. Kylie has a cousin who's a woman who has a special friend who's a woman, and none of her family ever sees them. The only thing any of the family know about them is that they both have short hair. One of them works for the Council. Belinda said she probably drives trucks, but Belinda just likes to get the attention.

I tried to make it that you, Mummy and Uncle Brian weren't going to have to see much of each other on Family Day. That's why I asked you and Mummy to come at lunch and not earlier. I know you wondered why I asked you that, and I couldn't tell you why, but I never told you a lie about it, did I? I asked Uncle Brian to the morning tea and he thought that sounded splendid and that he'd wear his best tie. When I told him it was on a terrace he guessed there'd be wisteria or something, and I said the magnolias were coming into flower then. He said he'd get me to put one on his lapel. You saw it there, I know. I noticed you looking at it.

Daddy you weren't supposed to meet Uncle Brian on the terrace. I wanted you all to meet at the lunch when there were more people around and I could be sure you'd all behave yourselves. The counsellor agreed with me on that point. But when I saw you and Mummy walking up the front steps my heart sank, because I could see it was all going to be a disaster and that you hadn't listened to me when I needed you to. You didn't give me time to explain to you and Mummy in private about what was happening, and I am still a bit angry about that. I hope I will get over it soon though.

I thought Uncle Brian was very polite in the circumstances. He left us alone for a while and got us all a cup of tea and some of the nicest cakes, and talked with some of the other parents while we had our first talk about it. I'm glad you didn't blow your top Daddy, but I do think you might have shaken Uncle Brian's hand when he offered it to you. When you think about it, there was no-one on the terrace who could have told that Uncle Brian is a homosexual, just by looking. He was wearing a suit just like yours, and he was quite comfortable talking with the other adults. I saw him talk to the Headmistress for a long time and she seemed quite at ease with him, and Mr. and Mrs. Banks wanted him to sit with them at lunch because they found him so entertaining.

I suppose Uncle Brian should have taken them up on their offer because lunch with us was no fun for him. I didn't think it was fun either. You and Mummy didn't make much of an effort to ask about Uncle Brian, and I know the last time you saw him was at my christening. A lot can happen in fifteen years. To just sit there, ignoring his questions, was so embarrassing Daddy. Your face was very red and Mummy looked as though she was going to cry. Even when the Banks family came up with Fiona you still didn't lighten up. Can you blame Uncle Brian for excusing himself and having his coffee with them instead of us?

I saw Uncle Brian for a minute before he left. It was when I went to the toilet. I was crying and I could see he had been. He said perhaps we'd made a mistake, and gave me a little hug. Mrs. Taylor our English teacher was coming out of the ladies and I introduced her to Uncle Brian. She said it must be very nice to have my uncle here. I said yes, and had a little more of a cry, and he gave me another hug. Uncle Brian said to Mrs. Taylor we were having a few family problems, and that the school counsellor was aware of them, and that I was going to be okay in a little while, and I was. Mrs. Taylor patted Uncle Brian on the shoulder and said he was a very nice man to be so caring of his niece. He nodded, and he was gone in ten minutes, saying he thought it was best, and that he'd be in touch soon, and I wasn't to stay upset, but to have a great afternoon and he'd come and see me in another piece of drama another time. He didn't want me to be upset and forget my lines or anything.

He gave me a present then, and I am not giving it back. It's too lovely Daddy. I'm not telling you what it is. I'm doing this because I know you told me a lie when you said Uncle Brian couldn't even pay you and Mummy the courtesy of saying goodbye. You thought I was in the toilet, but I was watching you, and you were so angry you didn't even turn your back to say goodbye to Uncle Brian. Mummy looked at him and nodded, but you didn't say anything. I think he was crying a little when he left. The Banks family tried to get him to come with them. I think they could see why, but he very politely excused himself, saying he needed to be at work for the afternoon.

I had to go and get ready for Romeo and Juliet. I know you sent Mummy with me so you could go and get angry at the counsellor. But she's there so we can tell her things we need to tell her. Things that we can't say to other people, even our parents. She never said a word about what you'd said to her, just that I should try to understand your response too, and that is why I am writing, to let you know I am trying to understand.

Romeo and Juliet wasn't as fun as I'd hoped it would be, not after the lunch we'd had. Mummy was supposed to help me with my hair, but she had half an eye on where you'd got to and I needed to ask Mrs. Simms to put my hair up for me. Mummy made no secret of the fact that she wished I was in a dress and not dressed up as the apothecary. Mrs. Taylor could see how disappointed Mummy was about that, but Kylie played Macbeth last year and it was her turn to play one of the female parts and as Mrs. Taylor told us all at the last rehearsal that the apothecary plays a major role in the tragedy, being the one who gives Romeo the draught to make him sleep and appear dead.

And anyway all the roles were played by men when they were first performed, even in front of Kings and Queens of England, so there should be no problem for girls in our class to dress as men. It's a girls' school daddy, you know that.

I think Mummy was just not herself after seeing Uncle Brian. Uncle Brian said he thought it might have something to do with an idea you and Mummy might have about homosexual people dressing up like the opposite sex? I don't know. I was too upset by then to care and I fluffed most of my lines and you didn't see any of it anyway because you were busy with the counsellor and the day was pretty much over by then anyway.

When I said that I didn't want us to sit down with the counsellor that afternoon I meant it because I was too upset. You were angry and just wanted one of your quick fixes, but Daddy I honestly think, from the bottom of my heart, that this is something that cannot benefit from one of your quick fixes. I know you've had some success at Church with your quick fixes, but somehow I think it was best just to leave the day as it was and for you and Mummy to go home and for me to eat my dinner by myself so I could think. I know you were shocked when I said that so strongly, but I meant it. I gave you a kiss and a hug and I meant those too. I love you Daddy, you know that, but right then I was so stirred up I couldn't sit down anywhere.

I went for a long walk around the oval. Kylie found me when she'd said goodbye to her parents, and we walked and walked. She thought Uncle Brian was charming, and we made it like a scene out of Pride and Prejudice and that got my sense of humour back and I half hoped you and Mummy would still be there when we got back, but you'd gone and I don't blame you. I ate with my home room class, some of whom have no parents, or ones that couldn't come, and that made me feel very grateful to have a family at all.

A few days later I got your email. We don't get much time in the internet room, so it took me two sessions to read it and I had to get permission to print it out so I could look at it in my dorm. I can see you've thought very long and hard about it all, but as I said before I don't think one of your quick fixes will work in this situation Daddy, it's too complicated for just one of your talks and a session with the Bible. Without you here to guide me I had to set it all up for myself and read the section you're talking about, and that took me the rest of the week because we had a lot of homework and the exams coming up.

It's pretty clear from the bits you quoted from Leviticus that you think Uncle Brian is an abomination. I had to look that word up in the dictionary. In my dictionary, it says this - 'Something or someone that causes great revulsion or abhorrence.' I then had to look up the word abhorrence and found this - 'Disgusting, loathsome, repellant. In opposition; completely contrary.' I then had to look up the word contrary and found this 'Opposed, as in character or purpose; completely different.'

Please follow me on this Daddy, because I am trying to show you how I really, truly feel deep down about what you wrote. Yes, in Leviticus chapter 18, verse 22 it says 'Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.' I know you were worried that I would not understand what 'lie down with' means, but as Mummy told you we have had our sex education classes last year, and I kind of know what it all means. I think there is a lot more to know.

Anyway, back to the point, and that is this—by following the meaning of the words, from 'abomination' we get the meaning 'different,' and that is all. Do you see what I am getting at Daddy? Uncle Brian might lie down with a man, which is just different to what you might want to do, different in purpose. Do you see what I am getting at?

I read some of the other chapters of Leviticus, and looked it up on the internet. I asked permission for this from the internet room prefect and she watched me while I did it. Here is what I found interesting.

It says 'Leviticus contains laws and priestly rituals, but in a wider sense is about the working out of God's Covenant with Israel set out in Genesis and Exodus—what is seen in the Torah as the consequences of entering into a special relationship with God (specifically Yahweh). These consequences are set out in terms of community relationships and behaviour.'

And from this I see that Uncle Brian just does not want a special relationship with God. But this does not mean we shouldn't speak to him, or that I shouldn't have asked him to Family Day, or that you and Mummy shouldn't be civil to him if you see him somewhere, even unexpectedly. I would be very surprised Daddy if you said that was true, that you could sit me down in front of me and tell me that if Uncle Brian has a 'different purpose' to you that we shouldn't talk to him or know what he's up to in his life.

After all, Mummy didn't take a lamb to be sacrificed a year after I was born, did she? And you have shaved your sideburns off, and we all like seafood when we go to the coast, and if we stuck to what it says in Leviticus, we'd have to be doing all that, and you'd only have a right to take one slave girl, and no more. We don't have slaves Daddy.

Before you blame anyone for this you must blame Mummy first, because it was she who told me I even had an uncle. There was a photo of the two of you together in an album she got out one rainy day when we couldn't go to the zoo. You were both in your school uniforms (and you both had some pretty big sideburns!) and I asked who was that friend of yours you had your arm around, and didn't he look like Daddy? Mummy looked at the photo a bit closer. I think she was actually a bit confused about which of you was which. She said you were the one on the left and Uncle Brian was the one on the right.

I asked her who Uncle Brian was, and she said to ask you. You never would tell me, and Kylie found him on Facebook because she is allowed to use Facebook at home when she's on holidays.

Please forgive me Daddy, and try to understand. One more thing to help you, and I hope it is a quick fix. I found it in Leviticus 19 verse 17—'Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart.'

Lots of love,

Your Libby xoxoxox

PS. I am going to pray about all this in chapel, but I am going to pray for Uncle Brian as well as you and Mummy.

Michael Burge

Leura

Endings

Linda Yates

Katoomba

First Prize, Blue Mountains Spring 2011

'A cold coming we had of it,

just the worst time of the year,

for a journey, such a long journey,

the ways deep and the weather sharp,

the very dead of winter.'

T.S. Eliot

There were two deaths that morning; my father's and the bird's. Well, really there were three, if you count the loss of some uncharted part of myself. Three souls taking flight as if in resonance with each other.

Sunlight had been pouring into the hospice lounge room all that week. A pleasant, cheerful room exuding peace. My six year old daughter had spent most of her time there quietly alone and patiently dividing her attention between the resident canary and her activity books, as I waited for my father to die. Unusually calm, almost angelic, for her.

Nurses popped in and out now and again, as did I. 'Does the bird get enough shade from the morning sun?' I had asked one of them, feeling the intensity of the heat through the glass on my own skin. No longer used to the Sydney weather.

'Oh he is well fussed over,' came the answer.

It had not started so amiably, that week.

'You can't take her out of school,' the teacher had said. 'She has already been away sick a lot this term. It's so disruptive.'

'Watch me', I wanted to say. There were many things I wanted to say. Like ... disruptive of what? Disruptive ... like death? That school might be the only reality known by teachers, but there might be more important things at work inside a person which school had disrupted.

But, of course, I said none of these things.

Instead, I slunk away, guilty, beaten before I had started.

Mind you, I did it anyway. Had to. There was nowhere else for her to go except with me. Katoomba was a long way from Sydney and I was stuck without transport or willing baby sitters, even if she had been willing to stay with them.

My husband, her father, had not even answered me when I asked if he could take time off work.

The call had come from my sister earlier in the week.

'He's at St Vincent's. We brought him here because he was in so much pain.' Voice stiff with accusation.

There it is again, my failure, suspended, hanging there.

'She can't still be sick?' I try to ignore this. I had not gone down to visit that weekend as planned because of my daughter's asthma. It had been a filthy, damp winter and I had watched helplessly as the mould grew, unchecked, across the ceilings and down the walls.

'Is he ok?' It sounded feeble even to me.

'He might feel better if his favourite daughter would visit him.'

Again there were things I wanted to say, but didn't. This is how our conversations had been for some time now. Since motherhood had come between us.

My sister, 'Why didn't the doctor tell us he was that bad?'

Me, 'Because he had been hiding his pain, I guess.'

'Why would he do that?'

'Lifetime of habit, I suppose.'

'What do you mean?'

'A lifetime of being unloved, feeling that he was a nuisance.'

'Oh.'

Clothes and toys and the medicines that were a constant in our life were hastily thrown into a suitcase. I still do not remember the trip down. Everything is blurred. The family had already been gathered at his bedside for some time. We managed a hasty greeting, but my arrival somehow signalled their right to go, leaving me alone. Again. With him. Sudden panic, seeing their disappearing backs.

'Oh well', he said wryly, not giving an inch, 'Once they get the morphine into me, I'll be gaga again and that will be the end of any sensible conversation.' He was referring to his reaction when he had had his heart operation years earlier, when he had to be tied up it made him so delirious, calling out our names over and over, trying to climb out of bed to find us, though we were right there. John, Linda, Mary. Desperation in his voice. Lost in his own disconnection.

'Dad.' Clumsy, hesitant.

'Your sister will be bossing you all about now! Pity I won't be here to see you all fighting over the bric-a-brac.' Is it now only a trick of my memory that I have him rubbing his hands together?

'Dad.' I struggle with the words to say it. He is already being wheeled down the corridor. Yet another back facing me. 'I am sorry I wasn't able to ... to spend more time with you.

'It is not enough. I want to add 'I did not know you were going to die so soon.' But that would have made it too frank between us.

His familiar shrug. Defeat in the raising of the shoulders and dropping them, as though he had never expected anything better. It was there in the slope of his shoulders. 'I have to get on with things now.' Dying he means, I suppose.

The week is spent going between his house, where my daughter waxes breathlessly in rapture over the cable TV, and the hospice, which is, ironically, round the corner from where we lived not two years before. We catch the train to Town Hall every day where it is de rigeur that we go into Woolworths, our old stamping ground. For her it is the excitement of new toys and books. For me it is the symbol of all I have lost in moving to the mountains.

It is still here, the bustle of Sydney. A kaleidoscope of familiar sights and sounds rushes in on me. The buses, the trains, which could take you to an entirely different sub culture in minutes. The traffic. Traffic lights! The planes going overhead. I never knew I would miss the planes. Hyde Park, with the broken fish fountain, as we called it, where my daughter and I fed the ibis until the day one of them stole the sandwich from her hand, putting her in a fever of permanent indignation towards them.

It is a week filled with nostalgia, loss and longing. And happiness too, oddly. 'Like before I started school', she says one morning. I do not add, 'and before we moved.'

My sister-in-law and I leave his bedside to go for coffee. I see that she is watching closely as my daughter starts to help herself to the packets of sugar, so tantalisingly laid out on the table. Restraining herself. Waiting. Soon, my daughter progresses to the salt and pepper.

'Stop that!' she pounces, in ambush. It is suddenly all too much for her.

'That is not how you behave in cafes!'

Perhaps she is remembering back to my mother's funeral six months before, when my daughter's high, fluting voice pierces the silence with 'Ha ha ha, grandma's dead.'

My daughter looks to me. I am frozen in space. The universe moves around me in slow motion. Then I manage a scowl at my daughter because it is easier than standing up to my sister-in-law. The waitress looks over, making me feel all wrong, as my daughter's querulous voice rises, so I squirm and scowl all the more at her.

Safe, back at the house, away from the weight of judgement, my daughter says, 'You never take my side. I wasn't doing anything wrong. I've been good all week.' I have no way to explain the complexity of my cowardice.

The next day I am in the room as a nurse tends my father. 'Pity he has such a strong heart or he would not be lingering on like this.'

I try to keep the edge of hysteria from my voice. 'Yes, pity about the by-pass.'

'He has such an unlined face. His skin is so smooth. His body is that of a much younger man. What a shame. He must have been beautiful.'

I look away.

As I leave the room, my daughter runs up to me in great distress. 'There is something wrong with the bird.' I go down to look. Yellow wings flailing hopelessly on the floor of the cage. I move it, but it is too late. I am there, an unwilling witness to his death.

'He'll be alright.' I usher my daughter quickly into the corridor, away from the bird, where I see my sister mouthing something to me. I rush back to my father's room, dragging my daughter with me. The nurse at the desk gives me a funny look. I am disapproved of again in some way.

I have just missed my father's last breath, but not its effect. A spell of stillness over the room, a hushed cocoon, my brother bending to kiss my father's forehead in a way that speaks of a tenderness between them that has eluded me.

My daughter's voice again punctures the air. 'It's like the world has ended.'

I move quickly towards her where she is at the window, watching life going on outside. Putting my arm around her, I say, trying to reassure us both, 'Yes, but then it all starts over again.'

Linda Yates

Katoomba

Scarred

Mary Krone

Glenbrook

First Prize, Blue Mountains Autumn 2011

You carry scars of absence

From when you were small

A brow unkissed

Gentle jokes not shared

A little hand not held

A consoling arm not lain

I'll heal the wounds

On your big man's body

At every chance

I'll gently infuse you

I'll hold your hand and speak softly

My words and touch filling the years of want m

Daniel

Sue Artup

Lapstone

Highly Commended, Blue Mountains Summer 2010

A few years before The Phantom got sick I went away for the weekend and when I returned he had been to an auction in Burwood. He came home with two artworks, a huge suitcase, a set of kitchen knives and two cars—a little heap of a Honda and a huge vehicular beast—a black Charger.

'Collector's item!' he insisted, as I made fun of his purchases, which he had hidden in the shed and which I gradually discovered over weeks. What the ...? Oh, the auction.

The Charger though was pretty obvious. Mostly it sat in the shed and he would just worship at it. Temple of the Road. Of Youth. Of Freedom.

One weekend we went away to the mountains with friends and it was a hoot. People would say 'Hey, Charger!' and make the 'V' sign at us as we roared up Govetts Leap Road.

The Charger was a symbol of masculine force. In particular it was a metaphor for my hero's strength. The beast idled in the shed. Potential with power. Everyone knew how formidable were those engines when revved. Yet they were better known for their purr! In the end the strength was to have little effect—only to maintain the life that remained, but useless to prolong it. The day my hero sold the wheels of the Charger to replace them with the wheels on a chair, a little of my heart was wrenched out. Yet he sat so brave, so accepting, so silently strong as he gave up this part of himself. It was not just a car, it was his life he was letting go, making way for his death.

I cried watching that car drive away up the street. There went part of my life, our life.

Youth drove away that day. A young man called Daniel sat at the wheel. He had to modify the car to drive it—he was a paraplegic. The irony of selling the Charger to a man who could not walk was at once warming and chilling. It signified hope, and the lack of hope. Daniel arrived at our place in a four-wheel drive, opened the driver's door, hurled himself onto the ground, hoisted his 'chair' out of the back seat and pulled himself up onto it. One, two, three. No-one would wheel this man. He was strong! And his conveyance consisted of a plank with a wheel either side. No arms for a wheeler to hold onto! His upper body was toned, tattooed—and he was young, he was vital. And my hero was hanging onto his body, his vitality, just barely. Similar restrictions, yet the prognoses couldn't have been more different.

Daniel. He gave us advice about wheelchairs, pulled himself in and out of our not-yet-modified house on his backside, quizzed us about the car, and bought it. How wonderful for him to have it!

Now, five years or so on, I have seen Daniel again. I was out to dinner in the mountains. He was at a table on the pavement having a smoke. I wasn't sure it was him, but I kept wondering, and I thought I would talk to him anyway. He was going through some documents, and was whizzing back and forth, for a smoke, to get a drink—he seemed to know a lot of people. I had my card ready. I was determined to make contact. When I was leaving, I went up to him and asked 'Did I sell you a black car about five years ago?' Yes! I told him The Phantom had died, and he said 'Well, he would be happy.' That was the best thing anyone could say.

So we chatted about life, the car—and he said when he gets it back on the road, he will come by and take me for a spin. I said I would like that. And he was hot!

Fly a Kite

Joan Vaughan-Taylor

Faulconbridge

Second Prize, Blue Mountains Summer 2010

My father showed me how to make a kite.

I watched his fingers, in the backyard shed

Construct the frameworks suitable for flight

And helped to cover all, in blue and red.

We took them to the park to catch a breeze

Which often was capricious, sly or wild.

So, several crash landed in the trees

A disappointment for an eager child –

But one kite, it soared in the sky that spring.

How I felt the pain, the power, the pride,

In gruelling effort to control the string!

'Keep on trying, never let go!' he cried

A memory lasting till the failing light

Is father teaching me to fly a kite.

The Stranger

John Ross

Blackheath

Highly Commended, Blue Mountains Winter 2011

I still remember to this day what he looked like. He was not tall, but then he was not short either. You could say that he was of medium height. His hair was light brown and he wore it short, like the men in old pictures of soldiers from the second war. His face and arms were a deep brown. The sort of brown that only years of work outside in the sun can give. In sharp contrast his eyes were the palest blue that I have ever seen.

I first noticed him when he was still a long way off. I had come down to the beach to be by myself. It was very early spring and there was still a sharp bite in the wind as it blew the tops off the waves and flung them back in a shower of spray that made a hissing sound as it hit the water. Some were flung so high that they caught the rays of the setting sun and for a brief moment the air was full of sparkling diamonds.

I had pulled on an old pair of ski pants and my warmest coat to keep out the chill. I probably would not have paid him much attention as even on a cold afternoon like this there were usually one or two people walking along the beach. As he came closer it was his clothes that drew my eyes back to him. A pair of tattered pants that had been torn off just above his knees. A shirt with the sleeves rolled up to above his elbows and an army slouched hat that hung down his back from a strap around his neck and which swung from side to side as he strode up the beach.

He appeared to be heading directly to where I was sitting. I looked away hoping that he would just keep on going and not stop to talk to me. I had come here to try to pull myself back from the edge of the deep black hole that was threatening to engulf me. My life at that time was in shattered pieces. No matter what I tried or where I turned it ended in grief or bitterness.

The sound of his footsteps in the sand stopped directly in front of me. Feeling a slight sense of alarm, as we were the only people on a long stretch of desolate beach I looked up at him.

The sun was shining full on his face and I knew immediately that I did not need to be afraid of him.

For a long moment he just stared at me and then gesturing behind him with one hand said, 'Beautiful isn't it?'

Then, unasked he sat down on the sand next to me. For many minutes we both just stared out at the ocean as the shadows reached out from the land and began to claim the sea.

He turned to look at me and said, 'Many years ago I waded ashore on a beach very similar to this. All around me was death and great suffering. It was early in the morning and no doubt it was as beautiful as this but I never saw that. All I saw was the chaos and destruction and all I felt was an overwhelming despair. I thought then that I would never recover from that and that my life would never be the same again.'

'Well my life did change after that day. But not in a bad way and not quickly.'

'Years later I went back to that same beach and sat looking out at the ocean just like you are here today. It was the same as on that earlier day, except this time there was no pain and no despair just peace and beauty. I realised that even at the darkest times these things exist. Look for them and be patient. They are there.'

I looked away from him and back at the sea. The last rays of the sun were just touching the tops of the waves. I felt my soul rejoice at the splendour of it.

I turned back to speak to him but he was gone.

A Wedding

Adrian Johnstone

Hawkesbury Heights

Highly Commended, Blue Mountains Winter 2011

Besides having to deal with the immensely hot sun bearing down atop of my sweltering head, the swirl of ultra atomic radiation curling its massive universal arms round in high five motion, congratulating itself upon its insipid harassment, the gelatinous mould making up the majority of my exotic Asian infused cuisine wobbling gently inside a plastic petrii dish would soon surely melt away to nothing. I needed to find a refrigerator fast or the shaving of American Scallop, Manuka and Brioche Glazed Walnuts mixed finely with Sautéed Capers and Gazpacho Roe Jelly would surely perish.

Before me, lined immaculately along the centre street—up along the harbour—ebbing tides and flows nipped slightly into the Chinese washroom area of the front steps. The entrance alcove of business shops were pristine and redefining the fashionable post-modern charismatic appeal that in the past could not be achieved by smudging red spots against sharp patches of black scagliola. And I, like the insurgent Afghan militia on perpetual stand-by, nearby, Tarquin - Proud and Gallant - customarily dining al fresco on the roof at The Pen on 39, one red hand on his mistress's thigh, keeps his steadfast inordinate guard on the Etruscans.

Glazed above their doorstep, like a rambling profusion of enraged debasement and pupal enlightenment, were the detailed and stately prose intricacies marked within time immemorial by Alighieri—the father of Italian. Having shifted away from the relative confines of orthodox passage and divine comedic poetry, the man of much too late had his endowment meddled and fornicated with, till nothing more of what scholars would recently decipher as 'Elogio Allah' filled their academic books with much consternation and delight.

The dribbling precipitation from the petrii dish was sliding down my fingers and arms.
It allured me only temporarily before I managed to duck another inept avaricious bastard. Unctuously obsequious posses committed to the Toque Blanche have been following me most observantly, exercising with a municipal argot of scintillating audacity the temperament of their tortured whim. With slicing blade and sharpened malice, congregations are planned and meddled over how best to beget me. I hurry my steps, over the pink flamingos swarming the grounds and under the hanging women fastened with garter belts and only wearing designer market Louis Vuitton stiletto heels. Their perspicuously tender hypertrophic genitalia dangling upside down, hanging from the hooks of industrial tower cranes, immaculately suspended by a trapeze of satin dental floss.

It didn't have to happen so quickly; I had only just gotten hold of Marionette yesterday and already this shit is happening. I was very amazed, even so much that my consternation, from their quick formation which had developed tremendously after such a short absence - of which I knew from what previous underestimated cynicism I had about the Three Legged Chair Formation Transformation Organization - would surely be nothing in comparison to their new-found pugnaciously barbaric proficiency.

From a small mason jar I quickly filled the lining of my tweed jacket with rhubarb relish, a recently discovered substance, not only once just a delicious gastronomical concoction, but now also, from rigorously intricate and meticulous scientific study conducted by the octogenarian, Hans Goldzimmer, at the Humboldt University of Berlin, founded by the liberal Prussian educational reformer and linguist, Wilhelm von Humboldt, in Germany, a unique and highly potent deterrent used against the rising vicious vulture population forming throughout the Southern hemisphere. No longer encircling the skies, waiting for that inevitable period when the prey plods its final, defeated step to the ground and awaits death till they strike—some don't even consider the flesh of a newly rotting carcass to be numero uno on their choice of delicacies—but poised fervently for the kill, they attack in large numbers, picking and tearing at the innocent victims on the ground below. If one is lucky enough, they flurry away victoriously with hunks of meat from still alive and kicking prey, retreating to the top of the wind blown skyscrapers after excreting corrosive uric acid on the bystanders below before settling down to nestle and feed their anabolic robotic young.

Warranting themselves bad enough and certainly horrific enough for us symbiotic xenophobic organisms, they are still no match for the ferocity of the vulture killing, one tonne giants: the lime green and violet mutated Chinese Panda Bears which infest, roam and tear through buildings during the night. If not from the constant plummet of Pandas accidentally tripping over their hydroponic bamboo leaves draping the sides of the abandoned buildings, crushing helpless victims into pickled garnishes, the relish should guard against what residing vultures there are and repulse them enough, if, for instance, the person were to survive a rush of greedy gastronomical vermin wielding Chinese pork blades, for the victim to maybe live yet another harrowing day.

The Toque Blanche shouted with endearment, praising the hydraulic blade that was passed to him. As the Sous chased him down from behind, pardoning himself most embarrassingly - begging mercy for his lateness—the Toque Blanche stripped down the traditional knotted cloth-button double breasted jacket and said most deliciously to pass him the oil-based lubricant.

'Are you certain that's wise, sir? It's only midday and you haven't had your Boudin Noir Skillet and Dried Potato-Chip on Fig Salad and Vin Ordinaire Borlotti Cassoulet with Double-Sweet Vouvray; how will you survive?' the doubtful Sous embrangled.

The Toque Blanche held the small plastic bottle of lubricant high over his head and, proclaiming with shaking might—as he sighed erotically into the bright day above—squeezed the contents over his gelatinous encumbered body. He moaned until the confluence of translucent slime curled and oozed around his black chest hairs and past his navel before dripping finally upon the tarmac at his feet. It was only when he shivered and convulsed with delight that a lone Anteater trailed by nonchalantly and licked clean the trapped ants held fast by its sticky substance.

'Damn it, Gunter, don't you see that this is the most tumultuous time for me to extend my influence? I have been aching oh so into the morning hour.'

'So sorry, Sir. Not to besmirch your great name. Do accept our most humble, sincere and gastronomical apologies.'

'And so you should ... infidel.'

Unto me the crumbling crack of vegetable flaked pastry, supporting an egg cream centre, undulates my nostrils. I lighten the exterior for the soft texture to ramify me with utmost daft; its simple pleasures— as Camus felt in the Algerian sun—I succumbed wholly to.

I tread in puddles of decrepitly ulcerous fermenting liquidations, curdling and thrusting with encroaching globules of air conditioned filtered water. Its vivific glisten entranced me only momentarily to see its putrid base purl over unwanted Styrofoam containers and Polyvinyl Chloride insulated electronic cables before rushing down into the sewer.

I recoiled.

Beside me, saturated in an chrome detailed vehicular edifice, pulsating rhythms of African Voodoo combos blare incessantly into my hip, inhibiting in me utter atrophy, excluding the swaying sensation of my bootilicious pelvis.

Solicit shouts curtailed from the other side of the street, over the flooding rainfall, and the circus clown, complete with slender flower tie and bright shots of pink on snow white, executes an elaborate technique of back flips over toward my side, narrowly missing traffic. He lands immaculately with a smoke already lit between his middle and index. With arms outstretched, his stern posture slowly sagged. He then dogged down a sausage filled doughnut handed to him by a dominatrix patrol officer in red latex sporting baby seal ugg boots. From flawless undisputed sources - microscopic surveillance cameras mounted directly around the purveying street - the lauding couch-potatoes were able to spot with every successive cycle of hands meeting upon the ground the nurtured seed to which the clown placed caressingly into after sowing the soil beneath the ravaged concrete.

Chrysanthemum Coronarium bloomed in his wake.

Walking up the enclosed street hand in hand, the chivalrous latex bound officer blows a thick cloud of smoke at the Toque Blanche as they pass by.

Quickly the puff of smoke reaches all remaining.

All white falls to the postulated metaphysical enterprise of the grey beneath in a heavy pensive assortment of Mishimaesque empirical reasoning.

'Did you ever expect that?'

'No. They may slide away but the options are just totally incomparable.'

I turned to the gal by my side.

She reformed herself by sticking a finger inside her left nostril. Afterwards, having removed from it a detailed piece of Victorian ivory embroidered patchwork - a small knitted number with minute letters, 'only to the waste end' - did she reinstate that which she so intently and most dramatically implored unto me years ago.

'Not to what the Platonic scholars had announced back in the Hellenic Parliament do I now feel the beautifully sequenced transmogrification that is about to unfold.'

Uh-huh, I replied. 'Yes, it too could do with a touch of work, most definitely.

Listen, doll ... there's this thing I've gotta do. I'm needed back at the office, pronto. So, why don't we say we'll shake this leg later, eh?'

Gracefully, as when a butterfly carefully leaves it comforting cocoon, she lashed me with an intent look of tearful yet hopeful exasperation.

'Don't worry, baby, we'll be in each other's arms soon enough.'

A tear rushed from her eye and a shadow leered by, long enough for me to catch his Masonic reasoning. He disappeared when I glanced toward his vector.

But soon she spoke again and I was yet again cast down by her hypnotic harpoon. Her soft globulous mouth was poised for the moment and ventured forth even though it was chemically imbalanced.

'Yes, oh yes, dear ... when the moonlit stars are far and wide, when Apollo speaks my name do the windmills of Evergreen fly high toward the plummeting bottom of the meteor crater, and when their insides spill from the gooey mess contained, I will then sense the touch of your warm vastitude. I will gaze far from the height of the eternal lighthouse.'

She stepped into a nearby store before we had the chance to express anymore.

Floundering through massive junctures, the rising water was levelling the city by the minute. Rushing to a nearby shopping vestibule, I was cornered off by deliberate shortcomings. The remaining entrance to the shop, and suddenly the district around me—arcades, promenades—had been conveniently replaced with an inseparable concrete edifice. Residing within the heavily adamant resilience of the concrete structure, reaching further than the eye could casually perceive, one exclusive accessible passage could be detected although it were only a passing route for those with a rule of thumb. Three identical segmented shapes were carved into the structure and coruscating neon lights aligned immaculately within the holes sprang vibrant agnostically induced temporalities into spiralling bombastic severities of mystically contorted cerebral fascinations.

I shaved hard. Harder than any man has done before, waxing intently my hard worn nipples until they became red raw, even at the splicing spasmodic consistency of the flashing blue lights.

Words and interpretations broke and popped open the pharmaceutical doppelganger upon a Nodachi Black forest pendulum.

I, as still, so became my ears, and then, once again, for they were the silent matter. It was only when I hunched down and took a step back momentarily that I noticed the three large holes carved into the wall were formed like an electrical socket.

Symmetrical and collectively rejecting art nouveau, pragmatically aligned dystopian temporality, a quasi-supernal figurehead cosmically contained, unconditional, mountainous, a delicate blossom of impressionist conceivability contemplating objective systematic unity by squashing its puny head against the path edge, swiping shattered teeth, pulverising them with fish into pungent little balls for the steaming nagging inconsolable pretentious children for their meandering and acquisitive monetary conversations confabulated disgustingly over simmering bowls of vegetable Seui Gau Mein before daily billion dollar realty auctions.

'I know you'd love it too, Agnus. How you'd love to see the confounding image. In all its resplendence, I could not but once confer to think triumphantly of your willing despondence. When that homicidal maniac tore loose through the pillage of broken homes, you, and you alone, were the only one who stood up to him, who stood up and fought for your wooden cuspidor. And, buckled head to toe in dazzling armoury you swung diligently and heroically the raving feral cat by the tail at your feigned assailant. But alas, he was too quick. Knocked about your head with a second inferior bucket that he left you with after he made his dashing exit, I remembered your saddened cry as you lay there with bucket to die.

Shit! You were absolutely covered in it. You had landed directly into the pile the neighbour had reposed upon your lawn, and I dared not waste my princely hands to yours of filth and muck. Might I digress?'

'Ok-ok ... ok. Sure, we can do that.'

Samson's reply was as virulent as possible but none too desecrating for me to be persuaded otherwise.

We headed directly for the old swimming pool that day.

He later cracked his head open upon a splintered rock when diving from the highest region of the cascade.

The police hauled his body off with flashing red electrical tape to the premiere of his father's latest movie: 'Revenge of Turtle Neck'. The press reviews, although often too accommodating, were consistently mediocre and proving only to be mildly successful when compared to his other previous astounding blockbusters until one cleverly conceived article from the space times presented his father's film in dramatic new light. Not only did they uncover alluring circumstances pointing out some major inconsistencies regarding the hero's mane - Tom Selleck - film critics found something more politically sinister. A few months after its Blu-Ray release, and following the movie's increasing popularity - especially among the retro favoured anesthetised bohemians - due to an anonymous tip, several heavily armed government entrepreneurs wanted continuous press interviews and all exclusive coverage to be stricken from public access. Incriminating evidence had been filed against his father's name. Analysing several précis reports written by several undergraduate literary students, the police found massive, irrefutable evidence supporting the double lives of the Backstreet Boys, and their swindling internal power struggles for world domination, hidden subliminally within his father's movie. Quicker than a flash of lighting, not only were the Backstreet Boys—whose alluring and sexually enflamed timeless hits have flung Cupid arrows of pre-pubescent love to millions of heated teenagers frustrated with wanton desire—taken into a restricted access military operational containment facility stationed a hundred miles below the removed correctional facility at Treblinka, but also Samson's father. In these times, to speak of such atrocities is not only considered highly illegal and strictly classified but it's also ultimately forbidden; a sentence punishable by necrophilia slumber. To spend the rest of your waking life locked up, naked, with a late world leader of the jury's choice, to be forced to fornicate at irregular intervals or suffer a slow release of phosphoric nerve agents, which is to be later viewed on satellite television aimed at a substantial market for reasonably moderate prices.

Viewed beyond the sediment of pulsating vibrancy, fermented bean curds collected in a finely ornamented drinking vessel shaped like the firm rendering of a curvaceous bosom - electronically implemented with musical micro-chips - when tilted upwards 90degrees upon its flat axis sing the lamenting queenly woes 'Oooooh, I want some more' were slammed down onto the lacquered alpine business bench in outrage, bemusement and agreement.

I checked my side. The water level was softening my shoe and was now within the entrance of the building. The suited individuals indicate through articulated and formulated gesticulation a number the catastrophic events relating to the imminent problem of commercial housing, to which - displayed against a concrete wall - were the expenditures and hazards now inherent in relocating and constructing formidable living accommodation around the already rapidly growing infrastructure and population. To where do they place the ever exceeding population, expressed profoundly with tip-pointed markers attached to their shoulders? In any indication of referral, if needed to be exhibited to the other board members, must now - since infused with said elongated attachment - be expressed by placing one's hands against their hips to be then followed through with fluid torso twists accordingly from left to right. Generally, when conducting the aforementioned meeting, one must now address the other board members by facing northerly according to their easterly in practise with standard ergonomic regulations as outlined by the board members.

Nods of agreement prevailed against inconclusive arrangements.

Glasses clinked, coffee splattered, and violent red paint was thrown against walls and one another as tables flew high toward the ceiling in an abject display of financial sentiment. Later, when the dust had lifted from the oppressive dim canopy of the room, their bodies remained sparkling clean alongside and within the spectacle of chaotic artistic semblance.

'Ahoy there, me dear matey' came from afar.

Hysterically pronounced through serrated tongues, a distant man beyond the torrent, under his loquacious amused embodiment, hailed me down.

From this distance I couldn't quite make out the millinery of sporting goods he adorned. The baseball cap, his orange nylon tight singlet with self made tears mainly along the neck line and contrastingly matched with an unusually pair of baggy black white striped Adidas training pants only came to me upon further scrutiny. Not to mention the repulsive detail of his exposed pubic line popping up gently from atop his slowly sagging pants were only a few initial things that haunted my mind as I reluctantly crossed over. I could discern at closer range the slant in his eyes, and his Asian inheritance were not the primary cause of his excitement. And crooked teeth, to which he placed three already lit smokes surprisingly into his mouth. Two were to be later excluded importantly from his smacked gob to the outer protrusions constituting the soft flexible tissue above the sides of his jaw.

An industrial toxic waste disposal unit pulled up alongside his person. And for one ghastly moment his hysterical face retained the utmost ardent pride and seriousness as he flanked them down, shouted something in Cantonese, smiled, and then dismissed them.

They left as soon they came.

His face retained this searing pompous taut expression of austerity until the truck turned off left by the interstate sign after the five kilometre long stretch of motorway.

Enflamed by extreme hypertrophy that inflated his face of hot air, the man resumed his otherwise incredible hysterical ornamentation.

The man began to cry. He then started moaning in utter despair; yet remarkably thrust his arms outwardly at my cheek, tapping them in goodwill as if to hint to both I and he that all things will turn out okay. After a time, the man then transformed once again to his previous hysterical beastly behaviour. The flux of bifurcated personalities zigzagged and crossed paths quite spasmodically, yet was consistently marked by the consecutive sequence of laughter, pride and depression. It continued until nothing much of his face could be resembled as entirely normal and of which, in his penultimate stature, was nothing more than an ethereal Baconian blur.

It stopped, affix with a deathly smile. He spoke, not a word.

During his suffocating pitch-bended haemoptysis, spasmodic abnormal congenital agenesis was coughed up quite distinctly, and fortunately, I did however understand his particular plea - as was so ethnically portrayed through his foul language - and resorting to trusty measures - not to let suspicion escape from his otherwise private colic confession \- desultorily, I remained.

Dozens of leeches were sucking happily all round his torso. This came as quite a phenomenal shock as his hellacious Egyptian Iris break-dancing reciprocating formational routine abruptly halted by the zippering extension from top to bottom magically revealing his lacerated top and exposed body. As informed through his native tongue, a rare treat - to which any man could easily recognize - was nestled deep within his arm pit hair. Just grazing the swollen welts on his body, he managed to scrape away most of the cardboard biscuit without hindering its fragile complexity and smearing too much purulent blood.

He emphatically mouthed words.

'OK'.

Placing the small piece of cardboard under my tongue, like melting wax-works, the paper mache buildings began to slide away with the rushing current now torso deep.

Amusement overcame my senses.

I turned to the behaviourally transforming medically deformed Asian with innocent affection as one would like an infant exploring the new found world.

A gelatinous white mould formed his chocolate-chip ridden tummy. I prodded his tummy with curiosity.

He began to laugh as I did.

We laughed.

We heckled.

The water flooding the city eventually swept his melted face out into the ocean.

I've gotta find a refrigerator.

Adrian Johnstone

Hawkesbury Heights

Black Future

Gregory North

Linden

Third Prize, Blue Mountains Spring 2010

I'm worried 'cause there are some folks who'd like to bury coal –

the industry, is what I mean.

I don't know why; it's pretty clean,

and such a great contributor to Aussie as a (w)hole.

They reckon that we shouldn't mine our ancient bands of coal.

I don't know what they're on about.

It's useless till we rip it out.

Yeah, maybe it supports some rocks, but that's a minor role.

How bored would all the water be without new depths to plumb

that coal mines open up for it?

Old creeks are dull you must admit,

and think what water might pick up and what it might become!

And if we didn't burn our coal, just how would we survive?

That solar, thermal, wind and wave

are too expensive. We must save.

To tear out coal is cheap as chips, so mining comp'nies thrive.

Oh, sure it makes some greenhouse gas, but of our nation's sum,

that forty-two per cent, as such,

it really isn't very much,

and starving trees of CO2 could see them all succumb.

Some cleaners would be out of work because of lack of dust.

No flyash, acid rain or gas

means far less cancer too, alas,

so doctors with no work to do would quit in sheer disgust.

But most of all we need our coal to sell off overseas.

Until they act on climate change,

our coal is tops of all the range,

with far less ash that brings about respirat'ry disease.

Old mines are great for shelter after nuclear attack,

and open cuts become flat land,

all cleared for suburbs to expand.

So, come on, keep on mining coal and make our future black.

Selling Green

Tony Dwyer

Springwood

Highly Commended, Blue Mountains Spring 2011

It had been a bad day for Peta Banshiel. OK, shocking was not an inappropriate word for the fortnight. If she had to rate the last thirty days in her worst ever months it would probably be in the top one. Her divorce had been finalised after two years of horrendous litigation. He got everything, the house, the shares, the yacht, and custody of their wolfhound. Not exactly how her friends had told her it would pan out.

The stress of the case had seen her performance at work deteriorate to such an extent that after failing to make it back from a particularly long lunch she had been sacked. So here she was, thirty-one years old, a former darling of the advertising world, reduced to selling electricity schemes door to door. Green power, mind you. Right on. Right.

It was commission only work, but it was the only employment she had been able to find that she was prepared to accept. Amazing how quickly friends disappear when the money stops flowing, she thought bitterly. Tugging unconsciously at her ponytail she looked up at the imposing house in front of her. Spanish in design, it had a heavy iron gate that opened into a courtyard with stairs leading to the front door. She detested doing these neighbourhoods in the stockbroker belt. The ostentatious displays of wealth flaunted by people with half her talent nauseated her. The day had been a catalogue of rejections from bubble headed gym bunnies or housewives racing to pick up their alpha brats. Peta thanked her lucky stars that at least she and Joel had not had kids. Take a big breath, she thought, last call of the day, focus. She brushed her jacket arms, checked her shoes and pushed through the gate.

Standing in front of the dark oak door she paused. She did a quick mental inventory of her surroundings, went through the spiel to herself and took one last look at her appearance. When she had taken the job she had been broke and running out of excuses with the landlord of the hotel. To her surprise, she had been very good at it. That was due to her intelligence, naturally. A careful examination of the job had shown that the look was critical. She was selling environmentally friendly power. People could access the grid without having to change a thing. It should be a no brainer given the current politically correct society. Hey, save the environment, feel good about your grand children's future and leave the budget untouched. You just had to get in the door. Then past the cynicism. Oh well. Appearance was critical. Peta's age was perfect, all she had to do was look like a reasonably well off lass who chose to make a difference in the world. Her strawberry blonde hair still shone and when she pulled it back into a ponytail with a bob fringe she had the appearance of someone committed to intelligent protest against the corporate destroyers of the planet.

Satisfied she was ready to do battle, Peta looked at the door again. She lifted the large brass knocker and thumped down twice, hearing the echo inside. At first there was no response, then she heard faint noises in the house. Oh God, thought Peta, at least have the guts to come to the door and tell me in person that you just aren't interested. She was about to try again, when she heard footsteps approaching. Peta stood back as the door opened and looked up at one of the most curious men she had ever seen.

He looked as though nature had taken the dominant features of a spider and put them into his DNA. Everything about him was long. Long legs, long arms, long fingers, just long. His high forehead swept up to a bald pate that appeared to have been cast in a centrifugal experiment. His eyes were dark brown with gold flecks that seemed to dance beneath thin brows. The only things that weren't long and thin about this man were his lips. They were the most amazingly sensuous lips Peta had ever seen, and when they smiled Peta found herself smiling back.

'Can I help you in any way?' the man asked, looking down at Peta's folder. He was dressed in neutral colours, the clothes were obviously well made, fashionable, but in a practical, nondescript way. The more you looked at the man the more he seemed to fade into the background.

A little off balance, Peta used one of her favourite tricks for getting back in to the driver's seat. Grovelling obsequiousness.

'I have no doubt that you can, sir, but,' she said, noting the small smile that her comment elicited., 'my name is Peta and I'm actually here to see if I can help you.' Let them ask the first questions, she thought, starting to feel good about this call.

'How do you propose to help me?' the man asked. His voice was pure velvet, with crisp pronunciation and an accent Peta could not place. She noted the man's body language. It was open. Peta smiled.

'Have you heard of green energy, sir?'

'Only what I've read in the papers, the usual stuff, wind farms, hydro electricity and all that.'

'You know more than most,' Peta replied thinking that the man deserved a Nobel Prize for tabloid awareness. 'I represent a company that allows people like yourself to support green power at no extra cost.'

'How interesting,' demurred the man. 'I am sorry, where are my manners, would you care to come in?'

The door was opened and Peta peered down a dark hallway. One of the secrets of the job was getting over the threshold, do that and you were half way there.

'Of course, sir, very kind of you, should I take off my shoes?' Peta asked, looking at the polished wooden floor.

'Don't worry about the shoes and please, call me Angel, I don't like this 'sir' nonsense.' The man smiled that gorgeous smile again before he turned and walked down the hall with Peta following. They passed two large rooms which both had floor to ceiling bookcases along one wall. Each room had a fireplace, a large central rug and leather chairs arranged around a coffee table. At gaps between the bookcases were pedestals with busts on them. The remaining walls were adorned with mediaeval weapons and huge canvasses of classical art. From the quick glance that Peta had she guessed that they were not prints. Great, she thought, I've got a chance to sell Green to the Addams family. She turned right at the end of the hallway and found herself in a large open kitchen with wide windows that looked out onto a superbly manicured garden. The contrast could not have been greater. Where the rooms she had passed were gloomy and arcane the kitchen was straight out of a modern living brochure, with natural pine paneling, marble surfaces and gleaming metal. A large square table was the dominant feature with a variety of pots and pans hung overhead. Angel was taking two mugs down from a cupboard.

'Coffee, tea, hot chocolate?'

'Uh, that's very kind Angel. Coffee please. Black, no sugar,' Peta said, again off balance.

'Tell me, Peta,' Angel asked while fussing about near a great kettle before clicking it on. 'Whom are you working for again?'

'Our company is called Green Scene. Basically they use the capital raised from customers to invest in and support green and renewable energy. By showing this to be a profitable way of doing business they hope to convince other organisations to do the same. Eventually it will put these forms of energy to the forefront, which will have enormous benefits for the environment. The company has the endorsement of several environmental groups. The cost to you is exactly the same as your current bill but it lets you do your part in helping the planet.'

'How ingenious, Peta. Who owns the company?'

'It's a publicly listed company, started by a group of students who believe the only way to make big corporations stop using fossil fuels is to show them that they can make a lot of money with renewable green energy.'

'Publicly listed? Presumably they have the same responsibility to shareholders as those big corporations they are trying to teach?'

'Er, sure,' Peta replied, uncomfortably.

'And they use the profits of the operation to invest in what you call green power?'

'Correct, things like wind farms, wave generators and low impact hydro.'

'Hmm, so they are still selling me power generated by fossil fuels, in effect, but are using the money I pay for that power to develop assets in green production facilities. This, in turn, allows them to generate electricity, which they can sell back to the grid while also gaining massive benefits in tax breaks and government funding. I would imagine that after a while this company would have a marvellous portfolio, Peta, don't you think? There would even be enough left over for some nice tax deductible donations to several environmental groups, eh?' Angel smiled whimsically.

Who is this guy? thought Peta bitterly. A retired Economics Professor with a penchant for the Inquisition? That was exactly it, though, with the company, and the old bugger knew it. Just as Peta was about to answer with a half-hearted defence the kettle boiled.

'Ah,' said Angel, 'let's have that cup of coffee.' He spooned instant blend into the mugs then poured the water. Moving smoothly to the refrigerator he added a small dollop of milk to his own before handing a black brew to Peta. He smiled again, and for some reason Peta was filled with hope.

'For all my scepticism,' Angel continued, 'I can see merit in the company's philosophy. How did you get involved in this, Peta?'

Again Peta had been mentally railroaded.

'I believe in the concept, I like going home at the end of the night knowing that I've made a difference, I ...' she faltered. Angel's small smile stopped her recitation of the lie she told herself every day.

'I needed the job,' Peta said quietly. 'I've had a rough trot of late.'

'I'm sorry to hear that, I know what it's like and I hope that you're getting yourself back on top.'

Angel's tone rang with empathy. Peta realised they were the first genuine words of encouragement she had heard since her whole life began unravelling.

'I guess it has been pretty bad?' Angel asked gently.

'It has,' Peta began. 'Bloody awful, actually, I've gone through a divorce and lost my job. This was the only work on offer, but still people look down on me, as though I'm some sort of sub class.'

'Society has become horribly self centred, Peta, compassion seems to be a thing of the past.'

'Don't I know it, sometimes when I get home you can see tramps scrounging in the bins outside my hotel. Trying to feed themselves with our garbage. It's hard getting back on your feet. You don't realise how much of the friendship and support that you take for granted disappears when your credit cards are no good.'

'You live in a hotel?' Angel asked.

'Just while I get over this hump, it's cheap, filthy actually, what they used to call a Ladies Boarding House, but I do get to enjoy eight different forms of halitosis every morning in our communal bathroom.' Suddenly Peta stopped, aware that she was blushing. What had come over her? she thought angrily. Looking at the half finished coffee she realised that she had blown the sale. Damn! Blown it stupidly, through weakness, by letting her shield down. She prepared to make her apologies and leave.

'It's all right, Peta,' Angel said, as though reading her mind. 'For what it's worth, I believe all men and women experience slumps that have a profound effect on their future. Most cope and are doomed to a life of mediocrity. Others collapse and are sent spinning into a world of self-hate and loathing, the men foraging in garbage bins, for example. Then there are the rare few, so deeply shaken that they are brutal in their outlook. They seize this moment and rebuild themselves in a way that guarantees their future success. No pre-eminent figure in history arrived at greatness without first undergoing this metamorphosis.'

Angel had finished his coffee and placed it by the sink. Slowly he turned around.

'What will you make of this opportunity, Peta?'

Peta looked at her own coffee, swirled the last remnants and gulped it down.

'I'm sorry I've taken up your time, Angel, thanks for the drink, I'd better be going.' She placed her cup on the central table and began to turn toward the hallway.

'Wait Peta. I was serious about the company having merit. Leave me the form and I'll sign up.'

'You will?' Peta turned, unable to completely hide the surprise and excitement. 'Hang on, we can do this right now, if you're sure.'

'Just leave the form on the table, I assume that to get your commission you have to process the sale?'

'That's right, but we could do this right now,' Peta struggled to hide her anxiousness in closing the deal. 'It will only take three minutes.'

Angel looked at her calmly, even a little sadly.

'I know it's hard, Peta,' he said. 'But trust me. Just write your phone number and the hours when I can reach you on this pad,' he handed her a beautifully bound diary, opened at a blank page. 'Actually, put the address of the hotel there and I shall have the papers delivered to the Front Desk tomorrow. While you're doing that, please excuse me for one moment.'

Angel turned and walked out of the kitchen. Peta heard the footsteps disappearing to where she imagined the bedrooms were. Looking down at the form she shrugged and accepted that this was the best deal she was going to get today. Taking out her pen she wrote in the diary 'Angel, call me anytime,' and placed her mobile phone number beneath it. Then she wrote 'Peta Banshiel, Room 28, Hudson Hotel, 137 Mary Street'. She added 'Hope to hear from you soon, thanks for your kindness and generosity.' With a sudden jolt she realised that she truly did hope to hear from the man soon, not just for the business, but because she felt a connection. 'Stop that,' she muttered to herself harshly. 'This man and you have nothing in common.'

Peta turned around and stifled a scream. Angel was standing right behind her. She had not heard a thing.

'I'm sorry, Angel, but you scared the life out of me.'

'Please, I should be making the apologies, I really must make more noise, but I can't, force of habit, you see.' He placed a leather satchel case down near his coffee cup and took a plastic bag from it, which he held, turning it briefly, before replacing it. Peta glimpsed a magnificent baton, about 30 centimetres long, with a golden eagle head at one end.

'Peta, I see a lot of my younger self in you. I hope that you are one of those few who can attain greatness by overcoming your current hardships. Some people think of me as an eccentric,' he said, holding up a hand to quiet the protest. 'No, please, I know that I am. I want you to have this.' Angel gently passed the case to and fro in his hands as he continued. 'This is a Field Marshall's baton. Not just any Field Marshall, either,' he chuckled. 'This one belonged to Rommell. Have you heard of him?' Peta nodded, recalling the name of Hitler's desert fox, before a spark of sanity flickered.

'Angel, no, you're offering me this, but no, I couldn't, it must be worth a fortune.'

'It is and, fortunately, so am I. Listen to me Peta, carefully. I apologise for rushing, I have had a good life, but it is close to ending. I was recently diagnosed with cancer of the pancreas. It will be very quick and very final. I have a feeling about you, I want you to have this, get out of that hotel and make a new start. If you like, you can consider it as pandering to the good Samaritan in me. Don't ask me why, just do it to make an old man happy. Call me in three months and let me know how things are working out for you. I shall need good news in three months, I hope you can give me some.' Angel moved toward the doorway again, suddenly looking very tired. 'I have done very well in this life for myself. It is only now that I realise I have done nothing for anyone else. Take the baton and start again.'

Peta watched as the older man came back to the table and placed the leather satchel case in front of her. It was happening too quickly, she felt like she was in a dream.

'Tomorrow I shall send the Green Scene paperwork to you but I hardly think you should concern yourself with that. For now, I have placed a letter of provenance and the deed of ownership for the baton inside the satchel case. I have also included the address of a dealer I do business with. He has been hectoring me about this piece for years. The plastic bag containing the baton and the envelope have been sealed, don't tamper with them or the dealer will be annoyed. I am confident you will get more than a fair price for the piece. Now, please go, Peta, and thank you for this opportunity.'

Peta felt the hand on her shoulder like breeze, barely there at all, but directing her toward the hallway and back to the door. When it opened Peta noticed that the sun had just set. She stood again at the threshold and looked back at Angel.

'Do me one more favour, Peta,' he said. 'I like to tick off the boxes, so forgive me, make sure you don't do anything silly tonight, have an early evening, and in the morning you will be given the opportunity to start a new phase in your life.' Angel beamed at Peta and then quietly shut the door.

Peta walked out of the courtyard and did exactly as she was told. She returned to her squalid room and placed the satchel case on the table near the window. Then she took it back away from the window fearful someone would somehow scale the wall and snatch it. Finally she clutched the bag to her chest and lay down to sleep, eventually drifting off with thoughts of a comfortable penthouse and her own agency. Mixed with these were fantasies of revenge against all who had wronged her, oh yes, she would raise a glass of Bollinger over their graves if she could.

She was woken just before six the next morning by a hammering on the door.

'Peta Banshiel?' a gruff voice demanded. 'Peta Banshiel, this is the Police, open the door immediately. Do you hear me?'

Sitting up in bed she put the satchel case aside and began pulling on her dressing gown.

'I hear you, hang on, I'm just getting dressed.'

She had barely finished the words when the door came off its hinges with a splintering crack. Policemen poured into the room. Before she could properly stand Peta had been thrown to the floor where she felt her arms being pinned behind her and then heard the ratchet of cuffs on her wrist.

'What's going on?' Peta shouted, outraged. 'This is a disgrace, what are you doing?' Then she looked up at the satchel case. Oh Christ, she thought, don't tell me the bastard has claimed I stole it.

'Peta Banshiel?' asked the gruff voice again.

'Yes.'

'I'm placing you under arrest.'

'Look if it's about the satchel bag ...'

'Satchel bag? Ms. Banshiel, we're talking about murder. You have the right to remain silent ...' the rest of it trailed off as Peta's mind swirled. Murder? What was going on?

'Do you understand your rights, ma'am?' the gruff voice repeated.

'No I don't understand any of it. Murder? Of who?'

'For the murder of Mr Angelo Peguse, Angel to his friends.' There was something about the way he said 'friends'.

'But I didn't kill anyone, I met a man at a Spanish house, his name was Angel, sure but ...'

'The man you refer to, Mr Peguse, was a very well to do widower. I think you know that. His house was burgled last night, we found him bludgeoned to death at the scene after we received an anonymous tip off.'

'No!' Peta gasped, turning ashen. 'There was a man there. We had coffee.'

'A single coffee cup was found, it's being checked now for prints,' he turned and called to one of the men in the room. 'Get her shoes, we'll see if they match the footmarks in the hallway.' He looked back at Peta coldly. 'He was a man who enjoyed the occasional company of women who came from the wrong end of town. Apparently these women were well compensated. Just wasn't enough for you, was it?' He spat the last words at Peta before turning away. The officer was nearly out the door when a voice stopped him. One of the young policemen was holding the plastic bag with the baton.

'Look at this!' he said.

'Put it down you fool, that's evidence,' ordered the gruff voice. 'Get these morons out of here, Sergeant, and seal the room.'

As the young policeman placed the baton next to the satchel case Peta looked at the eagle's head and noticed the dark stains around the beak and the eyes. She saw hair sticking to the stains.

Peta heard the gruff voice trailing off toward the stairs.

'We'll find the other stuff she took. My guess is that she pawned them last night. This girl doesn't look smart enough to know a dealer. If the Prosecution could prove that she did, well they'd just about throw away the key.'

Peta remembered Angel's last words. 'In the morning you will be given the opportunity to start a new phase in your life.' She remembered the smile of the nondescript man and, as part of her brain began registering the end of life as she knew it, another part was sure it heard quiet, mocking laughter. It was equally sure the envelope in the satchel case would contain the name of a dealer.

***

On board an Air France flight a tall, angular man in Business Class sipped cognac. The Cote D'Azur was lovely at this time of year, the man thought. What's more, his contacts would appreciate the several exquisite pieces that he had packed carefully into his luggage. Pieces that, if found by a curious customs officer, could easily pass for gifts. He smiled to himself. You just had to know what to take, and never get greedy. Still, it was a shame poor old Angelo had come home when he was meant to be at his Bridge Club.

He picked up a newspaper next to him and saw Peta's face on the front page. Prosecution was asking for a life sentence. Dreadful shame, the man thought, smiling. Still, it appeared that the girl's ex husband, an aspiring barrister, was taking her case pro bono. He was sure that a good defence would get the girl off, and who knew what would happen after that? Perhaps the couple would reconcile. He shrugged and turned to the social pages, which were already covering the party season in Cannes breathlessly. There were rich pickings to be had, green pastures indeed.

Tony Dwyer

Springwood

The Liberation of Ted Farmer

Robyn Nance

Valley Heights

Second Prize, Blue Mountains Spring 2010

Charlie was sitting on the Royal's verandah

With his old mates, Pete and Bill

When they saw Ted Farmer's trusty ute

Come chugging over the hill.

'Well stone the flamin' crows,' said Charlie

'That's an unfamiliar sight

His missus must have let him out,

and I bet not without a fight.'

Ted's wife was notoriously bossy

And ruled Ted with an iron hand

To see him in town in the middle of the day

Meant he'd finally made a stand.

Just as the weekly bus pulled in

The ute came to a shuddering stop

Out of the bus stepped a beautiful girl

You could almost hear the jaws drop.

They watched as Ted stepped forward

And whispered in the stranger's ear

He escorted her over to the ute

Dropping her bags into the rear.

He pointed out the three watchers –

Charlie, Bill and Pete

And the girl waved gaily and blew a kiss

As she climbed into the ute's front seat.

Lifting their glasses of amber

The three wondered who she could be

They all came up with suggestions

But no answer could they see.

As the ute drove away they returned

To the world's problems and the drought

They forgot all about Ted and his guest

And the fact he'd driven north, not south.

Five days went past and the three old mates

Were having their daily 'good oil'

When they saw the town's only police car

Pull into the front of the Royal.

The passenger door opened and a woman appeared

And they recognised Ted Farmer's wife

She seemed a shadow of her former self

As her face registered worry and strife.

Dan Roberts, the cop approached the three

And asked if they'd seen Ted Farmer

'Not for a coupla days,' they said

Then mentioned the beautiful charmer.

'Just as I feared,' Ted's wife cried out

'It's that bloody internet –

He said he was looking for a new house dog

But picked a different kind of pet!'

As the months went by there was no word

Of Ted – he'd simply disappeared

The three old mates called it "the great escape"

Drank their beers and quietly cheered.

Robyn Nance

Valley Heights

Paris Match

Samantha Miller

Faulconbridge

First Prize, Blue Mountains Summer 2010

In a narrow street in the 7th arrondissement of Paris; an unremarkable, yet attractive residential area, is the tiny shopfront of Madame Chauval – the seamstress. It is usefully placed; along the road from the launderette and close to several pensions and small hotels. It was there that Sandrine took herself on a Saturday afternoon in July for her fitting.

Sandrine knew that the dress she would wear at the Bastille Day dinner would be a coup de grace. She knew that all the men would fall at her feet. This dress would levitate her to the heights of a goddess. After all what woman in Paris doesn't feel this way when being fitted for a new dress?

Madame Chauval welcomed Sandrine. They knew each other well and had done business on several occasions. There was a trust between them that resulted in a mutual profit. Sandrine always looked stylish and Madame did well out of this.

The two women were very different in looks and age. Madame was a woman of a certain age, though very well kept by a retired politician who had purchased the shop and its flat for her some twenty years ago. She was still attractive, classically stylish and always impeccably groomed. Her hair remained nut brown due to the ministrations of Claude in the rue de Charles. Her eyes sparkled as much as her few modest items of jewelry and the LCD of her till, which she could beat to the calculation of moneys owed. She was small and birdlike and although her real name was Mignon, she always referred to herself as Madame.

Sandrine was young and fresh, living in the confidence of her own attractiveness. An accomplished coquette from an early age, Sandrine drank in the admiration of others quite naturally. It had always been so. She was a little too tall, her teeth a bit crooked, but her bottom and breasts were round and high. Her eyes were dark and turned up. Her hair was curly and untamed and her mouth was fashionably large. Why should men not pursue her? Madame had said as much since pinning her first party dress.

***

From a long way across the world a couple came to visit Paris. They stayed in one of the lovely little hotels; this one just around the corner from Madame's little shop.

Jo and her husband Robert were enjoying Paris. It was so romantic, it was ridiculous. Was this because everyone said it was so, or was this why everyone said it was so?

They walked the streets holding hands. Drank café in the brassières. Took the lift and walked up the Eiffel Tower. The view from above was captivating. Napoleon had arranged the building of much of central Paris in a neat star shape. Jo and Robert laughed that Napoleon had carried off in Paris what Burley Griffin had rendered so sterile in Canberra.

They retired to their room often to make love and sleep during the day, a usually unheard of luxury for a professional couple.

Jo and Robert wanted to visit the Moulin Rouge. This was something that was so essentially French to them, that despite the fact they would not normally visit a dancing show, they really wanted to see this one. The draw of the cancan lured them and they found themselves signed up for a dinner and show package through one of the tourist agencies recommended by the brochures found at Madame Bricolage's front desk at the hotel de Motte Picquot.

This trip was some days away, but in order to prepare they visited the launderette around the corner to wash some clothes and ensure they were suitably garbed for their night out. It was here that Robert discovered the rip in the seam of his good pants. They must be fixed. He had no others suitable. Shouldn't be a problem, as there must be a repair shop nearby.

***

Sandrine was standing in her dress before the full-length mirror in the tiny shop. Madame knelt behind her on a small cushion, lifting the hem of the dress here and there. The door opened and a couple walked in.

It was immediately obvious that the couple were not Parisians. Their clothes were more suited to a hiking picnic than a walk in the city of love. They were not even French. Sandrine's mind ticked off her list, certainly not American, not German, not English....?

Madame continued to raise and lower Sandrine's hem until the level was satisfactory to both women. Then Madame stood up gracefully and walked behind the counter.

"Tres belle, le robe," commented Jo in very bad French. Sandrine smiled and stretched herself. She walked behind the counter and entered a cubicle to the left.

***

Madame turned her attention to the task of dealing with the foreign tourists. At least they bothered to try to speak French. The woman seemed more skilled in this department, though she displayed more enthusiasm than skill. The man was nodding a lot and every now and then he would glance away and then down as if his lack of language embarrassed him.

It appeared that the man required a seam to be sewn in his pants. This would be no problem. He could leave them with her and could pick them up in five days.

***

Entering the cubicle with Madame's back to her, Sandrine pulled the curtain almost closed. Through the mirror in the cubicle she could feel the man's eyes on her. They flicked up and away again.

Sandrine began to remove the dress. She moved very slowly and very carefully, so as not to disturb the marks that indicated the desired length of the garment. She also moved with a great deal of enjoyment, sensing the man's eyes, imagining his breath on her neck, his hand on her thigh.

***

Five days appeared to be a problem for the couple. They were going to a good restaurant on Tuesday. The woman was earnest and polite, but her French was so bad and her clothes unattractive. Madame would not understand immediately.

***

Sandrine stood in her lingerie and fussed over the dress. She slid her eyes over to the mirror to ensure her audience was still entranced. He was controlled. He was subtle, and though she liked the look of him, he could have been anyone. This was about Sandrine.

She bent down to pick up her handbag, showing round cheeks of her bottom and the place where her panties creased over between her fat pussy lips. The man looked quickly at Madame and then at her again.

Taking her lipstick out of her bag, Sandrine ran the deep red over her lips slowly and looked the man in the eye. Carefully, she winked. Then she took her dress from a hanger in the cubicle, slid it over her arms and buttoned up the front.

***

As Sandrine emerged from the cubicle, the man and his wife were leaving the shop. They had a receipt from Madame for the pants, which they could pick up on Tuesday afternoon.

***

In the street, Robert walked quickly. As they arrived back at their room, Robert pressed himself against Jo.

'Oh my God!' He exclaimed. 'That woman was teasing me!'

'What woman?' asked Jo.

As her husband finished his story, Jo laughed. It was the laugh of a woman loved; a woman who knew her husband. He was titillated. He was flattered. Yet, he loved his wife. He began to make love to her and it was good.

'Perhaps I should let you pick up your pants by yourself,' Jo teased.

***

Back at the tiny shop, Madame Chauval turned to Sandrine. 'He will be back for more, that one.' she said.

Samantha Miller

Faulconbridge

Everything Seems to be Broken

Elizabeth Diehl

Wentworth Falls

Third Prize, Blue Mountains Spring 2010

Hello Jack you will be pleased to know that I am alive and well of body and almost sound of mind or will you? I tried to send a message to you but they would not allow me to send anything; so I sit and write this in the hope one day you will read it. I don't' think anyone ever understood me; but you have always understood me; or I thought you did; I just want you and the others to know who I really am. Not the broken thing you last saw.

I am longing for you to come and take me home; to put your arms around me and tell me it's all ok and we will be ok. When I am in your arms I feel like I have died and gone to heaven. There is something special about our relationship even if it has been like a roller coaster; and broken for the moment. You taking me home is not going to happen anytime soon, I know that and I know how badly I hurt you and the children. They tell me I will have to remain here for sometime to finish off my healing process. I have been living in a delusional world; acting a little crazy at times and I seemed to be insane to most people. Everything around me was shattered and broken; or is that another of my illusions? Sometimes I hear voices inside my head and I wonder if it's spirit talking to me or the craziness inside of myself.

At the toss of a coin I would explode and seem a little crazy to anyone listening. I would lose control and not be able to regain it for a very long time. I attacked anyone within arms length or my tongue lashed out and cut deeply into people's souls; destroying innocence; friendships and relationships; like the force of the cyclone I destroyed whatever was in my path. Every time I think of you I have to stop and try hard to remember to breathe; I miss you so much. There was a storm raging all around and in me and I had no idea where to shelter and how to stop it. I felt desperate and I felt like I was losing control. The word 'control' keeps coming up and I get all nervous when I think of it; such a powerful word; such a small word; a word that can cause so much pain.

I lay awake and wonder will I ever get a chance to tell you how I feel; and to be able to touch you and to feel your arms around me now that would be perfect. You cringed and pulled away from me as they took me; and I saw the tears of terror streaming down your face. I gave you my heart and you turned out to be a Judas. Are you a Judas or did you do the right thing?

As they took me away I screamed out silently for you to forgive me to know that it was not me; that I would never intentionally hurt you. You walked away from me, turned your back and as they put me in the van I knew then with a certainty that I had destroyed yet another relationship and it was broken; shattered and lost like myself.

Someone always gets hurt and someone always loses. Is there ever a winner in love and war? Was our relationship love or war? I suspect a little of both. My heart aches and my soul cries out for you to understand the real me. The rage and anger inside of me came from deep within me; it was not of my making.

We met when we were young and feel deeply in love but I always kept something physically and emotionally from you. I tried to overcome it and I tried to love fully but there was always something inside of me that raged and still does at the injustice of it all. I am so much better now but they tell me I still have a way to go before I am completely healed and allowed to go home to you; do you still want me, you never come to visit me, where are you? Did I break you; are you broken like me?

I was born the second child of four and like any small child I had dreams and hopes for my future. Laughter and tears were the norm in our house and there was love, lots of love. My parents were loving and wonderful people; did they know? Did anyone know my dirty secret? Was it written on my forehead for all to see? As an adult I did lots of intense work on myself to forgive and forget, but if I am to be honest with you and myself I did not dig deep enough. I held back for fear of losing my mind; how ironic is that?

I blamed my moods on PMS and then on menopause but deep down I knew it was that 'secret' I kept to myself causing it. Our children suffered for it, and this haunts me every day of my life. I lay awake thinking of them and how I almost destroyed their lives with my 'anger' and my 'secret'. Was it wrong of me to keep it to myself, should I have told you before we married and the children long before I did?

Then one day I confessed my dirty 'secret' and you and I cried together; holding each other and you whispered into my ear that it did not matter to you; that you would always be here for me. We decided not to tell the children; too much information for ones so young. Were we right; has it helped or hurt them keeping secrets only hurts people; or does it?

My childhood was like most; school and homework with visits to grand parents and church on Sundays. In summer we sang all the way to the beach in our Holden with the tailgate up and we ate water melon sitting on the hot sand. I was a skinny little kid with thin brown hair; who loved to climb trees and talk to the fairies; and make mud pies; ride my bike and play hopscotch with my friends and siblings. We played hide and seek in the bush land surrounding the school.

We dipped the plaits of the girls in front of us in the ink wells and we drank warm milk in bottles. We played cricket and used hula hoops when we could get one, they were in big demand. If we were lucky we would be brought an ice cream when we went to the movies.

Dad grew vegetables in our back garden and mum baked apple and blackberry pies. We would go down into the bush and pick the blackberries, always coming home with the stain of berries on our mouths; sometimes eating more than we brought home. Nana dropped in often and with her visits came laughter and love; she was such a wonderful loving giving woman. Mum's very much like her and I am like them in many ways. The only thing is they did not have the anger inside them that I have.

Life was simple and happy until the day my innocence was taken from me; the day of terror and disbelief. You know all this because we have talked about my childhood many times, but we never really talked about my loss of control or my bouts of temper or the depression and anger; my black dog days and the excessive drinking. I guess it was easier to sweep it all under the carpet and pretend it was all ok.

They tell me it is normal for woman like me; the abused to feel anger; to lose control and strike out at the loved ones around us. Maybe I went too far; is that why you let them come and take me away or was it because I lost my mind and tried to take my life? My brother took my innocence all those years ago he should have killed me then and there; it would have saved all this pain and anguish.

I drank to forget; to dull the pain so I did not have to think; but it never helped it just got worse. It got so bad that I found it hard to get out of bed and to function. The black dog days grew worse and the anger raged inside of me, spilling out and creating chaos all around me. I conquered my drinking habit; so those days are over but now I have to face reality sober; not such a good thing. I have been seeking; searching and trying to find myself in all this mess for years. I know underneath all of this I am a good loving person. I try to embrace life and face my fears but the anger gets in the way. I have been so tired of being depressed and I wonder why I am like this? Then I discovered that depression is 'anger' turned inwards and it became clear to me what I had to do.

Does my brother ever stop to think about how he ruined my life, how dirty he has made me feel? How many others has he devastated and how many lives has he ruined? Nobody would listen to me and when they did they would say; I was imagining it, I was telling lies and I was naughty girl and it was probably my fault for encouraging him. How can a small child encourage something like that, how would I have know about such things? I grew up shy and afraid of boys; I only ever felt comfortable around my family; but never completely comfortable around my brother and still don't. Over the years other boys and men tried to use my body; the anger raged and burned inside of me but I fought back and I have survived, just.

Life with you has been mostly good and we have wonderful grown children; but I have not been fair to you. I have held back part of myself and never really let you love me like you should. There have been many times when I have raged and ranted at you and I saw the pain in your eyes and the children's eyes. Once I unleashed the anger I could not stop and we all suffered for it.

Do you remember how we met? We were on a blind date; you walked into the room and crossed the dance floor and stood beside me. The only words you said were "Hello Sue" and "Can I hold your hand". You just stood there staring at me and that is how we remained for most of the night. Both of us were shy and had no idea how to make the first move. I remember thinking I can not go out with him again; he's boring but when you rang the following week I weakened and the rest is history.

I was a child growing into a woman and you a young boy trying to become a man. We knew nothing of love and relationships; I thought that love came with abuse; not that you physically abused me. I have tried really hard not to let the children see this other side of me; the dirty side. I wanted them to grow up in a loving family with their innocence intact. Did I do a good job, who will judge me?

Life here is ok; they let you have free time to wander in the gardens; even if it is surrounded by a huge wall. I feel comfortable with the wall I have live behind one most of my life. This time of the year is nice, the daffodils are out and the air is crisp just the way I like it. Remember how much I loved it when the autumn came and trees changed colour and then after a long cold winter came spring with the flourish of new buds on the trees. Only as a child did I ever love the summer, I worshipped the sun and would lay out in it all day if I could. I have a room to myself here whereas the others are in a dormitory with at least 8 people. I am not sure why I get to have a room to myself; did you arrange it? The games room is noisy and has a lot of crazy people in it; so I try to avoid it but they want let me; and like the group sessions that I dislike I have to attend.

They are confronting and the other people are always wanting to know what I am here for and why did I try to finish off what they see as a perfect life? I have no interest in telling complete strangers my inner most thoughts; I'm not comfortable with that. It is quite amazing how other people see your life; I guess it is different looking in from outside. I wonder how the children perceived our life; how did you see it; was there always a black cloud hanging over our relationship for you to?

Our children seem well adjusted adults, but are they really, what is going on in their minds? The counselor says I am doing really well, would they say that if they read my private diary that I hide in the walled in garden. I have searched for years why some people do what they do to others, and still the answer eludes me; do you have the answer?

They search every ones bags and take away the mobile phones when we come in here. Most of the others have phone privileges; apparently you told them you did not want me to phone you anymore; why? I feel broken and isolated; where are you? They make us sit in on a meditation class and this makes me uncomfortable. For a very long time I have been trying to work out who I am; maybe I need to become a monk; the Buddhist are such peaceful people. The solitary life would suit me to a degree; I love people but they can be so cruel, what is happening to this world? Why are people so cruel?

When they give me my sleeping pill at night I pretend to swallow it, I have gotten very good at putting it up on the roof of my mouth and then when I am completely happy they are not watching me I put it up my vagina till the morning and then I flush it. I lay awake and dream of you and our love making and the happy times we shared. The night is the only time that is completely mine, it is the time when I reflect on my life and how I got here. It's the time when the angels come to visit me and I am not so alone; I like that.

Do you miss me at all or have you replaced me with another lover? I miss you more than I will ever be able to say on paper. I'd like to get the chance to show you how much I miss you and love you, but you never come. It would be nice to have something else in my vagina other than a pill; is that too rude for you; should I say these things to you? Never mind I've written it now so it will have to stay on the paper. It's crowded and noisy here but I feel so alone and lonely. I have felt this way most of my life; actually all of my life. I can be in the midst of a huge crowd and still feel alone, why is that? Are you lonely?

I've never been one for having loads of friends like my sister; I prefer just to have a couple of close friends. She surrounds herself with people all the time and can not bear to be alone. I on the other hand do not mind being alone, but then when I feel the need for company I have no one to call up. It's like a catch twenty two thing isn't it? We always want what we do not have. Do you still want me? We were made for loving each other; I could never get enough of you and you me. Oh Jack smile; I can see you frowning that frown of yours; lighten up Jack.

I long to walk by the seashore and collect shells and then wonder what I am going to do with them. I have a compulsion to collect every brochure I find and you would always laugh at me for taking them home. Have you cleaned out all the draws I stored them in and thrown it all out or is it still waiting for me? I am a woman that likes a tidy house, but don't look in my draws and cupboards they are a mess. Does this tell you I am orderly on the outside and a mess on the inside; I think it does. I wonder what the head shrink would make of this one if I told them; I tell them very little. I hate talking about my inner most thoughts, it hurts oh how it hurts and I feel broken and out of control when they make me talk in the group. Even writing this to you hurts and causes me pain.

I miss my quilting, but I am not allowed to have scissors and needles, they think I am still a danger to myself. They constantly ask me what put me over the edge that day and I never say, to this day I have not told anyone the reason why. Maybe if you come to visit me I will tell you, but you never come. They tell me until I am willing to open completely up to them and be more willing to share my inner most thoughts I will remain here. It's not such a bad place to be. I remember when I told my mother that there have been times when I would like to lose my mind and not have to think; and then I got scared the God's would hear me and take my mind away; so I stopped saying it, but I guess they decided that I had said it enough and they stepped in and took it that day. For who in their right mind would take their own life? Did you not see the danger signs; did you not hear me screaming out to you for help? Were you so blind to me that you did not see the torture I was in and how badly I needed help? Have you ever stopped to look at our relationship and see how toxic it was? I would often say to you that you were like "a dead man walking", because you appeared to not feel. Were you willing to live with me under any circumstances?

Our love became a very different kind of love; we went from that intense passion to taking each other for granted; not seeing the real person. Most couples go through this and some come out the other side more in love or they decide it is all too hard and they go their own ways. I took this decision out of your hands; I could see you were struggling to hang in there. It's not why I did what I did that day; and it's not your fault, please do not blame yourself for that one. You can take the blame for some of our broken relationship, but not all of it; I was there too.

Love can be a painful experience and tear you apart; or it can complete you. I am glad to have experienced ours; there have been so many beautiful times and on the other hand so many painful times. We have laughed loved and grown together over the years and seen the children grow into beautiful adults. Our son has your quiet spirit and my impulsive behaviour, our daughter is the spit out of my mouth and also has my impulsive behaviour but has many of your family's genes; some good and some not so good. I am a loving giving woman and I have always tried to be a good wife and mother I am afraid I might have failed at both of these, please forgive me for that.

They tell me I have a lot of work to do on myself and until I am willing to share more of myself with them I will remain here a broken spirit. Did I tell you this already; sometimes I get mixed up and I forget where I am and when reality comes back I want to scream and scream; but if I do they stick sharp needles in me and they lock me up till I calm down. I feel tormented each and every day here because you do not come. I feel like a caged animal yet I will not and can not tell them what they ask of me. I suppose is not too bad here, there is the garden to walk in and there are daffodils to pick. You don't come; where are you? I keep hoping you will come to one of our family group sessions, but you do not come.

You stay away and I stay here locked in my mind and behind the garden walls. Dreams are all I have; no one can take them away from me; not even my brother. Have you moved on; are you seeing someone else, is she completing you better than I could; is this why you stay away? I feel tormented when I think of you with someone else yet I know you need to move on and mend yourself. Don't stay broken like me my love. The sun is shining and I am allowed to go out into the garden this afternoon; but not till the counselor says it is ok. They tell us when to eat and when we can go to the toilet; they govern our lives and they rule with an iron fist; yet they are kind and they care. Do you care; where are you my love?

Sometimes I think of that day, the day you let them take me away and I wish you had not come home so early. You called out to me s you came into the house and said there was something you wanted to tell me, what is it? Even in the fog I was in I can remember the shocked look on your face when you found me taking a bath in blood red suds. I laugh to myself when I think about how comical I must have looked, all dressed in my best in the bath with cut wrists. Did I steal your thunder; did I take from you the glory of what was so important that you had to come home early? Bugger you! Were you going to tell me you had; had enough and were leaving me or were you finally going to talk to me about our toxic broken marriage and tell me it will be alright? It's not alright is it; you never come here; is it because I disgust you that much or are you such a mouse of a man you can not face me and the truth of who I am? I am woman who loves you and I am here alone in all this madness I am here screaming silently out for help.

I am a victim and I do not belong here, I know this with all my heart but I will not and can not tell why I tried to end my life. Why is it so important for them to know? Crazy people walk around here all day and some even have those straight jackets on and rock back and forwards moaning so loudly it almost deafens you. Is this to be my life forever more, a crazy lonely woman locked behind a garden wall screaming out for help and not getting any?

Remember when I told you about my brother and you said I did not ever have to see him ever again; well I am so pleased I do not have to see him; it just disturbs me too much. The counselors are always asking me to talk about him and I tell them to mind their own bloody business and I usually scream at them and that is when I get one of those needles and go to sleep for awhile, did I tell you it is nice here?

The counselor said I was progressing nicely, what the 'fuck' does that mean? Progressing nicely! Sounds like a barn dance to me; he talks so much shit. Did I tell you that it's nice here; great garden. They let us walk amongst the daffodils and sometimes we are allowed to pick them; hmm it is nice here. I wanted to go and get some material to make a quilt for my bed but they said the shops are closed on Sunday; but I knew it was Monday.

I think they are the mad ones; not me. Everyone knows Monday comes after Saturday. Hmm they said that I could go another day; but then they said I was not ready to go out, it just goes to show you; who the crazy one is. When you come in next time please bring my sewing and some blue material. Oh and also when you come; please bring my brother I have not seen him for awhile; we can all sit down and have a nice cup of tea together. I hear the visitors bell ringing and the ever hopeful foot steps running down the hall to see if they have a visitor; stupid people; don't they know no one comes. I pray that today is the day you will bring the children to see me.

Good night my love; sweet dreams and please give my brother my love. Yours forever more Mary the mother of your children xx

Elizabeth Diehl

Wentworth Falls

Ticket

Aristidis Metaxas

Katoomba

Second Prize, Blue Mountains Autumn 2011

When I was young my father would, sometimes on a weekend for a few hours, take me to his place of work, and while he was busy doing what adults would do in their office I would be left to wander freely in the big International Terminal. Life was so much simpler then and the ever present eye of fear was something yet to come in a future time. All the busyness, the comings and goings of travellers to destinations yet unknown to me, instilled a sense of longing for far off places in my mind.

Over time I would get to know most of the people working there, and I remember one man in particular, who was almost like a fixture at this airport. There was something about him, some might say 'other worldly', which drew me to him and somehow he became, second only to my father, the most important influence in my life. Sometimes we would sit and talk, and sometimes we would just sit. His name was Mr Jones, and this is his story ...

Mr Jones was a well known figure at this gateway of departures and arrivals; he had been around the place for, some say, nearly 20 years or more. Nobody really knew who he was, where he came from, or much about his life; he was just known as Mr J, and as far as everyone was concerned, was part of the place. It seemed that he had nowhere else to go, and had been living at the airport as if it were his home. All the people working there got to know him really well – nobody had the heart to throw him out. Kindhearted people gave him free coffee and often a hot meal. There was no one who was unkind to Mr J as he ambled daily around the terminal. He became like a good luck charm to the place.

Often what he liked to do mostly was to pretend that he was about to depart on an overseas trip, or had just arrived, carrying a battered old brown suitcase held together with a leather strap, a suitcase not seen these days. What with all the shiny new fangled fancy trolleys and slick looking cases Mr J and his suitcase looked like a real curiosity from times past. But it suited him – like himself it was old, worn, nearly falling apart, had seen better days, had seen much and carried many things. Now, it just contained a comb, a toothbrush, an old photograph of his wife long gone and picture of his children, as well as an old faded Bible.

Somehow for reasons still unknown to this day Mr J was able to walk freely around the terminal, walking past the police, immigration, customs and security checks, and nobody ever tried to stop him or seemed to mind. Sometimes, when the place wasn't too busy with passengers he would even hand in his suitcase at the check counter, and then whoever was on duty would always put it on the conveyer belt with a smile, where it would disappear and, somehow, minutes later would reappear at the arrival carousel. Mr J would then walk through the gates and on the way tell other travellers nearby that he was going to all kinds of exotic places: Tahiti, the Caribbean, America, Hawaii or Europe. Or he would get his case from the carousel and tell how he had just arrived from overseas and chat about the wonderful places he had been to and all the sights he had seen. It was even said that Mr J at one time long ago was a professor of art and history and so he really knew, as they say, 'a lot' about these places. Occasionally it would happen that a new security guard or official, not knowing Mr J that well, would become overeager and try to move him from the terminal, seeing him more of a nuisance than anything else and a bother to the many passengers, but other staff would soon reassure them that Mr J was just who he was and harmless. And so days and years passed.

It was one of those warm late autumn afternoons, when the light was really golden and shining fully into the terminal, giving the place a warm glow and softening the harshness of chrome and glass efficiency. The old man was resting on one of the seats in the departure area, feeling a little tired that day and not quite himself. He sat there wondering what his life had been all about, and he was sunk deeply in his memories and thoughts when suddenly a voice on the address system made an unexpected announcement: 'Attention please, Mr Jones, Mr Jones. Would you kindly come to the Customer Courtesy Desk?' He heard the voice and the name but was sure that it wasn't for him – after all who would want to see or talk to him? He wasn't important.

But again, this time with more urgency, the voice announced: 'Your attention please, Mr Jones, calling Mr Jones. Please come to the Customer Courtesy Desk urgently.' He thought 'Who could that be?' Funny that someone here would have the same name as him, but then again Jones was a common name so it wasn't that unusual. Then he heard someone else call his name and as he looked up he could see Mr Dekker walking towards him. He was one of the long time airport administrators who had known him for many years, a good man who never spoke a harsh word to anyone. He was strikingly tall, over 6ft 5in; it was said that his ancestors in a different place and time had been tribal chiefs in Africa. Mr Dekker smiled and said, 'Hey there Mr Jones. I think that important announcement may just be for you. Why not go and see what it's all about? Can't do any harm.' He helped him on his feet and watched him as he walked towards the service desk in the distance.

Mr Jones arrived at the desk and the woman behind the counter, although she was unfamiliar to him and he had never ever seen her at the airport in all the years he had been there, smiled as she saw him as if she were greeting an old familiar friend and said, 'Mr Jones, how good to see you. Look what I have for you! Someone handed this to me just a moment ago. It is a ticket and boarding pass for you.'

'For me?' he asked in surprise. 'But how, who, who on earth would ...?' He took the ticket. It was an extraordinary colour, golden with a shimmer that made it hard to focus on the writing. Nevertheless, he tried to read the ticket: Departure Gate – 44; Flight no – 44; Passenger – Mr Jones; Seat – First Class. But there was no destination. 'Surely this must be a mistake,' said Mr J. 'This can't be for me.'

The woman smiled again and said, 'A lady came and handed it to me insisting that it must be given to you and no one else. Please hurry or you may miss your flight. Bon Voyage, Mr Jones!'

Something odd happened to the air as Mr Jones looked at the ticket again – it was like the air was bending, shifting, like on those hot lazy summer days when you get a heat haze and things go out of focus. He looked around at the people milling about him in the airport, they all had faces alright but he couldn't make out any of them clearly. 'My eyesight must be going,' he thought as he looked at the departure board which was usually full of all kind of announcements of departing flights. But to his surprise the only departure on the board was Flight 44, boarding now at Gate 44. He held on tightly to his old battered suitcase and walked as quickly as he could through the departure gates, handing his ticket to the attendant who put it through the check-in and wished him a pleasant trip. Nobody asked for his passport or identity, nobody checked his suitcase; it was all happening so quickly and in slow motion.

Mr J now walked even faster. In the distance he saw Gate 44 and he hurried towards it afraid that he may miss his flight or that perchance he would after all wake up and find that this was just a dream.

Mr Dekker was watching his old friend from a distance feeling that something was not right. He couldn't put his finger on it exactly but he sensed that Mr J was acting rather peculiar today, this was not his usual imaginary journey, and when he even passed on an offer of a coffee from a nearby worker, Dekker felt that this was extremely odd, the old man never ever refused a tempting offer like this. A momentary shiver ran up his spine and as he turned away he thought, 'Something out of the ordinary is about to happen' but immediately brushed it aside – airports were no place for superstition.

Mr J had finally reached Gate 44, running along the gangway and entering the plane. Stepping through the doorway he heard a sound like electric static in the air, a hissing sound and something closing behind him but he was too astounded at what he saw before his eyes. Something took him right back to his childhood. He had never ever been on a plane in his life before. All the soft lights, the beautiful shining interior – there was a softness, warmth and gentleness in that space that made him feel so filled with happiness and joy that he almost cried out loud. He sank back into the comfortable seat and closed his eyes.

Someone brought him a cushion and gently covered his body with a blanket. 'Kindness,' thought Mr Jones. 'What would our lives be without loving kindness?' He still had no idea as to where he was going but somehow it no longer mattered. All he could feel was a tremendous sense of love enveloping him and he felt that he had, after all these years, come home. Soon after he was seated the door closed, and as he opened his eyes again to his astonishment he saw that he was the only passenger on the big jetliner. He could hear the voice of the captain through the speakers saying quietly, 'Flight 44 requesting clearance for takeoff.'

Ben, the control tower operator, was an old hand at traffic control, he could almost do his job in his sleep. Not that he did, but this afternoon on his shift he was startled out of his routine when, after turning away from his screens for a second to grab a pen and turning his attention back to his computers he noticed that all traffic had suddenly cleared the sky – not a single plane was requesting to land and the only departing flight was a Flight 44. Checking and double checking the systems and instruments and drawing the attention of his colleagues and shift supervisor to the strange occurrence didn't make things any clearer – they too had the same result as Ben's. Although he found the situation unusual to say the least, and after his supervisor gave the OK to proceed, he found no further reason to delay the flight's departure so he said, 'Flight 44 all clear for takeoff' and entered the coordinates into the system.

In his time as a traffic controller he had seen many planes but what he saw taxiing down the runway took his breath away. A huge aircraft, bigger than he had ever seen, golden and shimmering in the afternoon sun, with no other marking or identifications except a big 44 beneath golden wings painted on its fuselage, but oddly enough with no sound coming from the plane's seven engines as it steadily lifted its mighty bulk and disappeared into the autumn sky. To Ben's amazement, the blip on the screen indicating the position of Flight 44 also faded without a trace. He tried re-tracking it over a larger area but could not find the plane anywhere. He reported the incident in his log, and when next he looked at his screen it was once again filled with planes requesting takeoff and landing.

***

It was one of the cleaners who found Mr Jones early next morning; he thought he was just sleeping on the bench in the departure lounge at Gate 43. His old suitcase was there right next to him and his body was covered with a beautiful dark blue blanket, with a fine golden border and a 44 beneath wings embroidered in the centre, his head resting on a small pillow of the same colour and monogram. After shaking him for a while he realised that Mr J had passed away. Someone called a doctor, and Mr J was declared dead, died sometime during the night around midnight. The undertaker came. They put the frail frame into a body bag, zipped it up and to the people who didn't know him he was just some old homeless man without relatives or next of kin who had died of old age.

Mr Dekker had been one of the first people to arrive after Mr J's body was discovered, and even as he hurried there he sensed that his friend had gone. As he put the old man's hands together as if in final prayer he saw a ticket in his right hand. It took some doing to free the piece of paper from his tight grip; the old man had really grabbed it so hard even in his final moments as if he had been afraid to let it go. He looked at the piece of paper again for a long time. It was a boarding pass alright, no doubt about it, although the paper had a strange feel to it. Yes, it was all there, it all checked out, it was a valid ticket: Flight 44, Departure Gate 44, Passenger Mr Jones.

Picking up the blue blanket and pillow with the golden wings he walked slowly back to his office, ran the boarding pass through the computer, already knowing what the answer would be – sure enough, it all cleared. Mr Jones had checked in for the flight that afternoon departing at the correct time at that gate. Dekker went through the air traffic control logs and there was no doubt that the flight had departed at precisely the time specified, although nobody seemed to be able to come up with an answer as to where the flight came from, just who owned the airline or where its destiny was, nor was there any record of the ticket's origin. Even though he scanned through the CCTV footages a dozen times hoping to find some concrete evidence, he could not even see anyone behind the Customer Courtesy Desk at the very moment when Mr Jones was standing there receiving his ticket, just an unearthly blue haze for a second or two. To make things even worse Departure Gate 44 didn't exist either – the last gate at the airport was 43, the place where they had found the body of Mr J.

He sat behind his desk all day and half the night as if in a trance with his mind spinning as he was trying to make sense of it all, occasionally touching the blue pillow on his desk as if to reassure himself that what he was seeing was actually real, looking at the ticket and the evidence, the computer and control tower logs presented. He talked with Ben and his colleagues for hours, and all were as perplexed as he was. For sure 'something' had happened that afternoon but what was it exactly. All the numbers and records were there but what did they represent? How was he going to explain any of this to anybody, when he couldn't even explain this to himself.

When night fell and the stars were coming out he tried to picture in his mind what his ancestors would have had to say. Most likely, nothing at all. In fact they would have merely smiled and knowingly nodded their heads. For them it would have been nothing out of the ordinary, a rite of passage to the other side, you don't ask questions about things like that; it would be considered, well, rude.

It was nearly midnight when he got up from his chair and began to make his way to the car park to drive home. On the way out he passed a waste bin and was about to throw the ticket away. But something stopped him from doing so, and he felt as if he were taken back in time, a time he remembered so well, a time when we were children ...

Aristidis Metaxas

Katoomba

The Wind at my Door

Robyn Chaffey

Hazelbrook

Third Prize, Blue Mountains Autumn 2011

I am sitting in my lounge

Enjoying the peace of the day

For perhaps the first time in a week or two

I breathe deeply

I luxuriate in the stillness of my mind

My music is playing

It's almost inaudible

Just enough to encourage the mood

I sit, so relaxed, almost entranced

I don't know when I last felt so at ease

My mind wanders

I hear again inside my head

Words of comfort

Words of friendship

Encouragements from those

Without expectation

With no demand for unattainable perfection

I am at peace

My thoughts reluctantly are disturbed

The wind at my door sounding the chimes

As I open the door to my home

The breeze wafting in

Carries perfumes

Of earth, and of cooking

It carries the sounds of a world at peace

It reminds me again of friendships

The door to my heart now springs open

But my mind holds its train

I think of each friend in turn

And compare to the wind in all it

There is she who attends

Like a Zephyr

Bringing freshness and warmth

And the softest caress

Then the Tornado

Who bowls right in

With momentary havoc attending

She leaves in her wake

Shock and disarray

But I'd not have her any other way

A favourite to me is my friend Gust

Strong, intermittent visits

Often knows just when to come

Takes one look, knows precisely where I'm at

His departure leaves me

Stronger than his arrival found

Then, there's little Flurry

Who comes and scurries round

She can never do enough

One day perhaps she'd let me do for her

I think perhaps my friends would say

That I'm the Whirlwind

Always spinning

Rarely holding my direction

Creating turmoil and disorder

As I rip and roar along the way

The many, varied, perfumed breezes

Who have touched my life and stayed

Are my backbone! They're my strength!

The ever welcome wind at my door!

Robyn Chaffey

Hazelbrook

Knock 'n Roll

Christina Frost Clayton

Woodford

Highly Commended, Blue Mountains Autumn 2011

Today I drove my new car! My husband John sat beside me offering words of encouragement and affirmation. I did it! I drove from Woodford to Hazelbrook and back again along Railway Parade. Indeed not a long distance but a milestone for me. It's been four years since I held a steering wheel and actually drove a car ...

I recall the last time I drove a car; it was one of those warm Friday afternoons ... the end of the working week and the excitement of heading up to the north coast for a relaxing weekend.

I lifted the boot of my car and placed my overnight bag inside, along with some DVDs, art paper and watercolours, anticipating a relaxing time painting the idyllic waterscape from the family cottage overlooking the bay. Yes, it will be a lovely weekend away from the busyness of home and work.

As I walked from home to car, my two beautiful old girls, Lady and Nala, my beloved thirteen year old dogs, shadowed me, ensuring that I wasn't going to get away without them! They knew from experience that when the travel bag was wheeled to the car, it meant that I was going away and sometimes they stayed home and were minded by family or friends; although they preferred to be with me. This time they were almost pushing their noses onto me reminding me that they were ready to go when I was! No way was I going to escape!!!

When I opened the door to place my handbag on the front passenger seat, Nala, with the beautiful soft brown hair and large brown eyes, leapt into the car before I had a chance to toss in my bag and jumped through to the rear seat and there she sat! You're not going without me! She was my 'special girl' who I had rescued as a ten week old pup and in the thirteen years that she had been my friend, rarely left my side, except when I went to work. Lady, my shaggy haired big girl with one blue and one brown eye, sat bewildered, gazing at us waiting for instructions to get in as well. My car, a two door Lancer, did not lend itself well to a Collie and an Old English sheepdog climbing through and resting on the rear seat, but we managed.

Nala was in and not budging, so I helped Lady in by lifting her hind legs and backside up and she pulled herself the rest of the way onto the back seat. Lady wasn't as flexible as she used to be. Age was creeping up on her and her large sheepdog hips were prone to aches and pains. So, there they were, sitting up looking at me as if to say, 'Well hurry up, what are you waiting for? Come on, we're ready to go.'

I ambled to the house feeling very relaxed, locked up and began my weekend adventure. John was already en route to the cottage as he worked in the city that day and was leaving from there. I phoned him before I left to let him know that I wasn't far behind him.

Stunning spring! The first of September and the first day of spring, the weather was warm and fine, just what was needed to lift the spirits after a cool and wet winter! It was going to be a fun weekend! Ah, springtime: a time for renewal and new beginnings. Wonderful!

Traffic! Lots of traffic! Damn! The M4 was at a standstill, a glass truck had lost its load! Hot, humid, intense waiting as the road was cleared. My poor old girls sat in the back, panting, thirsty and agitated. I opened the door and windows to let some air in. I filled their water bowl and they drank, just a little. I phoned John to let him know I would be late and noticed the traffic was moving again. Relief! I was worried that my girls would become too distressed if we were stuck there for too long.

It was early afternoon as I approached the F3, the traffic wasn't too heavy so the drive was pleasant and the breeze, lovely. I was enjoying listening to my music and the girls were asleep.

Crash! Bang! Bricks flying everywhere!

Truck in front of me was losing its load! Unbelievable! I veered towards the side of the freeway to avoid the shattering bricks. The truck veered there also. I quickly redirected my Lancer and passed the truck. No broken glass, no dents, no-one hurt. What a blessing!

Further along I pulled over again and phoned John as I needed to talk as I was upset by this second delay. As usual, he consoled me and I regrouped and continued on my way. He was almost at the cottage and I wished I was too!

The drive was so pleasant. The weather was warm and my old girls slept as I played my music and ate a few too many chocolates!

Thump! Hard thump! Really hard thump! What the!!!

What the ...! I'm rolling! My body was held firm in the grip of my seat. Searing pain in my right shoulder as I was thrust against the driver's door and my head exploded with pain as it hit the interior of the car again and again and again!

Black. No memory. Smoke? Burning? Petrol? What was that smell? My fingers struggled to locate the seatbelt clasp. Got it! It unlocked. Somehow I climbed through the driver's shattered window and felt the dry scratchy grass cutting my knees as I moved away from the burning smell.

Surreal. So surreal. Is this my bleeding body? Is this me sobbing? Helpless and hopeless! No! This couldn't be my story. My story is one of a relaxing weekend in the warm sunshine painting the water view from the cottage while John sails his sailboat. This can't be my story!

Who are those people crowding around me? What are they saying? Off duty ambulance officer? Medical student? People? Are those my legs? Yes I have two legs still, bloodied and cut, but two legs indeed. I place my hand on my face. What! Is that my blood? What is that hole in my face? I want my John! Where are my dogs? I want my dogs! I want my dogs! I want my dogs! My head aches. It screams! Voices and faces everywhere around me. Where are my dogs?????!!!!

She gets out of her car and walks towards me. 'I'm sorry', she says ...

'My dogs! I want my dogs! Where are my dogs?' I spoke! I speak! I'm alive! But where are my girls? I hear voices saying that the dogs have run off into the bush. They're afraid and are hiding. I managed to turn my head and then I saw it.

My car, my Lancer is upside down! It's balancing on its squashed, buckled and broken roof. My car! Is that really my car?

Did I just undo my seatbelt while dangling upside down in my shattered and broken car? Did I climb through a smashed window from an upside down position? Not me! Are they my belongings strewn across the bush? Did my car knock down all those trees? Am I really alive? Where are my dogs? I want my dogs! I want my husband! I want my daughter!

I try to stand up and several blurred forms surround me coaxing me back to the ground and steadying me.

'Stay there, don't try to move.'

'The ambulance is on its way.'

'Here's something to put on your face. Hold it to your face to stop the blood from gushing.'

'Don't worry; they can do wonderful things with plastic surgery these days, dear.'

'You're alive! It's okay, you're alive!'

'I will call your husband, what's the number?'

I say the number. I'm running on auto pilot. I hear the man's voice, 'There's no answer. I left my name for him to call me.' Kind, off duty ambulance driver; how fortunate for me. He gave me another surgical pad to press onto my face. Still gushing blood, still spurting all over me! I look at my hands and they are covered with dry and wet blood. Sticky.

'Where are my dogs? Lady! Nala! Come to mummy!' I call them, but they are nowhere. They are dead. I believe they are dead! People tell me they have run into the bush. Everyone is telling me lies! They know I won't survive without my girls. They are protecting me from the truth. They are dead!

Three ambulances arrive. I see them but cannot hear them nor can I hear the voices of those speaking to me. I am aching with sorrow for my old girls. They were so excited to go on our trip. They trusted me! I let them down. I feel so helpless. I cannot search for my girls. Agony.

I can hear again. A man is speaking about a semi trailer driver who called the police and ambulance and of the police who closed the F3 northbound lanes because of my accident. My accident! I didn't cause my accident! Where is she! Who is she? Why did she hit me from behind! A king hit! I had no control after a king hit! You tell me she was drunk! 0.28! Bull! No-one can drive with an alcohol reading of 0.28, that's almost six times the legal limit!!! How did she get into the car? How did she find the steering wheel? You say she was doing 140km/hr? And she said she was sorry!!!

'Just putting this injection into your hand, love. It will ease the pain.'

Am I in pain? Where are my girls? What are you doing to me? I need to look for Lady and Nala. No words escape from my mouth. My mouth has two openings now. Three lips! Why won't my face stop bleeding!

'Sorry love. I can't find the vein. I'll try your other hand. There we go. It's in now. Take it easy. We will have you at the hospital in no time at all.' He speaks to the off duty ambo who helped me, 'Why isn't she lying down? Why is she sitting?' I fade in and out of consciousness as I am placed on a stretcher, lifted then carried into the ambulance. The vehicle is spinning around me.

***

'Hey love; it's your hubby on the phone. Just told him you are leaving for John Hunter Hospital. Just talk to him so he can hear your voice.'

'Hello,' my voice shakes. 'I'm okay. Love you.'

John is speaking softly and tells me he will meet me at the hospital.

I am in the ambulance and my husband is going to the hospital to be with me and I have no idea where my beautiful old girls are. I cry. I cry. I cry.

I drift in and out of sleep as the ambulance is driven under siren to John Hunter Hospital. I hear conversations about a black BMW tailgating the ambulance and 'getting a free ride at 160 km/hr!' The ambo driver is calling the police. She misses the turn off and I hear someone tell me that we aren't far away and they are waiting for me in the emergency. There are two dreadful accidents en route to emergency and I am one of them.

I find myself in a white room with a very bright light above my head. The doctor is asking me to move my arms, legs and to blink and to speak if I am able. He is amazed! My injuries are not as serious as expected given the horrific state of my car as a result of the high speed crash. I am blessed to be alive. Not a broken bone. But my face ... and why am I so dizzy?

I fade into sleep. I hear voices and screaming and sobbing. A woman is hysterical. Another woman is angry. Another is snoring. I open my eyes and there is John leaning over me, touching my bloodied hair and he has tears trickling down his face.

He speaks, 'Why won't they leave us alone.' I fade again.

I wake. 'Lady and Nala! Our girls are lost on the F3,' I cry.

'Please John, find them,' I plead. He will not leave me. His wife is bloodied and cut open. Her face is slit and she has a punctured cheek with blood still spurting profusely. She cannot sit up and she is vomiting. He will not go. It is now about 7pm. The accident happened at 4:30pm. Two old dogs are somewhere along the very busy F3. Terrified. Or are they dead?

Time passes as we wait and many nurses, doctors and technicians hover near me discussing options for my treatment. I drift in and out of sleep as the morphine continues to smother my pain. John holds my hand and strokes my forehead. Another patient is brought into the emergency rooms and the ambulance driver is the same lady who drove me to this place. She notices me and speaks.

'We saw your dogs! They were on the side of the F3 near where you had your accident.'

'Are they alive?' I question.

'Yes, they are sitting and when we called to them they went into the bush, they are afraid.' She responded. 'There are people trying to get them for you.'

They are really alive! Then I feel numb with fear. They are absolutely terrified beside a major, busy highway. Who knows what injuries they have! 'Please God, don't let them run onto the road. They have survived this major crash and rollover; surely You won't let them die now! Please God, keep them safe. Please!' I beg.

John sits very still and quietly holds my hand. I can see in his eyes: he is filled with sorrow. He has experienced extreme loss in an accident before. I can feel his pain. Intense and excruciating, his tears trickle. So do mine, but I sob, loudly and deeply.

Two policemen walk up to my bed. One speaks to me.

'You're alive!' he exclaims with surprise. 'We have just come from the crash site. We are from the Crash Investigation Unit. You're alive!' He repeats incredulously. 'Your Lancer has been towed to our holding depot and your belongings are stored there too. We picked everything up. Everything is safe but I don't think you will be driving that car again ...'

'I got out myself. I didn't know it was upside down. I crawled out myself. Where are my dogs?'

I break into tears and sob again.

'I am amazed that your wife is alive,' he tells John. Then he pulls out his camera and shows John a picture. This is the car. John's face turns ashen grey.

'I got out all by myself ...'

I drift into sleep again, thinking about my girls and all that had happened. How would I tell Alyce? How will I tell my daughter about our girls? I wake and John tells me that he has phoned Alyce and told her about the accident and told her not to worry as I am safe. How will we tell her about the girls? I sob again. What about work? My class at school! I won't be able to teach until they sew my face up. John phones a teacher colleague with the news. We wait and wait for hospital decisions regarding my treatment. It's a busy night at John Hunter Hospital. Fridays in casualty are always busy nights...

'Please John, look for the girls. You can't help me here. The doctors will look after me, but there's no-one to look out for the girls. Please find them.' I beg. I sob. I plead.

Reluctantly he leaves to search for our old girls.

I drift in and out of sleep. I am moved to a tunnel for a CT scan. Next, I am taken for an x-ray and vomit on the nurse. She is cross with me! I didn't mean it. I'm very sorry but I'm sick. Morphine does that to me. They manage to x-ray me while I lay down as I cannot sit up. Spinning deliriously! I hate this!!! Where is that drunken woman! The high range drink driver with 0.28 blood alcohol reading! A doctor takes my blood to test my blood alcohol level. Nil.

It hurts!!! Stop that! 'Ouch! It stings!' The doctor has cleaned my face. He has wiped away the dried blood and is sewing the deep puncture wound in my cheek and then must sew my lip as it is slashed all the way across. There goes my kissability! Disability. I am fortunate that the puncture has missed the facial nerve and I can move my face. It hurts so much! Sewing my lip is stinging so much!

All done. I sleep. I think. I remember. I'm dizzy. I cry. I wake. I vomit. It is morning. I'm alone in a room. I panic! I cry out. A nurse is here.

'It's all right. You had a car accident. It was dreadful but you are safe now in hospital.'

'Where is John? Where are my dogs?'

She speaks, 'Go to sleep now and rest.'

I sleep.

I don't know how long I slept, but I wake to learn that it is midmorning. A nurse is speaking to me with a soft voice.

'Your husband just phoned. He has found one of your dogs.'

'Is the dog ... Alive ...?' I ask ...

'Yes it is,' she replies with a smile.

'Which dog is it?' I ask. I am so frightened to find out the answer to my question. I am confused. I'm a mess!

'It is Nala. Your husband said to tell you he has found Nala.'

I burst into tears. Uncontrollable sobs. Tears of joy, tears of confusion, sorrow and regret. I have betrayed my old girls' trust. I do not know how to feel or what to think ... If John has found Nala alive, where is Lady and is she alive? I am numb and roll over. My head spins again and I drift off. The morphine is doing its work.

Sometime later I hear a voice and feel a gentle touch on my arm ...

'Tina, Tina, your husband has phoned; he has found your other dog!'

I wake to the news. Unbelievable! Is that true? Really true? Are you pretending so I will feel better? I think, but no words come.

'It's true. He has both your pets alive and will be here to see you soon.'

I sob again, uncontrollable sobs of joy and relief. Thankyou God! All was taken from me ... I sat there on the side of the road with nothing but a bloodied mess, helpless and hopeless. All has been returned to me.

God, thankyou for my life. Thankyou for my good and kind husband. Thankyou for my beautiful daughter. Thankyou for my dear old girls. All has been returned to me. I drift back to sleep.

'Mummy, mummy!' I hear sobs and Alyce's voice. She hugs me and wipes her tears. She places a soft, brown teddy bear in my arms. John walks in with a smile and sits beside me. I gaze in wonder that they are with me and I am alive and cared for in a hospital.

'Here you both are.'

I am content. Sick, sorry and sore, but content.

'John, where were the girls? How did you find them?' I ask.

He speaks softly yet clearly. 'Here's an amazing story for you! Last night I drove the van and worked out from the police description where you had the accident. I parked on the side of the F3. It was so busy and the van was shaking as cars and trucks sped past. I got out of the van and walked into the bush and gathered a few of your bits and pieces which had been flung into the bush when the car rolled. It was 11pm so it was very dark. I had my torch but couldn't see any sign of them. No Nala and no Lady anywhere. I tried to sleep in the van hoping they would come back, but at 2am it was hopeless. The traffic was relentless and noisy and the van shook every time a semi-trailer sped by. I needed to relieve myself so did a wee and decided to leave some work rags right there, just in case the girls would smell my scent and come back to the scene of the accident and wait. They didn't come. So I drove to the cottage as I was so confused and tired and managed to sleep for a couple of hours. I didn't want to return to you without some news of Nala and Lady. Early this morning I drove back to the scene of the accident and our beautiful, brown Nala was sitting right where I went to the toilet, beside my work rags! She talked to me loudly as she does ... rrr rrr rrr, you know how she does that! I cuddled her ears the way she likes and patted her softly, as she was moving ever so slowly. Poor, sore old girl. I couldn't see Lady anywhere. Then I phoned the hospital with the news I had found Nala. I decided to look for Lady but had no idea where to start. So ... I said to Nala, 'Where's Lady?' and she looked up at me then put her head down and ears back and headed off into the bush. So I followed her. She didn't miss a step! She walked down into the valley, between bushes and scrub and trees, along a stream and through more bush, up the hill and towards the power lines in the distance. I followed, not sure if it would be for nothing but she kept going, so I continued to follow her. After about a couple of kilometres, she stopped and sat down. I thought she was exhausted and lost but when I looked up, there was poor old Lady sitting on the side of a hill, beyond the creek in the bush, just gazing ahead. We walked over to her and she was shaking with excitement to see us. After a while, we all returned very slowly to the van and I took them to the cottage. They're there now, sleeping and safe. Nala is an amazing and very clever girl!'

Days passed as I recovered in hospital. I ached to leave the hospital and to see my girls but was petrified at the thought of being in a car again. I thought about how I could live in the hospital forever but I knew that I had to get into a car and go to the cottage as my girls were there waiting for me. I knew I had to be a passenger, I knew I would never drive a car again! I was never going on that F3 again! I was never going home to Woodford! Never!!! So we went to the cottage. It was closer than Woodford.

The dogs saw me. Lady shook and fell over as she approached me. Poor old girl has vertigo... like me! Rollover will do that, every time! But we are alive! My poor, dear old Lady. Nala made her joyful noises but was unusually quiet. I patted her soft, brown fur and stroked her ears and found lumps. Two lumps! Ticks! Two ticks! Oh no! She isn't going to die from ticks after all she has been through! Not my beautiful Nala! She rescued Lady, she can't die now. I sob again. Bitter tears of anger and frustration, terrified for her life!

John lifted the girls into his van and again I climbed into the passenger seat, terrified. We took them both to the vet who shaved their long hair and thoroughly checked them over, removing ticks and ensuring their recovery. Thankyou yet again God ...

After six weeks I was reluctantly brave enough to be a passenger in a car again. I had to return to the mountains as I had a facial skin cancer operation at Nepean Hospital to return to! The surgeon had delayed it long enough. Up until now he had not been able to operate on my post accident face ...'Too messy,' he said! 'Your face needs time to heal before we can remove the cancer and place a skin graft there.'

We returned to our Blue Mountains' home. The girls rode in the back of the van and slept most of the way. I, on the other hand spent the entire three hour journey, crying all the way home. Terrified.

It's been four years since that accident. I had the skin cancer removed and replaced with a skin graft from my ear. My slashed, accident face has healed, it's scarred but together! I still have vestibular disorder or vertigo. I still have headaches and poor concentration at times. I have since recovered from breast cancer and am one year cancer free!

Nala passed away eleven months after the accident. She was never the same energetic dog and finally succumbed to a form of pneumonia. It broke my heart to have her put to sleep. It broke my heart.

Lady missed her dreadfully. They had been together for fourteen years. Always together. Lady followed Nala everywhere. Now Lady followed me. Lady passed away two years after the accident. She was almost fifteen years old. She died at home, I was nearby. My dear old Lady was so tired.

I miss my old girls. They were so brave and loyal. My best friends. I do not have another dog. I couldn't bear the grief again. Not now anyway, maybe in the future, who knows.

It's been four years since the accident and I drove my new car today

Christina Frost Clayton

Woodford

Always the Children

JE Doherty

Eglinton

Second Prize, Central Tablelands Spring 2011

I make the coffee strong though I know sleep will be hard to find even after the long drive home. The station is quiet except for occasional buzz of the radio and the tap-tap-tap of the keyboard. I pull the last of the paperwork from the printer, hurriedly scrawling my name at the bottom of the page. After a quick glance, I toss it into the filing tray for morning. I hesitate at the door, and then return to check the roster. Of late it has a habit of changing almost magically from day to day.

I should have walked out when I had the chance. The roster has changed. Tomorrow, I'm working with the Ogre. Now, not only will sleep be hard to find, but waking will be even harder.

The Ogre is a formidable woman, a sergeant who before coming here, spent her entire working life lecturing school kids on stranger danger and road safety. She had never faced an angry man, never done a real day's police work in her life and she isn't about to start now.

When you greet the prospect of the next day's work with genuine dread, you know it's time for a change.

***

The house is dark but I don't turn on the light. The familiar halls prove no obstacle. A soft warm glow peeks beneath the back room's door. The hinges sigh as I creep inside. It's strange how such a boisterous child can ware such an angel's face in sleep. I brush aside a wisp of hair and gently touch my lips to his brow.

'Sleep well little one.'

Clare is standing at the door when I turn. Through the net of shadows I can see her tired smile.

'I love you,' she whispers, kissing my cheek before returning to bed.

The room is dark enough that it doesn't matter if my eyes are open or not. I stare at the ceiling through closed lids, waiting for sleep to come.

***

'What have I told you about leaving the kitchen in a mess?' The Ogre waves her arm at the unwashed coffee cups in the sink. 'And the filing is supposed to be done before you go home.'

'I knew I was back this morning.' I push past her into the sanctuary of the male locker room.

Last night, I had a premonition today was going to be bad. So far nothing has happened to change my mind. Quick shifts are a drain at the best of times but with a forty five minute drive home and back ... That leaves only five and a half hours to squeeze in some sleep before you are back on the job.

Rap Rap RAP! 'We've got a job.'

I splash water on my face. Technically, we don't even start for another fifteen minutes. Why am I always right? This is definitely going to be a bad day.

The ambulance pulls into the driveway just ahead of the patrol car. I curse my luck. With a dead'n this early in the shift and no way known-to-man to prise the Ogre's note book from her pocket, it looks like I'm in for a busy day.

As soon as I walk through the door I know. This is no ordinary deceased.

The mother is crooning to her baby, eyes red rimmed and as lifeless as the child.

Why is it always the children? I ask myself. I look hopefully at the Ogre but she stands as emotionless as ever. I fumble with my pocket and take out my note book, trying to swallow down the lump in my throat.

It is hard to offer comfort to someone when you are facing your own worst nightmare. I have never been overly religious but each night since my baby was born, I offer up the same simple prayer.

'I do not ask for much.

Just see my baby safe tonight.'

As the ambulance officer moves to take the child, I touch her hair and her mother's hand.

'I am truly sorry. If there is anything I can do ...' What more can you say?

She howls animal-like, all wild eyes, leaning away and pulling the baby tight against her chest, sobbing kisses onto the tiny cold face. 'My baby ... my baby ... Don't take my baby ...'

The Ogre taps her watch.

I talk softly, touching her hand, sharing some of the pain. 'I'll take care of her.' I pry her fingers loose. 'I promise'

Her arms fall away and she sinks back into the chair like she is deflating.

If they're already dead, the ambos usually hit the road with a smug, 'Sorry guys, job for the contractors.' I am surprised when they take the baby from me and gently wrap her against the cold and carry her out to the ambulance.

I sit in the car, hand trembling on the steering wheel. 'Sergeant? Can you do the PM tomorrow?'

'It's your job.'

'I would really prefer someone else to do it.' I am pleading now.

'You are doing it, and that is the end of the matter.'

***

'Come to bed Tony,' Clare whispers from the door.

'I'll be in soon.'

'You said that hours ago.' She watches me stare into the cot but returns to her bed when I make no reply.

The rocking chair presses hard into my back but my head nods forward in a half doze. I snap awake, straining to hear my Jamie's quiet breathing, one hand seeking the comforting warmth of his body.

I wake stiff and cramped, trying to rub the twinge from my neck. The slight rise and fall of Jamie's chest makes me smile. The electric jug rumbles in the kitchen and I can hear Clare humming quietly as she waits for the water to boil. I push myself out of the rocking chair and shuffle into the hall.

Clare frowns as I walk into the kitchen. 'You should have come to bed. Your eyes look haunted.'

Sleep wasn't going to change that.

Clare loves my eyes; she tells me they are my most striking feature, clear grey-blue, bright like diamonds. Diamond eyes, she would say. I can see it hurts her to see my fear.

***

The room basks in fluorescent brightness. White tile walls reflect chrome and shining steel. The bench and slab table are buffed to a mirror shine. Rows of refrigerated lockers line the wall through the double plastic doors. The smell of formalin is heady, almost nauseating but it can't mask the stench of the dead.

Ted Greige, the orderly, is balding and stooped, more suited to a torture chamber than this sterile antiseptic room. Although it is very clichéd, he is known to the police as Eigor. That he enjoys his work is plain. There is always an eager glint in Eigor's eye. After a slurp of coffee and a bite from a sandwich slathered in red jam, he smiles.

'Slept in,' he apologises tossing his breakfast on the bench.

The refrigerator door opens with a hiss and he carries the plastic wrapped bundle to the table. Eigor unzips the over sized body bag and places the child on the table. She looks so small and pale, like a porcelain christening doll. Her blue tinged lips are curled in a pout of sleep.

But it's not sleep.

After another slurp of coffee, Eigor lays out the tools of his trade. They gleam bright like the room.

The Government Medical Officer sweeps through the plastic doors, absently leafing through his paperwork.

'Occurrence pad ... P.79A Coroner's report ... identification statement ... All seems in order.' He looks up. 'Ah, Constable ...' he asks brightly, noticing me for the first time. 'Is this ...' He rifles through the papers again. '...Catherine Norris?'

I look at the child and draw a deep breath. I touch her icy hair again. 'Yes.'

'Ok Ted, let's get started.' The GMO looks long at the child then moves to a large whiteboard and begins to write.

External and General Appearances: Female child of stated age. Very cyanosed lips, fingernails, soles of feet, and palms. Post mortem lividity fixed to back, upper half of abdominal wall and anterior chest wall. Head circumference ...

Doctor Stanton wields his tape measure like a builder, cold and business like.

Eigor moves to the child. His scalpel traces a thin red line from the hollow of her throat to her pubic bone.

The wet tearing sound pulls strings in my stomach, but I'm frozen. I can't even look away. I feel the colour draining from my face and grip the bench for support.

'Doc, you hear about that footy player?'

'Which one?'

'The one up for rape.' With clean, deft strokes, Eigor flays back her skin to expose the ribs.

'Must have missed that one.'

'Yeah, apparently she was all for it till he stuck it up her backwards.' He works with a professional, grisly ease. 'Split her open. That's when she cried rape.' Eigor picks up a small set of bone cutters, still too large for the work they have to do.

Snap goes the first rib.

I squeeze shut moist eyes. This is not the child, only the cloak she wore, I whisper to myself.

Snap. Snap. It's not the child.

Snap.

But all I see is the child. Like my Jamie.

Snap.

Small and helpless.

Snap.

I promised to look after her.

At that moment I realise I could kill them both, Eigor and the doctor, but I know if I let go of the bench my legs won't hold me. Still, I can't keep my eyes shut, can't look away, and that frightens me most of all.

Eigor pries out the rib cage and sets it aside to reveal the child's inner most secrets.

Heart: No congenital abnormality. Heart valves and muscle normal.

Aorta & Branches: Normal.

Lungs & Air Passages: No foreign body in air passages. No fractured ribs. Lungs cyanosed. Otherwise normal ...

As the doctor sorts and dissects the tiny organs, Eigor turns his attention to her head, slicing the scalpel around her hair line. My eyes are drawn to the baby's face, the only part that is still the child. I clench my jaw against a nausea that threatens to choke me. As I stare, it is no longer the face of Catherine Norris. It's my boy, my Jamie.

When Eigor peels the baby's face back to expose the skull, I stagger from the room. It's all I can take. I shut my eyes to the horror but that death's-head mask is burnt into my brain. Nothing can scour it clean. I clutch the basin, retching as the sound of the bone saw echoes from the other room.

***

When I walk in the rear door, Clare's worry is evident. She is holding Jamie. I walk towards them but I stop. I have to look away. I can't face my own son without seeing that raw, death's-head mask. If Clare thought my eyes were haunted this morning, what does she see now?

They feel empty. Cold.

JE Doherty

Eglinton

The Man Who Talked To Animals

David Bowden

Medlow Bath

Third Prize, Blue Mountains Spring 2011

A few years ago there was a humble man called Henry, who lived not so very far from here. He worked in the mailroom of a large media corporation, sorting through the many thousands of letters they received every week. It wasn't a particularly rewarding job but he decided that the best way to progress within the organisation was to ensure his service was of the highest standard possible, so set up a comprehensive system to make sure everyone got their letters on time. Now, normally this would be enough for Henry to be noticed and considered favourably for a promotion but he had a boss called Lucia who was a very demanding lady. It didn't matter how hard he worked or how much overtime he put in, she was never satisfied, always pointing out what he could do better or faster. Many would have told Lucia where to stick her job but Henry believed so strongly in the goodness of people that, rather than think she was being unreasonable, he became convinced that she had his best interests at heart and that all of the things she said about him being lazy and stupid must be true.

Henry lived with his wife Saskia in a modest semi detached house, on the outskirts of the city. They had a small garden and every morning while he was eating breakfast a small fairy wren would come and trill such a wonderful song that Henry would leave the back door open and ask his wife to stop whatever she was doing so that they could share in the experience. One day Henry remarked to Saskia, 'You know what I wish for more than anything in the world, my love? That I could know what he's singing about. I bet he's telling us something of real importance, I can feel it.'

Saskia smiled, 'You're a dreamer, my darling. These things are not for us to know, some mysteries are not meant to be solved.'

'I know,' replied Henry, 'but I can't get the thought out of my head.'

'You'd better eat up or you'll be late again. You don't want to get in trouble like you did last week.'

At this, Henry quickly emptied his bowl of cereal, brushed his teeth, put on his new shoes and suit and, with Saskia's best wishes for the day, raced down the road to catch the ten past eight bus from the end of the street. It wasn't the most reliable service, yet on most days two minutes was all he needed. This time, however, he left fractionally later than usual and despite a valiant sprint was only able to watch the back of the bus pull away and shrink into the busy traffic.

It would be half an hour until the next one arrived and he didn't want to upset Saskia by returning home, so Henry decided to visit a nearby cafe he often frequented. After ordering coffee he sat himself at a table as far away from the front door as possible. He liked watching the patrons come and go from a safe distance. Shortly afterwards, the door burst open and in shuffled an elderly lady in a fading, once elegant, black overcoat, dragging an overladen red trolley behind her. A small black and white terrier tried to follow her in, which drew the attention of the cafe's owner. After some negotiation, the dog was taken outside and tied to the nearest pole. From time to time he could be heard barking enthusiastically at passersby.

The woman returned, sat at a table not far from Henry, and began pulling items from her trolley. She began with a series of loose papers, most yellowed with age, holding some closely to her face as though the writings they contained were nearly vanished. Presently she started retrieving an array of crystals and aligning them in a very particular circular arrangement, all the while muttering and faintly singing in a language he could not discern to be English. She appeared to have no interest in coffee or tea and Jim, the proprietor, usually highly attentive to the needs of his customers, left her alone. After about five minutes of this, she carefully returned everything to her trolley and left. Henry had been too busy imagining the angry face of Lucia awaiting him at work to notice these goings on.

Realising it was time to get back to the bus stop, Henry swigged the last of his coffee, grabbed his suitcase and stood up. Only then did he realise that one crystal remained on the old lady's table. Thinking it might not be too late to catch up with her, he picked it up and pocketed it, paid for his drink and left. Sure enough, there she was, ambling down the footpath in the opposite direction to where he was heading. Henry raced after her and, on catching up, announced his presence loudly, 'Excuse me, I think you left this behind?'

She turned around with a swiftness that belied her age, stared at him intently and muttered something he could not understand. Henry thrust the stone into her hand. 'Here you are,' he said. The dog barked twice before the old lady quietened him with a guttural admonition. She stared at the stone with forensic intensity, as though she had never seen it before, then returned her gaze to Henry.

'Thank you, son' she said in a thick European accent, 'you are good man.'

Henry smiled and before he knew what was going on, found that she had wrapped her arms around him in a grateful hug. 'A good man,' she repeated, 'your wish come true. You not like others,' she added.

Henry took his leave of her and walked briskly towards the bus stop. He arrived just in time, too, since the eight forty pulled in five minutes early. Many would curse this inconsistency but not Henry, he just wanted to reach his destination as soon as possible.

The bus driver mumbled something to Henry as he alighted. Henry wondered how he got the job with such a poor command of English, but these thoughts vanished as his mind rehearsed fresh lashings from Lucia's sharp tongue. Arriving in the mail room, all was silent, dark, and no one else was present, so in a short time Henry arranged all of the mail and was ready to deliver it.

Just as he was about to afford himself the luxury of thinking he'd got away with it, Lucia stormed into the mail room and bawled something at him, while pointing to her watch. Henry recoiled and prepared for the daily dose of name calling.

'Joo joo besmiter grabble wibbit! Gool pergammon!'

What on earth was this? Henry had never heard her talk like that.

'Sorry, Lucia, I'm not following you ...'

At this the veins on her forehead rose like sheets of sinewy lightning and she shrieked, 'Fopor Boohaa! Shilly toller!'

'I didn't know you were bilingual but would you mind using English, please?' Henry used his most diplomatic tone.

'Garsnibble snop! Joo git MARDLE!'

Lucia raised her right hand and pointed to the door. There was no mistaking this, she was asking him to go.

'I can work up the fifteen minutes this afternoon. The bus was early this morning and ...' Henry's voice trailed off as Lucia grabbed the phone, dialed and screamed something to someone. Shortly after a security guard appeared and minutes later Henry was back in the street, the cool fresh air biting harder than usual. He went without a struggle, but it was the only time in his life he thought about contacting a union representative.

Which way next? What would he tell Saskia? Henry was propelled to return down the street where he only minutes before had strode in conscious confidence of his troubles, now it was alien terrain. On every other day he always turned left at Dolphin Street. Today he did not, since in his mind it was not the same street, the same suburb, and he was not the same person. He walked straight ahead.

Soon the amount of traffic lessened, the office buildings became houses and oak trees lined the road. The change was gradual and given the recent events crowding his mind, it took a while for Henry to register the difference. Presently he came upon a large park, where only one person was walking their labrador, in an unhurried, dreamlike, way. Henry spied a bench under a Moreton Bay Fig tree far from the street and determinedly walked over, resolving to rest there, away from human contact, to make sense of Lucia's conduct. But no matter which way he pitched it, the answers would not come.

After sitting there for a while, suddenly, on his immediate left, he heard a rustle of old leaves and a tiny male voice say, 'Oh dear! No bugs here. It's not like when I was young.'

Henry peered down through columns of shadow into the browny froth of unswept leaves but couldn't see anybody, only a small magpie darting back and forth, seemingly unafraid of him. Then the voice spoke again, 'And people are no use! Once upon a time mothers brought their children down to the park to share breadcrumbs with us. Nowadays hardly anyone visits.'

Henry was certain the voice came from the same direction as the bird. What a marvellous pet, to remember all of that conversation. There was no one else it could have been.

'Hello, little birdy, who's a clever boy then?' Henry called out.

'Who do you think you're talking to?' the magpie replied, 'some brainwashed fool who escaped from a pet shop? Have you brought any bread with you?'

'What? No. How come you can talk?' asked Henry.

'I might ask the same of you,' answered the magpie, 'normally you people make your grunting noises and then move on, that is, when you're not wrecking the place.'

'This is incredible. What a discovery for science!' Henry exclaimed.

'You humans amaze me,' the magpie responded in an exasperated tone, 'you finally work out what's going on and then you claim the credit for it. Now, if you haven't got any food, I have a family to feed.' With that, he fluttered to the other side of the tree and kept foraging.

While Henry was still taking this in, tiny voices suddenly buzzed around his head, singing in perfect harmony. It was two dragonflies:

'We love the sun,

we love the sky

It's a beautiful day

We don't ask why.'

And off they flew, gracefully zigzagging through the air, on their way to the lily pond.

He began to notice other voices too, the labrador he'd seen earlier, muttering to his master, 'Come on now, go faster please!' and a cricket calling out to someone. 'Els-s-s-s-s-s-sie! Elsie! Els-s-s-s-s-sie, where are you? Els-s-s-s-sie!'

Henry had to share these experiences with Saskia. It was time to head home.

When Henry got there, Saskia was in the garden, trimming her roses. She was very surprised to see him and this was when the realisation dawned. Neither of them could understand anything the other said. To Henry, Saskia spoke in the same mumbo jumbo lingo Lucia had used and, to her, he mumbled and whined incoherently. What was happening? Had he lost his mind? They were trying to resolve this situation when the fairy wren flew into the garden, sat on a branch, puffed up his chest and began to sing. Henry was astonished when he realised that this time the song had words.

'Hear ye! Hear ye! The time is currently eleven o'clock eastern standard time. Here is the news. Unemployment among pigeons has reached an unprecedented level. The Council Of Birds will hold an extraordinary meeting in Memory Park at 5pm this afternoon to discuss. All are welcome to attend.' He paused for a second, then resumed, 'The price of birdseed has gone up again and as a result our caged friends are doing it tough. If you have any surplus, please consider making a donation. Lastly, the Jones boy in 15 Scotch Street has taken up the slingshot again. We recommend that you consider this a no fly zone until further notice. That concludes today's bulletin.' With that he flew up and over the fence into the neighbour's yard and started all over again.

Henry began to excitedly explain to Saskia what the bird had said before remembering that it was futile. He looked beyond her questioning eyes and through the window she stood in front of. Something caught his eye. Letting out a yell, he raced indoors, leaving Saskia more puzzled than ever. This was all a little weird for her. Henry had spotted the letters written on a packet of cereal and realised that he could understand them. Maybe he could communicate by writing? Sure enough, when he scribbled 'can you read this?' on a scrap of paper and showed it to Saskia and she nodded, he knew he had made a breakthrough. He spent the next few hours writing down his experiences while she jotted little questions now and again. Saskia read his words incredulously, but knew that her husband was incapable of lying.

Later that afternoon, a friend from Henry's work came over to their house. Her name was Jenny. She was the office hippy and always talked about the spiritual dimensions of life. Many laughed at her behind her back for this, but never Henry. He always listened intently to what she said and learned many things from her experiences and studies. That morning she had heard Lucia complaining about Henry turning up drunk to work and knew this could not be true, since Henry never drank alcohol. He was so glad to see her and they conversed via paper. He told her what happened that morning and she seemed especially interested in the old woman.

'Did she say anything that was out of the ordinary?' Jenny asked.

'She told me my wish would come true,' wrote Henry.

'Did she have an animal with her?'

'A dog,' he answered.

Jenny nodded, 'I think you'd better come and see my friend, Josef. He's a shaman and may be able to help.'

Jenny took Henry to Josef's home, a large house he shared with three friends. Josef ushered them into a small room where he did a quick examination of Henry, feeling his pulse and looking into his eyes. Jenny explained to Josef what Henry had told her. Josef then turned to Henry.

'The woman you met before is witch. She put you under spell. You know where she lives?'

'No,' Henry replied, before asking 'how come I can understand you?'

'I study these things with teacher in Ukraine. You need find this lady. Paracelsus will help you,' Josef announced.

'Who is Paracelsus?' asked Henry.

Josef smiled and led them into the back garden, where a magnificent crimson and green King Parrot sat on a perch. Josef went over and whispered something in the bird's ear. It cocked its head attentively, made a few chattering noises then, in a voice as clear as any BBC announcer said, 'Be here at 8 o'clock tomorrow morning. We begin our journey then.'

Henry thanked them all and returned home. He was exhausted and soon fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

Josef had asked that Henry wear the same clothes as the day before, which he did. Saskia had made him some sandwiches and thoughtfully provided some seeds for Paracelsus. After saying goodbye to Josef they set out at the appointed hour, on foot in Henry's case, Paracelsus perched on his shoulder most of the way but flying from time to time. It was agreed that they should start by returning near to the cafe where Henry first saw the old woman and that they would make enquiries with the local animals there. Paracelsus, wise parrot that he was, had a good idea where to start.

'She had a dog you say, hmmmm, those creatures simply never know when to keep their mouths shut. Let's try over here.'

They approached a garden gate with a 'Beware Of The Dog' plaque on it and were rewarded with the predicted hurricane of angry snarling from the Rottweiler who lived there.

'Get off my street! I'm thinkin' about takin' a piece outta your leg. You're just lucky there's a gate!' the dog seethed through impressively bared teeth.

'Oh do be quiet,' admonished Paracelsus, 'no one's coming to invade your precious slab of paradise. We just want to ask a few questions.'

'Like what? We don't like strangers askin' no questions round here!'

Henry piped up, 'Have you seen a little black and white terrier go by, with an old lady who pulls along a red trolley?'

'Yeah!' replied the Rottweiler derisively, 'I've seen that little pipsqueak, and if I ever get the chance, he's dog meat!'

At this point a languorous aristocratic voice called out from the direction of the house, 'It's no good asking Dougie anything. He's a dog. By definition that means he's stupid. Why don't you ask someone with a little more intelligence? Like me, for example.'

Looking up towards the source of the voice, Henry spotted a black cat sitting upright on the second floor balcony rail, licking his left paw and looking generally unimpressed.

'Why don't ya come down here and say that, Charlie?' barked Dougie.

'No thank you. And it's Charles, if you don't mind ... existentialist philosopher by trade,' the cat added for the visitors' sake.

'Lazy good for nothin' layabout!'

'It's called thinking, my dear, you may have heard of it. With these whiskers I tune into the cosmos, they're my antennae. Nothing escapes my attention.'

Paracelsus asked the cat, 'So what do you know about the old lady?'

The cat's eyes narrowed and he smiled, 'Come a bit closer, little bird, I'm having trouble hearing you.'

Paracelsus twitched and, looking decidedly nervous, sharply replied, 'Just answer the question, please.'

'Alright, keep your feathers on, I am a cat after all. The old lady lives somewhere out near Bannerman Lane. Take the third road to the left and follow the signs to the village of Elsewhere.'

'Thank you so much,' said Henry, 'but how could you possibly know that?'

'Elementary, my dear boy,' the cat answered, 'I've seen her pass by in the bus a few times and since the next and final stop is in Bannerman Lane and she also walks by on foot, I deduce that she must live thereabouts.'

'Amazing!' exclaimed Henry.

'You're not dealing with some shabby tabby here, you know,'

At this point a woman's voice could be heard calling out from the rear of the house.

Doug stood upright and shouted up to the cat, 'Charlie, the mistress is calling. We have to go!'

'I'll get there when I feel like it,' yawned the cat.

'But she's our mistress, we must obey!'

At this point Henry and Paracelsus left them debating and continued on their way.

Henry and Paracelsus followed the cat's instructions and soon found themselves leaving the town behind. They occasionally stopped along the way, either to talk with some of the animals they met or for Henry to eat his sandwiches and Paracelsus his seeds. It was a gorgeous day, with barely a cloud in the sky and the trees alive with the chatter of birds. Although Henry never lost sight of his mission, there were moments when a sensation of peace descended upon him. At such times he wondered whether he might prefer to never return to the world of men and their insatiable demands, then he thought of Saskia and the home they were working to pay off and his resolve returned with new vigour.

He learned much from Paracelsus, whom Josef had befriended while visiting the Mountains. Paracelsus spoke of the challenges facing the planet. Henry didn't understand all that he was told but Paracelsus was clearly just about the best informed, most intelligent person he had ever met and he was a bird! The way in which he spoke was very different from any learning Henry had experienced in his own schooling, read in any book or seen on TV.

Finally reaching Bannerman Lane, the couple were still unsure exactly where the old woman lived. As they walked slowly on the narrow curb they heard a strange groaning sound ahead. When they turned the corner, a donkey's head peered at them over a fence.

'Hello,' asked Henry, 'beautiful day, isn't it?'

'I don't see what's so good about it,' replied the donkey, 'it's just like every other one, as far as I can see. We're all just wasting time until we die.'

'That's very pessimistic,' said Henry, 'what about the beauty around you? Don't those daffodils there inspire you?'

'I'm sick of them,' said the donkey, 'and you'd be depressed too if you had a name like Delbert.'

Paracelsus, ever sensitive to the exploitation of his fellow beasts, piped up, 'You're oppressed by farmers, aren't you? What you need to do is escape!'

'Oh no,' said Delbert, 'they're ok to me, really, and I could get away quite easily since they never lock the gate. But what's the point? Where would I go? A few years back people were always asking me to give rides to their children but now no one comes. I don't think anyone likes me.'

'Why don't you come with us?' asked Henry.

'Really?' Delbert's ears pricked up, 'but wouldn't I get in the way?'

Paracelsus chipped in, 'We'd love you to join us.'

Delbert showed them how to open the gate and soon he was travelling alongside Henry, with Paracelsus on his back. It had been years since anybody had asked for his help and it brought a spring to his step. He knew exactly where the old woman and the dog lived and agreed to take them to her cottage. It was back from the lane, down a pathway which led to the edge of the wood. Finally they reached her gate and at this point Delbert refused to proceed.

'What's the problem?' asked Paracelsus.

'No offence,' said Delbert to Henry, 'but you said she's a witch. I'm worried that she might turn me into a human.'

Henry smiled and said, 'None taken. It's ok. You can wait here.'

So Delbert waited nervously on watch while Henry, with Paracelsus perched on his shoulder, walked through the gate, strode up to the door and knocked.

From behind the door they heard scampering footsteps approach before a small but ferocious voice bayed at them, 'What's the password? State your business or go away now!'

Paracelsus had some experience with dogs and knew what to say,. 'Good dog, we ask that you get your mistress for us. We have important business with her, friend.'

The sound of little feet running away from the door implied that these words had worked. Soon after the woman Henry had seen at the cafe opened the door and stared at them both. At first her face was inscrutable but once she had the opportunity to size up her visitors, she burst into a resounding cackle.

'You good man. You found a friend already!' she exclaimed in the same animal language Henry was using. Then she spotted Delbert outside the gate, trying to look inconspicuous, and this made her roar, 'Two! Hahahaha!'

Henry looked at her seriously and said, 'We need to talk about this.'

The old woman chuckled and drew both of them inside. She proceeded to tell Henry that she had been instructed by none other than the Grand Eagle himself to visit that cafe and set up the circle of magic crystals, always leaving one behind if a man sat nearby. The eagle told her that she would this way find the 'Special One', who would one day come to liberate the beasts from their bondage and save the world. She did this for months, mostly no one turned up, or the jewel would go missing, until yesterday, when Henry tried to return the crystal to her.

'What do you mean, tried to return it?' interjected Henry.

'Look in your top left pocket, darling,' the old lady replied. This Henry did and was astonished to find it nestled within. She must have tucked it there when she hugged him.

'This give you the power to speak with animals. Now I know you are the one since you find me so quick and bring your friends too!'

Henry cradled the stone in the palm of his hand, 'What did the Grand Eagle mean about saving the world?' he asked.

'He exaggerate a little, but only a little. Animals see things we don't, they know many weeks and months before disaster happens. Man needs to listen but they take no notice of old woman like me. Eagle tell me there earthquake in three weeks time. You tell men in power. You they believe.'

But, of course, they didn't believe. Henry presented himself to his local MP saying that an eagle had told an old lady to tell him that disaster was coming, in very specific detail. He was so intense, persistent and sincere in presenting his case that they immediately locked him up as a madman in the local asylum. Worse, they put Paracelsus in a cage at an animal refuge and put Henry's sacred crystal in a vault with all other items found on his person. To complicate things even further, when Henry gave Lucia as a personal reference she recounted the story of his disastrous last morning at work to doctors running this establishment. All evidence, they concluded, pointed to a nervous breakdown leading to a delusional personality.

It took Saskia days to find out what had happened. Desperate, she contacted Jenny, who tried to get hold of Josef but could not, since he was on a retreat. Between them they begged and pleaded with the doctors to let Henry go but to no avail. As a last resort they threatened to go to the local paper with his story. Doctors are generally tolerant of the behaviour of distraught relatives but rarely react well to blackmail, so unsurprisingly the two ladies found themselves thrown out when this suggestion was made.

Nevertheless, Jenny did get in touch with Boris, a journalist friend at the Daily Wire, and told him of Henry's story. He took some notes but then promptly filed them away, thinking them no more than new age claptrap. He'd only recently moved from covering minor traffic offences to political corruption and had no wish to ignite the ire of his editor by even mentioning the matter.

Meanwhile, Henry found himself sharing a room with a young man who believed that the internet was a spy network, that all mobile phones were mind reading machines and that the government were really aliens. Given the circumstances of his own imprisonment, Henry remained open minded. Needless to say, his neighbour believed every word Henry said.

Two weeks later, on the day predicted by the Grand Eagle, disaster struck. The earthquake measured 6.9 on the Richter scale, several buildings collapsed, essential services were cut, three people were killed, many more were injured. Chaos reigned. Never had such a blow been struck against the city and those in charge were utterly unprepared for the devastation.

Jenny's journalist friend was assigned the job of finding someone to blame for the slow response to this emergency. His editor had more than one axe to grind against the current state government, so Boris was given carte blanche to help deliver a knockout punch. In sifting through files on earlier leads he stumbled upon the notes from Jenny's phone call. It eerily detailed the exact circumstances they were in. Showing these notes to his editor he was given permission to run a story on how warnings were ignored and the whistleblower was incarcerated. Henry was recast as an amateur geologist to give the piece a more worldly angle.

When published, the article caused a sensation. Scientists from many disciplines around the globe clamoured to meet this maligned genius and learn of his secret. There were many red faces in the government when they learned of Henry's current predicament. A very public apology, replete with mandatory handshaking photo opportunities, was hurriedly arranged.

As the truth emerged from beneath the journalistic embroidery, the fascination with his story only grew. Paracelsus was rescued, the crystal was returned and demonstrations were arranged for all to see. It caused a revolution in thinking. It was around this time that the Department For Animal Relations was set up, with Henry in charge and from that day onward, animal rights were taken seriously. Talks between human leaders and the key representatives of the Six Tribes of Fauna (bird, fish, insect, mammal, spider, reptile) resolved a great many issues, bringing a new sense of global responsibility to all concerned.

Henry and Paracelsus became national celebrities, famous for their speaking tours. Now a highly respected member of society, Henry was able to pay off his mortgage and he and Saskia had two healthy sons. Josef and Jenny both came to work for him while Delbert got a job giving seaside rides to sick children. Boris became the editor in chief at his newspaper. As for Lucia, shortly after Henry's story came out she was attacked by a dog nobody in her neighbourhood had seen before. While in the hospital recovering Henry heard of her plight and paid a visit. He was quite annoyed. It was clearly a hate crime based on revenge and he made a point of going on television and in animal language pleaded for an amnesty against humans. Lucia found this very touching and from that day on was a changed person. She came to work for Henry too and proved a highly effective member of staff.

So that is how these things came to be.

David Bowden

Medlow Bath

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