 
# CROSSROADS: An Anthology

## Edited by Lynn Fowler

## Published by Birdcatcher Books at Smashwords

This anthology is © Birdcatcher Books 2017,  
and each of the stories herein is © its author.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of these authors.

This book is dedicated to all those whose thoughts refuse to stay safely cloistered within their heads, but insist on falling out and landing on the written page.

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### CONTENTS

Introduction

Buried In A Whisper

Wanderlust

Caravan Man

One Small Coin

William Smiles

Villain

Home and Away

Tess's Choice

Past Future Present

Serendipity

Choosing Wonderful

Crazy Ladies On Trains

Night Moves

Star Crossed Soldier

Crescendo

The Grey

Rocket

The Honeyeater

Hanging Upside Down

Continental Drifter

A Little Bit Won't Hurt

The Game of Likes

Stasia's Stand

Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

Like Siamese

Differently Coloured Lights

The Lottery

More From Birdcatcher Books

### INTRODUCTION

BIRDCATCHER BOOKS ran its second annual Short Story Competition in 2016, and once again the judges were impressed with the standard of submissions. The stories you are about to read are the best entries from that competition.

Judges for the 2016 competition included the winners from the 2015 Birdcatcher Books Short Fiction Award, and one of them, Simon Crase, has a story included in this anthology, although of course they did not qualify to enter the competition. I have also included one of my own stories.

Unlike the 2015 competition, where the topic was completely open, for the 2016 competition entrants were asked to address the theme of 'Crossroads' - hence the title of this anthology. The crossroads involved could be a literal intersection of two roads, or it could be metaphorical, a point of decision and change for the characters. The entrants brought a vast sweep of interpretations to the theme, and their widely differing approaches bring a delightful element of variety and surprise to this anthology.

For some of the authors whose work is featured in this book, this is their first published work. Others are old hands, with many stories and even books under their belts. Likewise, their ages vary from quite young to retirees, and their backgrounds include a wide variety of training and experiences.

As well as being a writer myself, I love to encourage others in their writing adventure, whether they simply want to write for their own enjoyment and that of their family and friends, or their aim, as that of at least one of the authors in this anthology, is to be a "#1 best seller." As the publisher of Birdcatcher Books, I am delighted to be able to offer upcoming writers their first opportunity to see their work in print, and to give established authors a further outlet for their work. If you live in Australia or New Zealand and love to write, I encourage you to sign up for our newsletter where you will receive notification of upcoming competitions, and have a try. You never know, a future anthology might contain one of your stories, and even if you don't make it into print you will have gained from the experience of trying.

I'm sure you will enjoy reading this anthology as much as I have enjoyed putting it together. If you do, please leave a review somewhere so that others can find out about it. I also welcome your feedback through the Birdcatcher Books website.

Blessings,

Lynn Fowler

Publisher, Birdcatcher Books

Victoria, Australia, July 2017.

# BURIED IN A WHISPER

## by Simon Crase

### SIMON CRASE

SIMON CRASE has been writing short stories for the past 10 years and has been published in several anthologies and predominantly the e-publication, Eclecticism.

Simon was one of the judges for the 2016 Birdcatcher Books Short Story Competition, and congratulates the winners and all writers included in the publication. He currently lives in the North East of Victoria.

### BURIED IN A WHISPER

I STAND at the edge of the fractured earth, fists clenched. My gaze is nailed downward, fixed on the small wooden lid. Only metres away, it seems distant one moment, at my nosetip another. I try to focus, but my eyes continually tell me it's an illusion. Like train tracks converging far off on the horizon.

Beneath the lid lies my daughter. Taken, at the age of seven.

People move, hands brush my arms and shoulders, voices swirl, offering misery-laden condolences. They are the merest of murmurs.

If only she could hear them, respond and smile in thanks. But she's slipped into a gaping hole at my feet, a trembling faultline of our destinies. There is a treachery in every destiny, just awaiting birth...

A cheeky breeze passes in a hurry to reach a pile of leaves at the foot of a nearby tree. The leaves rustle and stir. Every leaf falls for a reason, I recall an old saying. And do they feel the life draining from them, then the letting go, no longer connected to a source? Leaves appear alive, even in their decaying state, the brittle brown providing a staid mature look. Death has many appearances...

Looking down, I understand how people afraid of heights feel when they describe the intense desire to jump from a great height in order to conquer their fear. Conquering is for the great, the heroic. Overcoming is perhaps the best the everyday person can do. For me there is only fear, shimmering and beckoning and waiting to splinter into thousands of depressing shards at the bottom of a hole in the ground. No victory is in sight.

Only two months ago, I was told all hope for her recovery was gone.

As the doctor spoke and I looked his flat eyes, my thoughts became heavy shapeless blocks of stone. I could feel them drop into my mind, a numbing avalanche of pain. Any thoughts since then have added to the pile of rubble — a pile that soon became the building blocks of nightmares.

Sitting by her side in hospital one night, holding her thinning hand, I watched the stars grace the darkening sky, appearing in their celestial order. Venus, a dripping prism of beauty, burned bright. I admired the scene until realising the sky's colour matched the dramatic purple under my daughter's eyes. A shudder of shame sent goosebumps over me from head to toe, as though nature was admonishing my indulgence in one of its small pleasures, the feeling cold enough to temper the sparkling stars.

"Make a wish, Pumpkin," I said, seeking forgiveness from above, and gave her hand a soft squeeze. She turned on her side and looked up at the dripping prism, then closed her eyes. A time passed before a small grin appeared on her dry cracked lips. She opened her eyes and continued to smile. "Thanks, Dad," she said and returned the gentle squeeze.

I offered her a sip of water from a green plastic cup, and she took it, drank, then licked her lips. She glanced at the bedside cabinet and the strawberry lip gloss which stood to attention on a children's book. A nurse had given my daughter the stick when her lips had started to be a problem.

"Now when you lick them, they'll taste good," the nurse smiled handing it over.

I'd always thought licking dry lips made them worse so I asked the nurse, pulling her aside as I left.

"Usually we would discourage it, but it can't harm if makes her feel better," she replied and walked away abruptly.

When thinking back to the exchange, in some awful irony, this was the nurse's way of glossing over the fact chapped lips were the least of my daughter's concerns. That there was so little time left, regular protocols or advice in some instances could be abandoned.

I grabbed the lip gloss and handed it to her and she put some on, in what had become a nightly ritual. She was careful and slow trying not to get any outside her lips, a frail pale colour.

She handed it back and then struggled to her knees and curled into a ball, her face contorting for a few seconds. I covered her with the sheet and her favourite mink blanket from home. The doctors told me it was not unusual for small children to sleep on their knees when they were in acute pain. I rested my hand on her back and she moved her head to my side to face the window and the sky now bruised to a treacherous black. She eventually dozed as I rubbed my hand up and down her back and I watched the stars glisten in ignorance and begin their slow nocturnal creep. I killed the glow of the TV and slunk out into the night.

On the drive home, Venus came into view directly in front of me as I swung around a corner close to home; its faultless light a brilliant bulb fitted to the sky, never to be changed.

Then the words came, forthright and clear in my mind: "I want you to talk about me when I'm gone, Daddy, when I'm with God and the angels in heaven."

It was a tender request but my throat closed and my stomach lurched, violent, reacting as the echo in my head played out. Tears instantly sprang, blurring my sight, and I felt and tasted the bitter bile, restless and strong, as I pulled into my driveway. I threw open the door and heaved up the hospital's dinner. It splattered on the concrete and my retching echoed around my head with the words as my stomach convulsed to get rid of its contents.

After composing myself to a point, I backed the car back six feet, got out of the car ignoring the mess and noticing the sour remnants of it in my mouth. I took a few deep breaths and noticed Venus was fading as the arc it was on leisurely robbed it of strength.

Inside, there was no fumbling for the light switch, I knew where it was in the emptiness. I walked down the hallway and stopped at a point beside the long cabinet up against the left hand side of the wall.

I reached out and gently grabbed the outline of a photo frame. It didn't matter which, the fifteen or so spread out like an exhibition of loss all contained images of the same two happy and whole people: my daughter and my wife.

I cradled it to my chest and walked into the living room, still and silent, went to the couch and sank, shivering.

My daughter's words wouldn't leave me (at least several glasses of whiskey had erased the bitter memory in my mouth) and for the next few hours they played havoc with the sane and rational side of my mind. I clutched the frame, the glass pointed towards me, my arms wrapped around it.

I woke after little sleep, convinced the words weren't a figment of my imagination, that they hadn't been whisked from the ever-swirling shadows of my depression. My knuckles ached but I knew the photo hadn't changed, that the life hadn't been crushed out of it. Inside it, the images were invincible, immutable.

Daylight approached. Venus would soon appear in another part of the world...

She was sitting up flicking pages in the book when I arrived. The sun bounced gleaming off her long brown hair and I could tell she'd not long had a shower. A nurse sat on the bed and as I made my way to it my daughter spotted me, her eyes brightening, lips curling, the book dropping to her lap in preparation for a hug.

I put my arms around her, and felt the rattling in her chest like a sick symphony of rickety broken springs. I sighed and resigned myself to the fact there was no pondering to be done over the request rendered the night before. It was someone else's wish. And who was I not to grant it?

During the eulogy, tears had stained the ground and I wondered whether the ground knew the difference between falling tears and falling rain.

Unlike the mourners, I couldn't weep. Along with the gnashing of fears, the grinding of tears had turned my eyes to sand-swept plains in the days since her death, and they had not been in a pristine condition before her death. For now, I was spent but knew the tears would return again like a season of fruitful despair.

And in my chest, there was alien barrenness, a mournful hollowness, where nothing could live. Not harrow, not pity, not lament...

The words I uttered to the gathered instantly became covered tracks; easy to ignore, no longer important. I remembered few of my words after the opening line: "A life without love is a book never written."

I know children talk about love and profess love to their parents, but can love burn inside them the way it does when emotions are no more than an undecipherable puzzle? Children can sense love from their parents, and feel safe and protected, but the word is said without knowing its power. That knowledge only arrives with age and pride on the besieged back of bliss and pain and loss. I have no idea where the opening statement came from — I'd prepared nothing. Perhaps from within the calm eye of the stormy sigh I let out as I began.

She deserved more than the usual prayers and preaches and platitudes wheeled out for people who've lived long, full lives. Hard as it was to speak, it was the right thing to do. I was the one who had held her, loved her, nurtured and comforted her. She had been right to make the wish and I paused halfway through the eulogy and thanked the voice that came to me, carrying the wish on intense starlight.

During the eulogy, a hiss snaked in my head, a companion to the words entering my conscience, coming and going like fleeing musical notes. It could have been my sanity, deflating with a slow leak. I glanced at the surrounding trees as I spoke. They rocked in time to my soliloquy, and I kept looking, waiting for a bough to break...

Lying in a hospital bed for six weeks, resting her head on pillows of wisdom, my daughter never failed to be upbeat. Her resolute spirit catered for her happiness the way oxygen caters for a scream. Every so often she'd tell a story from her childhood, smiling as she recited it in exact detail like a recording. Tiny obscure events I'd forgotten, but had impacted greatly her.

A memory of her sailed past the rocks in my mind and I relayed it to the gathering. Several hours after her birth I bathed her at the nurse's behest. She lay back, laconic, eyelids blinking with a slow serene drift. An elderly nurse took one look and remarked, "Well, I've never seen a newborn enjoy their first bath as much as this one. She's definitely been here before." The nurse vacated the room, her sage words resonating as I stared down at the rich blue eyes.

"Is it possible you'll remember the first breath you took?" I asked the child in my hands, the warm water lapping at her side. "Will you recall the taste, the pressure in your lungs, then the exhale? The first slow blink of your eyes?"

Seven and a half years later, she'd kissed me with dying lips, hugged me with a dying heart the last time I saw her. Questions writhed in her bloodstained eyes, the unknowing not yet firmed into fear. I covered her with the blanket. She knelt tight in a ball, as though trying to squeeze pain from a sponge. Her eyes were closed yet tears managed to free themselves and cling to her gaunt cheeks as the rattling in her chest reached its climax. A loud announcement the end was near.

Within twenty minutes the eyes were dry and would never open again.

It was easy to breathe then, but now as I look down at the fractured earth and honey coloured wood, my collar and tie tug, stifles my neck. I sway like a hangman swinging from his own demise.

Sunlight sweeps from behind the clouds like providence and flows across the ground. I look up and want to carve her name in the sun to remind the world of her presence. As the light meets the sheen on the wood, my reflection stares back, mocking like a lie at the end of a tunnel.

I hold out fists and let go and the dirt falls to cover the lifeless face on the lid. It drops like sand in an hourglass. Rays of light cling to the sand like tears to cheeks and the breeze has left the leaves alone and rushes around me into the faultline. It picks up the sand, lifts it in a billow and the sunlit-drenched specks refuse to drop, insist on staying airborne for as long as possible, as though being carried on the caressing crest of an invisible wave, and time feels like wet sand falling in sporadic chunks, uneven and chaotic.

The breeze tires of playing and the sand scatters over the varnished wood, the doll and the photos and the photo frames and the pieces of paper scrawled with wishes and poems and get well cards from classmates.

Reaching into my pocket I pull out a small object and pitch it forward. The strawberry lip gloss clinks on the coffin and rests between the doll's legs.

Silence banishes everything but my heartbeat and breathing. I will remember this day if I live an arm's length past eternity.

I stand at the edge of my faultline, fists unclenched.

# WANDERLUST

## by Joseph Young

### JOSEPH YOUNG

JOSEPH YOUNG is 19 years old, attending the Queensland University of Technology for Psychology. He has always loved books and reading, and highly considered going into a course for Creative Writing. For him writing has always been a way to express how he feels, whether it be through characters, internal monologues, the storyline, or the moral of the story. He says, "It seems that whenever I write, a little part of me and my experiences wriggles its way out of my brain and onto the page. It is an almost therapeutic process when I write - I feel like I enter another zone where I can forget everything else and live in another unique world that knows no limits and doesn't conform to the rules and regulations of reality. This piece in particular was highly inspired by Annie Proulx, who, on a broad scale, presents themes of loneliness, victimhood, poverty, depravity, superstition and harsh landscapes. Characters in this piece each have their own struggles; it is what they choose to do with them that ultimately determines the outcome."

### WANDERLUST

AN ASHY dawn zephyr was the first indication of an imminent heatwave. The Walker residence sat between an ancient cleft of rock and an unrelenting windmill which spun like a forlorn tumbleweed in the dusty undergrowth. As though spat out of the sky by a livid giant, the house - if you could call it that - sat on its haunches in the red earth, clawing itself miserably into the ground with its timber legs. It was home to ten twitch-eyed sons, a family of straggle-coated, itching rodents and a single daughter slowly desiccating in the wind. The family was like a bottle of RC Cola threatening to fizz over, the 'jumpy juice' (as one boy referred to it - back when their pa had allowed such store-bought indulgence) rattling their insides and shaking the tin walls of their overcrowded domicile.

Abel was born half-way through the litter, yet stood insignificant and wispy like a sapling, yearning to reach maturity in the hard Wyoming soil. Inquisitive, sentimental, innately empathetic; he was an outlier, existing feebly among wild animals where he was a beast of domestication. Their mother, an odious matron, patrolled the frontier. The sporadic yip of a lad punished for wrong-doing was emitted often in a day. "Spare the rod and spoil the child," she'd intone like the rasping voice of judgement. "Forgive us are trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us." The paradox escaped her. Iris was her name. But she was not like a flower. Nor was she colourful like the pigment in one's eye. She was rather the eye that watched, her hands clutched together in a strained, bony bouquet, her steely gaze penetrating into the mousy eyes of the sons she had regretfully birthed. "Deliver us," she'd whisper into the dry air, spurring the windmill to turn.

The world outside the ranch was foreign and dangerous. This is what Abel had been told by his mama. Yet, he had never wandered past the boundary that separated him from this perilous territory. He had frequently peered over the fence into the worn tracts worked by his neighbours, looked into the bulging black eyes of the cattle that moaned into the night lamenting, a sombre poem of incarceration. Tufts of their hair were snagged on the barbed-wire. He could remember when a heifer had approached him on a balmy evening, bleeding from the nose, mange-ridden and overwhelmed by flies. He lost his footing as he backed away, part of his sleeve tearing off, as he fell onto the hard earth from whence he had come. His father and his father's father (and all the male line) had constructed and maintained this barricade, protecting the family from the curses and sins that the vast outer world harboured. But maybe there were more than coyotes and people and wolves out there. As Abel lay on the hard ground, he gazed into the speckled sky at the galaxies beyond. The stars seemed so free up there, floating carelessly in the atmosphere, no restrictions dampenin' them down. Maybe that's why they shone so brightly.

The dreary needle on the ancient clock pointed noon. The whistle of the cuckoo bird sounded as the pendulum swung and, instantaneously, the boys scurried out from their crevices and into the kitchen. Angel was waiting in there, brandishing a frypan as though it were a shield. Their mother was hunched over the sink, scrubbing her hands furiously, trying to wipe off the blood that stained her skin, the blood only she could see. She sought to rid herself of the guilt that plagued her heart - and if it wasn't the hand scrubbing, she would pluck at her eyelashes and pick the scabbed cuticles of her fingers to the quick, until they looked raw, as if chewed by tiny carnivorous creatures.

The chorus began. "I'm hungry Angel," squeaked the voice of the youngest boy, his mouth open like a baby Sedge Wren waitin' for a slick worm to fill his gut. His name was Caterpillar. Though, this wasn't really his given name. After their papa had passed on, their mother hadn't the willpower to look after herself, let alone the child that would soon escape her stretched womb. At the age of four, Caterpillar had named himself - taken responsibility for his own floundering life when his mama couldn't, though only a few of the boys and Angel took the name seriously. At first, Abel had even felt an inkling of jealousy rise up in his bony chest. Caterpillar had constructed his own independence. Though an immature one, his name held a power that could rile up all the brothers around him. It was his own, and it was him.

The other boys echoed the youngest's plea of starvation. "What've you made for us?"

"We want to eat now."

"Gimme the mos', I'm the biggest."

"Naw you ain't."

"He right you ain't, but you' the ugliest."

"Shut your dirty mouth or I'll shut it for ya."

Something broke amongst the desperate chatter, the leg of a chair, or maybe someone's jaw, or a plate. This was not unusual. Angel's coarse yellow hair swung to and fro, like a half-plaited pendulum swinging from a horse's butt, as she prepared the meal for her savage brood.

"Now ya'll be patient or I'll sick mama onto ya," she threatened, cracking open an egg. Abel approached her, weaving through the labyrinth of sharp sweat and smudged, dirty faces, across the filthy dining room floor that a few of his brothers had claimed as their bedroom. Disarray trailed through the house like the twisting path of destruction left by a tornado. It had subsided into ruin. Iris could only do so much, strict as she was, to control ten pre-teen and post-pubescent boys, especially now that they towered over her five-foot frame, nothin' but bones and cartilage and sagging skin, pulled downwards by the iron grip of gravity. The death of her husband had drained the life from her, more than the wind-etched wrinkles or sun-given liver spots; she was marked inside by her loss.

The wind storm picked up outside then, the mill's arms creaking like a ghostly apparition, stretching towards the sky. If it could, it would probably try to pull itself up from the stony landscape, clamber its way to unchained freedom. Angel squeezed out some sausages from the old, rusty alloy of the machine her father once used, the squishy pink flesh oozing out into a tube, a pregnant bitch birthing a litter of young. She tossed the meat, strung-out into the frypan and they began to sizzle, logs on a fire.

"Need some help, Ange?"

Her long neck swung around, ready to slap the wrist of one of the savages if they swooped down on the food. "Naw," she said noticing Abel, "S'alright."

The other brothers noticed the interaction, creeping their way over to the two of them. "What'cha cookin' Angel?" croaked Tom, a stubby-nosed boy festooned with lice.

"Git away from here," she hollered. "It near ready."

"You can't tell me what'a do," the boy challenged, a stallion rearing up, "you ain't my mama. I never suckled on you as a young'in."

She didn't turn to give him the glare, instead let her dry hair cover her reproachful eyes - a curtain of defence. "Damn right," she shouted into the frypan.

He murmured an obscene suggestion, foul adolescent desire etched on his drooling face. Angel paused, dropping her spatula and standing stark still. It was as though the greasy words of the depraved boy had made time cease. A silence descended like that a hunting raptor carries with it. Angel stood like stone with her eyes burning. The one young woman in a household of juvenile monsters, she was the sole object of male lust, the queen in heat, surrounded by a glaring of ready-legged strays.

"You vile thing, she no more than your own sister," Abel hissed. Though his brother Tom was older, around sixteen or seventeen, Abel had no hesitation in standing up for what he thought of as decency. There had to remain some sacred vestige of 'the holy book' left in this house, as his mama would howl, or it would become a plot of degeneracy out of which would bloom thistles and burdock. "When you grow up big an' strong like me, you'll see that you can't control the urge, Abel." It sounded like a sort of curse that rose up out of the wicked heart of a soul writhing among the fallen.

Night crept up on them, the heat of the day wearing thin and drying the salty sweat off the children's foreheads, turning it into a crust like the flaky surface of a weathered rock face. The galaxies splashed the sky, Abel gawking up at them through a crack in the tin roof above his meagre, too-short bed. The prospect of benevolent, scintillating spirits looking back down at him clouded his mind and he wondered what advice they harboured. "Git away from that place," probably. "Git away and find a better place. Find a place where you can be free, where you belong." It was either that or they would be laughing at him, mocking him, twinkling as though some joke had been uttered into the sleepless dark. Maybe he was the joke. He didn't know the answer.

As unconsciousness failed to overcome him, Abel sat up wavering and desolate, peering around the bedroom where four of his brothers lay bound like bales of hay on a sliding hillside, snoring and sputtering, ignorant to the world. There was Dustin, Angus, Tom and Caterpillar. As he focused his gaze on the youngest boy, he noticed the glint of light from the moon in his eyes, the lidless eyes of a boy not quite human, marked by the multiple calamities his young life had known. Caterpillar was starin' right back. It was then that an idea crawled its way into Abel's mind, a creature of the earth burrowing deep inside his skull, bloating up on the mess and retreating, leaving a gaping wound to heal of its own accord. There was nothing stopping him from leaving. Hell, he could leave right now. It was a crossroads.

He stumbled in the dark, relying on his memory to navigate across the web of his brothers' unfurled limbs, making his way towards Caterpillar, whispering to his unmoving form, "We gotta get outta here," and picturing the two of them (no, they would bring their sister too) flying the coop simultaneously, uneasy; buzzing.

The small voice of an answer reverberated off the ugly flowery wallpaper. "Where we goin', Abe?"

"We gettin' out, righ' now."

"Naw," he managed, after a long silence. Hesitation flickered in his eyes, overwhelmed his innocence, made him look older, his face contortin' like a copperhead crushed by a thick-soled boot. "We can't go, mama will hurt us real bad; she'll smack us till we red raw."

"She ain't gonna find out till we long gone, Pillar." Abel took a deep breath, the musty scent of stagnant boys invading his lungs, permeating like the plague: bubonic, deadly, suffocating.

Abel led the way out into the tiny corridor, arthritic floorboards groaning in protest, the walls glaring at them, threatening to close in and prevent the emancipation, to come together as though clasped in prayer and squeeze the duo until they popped, their blood trickling like a rosary through the cracks of maternal palms. How could they escape if they neglect their redeemer? It didn't matter no more. Maybe mama was wrong. She had to be.

In solemn search for their sister, they crept up to the room their papa used to inhabit, his presence once vivid, potent, tangible even from behind the thick wooden door and its rusted hinges. Behind it now, they could hear the harsh breath of their mother as she slept, a bear in hibernation, sprawled out and malevolent, waiting for the precocious and unaware to wander by, to swallow them up whole as they trespassed. The door creaked as they slunk into the den. A figure moved uneasy in the corner of the room, apprehensive and skittish, leaning against torn curtains that clung to its back like a pair of wings, a silhouette of a broken angel, moving into the moonlight to be illuminated in its washed-out glory. And it was their sister. She too, was awake.

"Angel, it's us," Abel whispered, a whoosh of air, loud in the uncanny silence.

"What's goin' on?" she said in a low, hoarse voice.

"We're leavin'."

"What you mean?"

"We're takin' our leave, we gonna go into the city, find some place; we can do it and you're comin'."

Caterpillar whimpered.

"But we ain't never left the ranch before," she said. "We can't leave mama and the boys - we can't leave are life."

"Angel," he sighed, "we gotta get out while we still can. We're growed up now, you an' I - we can do what we want. If anythin' turns haywire, I'll take the blame, bring us back an' we can figure somethin' else out. I can't stand our brothers no more, these pain-in-the-ass desperados'll drive me to the grave, they will."

"You're right, I know that," she said postulating, running through the possibilities in her mind, kicking down thoughts and conjuring new ones without a second's hesitation. "But what'll they do without us? What'll mama do? They'll kill her if they can't kill you, or she'll kill them. Maybe we should pass it off fo' another time."

"If we don't get out now, we never will, Angel. An' we gotta save Caterpillar before he turns into one of 'em."

She stood up, then, a warrior ready to join the cause, and in her expression Abel could see something forming, spreading out and opening up like heated sand, glass-blown and growing. It was the galactic glimmer of hope.

They tiptoed, surreptitious but staunch, toward the exit, ready to manoeuvre their way past the boys and the rats and the wallpaper. This plan would not be taken up well by some; freedom wasn't part of their mama's vocabulary.

"You won't be goin' nowhere!" she screamed into the shadows, her coarse blankets turning into a vortex, stiff branches of bones and sclerotic fury activating as she awoke, or was she awake the whole time, the doubt was barely there. A .22 rifle appeared between her palms, the violent artefact of her late husband, unearthed from the archives below the springy, piss-stained mattress, aiming it in their direction, screeching and loading the cartridge, flicking off the safety and hoisting her chin into the sights, ready to spill blood. Their terrified legs already carried them out into the kitchen, then the front door, onto the porch, the dusty ground.

"You ain't goin' nowhere, oh boy are you three not goin' nowhere, I'll show you the power of God, I will, he'll git you and I'll be left to clean up the mess!" Her voice rose higher an' higher, tall as the Big Horn, coalescing, shattering the stillness of the powdery air. Her eyes wild, her spindly, geriatric body leaping after the trio, she resembled a frantic sheriff chasing down rustlers; though, when did dreams not dictate reality. She was weak, she could not match their stride.

"Keep runnin', just keep runnin', don't stop." Desperate cries, the whimper of the youngest boy, his stubby legs pushing forward, Angel's golden hair like strings of a harp flying behind her, the rhythm of their breaths sounding down the ashy road that stretched for who knows how long - they'd never seen paradise - but the sweet taste of freedom, imminent and juicy-ripe, beckoned them on. Abel chanced a last look back, pillars of salt echoing biblically in his hysterical consciousness. The barrel of the gun, now in one of his brother's hands, was pointed toward him, ringing like icy hail on tin in the worst winter, high-pitched whispers of choir-angels, or was it just his sister spurring him on. He felt something trickle across his vision, wet and acerbic.

He eventually collapsed onto the dried-out earth, gasping. The crinkle-cut cliffs etched in the firmament and the lights of a kaleidoscopic city called in earnest to him as he plummeted down, fading from a reverie to speckled incoherence. His vision blurred, sweat pouring down his face, it smelt like steel, like the barbed fences behind which he could see stocky, swollen cows groaning now; he felt the coagulated fluid. His hands came back red; only a graze though, of course, the metropolis was waiting. He could see the windmill, turning slowly, as slowly as dusk comes on a searing evening, the euphoria of solace overtaking his body, the arms stretching towards the sombre theatre above, filled with shiny, mocking faces.

# CARAVAN MAN

## by Chris Childs

### CHRIS CHILDS

CHRIS HAS a passion for writing biographical and autobiographical short stories, blending fact and fiction. A life long love of reading, a BA in Psychology and an MA in Biography & Life Writing have influenced her writing style.

Chris came first in the 2015 Henry Lawson Short Story award and won the Grenfell Festival's Harold Goodwin memorial statue for "One More Time", an insight into Ellen Kelly's (bush ranger Ned Kelly's mother) reaction to her son's impending hanging.

"The Death of Owen Owens", a story about a convict mutiny in Hobson's Bay, received a Highly Commended in the 2016 Stringybark Times Past Short Story award and was published in the subsequent anthology, Longing for Solitude.

A keen artist, Chris has also written and illustrated two, as yet unpublished, children's picture books, "Time for a nap", and "I wish I was".

Her entry to Birdcatcher books' Crossroads competition, "Caravan Man", is a semi-autobiographical short story, written during her partner's battle with cancer.

She is currently writing a pilot TV series based on a true Victorian Gold Fields murder.

Chris lives west of Melbourne with lots of books, her partner, Alan, and feline sisters, Millie and Molly.

### CARAVAN MAN

DRIVING ALONG the freeway weekdays, there and back, there and back, there and back. This is our new life: radiation, chemo day clinic, specialists, blood tests and CAT scans. As the non-driving, non-cancer stricken half of this duo I have an active role of supporting Gary and providing uplifting distractions. My eyes and brain wander over a broad and sweeping terrain, filtering out negative and unsuitable information and bringing back interesting morsels like a mother bird feeding her chicks. That was how I first encountered Caravan Man.

"There's a caravan parked in the bushes," I say excitedly as we make our way home after a week of hospital appointments. Doesn't sound that remarkable a statement. It's a busy freeway with no pull over bays for miles. At the side of the road, just before we reach the crossroads, there's some tangled, dusty vegetation impersonating a row of bushes. Beyond this a 'seen better days', once-white caravan and an old Holden station wagon was parked. So what's so amazing I ask myself? It was just a car and caravan pulled over for a rest stop on the way to a weekend break.

"It's still there!" I shout as we make our way to Gary's Monday appointment, where he's hooked up to a chemo bottle followed by a dose of radiation. The chemo bottle is attached to a catheter in his chest on Mondays and removed on Fridays. The rest of the week it pumps its cancer destroying medicine into Gary, twenty-four hours a day. Tuesday to Thursday he had to go in just for radiation treatments, but Mondays and Fridays he had radiation and chemotherapy.

"What's still there?"

"The caravan. I think I saw a man getting in the car. Surely he didn't spend the weekend on the freeway?"

On the way home, head full of hospitals, I forgot to look. We were kilometres passed the crossroads before I realised. Probably gone anyway, I thought.

It wasn't gone! It was there on Tuesday. It was there on Wednesday. It was there everyday that week. The caravan and the car were still there but there was no sign of an inhabitant. Each time we passed by I extracted some new information. The caravan wasn't on wheels. It was on wooden blocks. Some days the car rear door was open, sometimes it was closed. Once I thought there were two people sitting in the front seats. The following day I thought it was piles of clothes. By the third day I was sure it was piles of something that wasn't moving.

"I can't believe it's still there" I said after three weeks of sightings, "You'd think the council or police would have moved it on by now", glad that they hadn't.

As the weeks passed checking to see if the caravan was in situ became a twice-daily event. From across the other side of the freeway I could see a split second flash of the car and the front part of the caravan. On the return trip we were closer, as we were on the caravan's side of the road. From here the whole caravan was visible through the bushes, but not the car. I had occasional glimpses of an outdoor furniture setting on the other side of the car. Caravan man was definitely settled in.

If there were no discernible changes for days I'd worry that he had died a lonely death, perhaps murdered in his battered, old van. When there was a change, door open or door closed, there would be cheers from us both. Hooray! He's alive and still living his roadside existence. I even made up corny songs celebrating Caravan Man's continued existence. We sang them as loud as we could. Gary cheerfully beat tune on his steering wheel.

When we weren't singing we played the 'who do you think he is?' game.

Maybe he's a shepherd or caretaker of the nearby paddocks?

Maybe he's adopted this section of freeway and the council turns a blind eye because he picks up rubbish?

Maybe he's an author writing a book about surviving with minimal material possessions?

Maybe he's a fellow cancer patient getting daily treatment at the hospital?

Maybe he's a sign from the universe with a message for us and he'll disappear when your cancer treatment is finished?

"Yep, that'll be it", says Gary shaking his head slightly. I look across at him to glean from his face what he's really thinking. His lips betray an amused smirk.

"What now?" said Gary, under my increasingly intense stare.

"I wonder what the message from the universe could be? Could it be...?" I take a deep breath ready to expel any number of yet-to-be discovered reasons as they announce their arrival.

"Driver...concentrating", says Gary putting on his pseudo stern face and signalling that's it for today folks. The conversation is over. No more Caravan Man discussion until next time.

I think I saw him once. Traffic was bad and we were crawling along. I was anxious we'd be late for Gary's radiation appointment and didn't realise we were approaching the caravan. I was glancing the other way out of my passenger window, trying not to look at my watch. There was an embankment and small creek at the side of the road. A man was leaning over the water. He straightened up and I could see that he was quite young and had dark shoulder length hair and a wild looking beard. Could it be Caravan Man?

This new sighting sparked off a whole new line of enquiry about how he lived. Did he wash in the creek? Was that where he got fresh drinking water? What was he living on? Did he hitch hike up to the closest petrol station for supplies or unhook the ancient Holden and occasionally drive into town. Maybe an old friend dropped off supplies? Did he have a generator or have to use candles? Is he going to spend Christmas Day all on his own by the side of the road?

Gary's chemo and radiation came to an end. He'd come through with minimal side effects and the tumour had shrunk until it was almost gone. Couldn't have asked for a better result, the experts said. Next step is surgery at a bigger city hospital, followed by four months of 'mop up' chemo in the New Year. Just a weekly injection next time though. December came and went with a blur. No more daily trips up the freeway. This was a tricky new stage of the journey, another crossroad to take. Caravan man slipped quietly out of our lives.

*

Friday, January 23rd

Temperature 17- 28 degrees Celsius. Weather sunny with a light breeze. Traffic flow = moderate. Nothing of note to report until 12.45pm. After seeing the purple hatchback twice a day for months no sightings since late November. I was worried some disaster had struck them, sickness or car accident or abducted by aliens. Or perhaps they'd won Tattslotto and moved house to the other side of the Westgate or bought a new car with tinted windows. When they used to drive past every day, I wondered who they were and where they were going. They were always smiling. Hundreds of cars with stony-faced robots would go by and then, out of the blue, the smiling purple hatchback people. I never knew when they were coming. The time varied everyday.

Sometimes I think they were singing. Then they were gone. No sightings for weeks and weeks, until today.

Purple hatchback honked his horn and slowed down as he went past. I nearly dropped my binoculars. There they were smiling and cheering at Heaven knows what. What have they got to be so happy about? They couldn't see me but I cheered too.

# ONE SMALL COIN

## by Wendell Watt

***************

One Small Coin received an honourable mention in the 2016 Birdcatcher Books Short Story Competition.

### WENDELL WATT

WENDELL WATT lives in Sydney. Her training and work has been in science. She has also enjoyed time spent in writing articles, short stories and poems which have been published in various newspapers, magazines and anthologies.

### ONE SMALL COIN

ALL THEY see is a man of silver, dumb and - almost - immobile.

"What is it?"

"A statue, silly."

"It moved."

"Didn't!"

"Did! Its finger moved. I saw it!"

"Didn't!"

It did. It definitely did. I know, because it's my finger these children are talking about. I flick it again and twitch my shoulder. They cry "Ooh!" and back away.

They see the man of silver and do not know what lies under the mask or the paint, or how my heart beats waiting or how my mind builds up its picture of revenge. It is Tess's fault. I loved her; I thought she loved me. My Tess, with the smile and the tender hands; I am, I admit, a quiet person, and she was my link to others more at ease than I. She taught me how to laugh and then grew hard and taught me that the only constant in this world is money. Money is a release. If you have money, you are somebody. If you don't, you are no one. Tess broke me, when nothing else could. I slept a lot or sat still, curtained from the light, in my study at home and thought about nothing at all. Ended up here.

I do more than twitch for two young parents anxious to photograph their children with the statue when I see how much money they offer. They stand beside me, the father with his selfie stick, and I bend and extend an arm to rest on the tallest child's shoulder. Only, note only, because she is well-behaved. So many boys and girls are not. So many are like my own two. I never got on with them, even with my daughter, who never learnt the meaning of tact.

After the divorce and I went to live in my daughter's flat, this statue thing came up: a place for a busker at the Quay, someone to be a statue. At the interview, the young woman said, "People have different reasons for doing this. Writers can observe at length without causing suspicion. Artists, to fill their minds with images of people moving. Others to prove they can. And you?" I gave the easy lie. "I want to write," I said, and won the position. "The public will love you," she enthused. Perhaps no one else applied. The real reason? I wanted to escape into silence but not to be left behind.

When I see her, I think I am dreaming up a ghost. It's an untidy morning at the Quay, the wind spurting dust into people's eyes and the harbour water heaving. I haven't caught sight of her since we shook hands outside the court and said goodbye. She or the ghost is some distance away. I wait. She moves closer and becomes seriously real. Tess. I would know her anywhere and always. I forget I am a statue and turn to watch her walking past the wharves that poke into the harbour, across the pavement from me. This woman is my Tess, my wife, always will be, but she casts in my direction a vague unseeing look and continues on, veering for no one, owning the world, sorry for nothing. Marching to the Tessa tune as always. Her dark hair flirts with the wind; her dress follows the lines of her body and bells out at the knees, trapping air. Dust and discarded papers skitter around her feet.

I step down from my box, change, go home and escape to bed. The midday sun looks through the window and wonders at me. Yes. I am sick. I am sick with loss of Tess, all over again, and I don't care if I die.

After two days of huddling under covers in my bed, I wonder why I am doing this, my pain turns to anger and I get up and decide to live. I find something to eat and drink a glass of water. Sun watches me with one bright eye. I close my eyes to think and a grand, outrageously audacious idea is born. It will be a cry against cruelty, a cry for human standards and respect. Lucky when on duty I don't silver my face; I wear a mask. So Tess will never know it's me until the final moments when I show her who.

Up to now, I have spent my days resigned, observing but detached, closed in silence. But now, after seeing Tess again, I have a purpose, a future again. I will bide my time and wait as a big cat waits. One day I'll pounce. She'll be sorry then.

Outwardly I remain the same as yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that. All that other people see of me is a statue, silver and impassive, nearly human, perhaps not quite.

I am asked, "Mister, how did you turn silver?" I know if I answered, "I woke up one morning and there it was, I had changed colour sometime in the night," not explaining why I had gone to bed in a suit, I would catch a fleeting look of concern in youthful eyes that hope it will never happen to them. But of course I don't answer; statues do not speak.

My allocated spot under the overhead railway at Circular Quay is in that part of Sydney where harbour water breathes salty air into the city's heart, where ferries dock to engorge and disgorge tourists, where stalls sell food and quality coffee, and trains rumble overhead. This heart has a restless beat. It is never still. Even the gulls jostle like everyone else, happily urbanised but with no civility at all. I observe everyone, without anything being asked of me. I am in the centre of events without any need to take responsibility. Surrounded by noise, the horns of ferries, the drumming of trains, the complaints of gulls, I float in my own silence. I wonder why, in a country that has everything, I have so little.

I used to work in a science institute. Trained as a biologist, I was a researcher, an expert, with published papers and invitations to conferences. My latest project was to study the reproductive habits of a rare variety of earthworm. I like order and routine. In a quiet nest in one of the labs I worked on my experiments and in my office next to the lab, surrounded by specimens and notebooks each in their place, I studied results and planned. I was perfectly content, no need to curry favour with anyone or go to Happy Hour drinks or chat inanities over coffee. Between my worms and Tess, whom I first met at the local library, there was no room for other things. I did not need other things.

Sometimes gulls sit on my shoulder. Sometimes they make a mess on my suit. The runny grey blobs disgust me. They do wash off but still, I didn't expect that my new self as a statue would have to stand rigid as a gull's poop dripped down my arm. I might have descended a bit down the ladder of humanity but I like to be clean. Even a statue has its pride. Every morning, after I have silvered my hands, my head and my neck in the men's room in a nearby cafe (I insist on making a small payment for the privilege), I put on my silver suit and my silver mask, climb onto my box at the Quay and become a statue. Don't think I'm destitute. I have my pension and some money in the bank. I live in a small flat in my daughter's backyard although she doesn't speak to me. Can't remember why; it happened a long time ago, after Tess and I divorced.

Everything went wrong after that day at work when I was called into Head Office for an interview with the boss, a man who had always been, more or less, a friend.

"Come in, Kevin. Take a seat." He was welcoming enough but his lips flickered as he spoke and his eyes slid away. A pen on his desk required immediate concentration. My breaths came jerky. I waited for reassurance or a reason.

"Your work." He hesitated. The pen needed his attention. Suddenly he raised his eyes and smiled, but only with his mouth. "It is good. Very good. No complaints at all, at all, with your work. But well. You see, Kevin, no obvious commercial value yet and, and, our grants have been reduced and you understand how it is. You understand we have to respond to a changing world and sometimes we have to do things that we would rather not. We have to do. Very sad to be losing you and of course you will get a suitable retrenchment sum but we need to connect with industry where the money is these days, you understand, to connect!" And he punched the desk with a fist. Perhaps he really meant to punch the changing world – or me. "We're happy," he added, as if it were a privilege, "to keep you on until the end of the week." And that was that. My life's work ending in a short sad interview.

"If you're alive," a little missy asks, "Do you get stiff?" I do, but it's mind over matter and I like to have control over this wayward thing that is myself. Put up and shut up, I tell it, and it does. The only thing that moves is my chest, up and down with regular breaths, but almost imperceptibly under my heavy jacket which I wear even on a hot summer afternoon like today when the sweat is trickling down my back and making silver rivulets on my neck. I will leave here early and go home as soon as my hat is full enough.

At first Tess supported me. "You'll get another job. Easy," she said. No one wanted a researcher into the problems of earthworms, but I knew their time would come so I applied and kept on applying to universities, institutions, museums ... You name it, I did my best. Interviews did not go well. I'm a researcher for Heaven's sake, not a talking puppet. I'm not really young any more but I didn't think that mattered. But no one wanted me and in the end Tess stopped wanting me also. I know I was stressed. I suppose I might have smacked her once. She said I punched her. That was a lie. She did upset me beyond reason. After all my attempts, the interviews, the rejections, she attacked me without kindness or thought: "How could you stand there as a man and let me support you? I bring all the money in and you loll around the house and wander off casually for an interview occasionally, without really trying to impress. I think you like this layabout life, using up all the money that good old Tess brings in." Wrong, wrong, and wrong. And yes, I cracked, but not much. I'm a gentle man. It was a shock, that's all.

The amount of money I am given here by passers-by would surprise her, and that's just for painting myself and standing still. I watch my hat and its contents carefully. The mask I wear blocks out some of my view and I have to keep my head angled at the right position to see the hat sitting on the ground below me, how much money it contains, who's putting more in – and just in case, who's stealing from it. No one yet and just let anyone try.

A small boy approaches me with something in his hand. It is a small cake with chocolate icing and silver lollies on top. He has that little boy look, a smirk on his face, a glint in his eye that means; you eat this mister and see what it does to you, while he goes to laugh his head off somewhere else. The cake is probably laced with arsenic or at the very least with his own faeces or spit. I ignore him and after a time he goes away. Truth is, I don't like children much. They frighten me. Their frankness, their fearlessness. I worry that they will crack open the shell of myself and invade my soul, and discover that there is something sad inside.

In any case, how can a statue be seen to eat – and through a mask? I go home to eat, safe from people's eyes.

*

Weeks later, Tess returns. She walks past the wharves and towards Bennelong Point, where the Opera House perches with pale folded skirts and holds court with the macho bulk of the Harbour Bridge across the water. A sturdy bulk, and faithful. The Bridge and the Opera House are a necessary pair; they go together, they belong to each other, male and female; they need each other like any male needs his female and like any male is very lonely if his female is lost to him.

This is my chance. At first I rehearse my moves. I rehearse them again. If I don't hurry she'll be gone. Ready. I tense my muscles and flex my hands and start to count, one. On five I will jump from my box, a vengeful statue come alive. I will run to her, ground her, feel her throat...

Two.

I would recognise her in any crowd; the way she walks, the way she fronts the world, full on.

Three.

She moves past a group of tourists busy with photographs.

Four.

She puts out her hand and runs it along the balustrade. I am watching the person who twice changed my life.

Five ...

Hang on. My hat is full of money, mostly two dollar coins, worth a meal tonight. They'll be surely stolen if I leave them.

I decide to stay and guard my coins. They won't keep; Tess will. She'll come here again and next time, if my hat stands empty, I will do it. Anticipation is as good as the deed, they say, until the right time comes.

*

After that, he kicks in, the unwelcome critical twin to my ordinary self, the perfectionist other who inhabits my mind. You weak fool, he scowls. You should have done it. You had your chance and you stuffed it up.

I fight back, with dignity. I'll do it when it suits. I have my property to watch.

Wait. If I do it, I will never see her again.

*

Today another train is thudding across the overpass and another ferry is fussing at the wharf and gulls are fighting over some scattered chips when I see an apparition, ghost, whatever... It is a woman, skinny, bent ingratiatingly, hands together like a supplicant, dirty clothes and skin, tangled hair. She has lost hope, and I watch her as – with time slowing so much it almost stops – she bends over my hat. Her face is young but drawn and her skin is the colour of death. In this bustling quayside, confident with tourists and concert-goers, she is separate like me, but, unlike me, defeated. I watch. She bends over my hat, puts out a shaky hand and takes hold of a coin. Madam, I am trying in an honest way to survive, but you are not, you are a thief. I forget I'm a statue and come to life. "Hey!" I shout, and jump down from my stand. She drops the coin. I'm tall. I stand over her. She drops the coin and backs away. Her face is defenceless and afraid.

I climb back on the box and turn into a statue again.

The sun is still shining, the ferries are still elbowing the wharves and the crowds are still elbowing each other, but the living morning has died. Water rubs uneasily against the wooden piers and the gulls are quiet. A single cloud drags itself above the arch of the bridge. A ferry hoots, in disgust I think, but I'm not sure who the target is. Her or me. Where has the woman gone? Without kindness or thought. I move my head to search the crowd. I swivel to see behind. She is nowhere. She is everywhere. Her face imprints itself on all the others passing by: desperate, looking for one small coin of kindness.

I leave early and go home. The woman with nothing invades every corner of my flat. I strip and stand under the shower but she is still here, dragging me back in time, retuning the past. I see through her eyes my daughter's generosity. And children so naturally kind: a small cake, with icing and silver sprinkles on top; the care on the face of a child, if I might be stiff. Other things, like money thrown and not always in disdain.

I towel myself dry and stand in front of the mirror. Is my body real? It is pink and strong. Is my face real? I touch my cheek and it is warm. Who am I? Who is she, that woman? She is I, and I am she. Each looking, taking. What about giving, forgiving? Somewhere, somehow, there must be a choice. A future. For some of us, at least. It just takes courage, I know, and thick skin.

But I am tired. I will think about it tomorrow.

# WILLIAM SMILES

## by Wendell Watt

### WILLIAM SMILES

HE WOKE up to a bright sky and birds chirping over wormy breakfasts. "Happy Christmas, Susie," he said, as he always did to his sister on Christmas morning. Although, he thought, we won't be sharing it this time. No. A shade moved across the sun. Because you are.... Dead. A hard word to say, a word of stone. But convincing. And sometimes he did need convincing, even though he had had more than three months to get used to the truth of it. He and his sister had been never apart; they had lived and shopped together, watched movies, taken ferry rides, had eaten rolls and drunk hot take-away coffee in parks, fed hungry ducks with stale bread. She had loved the ducks.

Christmas Day. William had cleaned the house yesterday, just because. It was polished, quiet, his parents' furniture stolid in cluttered rooms among his mother's ornaments and family photographs. Now there was not even his sister to keep him company, to giggle over her own jokes or be delighted over simple gifts. There was no one left, no sister, no wider family. And no friends because of Susie.

Christmas Day. Breakfast porridge and two cups of strong black tea. A silent street, the world stopped for a time after a child was born and a star was seen. William itched and paced and pulled curtains aside and stared through windows at the garden. Dancing leaves threw coins of sunlight in his eyes. He blinked. An impatient voice inside his head told him, Something must be done. To William, that seemed like permission, even though it only came from the alter ego parked uninvited in his mind. He made peanut butter sandwiches for himself, packed an apple and a bottle of water, put on the red and green cowboy shirt he had bought for a long-ago holiday, and in half-an-hour was boarding the bus to Palm Beach.

On the outside the bus was ordinary, like all the other buses that plied every day through traffic: squarish, clumsy, painted blue and white, destination PALM BEACH on the front. The inside was a walk back into childhood and threw sharp memory into William's face, the tinsel and shiny baubles, the driver's very false white beard and his Santa hat. 'Santa' beamed "Merry Christmas" to his passengers while William shied, a frightened horse come from silence and solemn grieving rooms. He found himself a window seat and hunched towards the glass while the bus rocked from stop to stop along the coast. An air of festivity took over the day. Passengers got on and got off bearing parcels wrapped in coloured paper and bottles of wine in silver bags; they nodded and smiled to strangers. From his window William concentrated on the view, the wide ocean tipping over into beaches and sandy coves. He hoped that no one noticed that he carried no pretty wrapped parcels, only his old khaki backpack.

A young man wearing a T-shirt that read 'Team Rudolph' sat down heavily with his packages on the empty seat next to William and said, as if they were mates, "Families. The devil, aren't they?"

William offered "Yes".

You had to be polite.

The fellow added, "But you wouldn't be without them, would you?"

William answered "No", added to himself 'If only' and, turning to the window again, rested his forehead on the glass and closed his eyes. He didn't fit in here; he didn't fit in anywhere, only in his own house, shut away.

At Palm Beach he fled the bus and the crowds, hurried along the sand to the quiet end of the beach where no one else was sitting, put down the pack and spread his towel.

He wasn't going in the water; had not been swimming for years, was slightly scared at the thought of it, but sank into the warm soft sand and breathed in the salty air and watched the waves, their regular rising and rearing, and smiled at the sight of seagulls standing on the sand as foam twinkled at their feet.

The best times had been before the death of his mother, he remembered, when he had held a responsible job as storeman in a warehouse. He had friends then but was shy with girls and had waited too long for some nice girl to set her sights on him. Putting thoughts of marriage aside, he bought a small flat for himself near his mother's house where she lived with Susie. He learnt to cook, held small dinner parties and grew geraniums and mint on the balcony.

Ten years ago, many years after his father, his mother had died. William grieved for his mother and grieved more because she had left Susie, forty five years old, alone. William assured himself he was too busy with funeral arrangements to think about anything else at present but the question came anyway. "Are you coming to live with me now?" Susie, with Down Syndrome and her usual honesty, had asked her brother, two days before the funeral. It was a question he had dreaded, a duty he did not want.

He had answered yes because he couldn't say no. He left his job, sold his flat and became her carer.

His obligation, his burden, his happiness: that was Susie, his only sibling.

Now today there was only the sea, and seagulls squawking, and a little boy, four to five years old, on the water's edge chasing seagulls then waves then birds again. The child, dressed in sunproof swimmers and a Legionnaire's hat, advanced on plump legs threatening birds and water, and retreated squealing, and clapped his hands, and advanced again. A living moment, owning all the magic of the world. This was sheer joy that William was watching, as he had seen on Susie when she was happy. He remembered her pleasure in the trivia of life, her optimism, that effort to overcome all odds, and the bouncing back after failure. He had sometimes hated her, always loved her, was resentful because she had died on him and left him alone with nothing. He was finally, he supposed he could say, retired. Not needed by anyone. And lonely, and angry about a messed-up life. Free for sure (be careful what you wish for, didn't they say?) and, again and again, lonely.

But cheered as he watched the child. Watching idly, not really focussing. Suddenly alert.

The boy had been caught by a receding wave and was being swept back towards deeper water. Tumbling, fluffed over with foam, limbs thrashing helplessly, and no adults except William nearby watching or knowing.

William found himself in the water, clothing soaked and dragging him down but all he could think of was the little boy. He fought against drowning, against flabby unused muscles and the flailing sea to get to the child with a fierce will he had not known he possessed; and in an intensely unbelievably victorious moment reached him. He lunged and grabbed and held him tight against his chest, and forced a way against the seaward pull of the rip back to the beach.

The parents, almost incoherent, tried to thank him. "It was nothing," he said, knowing that it was everything. Shocked and confused by the fuss, nose and ears full of sand, he refused to take money or to join them in lunch but accepted a bottle of wine. He didn't drink but wanted to escape from their guilt and their heartbreaking gratitude. He took the bottle in the carry bag, collected his pack and with relief escaped to the bus stop where he boarded the bus back to Manly.

In his seat, after his heart stopped racing and his breathing slowed, and while his wet clothes dripped water and slowly dried on his body, he had time to think. The wine in the shiny silver bag sat at his feet. He lifted it to his lap and cradled it there, making sure that other passengers would see it and know that he, this fellow sitting alone and wet, like everyone else was carrying a Christmas gift today.

The driver of this after lunch bus had been erratic from the start, speeding, slowing, swerving. Now he pushed his Santa hat askew and began to sing, off-key, off-beat, off-centre. The bus began to waltz along the road, to sway, to turn – straight into a truck passing on the other side of the road.

William closed his eyes, heard nothing although he should have done: the rending, the crushing, the shattering, the screaming. When finally he forced his eyes open he saw not the ripped metal or the splintered glass or the blood but his gift, the bottle of wine, come out of its bag and lying smashed beside him, the wine dripping still and spreading. William saw nothing else but his broken gift and despaired. And blinked. And looked again. The smashed bus lay on its side in a skew of twisted metal and glass and people. Stunned, dazed, William tried to move and could. He eased himself carefully along the line of the bus past injured passengers, doing his best to calm and help.

Then the day blurred and faded. He woke in a hospital bed, between clean white sheets with a nurse leaning over him. Soft grey eyes. Smiling. Caring. "I hear you were a hero on the bus," she said. "Eh?" he answered, because that was news to him and not deserved, he thought. He was getting too much praise today and could not handle it; the fact was that he had only done what was necessary at the time.

The nurse propped him up in bed. Such a lovely lady; he hoped she would stay around. Her hands were soft. She brought him a hot cup of tea and he leaned against the pillows, thanking her with his best most charming smile. As he drank the welcome hot liquid, he surveyed the ward - his abrasions, his cuts and his broken gift forgotten - with a curious and beautiful contentment.

# VILLAIN

## by Will B. Riley

### WILL B. RILEY

WILL B RILEY was born in England where, to please a loving but insanely Catholic mother, he spent most of his teen years in a seminary. At eighteen, terrified by the spectre of a life of enforced celibacy as Father Riley he escaped to Australia where he quickly became the other sort of father five times over to compensate. His memories of the seminary are mostly happy, Hogwarts-style ones. He's still working on the Catholic guilt bit.

After winning $1000 in an essay contest he decided being a writer was a quick and easy way to fame and fortune. He knows better now.

He reads everything, from corn flake packets to Homer, and has completed several novels which are soon to be published as ebooks.

Will and his wife Patricia live on The Central Coast north of Sydney.

Find Will at:

www.willbriley.com

fb.com/willbrileywriting

### VILLAIN

AT THE sound of hooves on the woodland path Godric hid behind a tree. It wouldn't do to get caught poaching. Not that he had managed to catch anything but the fact he was carrying a bow in the royal forest was enough.

That the traveller was mounted meant he was not a peasant. If anyone in Godric's village had owned a horse it would have been eaten by now. Not a merchant either, they always travelled together for protection. That meant it was someone well-armed and confident, and Godric, weak and light-headed from starvation, would be no match for him. Best to stay out of his way.

On the other hand... Even a well-armed man was no match for an unexpected arrow in the heart. Notching an arrow he stepped out into the rider's path.

He lowered his bow. The rider was an elderly monk.

"You're taking a chance, Father," Godric said. "The forest is dangerous."

"So I see, but necessity forced me to take it. My guard fell sick and in my ignorance I chose the wrong path."

Godric drew his bow again, the arrowhead pointed at the rider's chest. "Just as necessity forces me to ask for your money and your horse in exchange for your life."

The old monk made no move to comply. "I see I was not the only one to chose the wrong path. Think of your soul, my son."

"If you think I won't kill you because you're a priest, you're wrong. I have a wife and three starving children, without a home and sleeping in the fields, and none of us has eaten more than hedgerow seeds in days. Damnation is in the future. Starvation is now."

Still the monk did not move. "I carry money but it is needed elsewhere. As for the horse, what use is it to you? It is a fine animal and, with it, dressed as you are, you will be arrested on sight. Come, I will share what food I have with you. You look as if you need a feed. See how you tremble"

It was true, Godric was so weak the bow shook in his hands. He attempted to steady it. No more talk, he was wasting time. Kill the old fool now. Eat what food was in his pouch. The extra strength needed to draw the bowstring back caused him to become dizzy.

*

He awoke to find himself seated against a tree with someone forcing liquid into his mouth.

"Drink this ale first, then we will share the bread and cheese I brought for the journey."

Godric's eyes cleared. The speaker on his knees beside him was the monk. Slowly his memory returned. He drank the ale.

"I wouldn't have sold the horse, Father," he said, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. "I'm not that stupid. I would have killed it and taken a haunch for my family."

"A much wiser decision." The monk stood and walked to his horse. Godric tried to summon the strength to rise and look for his weapon but almost fainted a second time. The old monk returned with a leather pouch from which he produced a hunk of bread and a large slice of cheese. Godric wolfed the food greedily while the other watched.

"I am Father Ulfric, cellarer of the abbey of Lilleshall. I was on my way to our hostel at Cheddingstone. It houses children orphaned by the war. Tell me your name and how you come to be in this condition"

Godric told his name. "A poor harvest to begin with, then the Vikings came to our village and took what we had, our stored grain and next year's seed, all our animals too. At least they didn't burn our houses like last time."

"A sad tale, and too common in these violent days. In my own district warring lords have caused much the same distress. Was robbery your only choice for survival?"

"I had no crop, no livestock and no store of food left. In desperation I walked to other districts where I thought I might find food or work. All I found was people in the same condition. When I returned the situation was even worse for the lord's steward had reallocated my land to another because it was not being worked. So desperate was I to find food for my wife and children I truly would have killed you if I could, for whatever you have, whether I be damned for it or not."

Father Ulfric sat down next to Godric. "Unlike many of my brothers I believe God, knowing your circumstances, would have forgiven you. But what next for you, Godric? Will you continue this life until you are caught and hanged?"

"Do I have a choice?"

"Perhaps. We all reach crossroads in out path through life and must chose one or the other road. Is not this such a crossroad for you? Was it God's will, I wonder, that we met and that your weakness prevented you from robbing me. What gold I have is for His children, the orphans. I still have far to travel and I'm sure God wishes me to arrive safely. When you are rested and regain some strength will you travel with me as my guide, my guard and my companion? There may also be a position available for you at the orphanage. We can buy food for your family as we go."

Godric felt a lump form in his throat and tears well in his eyes. This man whom a moment ago he had been prepared to kill was showing him kindness in return.

"I don't deserve compassion, Father. I'm a sinner. I would have done you harm." The tears were flowing freely now.

"Well, if I who am imperfect can forgive you, surely God who is perfect can too. Come, my son, since you are weakened you shall ride and I shall walk. Let us find your family."

# HOME AND AWAY

## by R. A. Purtill

***************

Home And Away received an honourable mention in the 2016 Birdcatcher Books Short Story Competition.

### RAELENE PURTILL

RAELENE WRITES as R.A. Purtill.

She enjoys all sorts of creative writing but short stories have been her most successful medium.

Her current work in progress is a novel length fantasy/fairy tale with steam punk tendencies and Christian themes.

She loves connecting with other writers through workshops, retreats and seminars. 'Conference Junkie' is how she describes herself.

She is a member of the Writers Anthology Group, the editorial committee which oversees an annual anthology in the Moreton Bay shire.

She lives in the northern suburbs of Brisbane with her patient husband and three millennial children.

Find Raellene at:

<https://www.facebook.com/raelene.purtill>

### HOME AND AWAY

THE RUMBLE of the highway outside town is a muted, constant undercurrent to our existence here in Cooper.

It's the pulse of life to our community of farmers, shopkeepers, housewives with frolicking toddlers and those of us who dream of something better.

So when that rhythm was absent one summer morning, when the throbbing beneath our lives paused, an uneasiness fell upon us.

Nerve piercing squeals of air brakes and exhaust injected themselves into our day regularly. They were instances of time, ripped from eternity in which we held our breaths, glancing at each other across kitchen tables, or pausing in our daily tasks to listen against the pressure of our lungs, until the beat began again and the highway moved forward once more.

That day though, that day it didn't.

There was a huge silence and it demanded we congregate in the street, emerging from our fibro houses with our ears alert for the sound that signalled the resumption of our lives.

That day, it did not come.

Seventeen minutes later the siren that changed everything, broke into our congregation and confirmed our fears: there had been a collision at the cross road into town.

The absence of the rhythm of the highway required us to invent our own. It was a beat I did not want to hear.

It was a rushing, hectic scrambling, punctuated by Dad calling instructions while throwing on his high vis jacket and Mrs Hardy from number forty-two rolling her Jumbuck down the street collecting equipment and volunteers.

Dad shook his finger at me. "No, Samantha. Stay with Mum."

This was serious. He never called me by my full name.

I remained abandoned in the dust as Mrs Hardy gained traction and Dad disappeared, his high vis jacket a yellow spot in the distance.

Stay with Mum?

With one foot on the road and the other in our front yard, I was at a personal crossroads. Obey Dad or obey the urges of my own curiosity?

I glanced back to the house, knowing Mum was inside waiting with her kettle and her hospitality and her expectations of me. I shuddered against the image of desperate strangers in our lounge room.

And I crossed the road.

I could gain the action at the intersection if I went through Mr Adams' paddock but that would mean confronting Angus, his prize bull. Jackson's vineyard was safer but it was too far, and besides if old Mrs J. saw me...

I didn't have time to contemplate that. It would have to be the paddock with the bull.

The fence by Mr Adams' house was easy. I leapt over that like the athlete I was becoming. It was a pity Coach Smith couldn't see me today.

At Angus' enclosure, I hesitated. The beast was parked, casual but alert, under the single tree he owned fifty metres to my left. I inched my way opposite where the electric fence met a row of trees. At the corner, I squeezed under. Hadn't I done it enough times? Today my technique was sloppy.

Whether it was the jolt the fence sent me, or the thought that my involuntary squeal would bring Angus barrelling toward me, I can't tell, but I was thrown into top gear and I hurtled through the paddock.

My hair whipped around my eyes but I could see the finish line ahead.

I could hear Coach Smith hustling me toward it, and I could feel the pounding of my feet echoed by the pounding of Angus. The beast had seen me.

The road was still fifteen metres away. From the klaxon in my head to the siren in my lungs and the gong beating at my feet, alarms were going off all through my body. From the side line in my imagination, Coach Smith whooped as I went for the record.

I launched.

Angus skidded in the ground behind me, raising mighty clumps of dirt and grass which heralded my landing. He snorted, shook his defeated head and remained on guard at the fence. He pawed the ground and gave me his best I'll-get-you-next-time glare.

I grasped my knees and my breath, assured of my triumph, then I stuck my tongue out at the beast and swaggered toward the road.

*

Charlie tried to grab me as I pushed my way through the steady backs of the gathered spectators.

"Stop."

But I was soon out of reach of his flailing arms, and away from the whispers of concern and gossip filtering through the crowd.

My lungs recovered but now what had been warm sweat arrived on my skin as freezing ice and my life came to a halt at the intersection of the A12 and the Cooper-Shilo Exit.

Two mangled cars lay scattered across the road. Two mangled cars and a truck. Two mangled cars, a truck and one body covered in a tattered blue tarpaulin. It was like a scene from a road safety commercial. It couldn't happen to me. But then it did.

I recognised the most mangled of the vehicles and moisture leached from my body. It retreated from my eyes, fled my joints, and drained from my head, leaving me dizzy and weak.

Coach Smith.

The murmuring shroud lying beside the vehicle suddenly became human. My human.

I dropped to my knees by the abandoned bundle and ripped back the cover.

"Sam! Don't!"

But I did. Dad's command came too late.

Too late to stop me from seeing Coach's blue and beaten up head. Too late for the sight of seeping blood spread across his unmoving chest.

Too late.

Mrs Hardy put her hand on my shoulder and we covered him again. And I covered my ambitions, my dreams of competition, of winning. They expired with Coach Smith on the bitumen at the cross roads.

Something else died that day. Its death was temporary, although months passed before I came to that realisation.

Charlie's sister, Rachel, was two years older than me but she was my friend. Before the inquest we lived by the rumble of the highway dreaming of something better than Cooper. We had sleepovers, borrowed each other's clothes, and jostled for the attention of Jim Craig.

But the inquest charged her with dangerous driving, responsible for the death of Coach Smith. Manslaughter. Guilty. The words tore the fabric of our friendship.

Pastor Cook spoke about forgiveness. He didn't talk about guilt or abandonment or the destruction of dreams. No. He preached forgiveness. It was a choice, he said. Was I expected to forgive Rachel? I wasn't ready, not yet. Forgiveness was for people who cared. I was empty of caring.

I hovered by her hospital bed and I was cold. I remained untouched by her disfigured face with the black spikes of twenty-six stitches and her immobilised legs trapped in huge white casts. I resisted the pleading of her tears, soggy with remorse and pain. I even dismissed Charlie who was searching for something I couldn't give, his big, dumb eyes all over me, and I bolted from their lives.

*

Back home, I rolled the peas about my plate with disinterest and then stabbed one, until its juice spurted out and it died. Died. Dead. I mashed it underneath my fork. "It doesn't matter any more."

"Yes it does. Even more now." Dad spoke over Mum's head where he cradled her. She had been blubbering at the bench. I was rarely in the company of their intimacy, let alone their grief. Many, many things had changed since the accident. I wasn't up for hugs though. I didn't want to be touched.

"There'll be other coaches. You'll carry on."

"No. I won't." I pushed back my chair and fled.

And I kept running because as it turned out, running did matter.

So I ran until it became all that mattered.

I jogged past the intersection many times. I returned and returned until I could stand at the memorial there and watch the afternoon shadows claim it without weeping, until it didn't hurt any more.

But one day Rachel was there with Charlie and all the hurt converged.

I thought all the running had made it go away but it was there again, at the cross roads. The choice I had refused now confronted me and demanded to be made.

I pulled up and we regarded each other from the edges of the road. Charlie waved and gestured me over. Sweet Charlie, not a sour note in his soul. I was the bitter one.

I thought I'd been running for something but that afternoon I knew I had been running away. I was a better runner, but was I better person? Could I be?

"Cool outfit." Rachel didn't meet my eye.

"Thanks."

"I heard you were going for State."

"Yeah. In three weeks."

Nothing. The air hung limp between us.

"So you're healing up okay?" I pointed my chin at her.

She leaned over her crutches, her put-back-together face lit with an expectation I didn't understand. And Charlie's eyes playing ping pong, rolling back and forth between us. "You're fast. You go fast, I've seen you."

Rachel said, "It's not all about the speed, dearest."

I snapped.

"Of course it is. It will always be about speed, and focus and concentrating on other runners around you."

Good. My accusation worked. She stared at me, sorrow building behind her eyes. But when it leaked out, I was taken by surprise at my own tears. And then I did the best running I've ever done. I ran into the arms of my friend and nothing hurt any more. Everything came together at the crossroad of the A12 and the Cooper-Shilo Exit.

Today, Rachel and I are at the intersection again only this time it is for our departure into the rest of our lives; starting where Coach Smith's ended.

The town has gathered at the cross road to say farewell. Jim Craig is here. For me he has flowers and high fives. For Rachel, there's full on the mouth kisses and wandering hands. She won. Sort of.

While my exit from Cooper is to freedom and the hope of medals, Rachel starts her jail time today. There's a policeman and a detective waiting to escort her to Shilo Detention Centre. They put her in the car. Charlie hovers at the vehicle, jittering and crying. Jim Craig pulls him aside and the car drives away, Rachel's face pushed into the back window.

All their eyes are on me now, waiting. The bus will come soon to carry me away from them, from Cooper.

It will pause just long enough for me to climb aboard and I will become part of the beat of the highway, moving towards the rhythm of a new life.

# TESS'S CHOICE

## by Margot Ogilvie

### MARGOT OGILVIE

MARGOT OGILVIE is a 54-year-old married mother of three from South Australia, who is currently studying towards an Advanced Diploma in Professional Writing, writing short stories, and pursuing her love of reading. She is featured in three short story anthologies, has won several short story competitions and has written collection of biographies of Christian Australians.

Margot loves all things Australian: its vast landscape, its strong people, its deep history and the hope it offers for the future. She has travelled widely with her family on many extensive home-schooling 'excursions.'

### TESS'S CHOICE

BEFORE SHE was fully awake, Tess knew things were different. It wasn't the beep of the alarm that woke her, or her Mum shaking her. Tess woke to the gentle sound of waves lapping the shore. Then she remembered. She'd run away. Rather than face another fight with her mother, she'd fled to the beach. Now, she could fill her day however she chose.

Watching the glow in the eastern sky intensify, the colours and light reflecting off the glass-like surface of the water, a strange sensation filled her heart. Peace. Perhaps everything would be alright.

Tess's hand reached for the small bump in her tummy, caressing the life it signified. Greeting her child. The bump had been a shock to her Mum when she entered Tess's room unannounced last week and saw it. Tess had long awaited its inevitable appearance. She knew she'd broken her mother's heart. Mum's face couldn't decide between confusion, disappointment, and anger. Finally it settled on shock. Speechless, paralysing shock.

Mother and daughter stood in the same room, eons apart in that moment, watching the dreams they'd had for Tess splatter like millions of tiny shards of glass. University – gone. Career – gone. Pure white wedding dress – gone. Tess imagined they were the splinters her Mum saw.

Tess had grieved those losses over these past months and come to a different place. Now, on good days, she could see beauty in the shattered glass, rainbows prismed all over the walls of her life. New dreams. Potential. Adventure. Hope.

Her Mum had spent the week striving to recreate those lost dreams, to piece together the tiny shards and resurrect them as a fine crystal glass. No matter which way she did it, or how hard she tried, it would never hold water. She could "What if?" for eternity, but nothing would ever be the same again.

The growling of Tess's stomach stirred her out of the past, reminding her that she was hungry. Despite the need to budget, she couldn't starve herself. She had more than herself to consider now. She walked along the Esplanade, past fast food, pancakes, hotel dining rooms. Finally she came to a café with a sandwich board out the front boasting "All You Can Eat Breakfast." Just what she needed.

The fifteen dollars on breakfast was money well spent. She hadn't touched coffee since she found out about the baby, but enjoyed the aroma. Her mouth watered at the sight of bacon, berries and fresh-baked bread. She loaded up her tray and sat at a corner table. She went back for seconds, delighting in yoghurt, fluffy yellow eggs, and golden brown toast. This set-up was perfect for the complex culinary combinations Tess craved since she got pregnant. Never mind that they brought shudders to the non-pregnant palate. It was also perfect for indecisive teenagers on the run. She loaded up her bag with bread rolls and fruit and even a couple of sausages wrapped in a serviette.

Her days fell into a peaceful routine. Tess feasted on the café breakfast, then nibbled pilfered leftovers all day as she wandered the foreshore district. People-watching. Thinking.

At seventeen, Tess was embarrassed to admit that this would be her first decision without Mum persuading her to do it Mum's way. And what a choice it was.

At first, it was as if Mum was still there, inside her brain, controlling Tess's thoughts as she always had. Tess could get rid of the baby and finish school. And be eternally scarred. Then there was the adoption option. Would that be less haunting? She couldn't imagine how. She'd read all the books, seen all the movies. The theme had been explored every which way with many and varied outcomes.

Mum didn't seem to get it. This was Tess's life. Her crossroad. Her baby. A tiny life growing within Tess's body. Though she didn't know which way she wanted to turn, she knew she had to deafen herself to Mum's directions and decide what was best for herself and the baby.

*

One day a cute family caught Tess's attention at the cafe. A young mum and dad with the sweetest little girl, with pink-ribboned pigtails, a pink frilly dress and pink furry boots. A tiny baby, all in blue, in his mother's arms. All of them happy. Dad was so attentive to his darling pink daughter. Mum was completely enraptured by her son. They were the stuff of Christmas cards and day dreams. "Could this be a picture of my future?" Tess wondered.

Another day she heard yelling further down the beach and went to investigate. A young mum was battling a wilful boy who was determined to strip naked and pee on the beach. Her arms were so full of baby, she couldn't wrestle the lad, so she was yelling, and trying to get her third, older child to help. Three young children and a frazzled young mum. No frills or laughter here.

"Sure glad it's not me," a woman in the gathering crowd nudged Tess. "What a nightmare."

Tess felt sorry for the young mum. And wondered if it could be her someday.

After two weeks of hanging out around her beach-bedroom, Tess realised with relief that her brain was finally free of her mother's voice. Her thoughts now belonged only to her, even if they did vary as much as the tide.

She'd done a lot of people-watching, but it only served to confuse her. She'd seen happy people with and without kids, getting along nicely either way. She'd seen people snarling and snapping at each other, some with and others without money. If having kids and money didn't guarantee happiness, what did? Maybe she had as much chance of finding it as anyone.

*

Two weeks later, a storm woke Tess while it was still dark. By dawn she and everything she owned were tired, cold and wet. What did she expect? It was early May, after all. She was now five months along. It was time to put her fledgling decision-making skills into practice and find somewhere new to live.

She wasn't ready to face Mum yet. Tess had grown to love this baby. She knew beyond doubt that she would have it. But she hadn't finished sorting through anything beyond that. Another thing she knew was she didn't want her Mum taking over.

Alec. She had longed for his strong arms to embrace her ever since she'd come here. What must he be thinking? He knew nothing of the baby. In her determination to shut her Mum out of this decision, she had excluded the one person who really had the right to any input.

She rode the bus to Alec's place, imagining all the ways the coming scene could play out. The closer she got, the more desperate she became to see him, to tell him.

After she arrived, Tess sat on his doorstep for ages waiting for Alec to get home from school. Finally he was there, sitting beside her, unable to take his eyes from hers. He reached for her hand. She snuggled her head into his shoulder.

She broke the spell, looking up into his blue eyes, those deep pools of love and concern.

"Alec, I'm going to have a baby. Your baby."

"What. . . How. . .Really?"

Tess watched his face transform like a sky at sunrise. Shock. Disbelief. And finally, maybe a smile. At least the start of one.

"That's why I went away. Mum went crazy. She wanted to make all the decisions. I thought they were mine to make. I'm sorry Alec. I should have realised they were ours to make."

"Gee Tess, this is all so sudden. I just don't . . . "

"Wow. What was that? Quick, Alec, give me your hand."

Grabbing his hand, she placed it on her bulge, hoping the baby would move again. Sure enough, a little limb poked its father's hand, then seemed to disappear.

They sat for ages, waiting, feeling, talking, kissing. When Tess decided it was time to face her Mum, Alec offered to drive, not willing to have her do it alone.

*

They walked into the house hand-in-hand. Tess's Mum ran to embrace her daughter. Even then Alec refused to release her hand. It wasn't long before her Mum started bombarding them with questions, issuing ultimatums, wringing her hands at the embarrassment they had caused her.

Alec took the brunt of her fury. At first, Tess tried to respond calmly, but as her Mum got more and more worked up, Tess had to yell to be heard. Alec yelled to defend himself, and Tess. It was awful.

Without warning, Tess clutched her stomach and doubled over, crying out in pain. Alec knelt beside her, concern all over his face. When she could stand, she hurried off to the bathroom.

When she returned, Tess stumbled back to Alec, crying and shuddering between more attacks of painful cramps, finally admitting she was bleeding. Without even looking at her Mum, Alec scooped her into his car and raced for the hospital.

"I don't want to lose this baby, Alec. I can't. Not now. I love him or her so much."

"I know. Just try to be calm. Relax now. Take deep breaths."

Tess was soon on a gurney in the emergency room. Alec refused to leave as they poked and pricked her. He held her hand through it all. Together they saw the baby on the ultrasound screen, so perfect, so tiny. And with a beating heart.

"Is the baby alive?" Tess questioned the technician.

"Yes, with a good strong heartbeat."

The nurse stuck her head around the curtain, telling them Tess's Mum had arrived and wanted to come through to see her. With a quick look at Alec, Tess asked them to keep her away. At least until they knew what was happening.

Before long they were left alone to wait for the specialist. Just the two of them. No. The three of them. There was a baby monitor strapped to Tess's tummy and the steady rhythmic sound reassured them that their baby was alive. Stressed perhaps, but alive.

Alec scooted onto the side of the bed, one hand on Tess's tummy, the other holding her hand.

"You've really got a baby in there. I can't get my head around it, but I can't deny it either. Not with that heartbeat tapping away."

"I hate that our baby's in trouble, Alec. Surely all that pain and bleeding can't be a good thing? What if we lose him or her? Before we even get to see him. Or hold her."

"Sshh. We don't know what it means until we see the doc." Alec leaned over and kissed her.

"Try to stay calm. Think good thoughts."

"Do you think the baby knows what I've been thinking? That Mum even had me thinking about getting rid of him or her? That I've thought about adoption?"

"Is that what you want now?"

"Oh no. How could I give our baby away? I've felt the movements inside of me. I can hear the heart beating. No, Alec. I want to keep this baby. I know it won't be easy, but I'll do whatever it takes to keep our child. If only he or she survives."

"And I'll be there for both of you, Tess. I want this baby to live. It's all so new and scary, but I want us to be a family. We are a family, Tess."

Alec wrapped his arms around Tess and the baby. Tess nestled into the safe place within his embrace. She didn't know if she was imagining it, but she sensed the baby felt safe too.

# PAST FUTURE PRESENT

## by Kathy Childs

***************

Past Future Present won second prize in the 2016 Birdcatcher Books Short Story Competition.

### KATHY CHILDS

KATHY CHILDS spends every spare moment writing; to the detriment of her exercise program. She delights in writing short stories – some light and fanciful, others dark and disturbing. Kathy has won a number of short story competitions and has been published both online and in print. When not writing Kathy loves to read and travel and even remembers to show up for work on an almost daily basis.

Find Kathy at www.kathychilds.com

### PAST FUTURE PRESENT

I CAN see by the look on her face that Rachel isn't pleased to be here. Resigned. Dog tired. For her it's a mundane day of chores, another old man with wrinkled skin and a mangled body trapped in a wheelchair. Persona non grata. For me it's one of the few times I get to see another human being. The meals on wheels lady may come three times a week but she never stops to chat.

Subsidised in-home care – it has enabled me to stay in my own home for far longer than I should have. It has locked me into this house that I can no longer maintain and then humiliates me by sending young girls to manage my personal care. Rachel is my fifth such carer; they don't tend to stay, but she's stuck it out longer than most. Poor pay, no prospects and grumpy clients – hardly a sterling career choice. Perhaps it's because she's older than the others. The problem is that even on my good days I'm not great company; too many hours of solitude and I've lost the art of conversation. I never used to be so insular. I used to be someone.

"Rachel darling, can you grab me the photo album in the top drawer. Be a love." My voice is scratchy with disuse. I used to limber it up nightly by yelling at the TV, but the novelty wore off a few years back.

Rachel darling scowls, deepening the creases around her mouth. She hates being interrupted; she has a routine, the fastest way to the goal line and out the door.

"Don't darling me, old man." She snaps, but without any heat.

"Sorry. Old habits."

"Course they're old habits. You're old." Her voice lacks its usual venom. I've always had the impression her testiness is a front, but after three months of 'expert in-house care' I'm beginning to doubt my powers of observation.

"Please Rachel dar...." I catch myself just in time. "Help me out here, girl."

"Where is it?"

"In the dresser. Top left."

Rachel digs through the detritus and finds the ragged old album. My past. My life. My story. She wipes the dust off the cover. "Here you go. Don't expect me to look at it with you. I have work to do, old man."

"Wouldn't expect you to be interested; just an old man's memories. I was the 1962 Muscle Man of the Year. Seems a long time ago."

"Really?" Rachel leans against the dresser wiping her hands on the cleaning cloth. "Got a photo?"

I flip past my scrawny youth and gangling teens and find the photo. Twenty-six and proud as a peacock. I run my finger down the photo; the images coalescing in my mind of the backstage dust and mildew mingling with the smells of oil and testosterone. Ah, those were the days.

"Is that really you?"

"Yes, really. I wasn't born this way you know. I was young once."

"Of course you were." She's looking over my shoulder now as I thumb through the album.

"Where is that one taken?"

"The dressing room." There I stood, my skin sleek and tanned, glistening with oil rubbed on by some striking lass. I had washboard abs, tree trunk thighs and broad muscular shoulders. I was a sight to behold.

"What a hunk." Rachel isn't shy with her words.

"I was rather, wasn't I?" I'd forgotten I knew how to preen. It's rather nice. "Won first prize that night."

"What went wrong?"

Deflated I close the book, trapping my old self inside. "Life got in the way of dreams."

"What do you mean?" Rachel seems genuinely interested now. She's been cleaning the house and washing my privates for five months now. We chat superficially as a way to get through the awkward moments when the wash-cloth descends, but never about our personal lives. It never seems appropriate somehow.

But I'm dressed now and, as I settle down into my past, a lifetime of memories washes over me. I run my hand over the cover of the album, the cracked vinyl under my fingertips a reminder of just how long ago it all was. I turn to 1962 and, peeling back the cellophane cover, remove the black and white photograph. I hold the photo to my nose and breathe deeply, trying to recreate the moment. "I was 26 years old and I was the best of the best. Brooklyn, New York – the final event for the season and I was competing against the top body-builders from all around the world. I was buffed. I'd worked hard to chisel every muscle, to tone every fibre. Now, there was perfection."

"If you do say so yourself." Rachel laughs. The first sign today that there is a spark in her. She wears her life like a heavy grey cloak.

"Actually I do." I smile at her. "Look at me. There is a man in his prime." I hold the photo out so she can see me clearly, the fine lines of a perfectly sculptured body.

"Easy to do when you don't have to work for a living."

"What makes you think that? I worked on the wharf during the day, six days a week, and trained and toned at night. Those aren't fake muscles like the blokes at the gym these days. They were the real deal. Carrying bags of wheat off the ships to the cargo pallets, one, twenty, fifty. Builds the torso. I ate healthy food though, unlike the other blokes who would shove down some greasy muck. Not me. Protein and carbs. Bastards gave me a hard time, you know, about that, but no one was game to take me on. I was tough too, a street fighter from way back."

Rachel looks me up and down. She sees the ancient, decrepit body; the wheels that I rely for movement. Her eyes look sad. She sees me watching and brusquely turns away.

"I have to get back to work."

"Do you? Do you really?"

She turns back and I look her straight in the eye, something I've never done before. I'm old you see and it's humiliating. Not the housecleaning, that's fine. It's the other; too personal, too embarrassing. So I avoid eye contact, keep my distance.

"Rachel, sit a minute. Let's talk."

"I ..." She holds my gaze momentarily then looks away, her attention diverted by the trilling of her phone. Reaching into her apron pocket she silences the ringtone while glancing at the screen. Head tilted to one side she looks in my direction, opens her mouth to speak, then thinks better of it and answers the phone instead.

"What's up honey bunch? Home already?" She wanders off down the hall to take the call in private.

I look to my left. Rachel's bag is lying there, her purse visible, almost reaching out to me. She seldom leaves the room without it. Moving is not easy these days, but I figure with a stretch I can just about grab it. The question is should I? A choice. I manoeuvre myself closer to the bag and lean across the tattered arm of my wheeled chariot. I am just about to grab the leather strap when I hear Rachel returning. I sit back quickly, knocking my elbow on the metal support and adopt a nonchalant look while cursing inwardly. Bloody funny bone. Whoever named the damn thing should be shot.

"What's it like to have had all of that and now, well, be like you are?" Rachel is behind me, her voice soft, gentle; left over sentiment from speaking with her daughter.

I rub my elbow to mellow the pain. "Hard. Harder some days than others." I twist my neck so that I can see her. "Some days I find it difficult to remember that I was ever young. Other days it seems like I still am 26 inside and my body aged to spite me, trapping me in the carcass of an old man. I have days when I feel like standing up and dancing, when I want to throw my arm around a gorgeous girl and dance off into the night. And then," I turn away from her, "And then I remember who I am now. Remember that my dancing days are over."

"I'm sorry."

"What for? For being young?" I don't like the bitterness in my voice. I try to bury it with my words. "I had my time. And what a time it was. The world was my oyster. Everything I dreamed came true. How many can say that?"

"Not me that's for sure." Rachel picks up the cloth and starts dusting again, her back to me. "You know, I always wanted to own my own shop, be self-employed; to have a little place where I could sell old jewellery and clothes. Vintage stuff mainly. You know, from the 20s and 30s right up to the 60s. In the back an old gramophone would be playing vinyl records." Rachel smiles and sits down on the arm of the easy chair, her eyes distant. "The retail counter would be made from the back of an old Chevy, cut down, all pink and chrome. The whole place would have pockets of time – a 20s space with a flapper theme, a 40s place with a war theme and in the back a 60s café with booths and staff in costume."

"You've given this a lot of thought."

"Well dreams are free." Rachel's voice is harsh now and she stands up and starts moving the ornaments rather than dusting around them. "Life however isn't; which is why I am here."

"You have a daughter, don't you?"

"Yes." Her clipped tone makes it very clear the conversation is to end here.

I can take a hint as well as the next man - well at least when it suits me. "Did you ever get as far as a business plan?"

Rachel turns and looks at me again. "Why?"

"Just interested."

She tucks her hair behind her ear, cocking her head to the side, while she makes the decision whether or not to answer. "Actually, I did. My daughter's father is a financier and he helped me draw up a business plan and we even did a budget. We were going to start the business together. He was going to finance it and I was going to run it."

"What went wrong?"

"His wife."

"Ah."

"Yes. Ah."

"Would you let me look at the plan?"

"Why?"

"I know quite a bit about business. Just because the body is old doesn't mean the mind is dim."

"No point really."

"Why not?"

"No money."

"And the motivation. Is that gone too?"

"No." Rachel's voice is melancholy. "No, it's still there. I buy a lottery ticket every week and I still dream it might happen. But that's all it is. A dream." She stands up straighter; pulls her shoulders back. "Besides, old man, what would you do without me?"

"And if you won the lottery? Would you do it?"

"In a heartbeat, but I know the chances of winning so I keep working and keep dreaming. One day, before I'm too old, I hope it all comes true. You never know. I haven't checked my ticket. Perhaps this will be the week." Her attempt at flippancy is feeble. She doesn't believe.

Rachel's phone trills again. "Shit, I'm meant to have finished here. Teach me to gasbag. Look, I'll just give the bathroom a once over and do a proper job on Thursday. That okay?" Without waiting for an answer Rachel picks up her bucket of cleaning products and marches into the bathroom.

I smile to myself as I lift her purse out of her bag and replace her lottery ticket with the one from my top pocket. I have made my choice. Second division win. After all, what can an old broken man with no family do with $330,000 anyhow?

# SERENDIPITY

## by Leonie Crowden

***************

Serendipity received an honourable mention in the 2016 Birdcatcher Books Short Story Competition.

### LEONIE CROWDEN

LEONIE, A former teacher, has always written poetry but after retiring, turned her hand to writing fiction, beginning with children's Picture Book texts and Junior Novels. After joining a local writers' group she decided to attempt Adult Short Stories, a genre she really enjoys. She finds inspiration in casual conversations and anecdotes, amongst news items, in social media and in books, newspapers and magazines.

Leonie has entered a number of national writing competitions with considerable success. Some of these stories have been published in anthologies and she has also contributed articles for a Travel Magazine. Her successes have encouraged her to continue with her writing.

As well as her literary interests, Leonie volunteers within her local community, participates in amateur theatre, both on stage and at production and committee level, works casually as an usher at a Performing Arts Centre and as a Tour Guide at a Heritage Property, all activities which provide her with plenty of inspiration for her writing pursuits.

### SERENDIPITY

WE MET by chance just after midnight on New Years Eve, over forty years ago; minutes after I decided to end my existence. The hour we spent together altered the direction of my life, re-affirming my faith in the power of human connection; a moment in time when I discovered the course of one's life can change in a heartbeat.

Drifting through life, barraged by memories of the horror and carnage I'd witnessed, I was trapped in a fog of despair; a lost soul endeavouring to escape past realities and seeking justification for my existence. Although I'd escaped physical injuries, I'd become one of the many casualties of war, scarred by the atrocities of a futile battle for supremacy. Haunted by nightmares in which the lives of countless men, women and children were sacrificed by egotistical leaders in the name of superiority and greed, I struggled to rationalise why my life had been spared when so many others hadn't been so lucky.

I'd served my tie as a fighter pilot, trained in aerial warfare, regarded as one of the most prestigious positions in the Air Force. Considered one of an elite group of heroes, I completed my tour of duty with an honourable discharge, applauded for my unblemished performance and personal conduct but it was a reputation of which I wasn't proud. Although I'd received accolades for my impressive, tactical manoeuvres and accurate target record, I left riddled with guilt, ashamed of the suffering I'd caused. My dreams were peppered with graphic images of homes I'd demolished, families I'd destroyed and lives I'd cut short. In the opinion of my superiors I'd served my country well but in my mind I'd sold my soul to the devil and betrayed the human race. I considered myself unworthy of any future happiness, having denied that of my victims so I made the decision to end my life.

Although selected as a fighter pilot for my level of physical prowess and strength of character, I suddenly found myself doubting my ability to follow through with my resolution. Feeling weak and gutless, I thought several strong whiskeys might provide the necessary courage. However, having sought comfort in the bottle too frequently, a search of my cupboards proved fruitless so I grabbed my coat and headed off into the night.

I wandered aimlessly through the streets, my mind a swirling vortex of thoughts, oblivious to everything but a seemingly endless tunnel stretching before me. Trudging past a continuous seething mass of people, my eyes avoided their faces. I walked in the shadows of unfamiliar buildings, unaware of the direction I took. Surrounded by a smorgasbord of stimulating experiences, my numbed senses were unresponsive to the pulsing fervour of a vibrant city heralding the promise of a new year.

Eventually I found myself gripping the cold metal railing of a bridge, mesmerised by the swirling, murky waters in the depths below. A statue cemented to the spot, legs leaden and body aching, I was overwhelmed by a deluge of physical, emotional and psychological exhaustion. The time had come to end it all.

Suddenly, a sound permeated my self-absorbed trance; soft and indistinguishable at first. Sifting through the cacophony of noise echoing around the city, I slowly recognised the anguished sobbing of distress. I turned, my eyes straining to focus as I peered along the walkway. It was then that I saw you. Time stood still momentarily and in that split second my life changed forever.

Metres away, dwarfed by the massive construction, you huddled in the shadow of the stone pylon, unaware of my proximity. Draping over the contours of your slender frame, a flimsy, red dress billowed gently in the breeze; intricate, diamante detailing at your hips shimmered in the moonlight. Long, shapely legs were bare; silver stilettos dangled from delicate hands. Magnificent, auburn tresses cascaded over your shoulders. Dark, red lips quivered as tears streamed down your cheeks. Stealing my breath away, I thought you the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen.

Drawn like a magnet, enchanted by your beauty, I yearned to wrap my arms around you and never let go. Instead I simply asked if you were alright. Turning towards me, I felt warm breath on my cheeks as you tried to form words between the sobs.

"It's ok," I said, "There's no need to say anything."

Sapphire eyes stared at me; crystal pools rimmed with dark lashes in contrast to your pale, flawless complexion. Shuddering as your piercing gaze peered deep into my soul, I instinctively wrapped your shaking hands in mine.

"It's alright," I said, "I understand."

With your eyes never straying from mine, convulsive tears gradually slowed to intermittent sobbing before stopping completely.

"Yes," you whispered, "I believe you do."

An old African proverb states, 'However long the night, the dawn will break.' As if on cue, orchestrated by some divine intervention, cool, soothing rain began falling; big drops splashing intermittently on the asphalt on which we stood; diluting the patina of emotions engulfing our hearts and calming our troubled souls.

Without another word, we turned in perfect synchronisation, our fingers entwined as we began walking towards the riverbank. Warm spasms of energy surged between us, calming your shivering body. As if reading the other's mind, we halted momentarily under the awning of a cafe, turned and went inside. It wasn't coffee we craved but something warm to nourish our dampened spirits.

The atmosphere within was subdued. People sat, some deep in conversation, others quietly enjoying their meals. We selected a table in the corner and sat opposite each other. There was no need to break the ice; it had already melted between us. Feeling relaxed, like old friends re-united, a comfortable warmth quickly enveloped us. Inhibitions disappeared as words tumbled out in a tacit understanding of the other's emotional needs. Somewhere along the way we ordered coffee and cake and as we savoured the last remnants of the sweet dessert, we bared our souls, lamenting over the crumbs of our disintegrating lives.

Tears flowed freely as we listened to the cause of the other's despair. No comments were made, no judgements passed. There was just an acknowledgement of facts. You told me of your engagement to a much older man from a wealthy family; acquaintances of your parents. Considered a good match, the betrothal had been an expectation. You were hoping for love, he was seeking a trophy wife; a young, attractive woman; proof of his power and wealth to attract a desirable partner despite his advancing years. Destined to spend the rest of your life bound to a controlling and possessive man you didn't love, your life was in tatters.

In a natural response, I opened my heart and vocalised my most intimate thoughts, sharing more about my personal battles than I'd even acknowledged myself. You offered no sympathy but immediately I sensed your genuine understanding of my situation and it was at that exact moment I fell in love with you.

I ordered more coffee before excusing myself to the bathroom to gather my thoughts. Tension had eased in the reflection staring back at me in the mirror, replaced by a calmness that hadn't been visible for a long time. My eyes sparkled and my skin tingled. Feeling more alive than I had in years, a fluttering sensation pulsed through every cell of my body. Suddenly revived, I'd been thrown a lifeline by someone I'd only just met; a complete stranger but I felt as if I'd known you for ever.

Splashing cold water on my face to compose myself before returning to the table, I meandered back through the restaurant, my thoughts thrusting into overdrive as I conjured images of the two of us together in various scenarios. For the first time in a long while I contemplated a future; not just my own solitary existence but one that included another person. The impact of our chance meeting had been life changing. Suddenly I was no longer alone; there was an 'us' and the concept sent warm shivers of delight rippling through my body.

Smiling with a warmth emanating from deep within as I approached our table, my mouth opened to voice the words I'd been forming in my mind but as I looked for your understanding face, I saw the table was empty; you'd gone, disappeared out of my world and back into yours; vanished just as quickly as you'd appeared.

I glanced around at other strangers, selfishly immersed in their own private arenas, oblivious to the panic slowly building in my chest, threatening to erupt at any moment. Had I imagined you; evoked your image to feed my desperate longing? I searched for a note, abandoned sandals, a lost earring; something you'd left behind but there was nothing. All that remained was the musky scent of perfume, lingering in the air like an alluring siren, full of promise; proof that you hadn't been a dream. You'd vanished leaving me to face my demons alone.

Thoughts returned to my original plan for the evening; the decision to end it all but the hand of fate had intervened that night. Lady Luck had shone her torch, illuminating the pathway ahead and allowing a glimpse into my possible future. Our journey together may have become an impossibility but my own life hadn't. Our paths had crossed; our lives connecting briefly before veering off in opposite directions but a chance meeting had made me renounce my feelings of inadequacy and self loathing. Suicidal thoughts drifted off into the distance as I tried to assimilate what had actually occurred that night. Amongst the sea of confusion before me, there was one certainty. I knew I had to survive, if not to find you then to cherish your memory in my dreams.

I spent the rest of my life desperate to catch a glimpse of your beautiful face, yearning to find you and continue where we left off. I searched everywhere, hoping to see you walking along the street, sipping coffee in cafes, waiting in queues, seated along from me on the train. I sought your face in the crowds of everyday people, amongst celebrities, in newcomers I met, those who served me in shops and others I dealt with in business. I never stopped looking but sadly I didn't find you. Your identity remained nothing more than an image forever etched in my memory but I knew that if by some miracle I stumbled across you, I'd recognise you immediately; such was the impact you had.

Over the years I've often thought of you; my dreams filled with endless possibilities but although my life hasn't been the one I envisaged with you, it's been a good life. I've found love with a wonderful woman and fathered three amazing children; enjoyed a successful career; travelled the world; and savoured many wonderful experiences. My life has been filled with immense pleasure, joy and love but the most significant sensation I've experienced is the feeling of absolute peace and the accompanying freedom that came with having finally forgiven myself; something I was unable to do until the night I met you.

I've spent a lifetime reflecting on what could have been. Now in the twilight of my life, I realise the time is approaching when perhaps we'll meet again. Although separated in life, in death our souls may be re-united in spirit and I'll finally have the opportunity to thank you for rescuing me and providing my reason for living.

You entered my world like a shooting star, illuminating the darkness for a brief moment in time before fading into obscurity but your memory has lived on in my heart; a flame igniting my passion and nourishing my soul. You gave me a future, enabled me to find love, create a family and live a satisfying, meaningful life and for that I'll always be extremely grateful.

My greatest hope is that I did the same for you.

# CHOOSING WONDERFUL

## by Marshall Willan

***************

Choosing Wonderful received an honourable mention in the 2016 Birdcatcher Books Short Story Competition.

### MARSHALL WILLAN

MARSHALL WILLAN (64yo) is semi retired living in Perth. He extended his lifelong love of the written word in 2010 to a small portfolio of a dozen short stories and growing. These are fine tuned for competitions he enters once or twice a year. He has had some success in having been shortlisted three times. He regularly harasses authorities in the field for advice to the point no doubt of becoming a nuisance. Writers' festivals are also sources of considerable knowledge and exponents of writing as an art form. There is never too much learning to absorb.

Marshall is also active in male choral singing [Perth Male Voice Choir] and an enthusiastic outdoors participant in kayaking and cycling. In 2017 he intends to cycle Perth to Sydney.

### CHOOSING WONDERFUL

PERHAPS ENTRANCED as though captive to the picturesque Norfolk landscape, the albatross hovered; buffeted gently like a feather might nestle in God's palm. Ever aware for movement on the ground it was oblivious to Herbert seated directly beneath. The giant bird responded to Nature's call as its deposit of waste spiralled down like a missile, its earthbound destination interrupted by the uppermost tip of Herbert's left ear.

The elderly man flinched. Startled, Herbert wiped at the smear which now threatened to ooze onto his shoulder. Initially annoyed, he shrugged off the intrusion with characteristic composure. His accustomed humour aroused caused him to murmur, "A sign of good luck, I understand."

Herbert settled back on the park bench to wait, his receding silver grey hair swept into place. It had been another overcast morning; a precursor to the approach of winter. Alone and at peace he had passed the time absorbed with his reading. As the world's affairs ploughed through the uncertainty of the latter months of 1911, Herbert remained nonchalant, captivated in his thoughts. He was aware the shaky economy had stalled from bouts of wavering speculation. Preachers of doom appeared to almost gloat, gleeful in their predictions of dire tidings. The neighbours, Germany and France were sabre rattling once again which only served to unsettle the rest of the European community.

Content with his modest rustic cottage and surrounds, Herbert was a man who did not allow such wails of despair to haunt him. His advanced years reminded him the cyclical upswing of an economy as though a momentous pendulum would always emerge to dispel gloom.

Of greater concern to Herbert at the moment was the dark cloud overhead which, like a shadowy brute, had emerged from behind hovering with a sneer of threat to the long awaited afternoon.

Herbert's back would ache like the stab of a rusty nail when he remained seated in the one position too long. And yet if he stood to relieve the ache, his knees would groan to hesitate with the strain. Despite the resultant protests from far flung regions of his body, formerly staunch and able to weather onslaughts of younger years, Herbert's humour and outlook, like a gulp of North Sea air would inevitably tend his ailments.

Whether during earlier and more demanding days in business; or now, contented retirement; sickness or health; even the tragedy of his failed and childless marriage that almost broke his heart, Herbert bore within a personal reminder that the sun would always rise tomorrow to proffer the gift of another day.

He squinted to check his watch.

*

Herbert's encounters with Eliza were always anticipated with a fillip. The two had first met over forty years before and in time, like a meadow of sunflowers, their friendship had blossomed beyond expectation. They became accustomed to meet every couple of months to chat; comfortable in each other's company as they shared a couple of hours. The relationship had always been close but while the foundations to be closer were apparent, neither had deliberately extended it further. Herbert respected Eliza, her family and her life with Rufus who could at times prove a tiresome challenge for her. In turn she, always aware of Herbert's quiet solitude and independence respected his selected path in life. Neither sought to undermine what the other had and as a result both maintained a mutual care and concern that extended to close affection. Herbert had certainly felt stronger for Eliza than any other lady in his past. Yet had he pursued his feelings further, he felt the consequences might destroy the bond they had nurtured as though an hour glass smashed, the disarray for them both irreparable.

Life can be difficult at times, Herbert pondered with the mere hint of a wistful shrug. He gazed absently and pulled his favoured tawny tweed jacket closer. It can be a devil at times or the next moment absolutely wonderful. Ruefully he chuckled to himself as he thought, I might choose ... wonderful.

Briefly his thoughts wavered, poised as though in the mire of doldrums. Life was like a road with a journey to inevitably unfold; the steep climbs with rewarding vantage points and views; descending rocky outcrops; ruts and potholes; some open stretches over grassy plains followed by deep crossings although occasionally assisted with a timely bridge.

How tiny we must all be and yet how dangerous, Herbert would muse, conscious of man's apparent inclination to self destruct. Little was he aware of the precipice of horror about to punctuate these early years of the twentieth century.

On occasions Herbert stooped as if burdened with the inheritance from those who had worn the same path before him. He reflected with humour, sometimes regret, but mostly in quiet acceptance the journey traversed, wearily now behind him. Any remaining days were a bonus and for that he eagerly envisaged, as always his all too few allotted hours with Eliza McLeod.

The clouds which threatened earlier drifted past as though a grant of benevolence to spare the old man seated alone. His eyes glazed as they cast beyond the coastal strip to far across the North Sea. Always beautiful to Herbert, the sea offered a gift from Nature which, whilst on occasions it might resemble a woman scorned to inflict wrath for man's impertinent forays, would recover with the grace and love of a kindly grandmother.

*

"Hello, 'old man'!" Eliza tottered from behind, her mischievous green eyes sparkled their accustomed twinkle as she tickled Herbert's scalp.

Herbert, startled, looked up, his delight evident upon Eliza's sudden arrival.

"Oh, unstoppable as ever I see, my lady," he smiled in welcome as he rose unsteadily to greet her with a hug. He warmed to the particular moment he would always anticipate. Eliza was shorter, rising only to Herbert's chest but despite the advanced years of them both, she never failed to fill him with a renewed pleasure, his thoughts briefly digressed to what might have been had destiny offered an alternative route.

As they sat down at the park table he produced a flask of tea from his bag. Busily, Eliza rummaged through her basket to produce some scones.

Still an attractive woman, her once blonde locks now reflected silver, although as always, impeccably cared for. To Herbert they shone like an angel's halo. Eliza took in the view, boundless it seemed to the Belgian coast. She paused for a moment, her thoughts gathered to reveal her plans for the day; where she had intended going afterwards and what she had been up to since the two had last met. As she spoke with her soft though distinct tone, Eliza's voice barely raised with any emotion whilst her words tumbled to Herbert's amused scrutiny in a mostly one sided conversation. She remarked almost with resignation of her three children and their families scattered to distant lands. Eliza missed them. Her late husband had passed away thirty years previously but she had thrived like a juvenile osprey stretching its wings with a newly discovered freedom. The many new and immense avenues unveiled to her curious eyes bound her as willing hostage.

Herbert, more the listener, delighted to observe and listen as Eliza divulged her minor daily hurdles and conquests. Passers-by would have barely noticed, and even then with scant regard, the two old souls as they passed the time in quiet company. Eliza's eyes danced to crinkle with charm and every now and then she would chortle at a mischievous thought which might have sprung unintentionally into her discourse. She would almost reel with delight from sudden laughter caused by a cheeky sense of humour. Her chimes of mirth, sometimes even guffaws were infectious to any listener bound by the spell of a minstrel's music.

Herbert would quietly smile as he allowed her to feel she had to impart to him some necessary advice and feigned surprise when she might expound an unexpected observation of him as though he had been unaware. He had rarely seen her angry but valued the recognition of her disappointments as pearls of confidence clutched tightly; precious between them both. They shared an absolute trust; a bond in which few others would be fortunate to experience. For this, Herbert felt not only privileged but especially proud to be privy. His care for Eliza was probably more than she would have been aware. As self appointed custodian for her welfare his role was sealed with affection. Despite solitude his daily companion, he would not jeopardise what they had and felt placated with a life which, upon reflection, Eliza provided a pinnacle.

She had travelled widely and was inevitably in the midst of planning another journey – sometimes with Rufus, sometimes without. She would speak of the distant rail trips to Cornwall, Scotland or Wales; the hazardous sail across to Ireland or even once her excursion through France to as far as the Mediterranean Sea. Herbert, by contrast was more relaxed when at home rather than having to contend with the upheaval of vast journeys. He too had travelled but not as much as she, although sometimes he had to admit to curiosity with the exuberant tales her exploits aroused. Her frustration with Rufus' apparent disinterest was evident. They had been together for many years, a fact that bewildered Herbert. Why does she bother he would reflect only to immediately reprimand himself to it being neither his business to question nor his right to deny the fact perhaps Eliza and Rufus really did have an underlying attachment, a tie he had been unable to allow himself to entrust. Eliza had displayed annoyance with Rufus' lack of motivation to initiate the plans to which her insatiable thoughts and dreams demanded attention. Invariably she had been the instigator from which the inevitable chagrin would lead to friction between them. Often Eliza embarked upon a journey without Rufus - an unusual scenario for a lady to be travelling solo in the early twentieth century. For Eliza though, the thought of it as an obstacle never crossed her mind. She was very much her own woman; independent and adventurous but one who never ceased to be the source of intrigue for Herbert.

Herbert's reflections were interrupted as he realised Eliza had asked him a question which, while he had been studying her, he had missed completely. His hearing had deteriorated in recent years and Eliza's voice was not always loud enough for him to distinguish.

"I'm sorry Eliza. What did you ask me?" His manners, impeccable as ever. "I was distracted by the wind with your hair."

The white lie caused them both to smile.

Eliza's eyes creased to tease him. "I had said ... Herbert Carruthers, you have not spoken much this afternoon. I repeat, how is everything in your life?" Her interest in him was sincere. She realised he sometimes had to be prompted to reveal his thoughts to her. It was not unusual he might conceal too much which provided Eliza reason for her private concern for him.

Undaunted by any hint of a gentle reprimand, Herbert replied "My life? Well, my girl I am as happy as a gull on that distant cloud." He pointed vaguely. "I like to look after my garden. I read books and write letters. I walk daily and when I walk, I contemplate many thoughts. Sometimes I think how I could run this country. It would be like organising the village fair you know. Keep it simple for God's sake." Herbert smiled to acknowledge the naive notion. He continued. "On other occasions however I might wonder how you are as you clatter about; how things are with you and Rufus and what grand expeditions you have planned next." Herbert liked to gently enquire without any sign of being intrusive. With questions subtly curious his mind was like the quiet purr of a cat under pretence of sleep. His observations were astute and begged answers to his veiled enquiries.

Eliza pounced upon his veneered query like a raptor upon its quarry. "Oh! Would you believe what he is going to do now? Fortunately I asked him. Otherwise I might not have found out until he was packed and ready to go!"

"What is it?" Herbert asked, instantly alert, his intrigue agog and confounded with possibilities.

Rufus was a complex character and often his own worst enemy. Herbert liked him but suspected the feeling was not mutual. They had seen little of each other in recent years which disappointed him. Rufus was aware of the friendship between him and Eliza but was in no position to impose demands to turn her back on someone who was merely an old, albeit close friend. She would have dispelled any argument with irritation. Rufus was also mindful of Eliza being perfectly capable to demand, even at this late stage of their lives his very own dismissal so he quietly seethed upon mention of Herbert's name.

With obvious exasperation Eliza threw her hand in the air. "He and his supercilious brother Rupert have decided to go to the Isle of Man of all places with a gaggle of friends for six months to write ... poetry!" As though daggers suddenly unsheathed, her eyebrows soared with indignation into her brow, aggrieved eyes popping in bewilderment. "I imagine they'll find a cave somewhere and..." she left the sentence unfinished. "Do you think I might have been considered?" Her annoyance and hurt were apparent.

Accustomed to tales of disruption in the household of Eliza and Rufus, Herbert listened with a sympathetic ear. She would not request an answer to her continued private vexation. Like a wizened sage Herbert quietly nodded gloomily. After a marked pause he ventured to suggest the obvious, to ignore Rufus' thoughtlessness and do what she might have always wanted despite his behaviour.

He reeled at the unexpected response.

"Oh don't you worry yourself about that little problem my lovely friend," she announced with a sudden gleam in her eyes. "I have made plans to visit America!"

"America?" Herbert choked upon his scone. Crumbs flew like slivers of shrapnel into the air. "That is so far away." His own travels had extended only as far as the Lakes District a couple of years before and prior, briefly the Channel Islands. Herbert's home was his castle but to contemplate America on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean was as though it were another planet, a world far removed from his beloved Norfolk.

Without any sign of being taken aback by this predictable response Eliza continued. She deliberately ignored Herbert's amazement. "And I think you, my dear, as my friend should accompany me!"

"What...? Me...? Accompany... you?" Herbert was astounded the conversation should have taken such a turn. Like a battlefield with armies in disarray his mind raced to marshal the havoc caused by his thoughts' unannounced dilemma. Innumerable hurdles were hastily erected to confront the bedlam. Eliza, fully prepared would hear none of it.

"Yes Herbert! It will open your eyes to have a look beyond that garden of yours! And who says you cannot travel to America? Goodness knows you can afford it. The change of scenery will do you wonders. I tire of the travels I have had on my own. I want to be able to share the experience. It'll be good... for both of us," she added, her eyes lowered. "You'll be able to write a book on this one!" Eliza was adamant. To argue was pointless.

Wisely she had ensured Rufus would hear none of her latest plans. God, she thought. He will be so imbued with his Isle of Man sojourn and the beloved poetry. He won't even notice me gone.

"But..." wailed Herbert.

"Herbert Carruthers! You have to make arrangements!"

*

Six months later......April 1912

Herbert poked his head from his cabin. "Eliza, are you ready?" He knocked on the cabin door next to his. "We're about to leave."

With an entrance into the corridor as a young queen might ascend her throne Eliza announced "Coming right now", her face flushed and eyes alight with excitement. She was dressed as colourful as ever with a magnificent floral hat which would not have gone unnoticed at Ascot.

Steadily, the elderly couple made their way to the upper deck immediately above their cabins. They deftly manoeuvred through the excited crowd as the liner prepared to slowly pull away from the Southampton dock. By the time they were on deck to catch a glimpse of the departure, the scene was ablaze with streamers and balloons. Like hounds upon a quarry the ship's band played relentlessly to contribute to the commotion of the occasion.

Eliza and Herbert found a position for themselves at the stern as they hung on to the railings. Eliza slipped her arm through Herbert's and charmed him with the briefest of smiles as she caught his eye.

Herbert gazed into the sky with delight, the happiest he could remember.

"Just wonderful," he murmured. Spray dampened a faint tear in his eye.

Like the rallying pitch of a huntsman's horn, the liner's funnels hooted three almighty puffs of smoke in farewell. The roar of excitement and envy in response from those crowded shoulder to shoulder ashore, streamers flapping wildly and taut to breaking point was tumultuous.

Herbert leaned over, beguiled by the moment as a faint breeze caught his hair. The spray dripped from his beaming brow to wash on to the registered wording on the liner's stern:

TITANIC

LIVERPOOL

# CRAZY LADIES ON TRAINS

## by Alicia Bruzzone

***************

Crazy Ladies On Trains won first prize in the 2016 Birdcatcher Books Short Story Competition.

### ALICIA BRUZZONE

ALICIA BRUZZONE completed an Arts degree without much fanfare. Pregnant with her third child, she had vivid dreams she decided needing recording and put some of those studies to use. Since then she has written for her own amusement, even if no one else finds her funny.

Alicia has won several short story competitions, and has been shortlisted and highly commended in enough others to feel special.

Her work features in numerous anthologies; which look really pretty on her bookshelf.

Alicia has a slight addiction to frozen coke and Disney Channel. Her family approves of both.

### CRAZY LADIES ON TRAINS

IT'S AN unwritten rule of public transport that on at least one seat in every carriage sits an insane person. You know the one: dark eyes, wild hair, sometimes the scrumptious body odour that suggests they like to marinate monthly before showering to build character. Today, I find myself the nominated crazy lady.

Not that I smell particularly offensive or I'm harbouring a hidden bag of feral cats, but the sections of my hair I haven't shaved off are currently purple, and the pins in my eyebrow are longer than the ones for your credit card. Not the initial life goal I set for myself, but we work with what we get. Currently, I also appear to be talking to myself in a made up language. I need to start sticking my Bluetooth in the ear away from the window, but I'm worried one of the crazies will steal it. I know, me a victim, when most of the train keeps a good metre radius from my body. If you've ever headed to the city in rush hour, you know that's a quarantine space in case I'm catching. It's as if they are already envisioning the title on the front page of this evening's paper: The Case of the Contagious Crazy Lady; Could She Have Infected You?

"Nəḥna ʾi-nəkl ḥawira," I insist into the tiny microphone, wishing for the thousandth time my sister could have chosen to speak a normal language like Spanish. Yes, it sounded cooler than 'we cannot go,' and prevented eavesdroppers, but I had enough insane lady going for me as it was.

As I say goodbye and hang up, a man in an over-starched grey suit sits next to me. He looks too young to wear a suit everyday to work. Then again, I think they should be exclusively relegated to the over seventies so they can prep how to look in their casket.

"Your pronunciation is wrong," he informs me as he unfolds his newspaper and spreads himself into every spare millimetre of space between us like a caterpillar settling in a cocoon. "I know the glottal consonant phoneme is controversial, but it is widely established now to be similar to the modern day s."

I stare at the side of his head, waiting for it to explode. I'm the only one supposed to be speaking a made up language.

He turns to look at me, brown eyes like warm caramel slotted into skin that looks like chocolate cake batter. "You were speaking Ge'ez? I don't think there's many of us around, what with it being extinct and all." He goes back to his paper after producing a smile for me that suggests he thinks we're in some sort of secret club. "I can tutor you if you need it."

I roll my eyes, catching a glimpse of my eyebrow piercing in the process. "Take it up with my sister. She refused to play with me unless I spoke her secret language, but she wanted a real one. Coptic was too common." I'm used to snide. Combined with narcissism, it usually keeps me a free seat on the train.

Not today.

He actually smiles at me and folds up his paper, ready to engage in real conversation. "She must be older."

"No, twin. She wanted us to have cryptophasia, but couldn't subject herself to making up gibberish." I smile involuntarily, thinking of my sister. She is the reason my hair is purple right now. We no longer look identical.

"Interesting concept, did she try and imitate your actions?"

"No, I was supposed to do hers so she didn't get dirty." I shake my head. I don't want to share this with a random stranger. My stop is coming up, so I stand and head for the door. Unfortunately, Grey Suit joins me.

"I've seen you all week. New job?" He's still staring at me like a science project.

"Sort of." My phone silently buzzes in my ear, and I answer as he continues talking, unaware my mind is elsewhere. "I'll be in soon. Can't it wait? Okay, pass the phone." I hear the greeting in the extinct language of Ge'ez when the phone is passed. The odds of finding someone else dumb enough to know it are astronomical. I continue the babbled conversation I hung up from earlier, and with repeated assurance that I am coming, I am allowed respite from the conversation.

Grey Suit is staring at me, and I think if I were a lollipop he'd already be licking.

"I only speak it because I have to. No linguistic conversations are welcome." I push the button and the doors open with staggered exaggeration at the effort.

"Is coffee welcome?" he asks, edging past an elderly couple who glare under a face full of wrinkles as only the geriatric can. It's as if all the skin of the friends they loose over the years gets re-rationed to their comrades.

My mind flits to the cafeteria sludge I will be forced to consume later on in the day, and I check my watch. I have twenty minutes to distract myself, and I've covered the no Ge'ez speech. Like I had one of those rehearsed. It's happened all of never. "As long as it's made from actual coffee beans, then yes."

Grey Suit smiles at me, white teeth perfectly aligned as if they were planted by a mouth landscaper. I'm in trouble.

*

He's still smiling as he looks over a cup of cappuccino froth towards me where we share a table. I feel my insides glow as I take a sip.

"Is your neck alright?" he asks, and I automatically reach to touch the tender part just below my scalp.

I thought the marks had faded; I guess not. "It's nothing," I suggest as I take another mouthful to hide half my face behind the cardboard cup. It's too much and I burn my tongue, but I don't want him to ask.

He doesn't with his mouth, but his eyes do. I ignore them. They may look like honey, but I am not a bee or any other winged insect variety likely to head towards them with reckless abandon.

I flick a packet of sugar between my fingers, weaving it in and out like a loom where I can crochet confectionery.

"Are you running late?" he asks me, catching me checking my watch. "I'm not holding you from anything?"

I shake my head and gulp more scalding coffee. They won't admit me in for another ten minutes, but I should probably start walking. "I have time, I just know I have someone desperate for me to get there."

"Boyfriend?" he asks politely before he dunks his head into his coffee, and I laugh, as I know he's copying exactly what I've been doing every time he asks me a question. His eyes seem to liquefy, and I'm not sure if it's the happiness I exude or my definitive no.

"Very smooth. The coffee, of course," I tell him with a raised eyebrow, pulling the piercing with it.

"Well, if you ever want to practice your Ge'ez, I'm always looking for a chat," he offers with his hands wide as if he might be trying to catch the sky.

I've never understood that one; how it is placating to fake amateur juggling hour. Still, his words have given me thought for consideration. "Any time?"

Those eyes again. I take that as a yes.

"You busy now?"

He chokes on the mouthful of coffee he hides behind, and I blush as I laugh and hand him a napkin. I'm not trying to be forward, but he doesn't know that. "I'm free for a little while," he hesitantly admits, as if he's already rearranging a mental planner with phone numbers and times in red brain ink that highlight his activities of the day. There's probably an expensive device in his pocket that has everything recorded, but he doesn't want to seem too eager. After stalking me from a train station and buying me coffee, one can never be too careful.

I still think Grey Suit is using me as a social study, but if that's the case I'm really going to make his day. "It'll be about six hours if you're interested," I call, and start to wander off, knowing if he wants to follow I'm fairly easy to spot. Not a lot of purple half-haired women on the street today.

I can hear him scurry behind me and murmur into his phone, trying to prevent me from hearing his conversation. Because I'm not creative enough to fill in the gaps. Perhaps I need to start overdoing my make up to suggest artistic tendencies. Drag queen could do it.

"I'm all yours," he announces slightly breathlessly when he catches up, the conversation and long strides too much in a suit and the morning sun.

"No," I correct him. "We're sharing."

*

His face turns the colour of his suit as he stares up at the building before us and I march in. St Margaret's hospital isn't my favourite place in the world either, but it's not like I'm checking him in to die. That spot has already been reserved.

"You're coming in for treatment," he says slowly, and I can imagine his inner brain flurry as all of his witty Ge'ez comments go sailing for condolences and appropriate comments for the terminally ill. I walk into the oncology ward, and I can feel his eyes staring at my half shaved head, mentally cataloguing how much treatment I must have to go.

I leave him to fester for a while, even though he did just buy me coffee, because I need some entertainment today, and I nominated him. Hell, maybe I just need some therapy.

*

"Ḳāla barakat," calls out the figure in the bed, and I return with a 'word of blessing' of my own.

Grey Suit is stuck in the doorway like a poorly built damn, blocking the nurses, but filtering through light. "You taught a four year old Ge'ez," he remarks, something between awe and dumbstruck resonating through his voice.

"Decklin is six. And remember the over achieving sister I mentioned? This is her son." I sit on the end of the bed, and Decklin begins to speak with me in Ge'ez, the only language he has spoken since my sister died. No one understands him except me, but I have a plan. And it involves Grey Suit.

"Hi, Decklin," Grey Suit mentions nervously.

Decklin replies in Ge'ez, as he usually does, and bursts into tears when Grey Suit replies in turn.

"You told!" he wails in Ge'ez, pitching a fit into the pillow. "It was our secret!" He's stuck in Ge'ez, and I don't know if what I've decided can be classified as helping. Decklin's little body is wracked with sobs, every rib making its presence known through his t-shirt that once fit and he now wears like a hand me down from an older sibling. The drip that is constantly plugged into his arm sustains him, but does little to offset the weight loss side effects. Still, he's alive, which is more than I can say of his mother.

I gather him in my arms and cradle him, kissing his bald little head. The chemotherapy has been hard, but losing his mother was worse. "Decklin, remember how your mummy told you it was something people used a long, long time ago? I found us a friend who knows it too. He's going to keep you company for me while I have a nap. Come on, buddy." I nudge his pointy chin, and he nuzzles in further like a mole burrowing to the safety of the dark.

Grey Suit stares at me, and I realise we used one of our made up words. There was no Ge'ez translation for buddy.

Decklin calms down eventually, and I leave him on the bed to get the nurse and have a word with Grey Suit. He's uneasy, so I give him an out. He doesn't take it, which makes me wonder what the hell is wrong with him.

"What do you need me for?" he asks, not showing any disappointment if he thought this was a date and now feels rejected.

"He needs another bone marrow transplant. Usually parents aren't a match, but his mother was. Funny thing about identical twins, I can donate too. I'm not good with blood ..." I mention nervously, poking the path on my neck where the needle will be inserted. It was usually done in the arm, but with me that didn't work so well. It had to go somewhere I couldn't see it. "He just needs someone to talk to. Ask him questions; don't bring up his mother unless he does. She died three months ago, and he hasn't spoken English since. The nurses don't know what to do with him." I didn't really either. Aunty to mother was a jump, and he'd been admitted in here for most of it. He was six. He needed family with him when he was sick and it killed me to have him in here.

"What's wrong with him?"

"Beyond leukaemia? He misses his mum." So much so I'd dyed my hair purple and gotten myself pierced so I no longer resembled her. His eyes used to light up every time he saw me walk through the doorway, and he'd burst into tears whenever I corrected him and had to remind him gently that his mother was gone, and it was only me. It broke both our hearts. I would undertake any manner of drastic hairstyle or experimental cosmetic procedure to not have to see that look on his face ever again. "She taught him Ge'ez as a way to annoy her ex, but it turned into something more with him. I've tried, but he won't speak English, and I can't be here with him all the time. He needs to communicate with the nurses so he's less miserable." I also need to be stabbed in the neck for several hours, and he got scared when I stopped talking. I told him I fell asleep, but really I just passed out.

Grey Suit nods and heads back into Decklin's room while I round up a nurse. They know me here well, and my arrival signals a giant burden off their shoulders. My nephew can't be the easiest of patients, and I can tell they want to reach out to him and help, but he just doesn't let them. He's shrunk into himself the last three months, and with his emancipated figure it's not hard to see why Grey Suit thought he was four. He's a shadow in a boy's skin, as much as I don't want to see it. I'm his guardian now, and it pains me to visit every day and watch him try and leave me too. I take a deep breath, warn the nurse to watch Grey Suit as I don't really know him, and set myself up for the pain that might just save my nephew.

The needles and tubes in my neck don't bother Decklin, he's been stuffed into so many lines for the last part of his life they seem normal, which just makes it so much worse. He's supposed to be learning how to swim, and lying about eating all his broccoli, and kicking a ball around the yard until it's too dark to see and the mosquitoes have feasted on his blood. I don't think they'd even want it at the moment.

I hand him some homework and make him read to me to begin with, suppressing a smile as he first reads the text internally, then announces it in Ge'ez. Any word he can't think of a translation for, he skips. He's too clever for his own good, exactly like my sister.

Only his maths work when completed can be handed in, his reading comprehension is also completed in the exclusive language, each letter delicately scrawled into a sheet of code his teacher will never appreciate. Grey Suit is watching in fascination. Decklin is pretty impressive if I say so myself, but it's nice to see someone else appreciate it too.

I prompt Decklin to talk to Grey Suit about dinosaurs, since I know he loves them and the kid has so many words cooped up inside him waiting to spill he's like pot set to simmer that started boiling ten minutes ago. I start to fade out, the blood removal and recirculation always effects me, but I'd go through so much worse. The past five days I've had injections to prepare me, not wanting to go under for surgery to have my bone marrow removed from my hip in case something goes wrong and Decklin is left with nobody.

Decklin prattles on, and gets to a point where he's using a word we created to fill in gaps where none exist. Sematic languages from the fifth century had surprisingly little use for the word 'Pteranodon.' Grey Suit asks what Decklin means, and there's a pause as he withdraws back into himself. I can imagine him throwing startled looks my way, and as much as I want to interject and it pains me to stay silent, I do, feigning the sleep he is so accustomed to when I undergo the procedure.

It seems like forever, maybe it is just half a heartbeat, but a small voice gently adds, "Pteranodon. It's a flying dinosaur," in perfect English, and I allow myself to drift off for real this time. Everything isn't going to be okay, but if we get past these hurdles one at a time, the road ahead doesn't seem quite so terrifying. We fixed two problems today. Decklin can now communicate with the nursing staff, and I didn't have to subject myself to cafeteria coffee. It felt like a win to me.

# NIGHT MOVES

## By Julia Archer

***************

Night Moves received an honourable mention in the 2016 Birdcatcher Books Short Story Competition.

### JULIA ARCHER

JULIA ARCHER writes short stories and Young Adult fiction, often with themes drawn from her two decades living and working in Singapore, Pakistan, Kazakhstan and PNG. She is a qualified Teacher of English as a Foreign Language, and has post-graduate degrees in Creative Writing.

Website: http://khan.sharif.chronicles.com

### NIGHT MOVES

WHEN THEY found a house to rent in Peshawar, the next step was to retrieve everything from the old house in Abbottabad. Karen booked a removalist with a good reputation among the foreign community, and Doug obtained a certificate that the truck contained household goods. Otherwise they would have to pay tax at every local government tollbooth along the route.

He gave her the certificate as if it was a thoughtful gift, a caring gesture.

"But aren't we going together?"

"I can't. I can't take two days leave when I've just started work in the project."

"Doug! Of course you can! They know we have to move!"

"I can't! I'm just overwhelmed by getting on top of where the project is at and my role in it, and who the local staff are. I'm sorry. I have complete faith in you. You'll manage it magnificently."

How did he always turn it around? Make it seem like she was a whining and dependant woman, and he was liberating her?

"Doug, women do not drive alone on the highways in Pakistan!"

He was losing patience. "You did it often enough from Abbottabad when you wanted a few days in a more westernised environment in Islamabad!"

He had her there. She was silent. But that was less than half the distance, and the route had become familiar. She had never driven out of Peshawar alone. Never driven out of Peshawar, full stop. Hardly remembered how they had driven into the city together, three weeks ago.

On Wednesday, Karen drove the Corolla out of Peshawar down the Grand Trunk Road. Locked in among thundering trucks and recklessly overtaking buses that routinely forced oncoming traffic off the road, she was constantly tense and frequently terrified.

Why was she driving this dangerous road alone? Why hadn't she refused? No other woman she knew, foreign or Pakistani, would do this and a hundred other things she had done in the last six years. Living in Islamabad it had been difficult enough, even with the support of a community of foreign women who had taught her the city's ins and outs. She had set up a house from nothing, learned where she could buy Western groceries, and which shopkeepers spoke English. She had discovered coffee shops and bookshops to retreat into when Pakistan all became too much. She had joined interest groups and gone to talks and exhibitions, while Doug buried himself in his work.

When his career signalled another move, to small-town Abbottabad, she'd kept her fears to herself in case she sounded weak and unsupportive. Settling in a provincial town where a foreign woman was a curiosity had proved so much harder than in Islamabad. Without speaking Pashto she had still somehow found tradesman to fix the plumbing and fought bureaucracy to get the phone connected. She had created ways to keep sane for three years while work demanded all Doug's time, consumed his weekends, drained his emotional energy.

Every few weeks she'd driven two hours to Islamabad, partly on the Grand Trunk Road, craving conversation with other English-speaking women, lunch in a coffee shop, a chance to buy imported groceries. Her American friends, particularly, had marvelled at the Australian woman who drove alone on the highways.

And slowly, over those years, crazy, scruffy Abbottabad had become home, slung as if in a green hammock in its valley between the encircling hills. She'd come to love her house with its view of distant snowy peaks. She'd found her emotional recharge in wandering through the bazaar, wrapped head to foot in her white chador, avoiding eye contact with men.

But huge, dusty, chaotic, ultraconservative Peshawar, where Taliban fighters on leave from Afghanistan boldly walked around with AK47s and black turbans, was a whole other world.

How many more adaptations to serve Doug's career could she make, before something in her broke?

Somehow evading all the other drivers' attempts to kill her, Karen reached the road junction at Hasan Abdal and with relief turned north onto the familiar High Road to China as Lonely Planet poetically called it. Well, China was several days and a thousand kilometres and the crossing of a mighty mountain range away, but in theory, yes, the road would take her there. Now, the traffic had thinned out, slowed down, and she could look around at the farms and villages and take an interest in the seasonal activities in the fields. She recognised places she had stopped in the last three years and taken photos.

She reached Abbottabad in the early afternoon. Habib greeted her with relief and the cat ostentatiously ignored her.

"Tomorrow," she told the security guard, "the truck is coming at nine o'clock."

Habib inclined his head, "Good, madam."

She went to the hotel, checked for herself that the bed sheets had been changed after the previous guest, and asked the staff to adjust the TV to the BBC. She ordered coffee and biscuits and The Pakistan News, and bunkered down in her room, exhausted. The BBC obsessed over the latest climate summit and a new global financial crisis. The newspaper wrung its hands over a sordid constitutional crisis in Islamabad.

Next morning Karen was at the house before nine and locked the cat in an empty bedroom.

At eleven the removalists arrived from Islamabad, two hours late and with a white one ton truck.

She asked the worried-looking little man in charge, "How are you going to remove in that small truck all the items on the inventory I sent you?"

He looked gloomier than ever. "I will have to telephone my office and then I will have to hire a second truck."

"There are always Bedford trucks to be hired next door to the Army mule stables. You can do it in twenty minutes."

Almost two hours passed. If Doug had been here, they would have hurried back, out of respect for a man with an important position. Finally, at one o'clock, they arrived with a Bedford – the standard, everyday towering construction of timber sides and a timber balcony above the cab, every square centimetre fantastically decorated with mountain scenes, flowers, birds and animals in finger-paint colours. Karen clamped her teeth shut on angry comments over the delay and went to the hotel for lunch, the key to the locked bedroom in her pocket.

The winter afternoon was ebbing away when she returned and brief gusts of misty rain did nothing to improve her mood. Habib went to afternoon prayers at the mosque and came back to help her sweep out the slowly emptying rooms. From the Army parade ground beyond her garden wall she heard the hoarse roar of the drill sergeant abusing the miserable trainees. The background chorus to her life for three years, she would never hear it again.

From the bedroom the cat wailed incessantly.

Habib went to sunset prayers at the mosque.

The worried little supervisor announced they were ready to go. The canvas cover had been unfolded from its storage place in the great wooden prow above the truck cab, and roped over the hoops that spanned the load, like a pioneers' prairie wagon.

Habib came back from his prayers and there was a formal farewell. Karen had come to value these small, structured courtesies as a form of cultural beauty. Across the social minefield which divided men from women, mistress from servant, Pakistani from foreigner, Muslim from non-Muslim, the structure made safe passage for her and for Habib to say, I appreciated you and I'm sorry we are moving on, and I wish you well. Without saying any of those things at all, of course.

In the dusk the small convoy moved down the highway that curtly bisects Abbottabad in its hurry to reach the mountains, and beyond them, China. In each familiar shabby little shop along the road business was ending for the day. From the Army barracks the smell of brown coal fires seeped into the car. The lights of squatter settlements speckled the hillsides. People huddled in shawls on the roadsides, waiting for a bus.

Karen saw it all through a blur of tears.

Goodbye to the butcher with the bloody buffalo hides folded on the floor, black hooves lined up like gumboots along the wall. Goodbye to the shop where I bought the curtains when we came here. Goodbye to the busy, tangled lanes of the bazaar. Goodbye to the nomads and their flocks who pass through in spring and autumn. Goodbye to bare furrows under frost and the line of leafless poplars in the winter fog. Goodbye to the circling mountains and summer picnics among the fir trees.

The painted truck was in front, Karen's Corolla in the middle, and the empty white truck behind.

"So we will keep you safe," the supervisor had told her.

After all, it was a rule among foreigners that you did not drive on the Grand Trunk Road after dark, a rule Karen deeply believed in. She had not even driven at night on the relatively safer road from Abbottabad to the junction at Hasan Abdal.

They reached the edge of town at the pass between the hills and began the long, winding descent southward from the plateau, Karen squinting against the oncoming headlights on the inside bends, the cat loose in the car and wailing like the damned.

The kilometres between the foot of the hill and the long Dor River Bridge were notorious for night-time gangs of highwaymen. Karen felt her breath caught painfully in her throat until the little convoy had safely crossed the bridge and passed through the almost deserted bazaar of Havelian.

The night had long since swallowed anything beyond her headlights. She fixed her eyes on the white square of her washing machine in the back of the truck and tuned out everything else. Thirty minutes later the three vehicles were locked into the traffic of Haripur's main street, among animal carts with no lights, auto-rickshaw drivers with no road sense, and taxis, buses and heavy trucks.

On the far side, winding down towards the brickfield pits, watching out for unlit pony taxis and still fixated on the white lode-star of the washing machine, Karen became aware that the headlights of the little white truck were not behind her. She was no longer being shadowed by friendly eyes, no longer in a small zone of relative safety. What had happened to the truck?

She flashed her lights and sounded her horn at the truck ahead, but after several kilometres she gave up. She forgot the white truck. Her only imperative now was to hold fast, with the tenacity of a working cattle dog, to the truck with her household goods.

The wide green farmland of the Hazara plain was hidden in the darkness beyond the headlights. Even the eucalyptus and rosewood trees that arched over the road were more hinted at than visible. The roadside hamlets were shuttered down for the night. Only an occasional mosque interior glowed with pale eggshell tints until the last prayers at nine o'clock. There was little traffic on the road, apart from inter-city minibuses and an infrequent truck, tail-lights optional.

At Hasan Abdal, under a cluster of rare streetlights, they reached the end of The High Road To China. Esther's hands were sweaty on the steering wheel as she broke the foreign community's rule and turned west onto the Grand Trunk Road at night.

Suddenly thrust among thousands of fast-moving, badly-lit vehicles, she locked her eyes on the truck with one and a half tail-lights and a small white square at the back on the right. The traffic in both directions was relentless, rain gusts spattered her windscreen, the cat roamed silently in the darkness of the Corolla's interior. Karen gripped the wheel until the tendons ached in her neck, flinched at the oncoming headlights and followed the truck over the railway crossing and towards the Indus bridge.

They were crawling behind something even slower, and suddenly her truck swung out, overtook other trucks and disappeared. Oncoming traffic prevented Karen from following. Several tense minutes later she pulled out, floored the accelerator and raced over the potholes and back into a slot on her own side of the road. She closed on the truck, and realised with a shock that it wasn't hers. Was her truck one of the three she had just overtaken or was it still ahead of her?

She darted around the alien truck and sped down the highway. The next truck loomed up ahead. One and a half tail-lights, and a small white square. She almost vomited with relief.

By the time they reached the Indus she had chased the truck around other vehicles three times. The cat had settled on the back parcel shelf of the Corolla, its fur a golden halo in the lights of the vehicle behind. That vehicle was following quite consistently. Even in all the tense drama of pursuing her truck she was aware of that. The white one-ton had found her again.

I hope you enjoyed your dinner in Haripur, she thought, furious that they had abandoned her to stop for takeaway food. Just as they had wasted hours having a leisurely lunch. They wouldn't have dared If Doug had come, and this trip would have started in daylight.

The convoy crossed the Indus bridge, out of Punjab into the North West Frontier Province. Another hour passed, an hour of numb, single-minded focus on the small white square, punctuated by manic, high speed pursuit and search operations. Occasionally the truck lumbered off the road, the driver showed his pass to the brigands lounging at the local government toll booth, and was waved on his journey.

Karen knew that if they ever arrived in Peshawar someone else would have to unlock her hands from the wheel.

They passed through towns that yesterday in daylight she'd seen as utterly squalid, but now had the respectability conferred by night. At Akora Khattack the illuminated colonnades and minarets of the seminaries were beautiful, something out of a story by Scheherezade. In daylight the seminaries trained impressionable young men for life as holy warriors, fighting for the cause in Afghanistan and Kashmir.

Back to the darkness of the highway, to pulling out in a gap in the oncoming traffic to pursue her furniture, only to find, time and again, there was no gap, but a truck approaching with headlights off to save the battery. A brief flash of lights to warn her of her error, and the truck's dark bulk hurtling past while she shook and trembled and sought another opportunity.

It was almost nine when they reached the outskirts of Peshawar. Karen pulled ahead of the furniture truck, flicking on her hazard lights, signalling it to follow, watching it closely in case the driver, who was after all an anonymous stranger, took the chance to disappear and steal the load.

Her senses blurred by exhaustion, she felt like a drunk driver by the time she stopped in suburban Rehman Babar Road, her new security guard swung open the gate and the truck reversed in.

She drove off again, over the level crossing of the Khyber Pass railway line, and into the grounds of the American Club, where she left the car with the cat locked inside. On rubbery legs, shoulders throbbing, she climbed the stairs to their rented room and opened the door. She realised it was over seven hours since she had eaten.

Doug looked up from the project documents scattered on the desk.

"We're here," Karen said.

"We?"

"Well, the furniture, the cat and me."

"That's wonderful, darling. The trip all went okay, did it? I told you you could do it. You're such a capable person. Don't always put yourself down."

She had no answer. There was no imaginable connection between his words and her exhaustion, her shaking hands, the hours of fear and ferocious concentration.

Instead she simply said, "You didn't bring back sandwiches or something, did you, while the dining room was open?"

His sudden shamefaced look told her he hadn't.

"I thought you would have eaten on the road somewhere."

It was beyond ridiculous. He hadn't thought of any such thing. If he had, he would have realised immediately there was no way a foreign woman could have stopped anywhere on the road to eat. He had not given her needs a minute's thought. He had been totally involved with his project paperwork until his own growling belly took him to the dining room, and his need satisfied, he had gone back to his papers.

He tried to make amends. "The bar is still open. I'll go and see what they have there, will I?"

Oh yes. Some nuts and potato crisps would be great right now. Or, better, a few shots of vodka. Pity she didn't drink.

One day, will I look back on tonight and know it was the moment when our marriage began to end?

Quite likely, she answered herself. She could very well have been killed out there on the road. All to save him losing two days with his bloody project papers. His empty praise was only to reassure himself that he was generous and appreciative, and to keep her docile, eager to please. To keep her here, supporting his career.

She supposed she should feel proud of what she'd done. She didn't. The fear and danger of those hours obliterated any triumph.

And the thought of living for two years in this repressive city, where for the last three weeks men had leered at her whenever she went outdoors even wrapped in her chador...

There was a new house to be set up, a whole new life to be set up, shops and tradesmen and petty officials to learn to negotiate, while Doug sat sheltered from life in his office, throwing her crumbs of praise.

Can I do it? Do I even want to try?

# STAR CROSSED SOLDIER

## By E. R. Duff

### E. R. DUFF

ERIN DUFF is a newcomer to the publishing scene, yet a writer who can rarely keep her fingers off the keys for more than a few minutes. With the aim to be a global #1 best- selling author, she'll just keep on throwing spaghetti at the wall until something sticks. Best known for her relentless sarcasm often infused into her works, Erin's books — presently in the pipeline — will be thrust upon the world when the right moment strikes. A scientist by day, a writer by night; an aficionado of toasted cheese sandwiches. Watch this space!

### STAR CROSSED SOLDIER

IT SHOULD never have come to this.

Soldiers knew better. Well-trained soldiers operating under false guises were tasked with remaining indifferent to those they blended in with. They were trained to separate emotion from duty; to partake in spy-like reconnaissance missions where social acquaintances were merely tools of the trade, only good for providing facts that scans and surveys could not otherwise gather.

Proper soldiers were masters of their craft. They dared not question the reasoning behind their actions, for the demands of their rulers were paramount and incontestable. They hid amongst the sheep that were bound for slaughter, befriending them for the sole purpose of leading them by hand to a future harvest. Just as a farmer justifiably chose against naming the animal that would one day present itself on a plate at the table, a soldier would not opt to stay around for tea at the residence of a specimen that was ignorant to the spy who had befriended them under false pretences.

In light of these points, a proper soldier was textbook Lucina Galt.

Lucina Galt had not a single bad mark against her name. Officer Galt was a model citizen of her planet; an exemplary example of a fighter who had made all the right choices at the Conservatoire, thus leading to the brilliant amalgamation of both combatant skills, and an incredibly fulfilling academic repertoire of both mathematics and science, with a key focus in xenobiology.

And fighting skills were fun, mind you.

But this particular soldier loved aliens. As a human child would salivate at the chance to hear stories of dinosaurs once roaming their vast planet, Lucina would stay up countless hours to flip through text after text pertaining to various alien races scattered throughout the known galaxies. Some were terrifying, and some were downright laughable. And yet, there were some that were just clouded in absolute mystery; many comprising of reasons to avoid the trip, or simply too far to justify the finances behind such a lengthy journey.

But as time had passed, the technology of her race had advanced beyond anything previously anticipated. Ships became faster; methods of lengthening journeys with fewer rations increased in efficiency and thus lowered costs. And by the time she received her qualification in xenobiology, she was granted the very first seat on the very first shuttle that would lead to the very first expedition to a planet that had only just been given the green light.

Earth.

It was a mission in the early stages, of course. No First Contact, yet the planet had already been deemed to be valuable in terms of the remaining natural resources that it carried. Even before the mission had been given the go-ahead, debates amongst those who held authority argued, and rightly so. See, planets capable of supporting life were seen as opportunities for colonies to thrive and start anew. These colonies in question were members of a race who would basically put in for a bidding war, and those who were deemed successful in such an auction would be allocated a certain number of individuals to be placed on the planet they 'won.' Only certain species that had proven sustainable practices in conservation were permitted to apply, and it was seen as beneficial to all who shared a place in this vast universe.

But there were those who disagreed with it, naturally.

Of course, the first question thrown to the table was 'but there's already a race living there; what are we going to do with them?' And unsurprisingly, it was a fair issue to probe. But those who boasted power were quick to brush this contestable subject to the side, according to Decree Seventy Two, which stated, 'Following the discovery of a habitable world, a species shall be assessed on their capability to ensure conservation and longevity of their planet. If, after a period of time where reconnaissance has proven otherwise, a forced mass-extinction event will take place.'

Justifiably, many would cringe at that sentence.

But soldiers were different. Soldiers of all sorts did not question any decree, or any ruling.

Soldiers such as Lucina Galt, for example. A soldier who had been tasked with the lucrative role of espionage on an alien planet for an extended duration; a soldier who, with sixty-four other operatives, had been placed on this planet and, following a few cosmetic alterations, had been thrust into the deep end of human society where every individual moment of time on this planet was counted, recorded and stored. Nanobots implanted on each visual nerve and situated just behind the retina recorded every second of every moment, the air they inhaled took an instant reading of air quality and assessed the ever-increasing pollution that seemed to constantly clog this planet, and every tactile touch with a finger allowed sensors implanted beneath the skin to do a real-time chemical analysis of the composition of the item. They were biological scanners; physically and biologically modified to make an adequate assessment of the planet they walked amongst.

The planet they studied.

And initially, it didn't bother Lucina one bit. At first, she kept the inner-child suppressed; the part of her who wanted to touch everything, talk to everyone and experience everything that it meant to be human. But being the soldier and a scientist meant that she had to remain impartial to such temptations, so for the first year she simply watched.

And she listened. And she waited by those who were having foolish conversations about celebrities who sculpted the shape of their nose through primitive means, or discussions about the size of a certain appendage that belonged to the human male. The first year was purely that of observation and eavesdropping, and any and all attempts to converse with the human race were dodged at all costs.

But the second year, that was different.

She took a job. She had no requirement to, for she generated her own credit and thus had access to self-sufficient human currency. But the temptation was starting to spark, and a job in a menial office could carry far more opportunities to snoop. It was a far cry from her academic prowess as a xenobiologist and her tactical supremacy as a soldier, but it was part of her current task, and she had to harvest any and all observations that would lead to the ultimate decision for this planet.

Jobs were boring, Lucina had decided. First day in, and filing proved to be painfully repetitious and dull. The filing room was terribly unfulfilling, and offered no real mental stimulus.

Yet, for the first time since her deployment, she was placed in a position that she'd not yet experienced. A position that, given her aim to remain as invisible as possible, went completely against her goal to remain unseen.

She had a colleague.

A human colleague on this planet who conversed with her, shared stories and naively treated her like the very human that she was not. Jane was her name; bubbly, bright and always the first to spur a rather questionable conversation topic; she was drawn to Lucina like a firefly looking for the light. And the soldier had been hesitant at first; they were meant to observe from a close distance, and if a conversation had been instigated by the other party they were utterly forbidden to carry it on, unless if they were forced to do so to avoid arousing suspicion.

But Lucina let it carry on the first day; she was curious.

And the second day was no different. For each day, unlike the other, was entirely new and each bizarre tall tale that wafted out of Jane's mouth was colourful, enlightening and fascinating. She'd been shot, apparently. Her mother had died twice on the operating table, and had lived to tell about it. Jane once gave mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to her canine companion after it had near-drowned from diving off a cliff at a cliff diving 'hot spot', and she spoke four native-Earth languages.

Day twenty-seven of this wonderful friendship evolved even further. Lucina, still ever observant, was invited out to an evening meal to celebrate the year of Jane's birth. Interestingly enough, however, Jane invited seven others; seven other humans that were just as giggly and bubbly and strong-headed as Jane, all with their own individual stories of overcoming countless adversities. Lucina was enamoured; at that very point in time, the energy in that room was electric. The warmness of each who surrounded that table was inviting, and pulled her in. It was as if the chains of authority binding her to her duties were loosened, and she was free to study with a far greater sense of autonomy.

One year later, and it was Lucina standing in the bathroom of her very own flat, staring at her very own reflection, preparing for a meal that highlighted her very own 'birth date.' She'd dropped her hair down, staying clear of that strict military-style bun that had once been her go-to since she'd laid foot on this planet; a welcome tip from Jane. And her clothes, they now painted her wardrobe with splashes of warmth that had not existed beforehand. What once had been her default attire of dull greys and monotone hues; these had now been replaced with exciting pastels and rather ambitious shades. Heck, Lucina had even changed enough to pride herself on her fashion. A jumpsuit for her duties as a soldier was often a repetitive affair, but on this vast planet with just as many highlights as it had lows, she had discovered this unbridled independence within her that demanded to be expressed.

Minuscule moments like this, it spoke volumes when it came to describe what 'humanity' was.

And in this very moment, as she stared at the mirror and prepared to pat on a few small ounces of overpriced cosmetics, the very thought of her reasoning for being on this planet was never once forgotten. The very looming reality that in one further year, she and the sixty-four other soldiers would return to each concealed craft that lay hidden in extremely inconspicuous locations.

And thus, her life would return as it had always been. She would report her findings, and reprise her role as soldier, and scientist alike.

So in this very moment, as she stared into the mirror and anticipated the events of the night to come, Lucina pondered over her duties, and her expectations. Despite the visual and tactile data that she had recorded throughout her stay, she still had the daunting task of reporting her own subjective interpretations of Earth, which would maintain as a small but necessary portion of her reports. Because of course, a soldier undertaking the vital task of reconnaissance on an alien world must remain detached to emotional and superfluous feelings towards things on this planet that maintained no weighting for the purpose behind her job.

And her observations of this world were truthfully damning, at best. The treatment of this world was questionable; a class-based system existed in most nations, all-varying to some degree of severity. There were those were crawled on hands and knees, stretching out a bony limb whilst starving for mere morsels of food in some, yet others were horrendously gluttonous in others; glued to couches with square-eyes fixated on screens, ironically often displaying athletes at the ultimate peak physical condition. Mining, farming, pumping and raking were tearing at the globe without little care for the consequences that followed. People were suffering, overpopulation rife in each continent and in politics those who held considerable power were held at the highest esteem.

The human race was flawed; broken, a cancerous scourge brought unfairly upon this planet and they showed little signs of slowing down; resource demands had to be met. Those who had opportunity and purpose had to be fed. It was the way of the world, and unfairness was frequently swept under the rug so to avoid a proper debate.

And given these rather damning viewpoints, the human race was doomed.

Had to be.

But those artificial blue eyes that stared back at her, they had also seen glimpses of hope that shimmered between the cracks, little highlights that overcame the incriminatory horrors; the unforgivable crimes that had been taken out against their own planet. The unnecessary extinction of a wholly unique species is inexcusable, yet many of the younger generations voiced a heartfelt opposition to such an act. The stark abuse of a planet for the purpose of extracting resources to propel a vehicle from one point to another was unpardonable, but the surge in research leading towards the promise of sustainable energy and the outcry from many to try harder to do better was nothing short of admirable.

Humans were inviting, opposing, heartfelt, passionate and conflicting. They were a turbulent melting pot of diversity; wars had raged and continued to do so because of such variety, yet it only proved to make the Earth a little more vibrant than most. They destroyed their planet, just as much as they sought to protect and preserve; and while they should be shamed for their misconducts, they should be commended on their struggles to correct them.

Many of these mere glimpses had been gained through fleeting experiences with her friends, but these were valuable moments that must be cherished; valued, appreciated, and noted for safekeeping.

Lucina could not predict what the others would report with regards to their findings; perhaps they would be entirely damning, completely indifferent or, illogically, just like her own. Perhaps they had strayed from the guidelines they were given; perhaps they had dived into the deepest waters of human culture to garner a real taste of what it means to be human.

Perhaps, like this particular soldier who chose to wilfully stray off the path set out for her by her leaders, they had found themselves at a rather particular... Crossroad.

## CRESCENDO

## by Emilie Morscheck

### EMILIE MORSCHECK

EMILIE MORSCHECK is the young Australian author of the award winning short stories 'What Can Your Demon Do For You?' and 'The Girl Who Was the Forest'. Her online works, including the novel Half-Fay, have received over 40,000 reads from around the world. She is a frequent participant in National Novel Writing Month and is an avid reader of the fantasy genre. (twitter: @PranxtorGlade)

### CRESCENDO

LIPS PAINTED crimson.

The same as my silk shirt. I let the heavy curtain fall against the wall. She promised she would be here, seated middle, front row. Amelia kept her word. My fingers shook, from nerves, from the desire to play. Another glimpse into the audience, the judges sitting in the centre of the room, illuminated by the ambient glow from the stage.

"Henry Thorn will now play Chopin Polonaise Op. 53 in A flat minor," a disembodied voice read. I smoothed down my shirt and walked into the pool of light that engulfed the piano. Silence in many shades of anticipation. Respect, curiosity, desire, expectation all governed the demeanour of each person in the chamber. I bowed, not daring to search for Amelia's eyes. Instead I pretended we were in the college music room, her body laid out on the floor as she listened.

She guided me to the keys and told me to play. I did not need more encouragement to begin than the urge to speak to the music and let its stitched together sounds whisper back. This piece had been my tormentor but now it was going to save me.

*

"Again," my father said, newspaper crinkling in his hands. Eight years old, and a pair of notes reversed by accident. I flicked through the pages, finding the start of the piece and began again. My ears strained waiting for the sound of the newspaper: that short sharp crackle. I couldn't hear the music any more; my fingers did as they were instructed, leaping between keys to the thrum of the metronome. Halfway through, not another mistake made, my father stood and took the paper away.

He returned to hear the final notes.

"Excellent job son," he said, "I have a treat for you."

A smile. A true smile of joy. Years later when they called my father an abuser I would shake my head. He loved me. When they blamed him for my breakdown I wished I had the ability to convince them they were wrong.

The treat, ice cream and a new cassette to listen to in the car, one without classical music. Playing for him was terrifying but at eight the rewards were immense.

He played part of a piece I was to learn. "Do you hear it? What the music is saying?" he said.

I listened as his fingers scaled the keys. There was his breath, metered, the creak of the piano, random. And then there was the musical instrument's inner workings.

"What do you hear?" I relayed the sounds. He shook his head. "The music. Listen to the music."

Eyes closed, filtering out other sound. An ebb and flow of music. I could hear it speak, telling a story. Let's reach a crescendo. The harmony tremors. Feel your heart pounding in your chest in time with the accelerando? Will you let me live, breathe, share this sensation?

The music stopped and the voice fell silent. Startled, I opened my eyes.

"It had more to say," I said, "You didn't let it finish."

"I can't hear the words Henry. That is your gift and why you must free the voice." His hand clasped my shoulder.

I needed to keep that beautiful voice alive.

*

Amelia sat on the seat beside me, a hand on my thigh, head resting on my shoulder.

"Where did you learn to play?" she said, eyes half closed.

My fingers continued to sweep across the keys. Her voice blended with the melody.

"My father taught me to play," I said, "When I was twelve I played at the Conservatorium on my school teacher's suggestion. My father agreed, he always wanted to share me."

"I think he just wanted to show you off."

"He got his wish, I guess. A scout watched me perform a few years later and I won a scholarship to study in America but my father wouldn't let me go."

"But he is the one who wanted you to play?" Amelia said. Her brow furrowed.

"I was fourteen, he was just protecting me."

"Oh," she said, pausing, "Well, I'm glad I had the chance to meet you. If you had gone to America ..."

"... It would all be very different." A laugh split my lips, something more musical than what an instrument could capture. Amelia chuckled in response, resting her head on my shoulder.

*

Chopin Polonaise Op. 53 in A flat minor was one of the most complicated pieces I had ever played. But I loved the story it told.

The music whispered to me and I spoke back. I was setting it free.

Let me take you on an adventure. A grand journey. Off we go.

Run down the hill. Let the breeze catch your clothes and your hair. Roll through the grass. Lay down in the sun.

Mother and father are here. Smiling. Brother and sister. Grinning.

We play and eat. Listen to the cassette in the car. Fingers stroking phantom keys.

It starts to rain.

Run up the hill. Bags and shoes. Shoes and bags. Laughter. Fear.

What a grand adventure.

I play the final notes, force behind each stroke. It is alive. The room can feel it. Every person has been satisfied, hearing what only I could share with them.

Pause then applause. I stand. I bow. A new kind of music. I search for Amelia's face but I can't find her. There are no judges either.

As I walk off the stage it feels like I'm forcing myself to plunge into icy water. Why can't I stay in the warmth where I am loved, cheered even? But I have shared my gift tonight. Any more would spoil that magic.

In the brightly lit corridor behind the stage I noticed my hands. Oh how Amelia loved my soft, slender hands. Time was a cruel master.

A woman guided me back to the change room. She was young, speaking into an earpiece. Her job done once I was seated before the mirror. The truth returned as if having been on some long winded holiday.

Amelia was gone. I was old, alone, unable to pass on my gift. Wrinkled face, veins protruding on the back of my hand. An Amelia that was no more than a figment of my memory.

A series of coughs shook my body. Had I done my father proud?

A flash of colour in the mirror caught my eye.

Crimson painted lips.

# THE GREY

## by Sas Lawrence

### SAS LAWRENCE

SAS LAWRENCE is a full time dreamer, worker, domestic power house and a part time writer, reader, gardener. Recently she decided that she'd like to swap her full-time pursuits for the part-time ones and thereby started sharing her short stories and random thoughts-on-life online. She has also started work on her first fictional novel which she hopes to complete sometime before the next ice age.

Sas lives on the South Coast of NSW with her long suffering partner and 2 once adorable kids.

Find Sas at:

www.SasLawrence.com.au

### THE GREY

FIONA'S WATERSHED moment was never destined to result in finding a solution to world hunger or lead to peace between religions, it wouldn't give love to the unloved or shelter to the unsheltered. It was a somewhat more hedonistic, micro-level turning point. One that had started flippantly but had been over-analysed to within an inch of its existence and grown into a symbolic landmark. A point of reference she would need to return to for reassurance that she'd chosen the right door. A crossroad.

It was her hairdresser's fault really. His was a one-man show that closed when a holiday was needed. She couldn't blame him; their shared coastal town located in a thriving Bible belt, dominated by white Anglo retiree rate payers caused claustrophobia to any sane person let alone a single gay eccentric. And his holiday yarns provided such vicarious spice! Its just that she hadn't been on top of her game and the five weeks he was away turned her regular appointment into a three month hiatus. This hadn't occurred for many a year in Fiona's structured, calendar driven world and therefore she hadn't given a moment's thought as to its rippling consequence.

The consequence was grey. Melanin deficiencies. Pigmentation malfunctions. Grey, silver, white – all the same when confronted for the first time. 'Oh well, grey, who cares?' was the response Fiona had assumed she would adopt when the time came to age gracefully. It would be romantic to be thought of as wise, she could sport a bob, get away with dressing eccentrically, keep a cat, sink so deep into retirement that she learnt to play Bridge. But not yet. She didn't have time to be old. She was in the crux of life - no longer drowning in Napi-san but not yet drinking sherry or listening to Radio National.

The growing evidence to suggest that her youthful mental status was not inline with her declining physical status could not be disputed but that didn't mean acceptance was a given! "A Lily Munster streak of grey would be preferable to this 'greying at the temples' nonsense," Fiona muttered. Cringing, she recalled only yesterday how she had she gleefully described her older cousin as "having put on weight and greyed"! Grey was a colour without colour. Grey was old. Grey Nomads were Baby Boomers. Baby Boomers were old. Fiona wasn't old, was she?

Grey could be seen as distinguished. Grey implied wisdom. Fiona could rock this look. She had more than once thought Richard Gere was a dashing silver fox. Richard Gere? "Oh my goodness" Fiona muttered, "I am old".

Since the emergence of The Grey she had been mentally scribbling a list of 'old signs' to be on the lookout for. She conceded she'd recently noticed her laughter lines lingering, had concluded that the sun spots on her face were not residual faded blobs of hair die, had invested in a pair of snazzy reading glasses you could buy off the shelf in the post office and had recently spent far too much money on 'wrinkle reducing' night cream.

She'd always hated noisy pubs, owned slippers and complained about the rubbish on TV so Fiona felt it would be unfair to include those traits on the mounting 'Indicator Old Signs' list. It was true that every now and then Fiona's temporal lobe had trouble moving the name of an everyday object from a visual cue to a verbal action and yes, she was guilty of leaving the occasional strange non-food item in the fridge. But she wore many hats, each with its own responsibilities list! Fiona dearly hoped there was a well-defined line, however slim, between an overloaded working mum's brain function and early onset dementia.

What was the true state of affairs? She tried to remember her last conversation – had she repeated herself, had the majority of the dialogue been about herself? She thought hard about her stamina – had her endurance fled, did she always look for the car park that required the least amount of walking? She examined her health – did her teeth/hips/knees need replacing?

No on all counts. This was encouraging. Fiona continued her self-appraisal.

She was not yet a member of the National Trust and had no intention of ever watching an episode of the Antiques Road Show. She could work a computer, owned an iPhone, knew that Taylor Swift was a singer, sped with regularity and owned uncomfortable shoes. She was heartened to see the needle pointing towards the 'Definitely Not Old' side of the gauge.

Was it possible then to separate feeling old and looking old? Her 80s teenage indoctrination via Dolly Magazine had led her to believe the answer was no! - the disintegration progress went hand in hand. But now that she was there, living it, the answer was most definitely yes! \- looking old did not equate to being old. Maslow could not have been prouder of Fiona's self-actualisation progress.

Just like she could choose the walking distance between car and shop, she could choose the extent to which she accepted her visual ageing traits. Face lift or expensive 'wrinkle reducing' night cream or embrace the facial crevasses? Nip & tuck or Spanx or love the sag. Shaving to the scalp or hair dye or embrace The Grey? Choices, choices.

Fiona was acquainted with a fellow mum who had chosen The Grey, deliberately. A luncheon was immediately organised where Fiona intended to interrogate Jacinta on her brave choice. Feeling a little superior because Jacinta was several years younger, Fiona arrived early to the cross-examination but sadly never received the validation she was after. One look at Jacinta's tired and over burdened facial contours turned the anticipation justification into a consoling session. Fiona doubted if Jacinta even noticed the discolouration of her hair considering all the other burdens she was carrying. No matter how hard she tried Fiona could not stop staring at Jacinta's version of The Grey. Did others stare at her like that? Jacinta looked (and by the sound of it) felt old.

Rejecting the Grey was gathering votes. But just because Fiona could mask her ageing signs, should she? Would cloaking The Grey be equivalent to her daughter wearing heavy foundation on her blemish free, unlined face to make herself look older? The irony was saddening.

There was a chasm separating could and should. Print media and her peers had heavily influenced the teenage Fiona's decision to parade around in shoulder pads, bubble skirt and fringe quiff. She had been embracing the times, harmless fashion crime. She could so she did. Fiona's daughter Belinda was now in much the same boat but even with four decades of style separating them, the fashion police had not been diligent - form fitting skinny jeans and corset styled mid-drift tops were today's crime. Just because social media encouraged the bathroom mirror selfie didn't mean that Belinda should take that shot. Belinda's shouted response through the bathroom door to Fiona's moralistic attempt to point out the suggestive nature of her outfit was "Just because you had access to legwarmers didn't mean you should have worn them Mum!". Belinda did have a point.

So a crossroads had been reached. Which way to turn?

Reject The Grey – if immediate action was taken very few would ever need know of her predicament. Divorce her hairdresser in his absence and seek immediate solace in the arms of his rival. One superficial aging factor at a time was enough and currently she was putting much faith in the cream. She had the means at her disposal to mask The Grey so why shouldn't she?

OR

Embrace The Grey - aging was just another stage in the circle of life, nature's timepiece. Calm and gentle acceptance was required. She was a role model to her daughter and positive body image was her message – don't be concerned with the superficial layers, don't let other people's attitudes be your judge or social media be your clothes rack. Age with grace.

Bullocks to that! If ageing gracefully was really what women thought then where were all the 45 yr olds with greying temples? It was more and more obvious to Fiona that hypocrisy reigned not only between generations but between women themselves. Of course Fiona's dilemma was not a new one (possibly not with such high levels of over analysis) but women had been debating this topic for centuries and she didn't need to conduct a Nielsen survey to conclude that if a packet of hair dye was at the disposal of any woman under 50 in the Western world The Grey would be obliterated - routinely, continuously... but fatuously.

What was it that Dylan Thomas said?

"Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

With the decision made she felt the years rewind. She took a moment and felt at peace with the verdict. Satisfied she strode into Belinda's room to demand she hand over her foundation. Hypocrisy was a look she could (but probably shouldn't) wear.

# ROCKET

## by Sas Lawrence

### ROCKET

I OGLED Harriet from beneath the protection of a fern frond weighted from the constant drizzle, its droop effectively concealing my scrawny body from her beady, observant eyes. Although it was sheer terror that had silenced me and the other Rocket Frogs on the night shift, there was uncomfortable comfort in the knowledge that because of our vigilance, our acceptance of being at the bottom of the food chain, my compatriots and I were constantly on the look out for trouble and how best to avoid a predator like that villain Harriet Heron. From underneath my shelter I risked a top to toe visual. Following her long ultra-skinny legs up up up, past her surprisingly rotund body to her extended, slim neck it was the white face, the pointed mouth that I couldn't tear my focus from. I gulped. Silence reigned and we waited.

"Cr-a-a-aw-a-a-awk cra-a-a-awk crok crok" Boris the Bell Frog's call broke the silent tension.

Did he not get the inaudible memo of the pond's unwelcome visitor? The vegetation surrounding us deprived his song of it's triumphant echo. I wanted it to cease only because I knew the outcome of Boris should Harriet locate the sound. But in truth I shamefully admit that I desperately wished the call to grow in depth and reverberate loudly off the mossy logs and rock piles littered along the river bank signaling his location like a beacon, beckoning Harriet towards the sound and not me.

"Cr-a-a-aw-a-a-awk cra-a-a-awk crok crok" Boris's call still trumpeted with its usual strong authoritarian tone.

I shook my head in disbelief at Boris's audacity but without a neck the action resulted in my entire body swaying in an uncoordinated frog dance move. Novice! Detection from Harriet and I would be her dinner – thoughts of my imminent demise stilled me instantly.

Silence again.

While contemplating my continued existence, or lack thereof, in this state of dread my senses had evolved. Maybe my home of verdure wasn't completely soundless... I registered the drone of mosquitoes overhead - my tummy rumbling at the thought of their deliciousness; a persistent drip, drip, drip - the very sound that had rocked me through my 'tadpole time' into adulthood; my heart beating through the thin membranous tissue in an irregular rhythm literally signalling my fear to any creature who turned my way; a gurgle of water in the distance luring me back to play, into the danger zone. Terror was obviously deteriorating my small froggy brain if I was becoming so ascetically observant.

*

"Cr-a-a-aw-a-a-awk cra-a-a-awk crok crok".

Boris Bell really didn't have a self-preservation gene. You had to give him a flicker of admiration though. Boris's arrogant, top-of-the-pile, cocky attitude had carried him far. As far as was possible round here anyway – he was our Alpha. Not a particularly popular leader but Alpha never the less. He ruled on fear (which had ironically prepared us lower order amphibians well for a situation like the one we currently found ourselves in.) But he was so tough he could do unheard of feats like bask in the sun: an accomplishment none of us were capable of without dire outcomes, usually death. I'm not saying that we respected Boris more than we loathed him but that sun trick - it was a ball-tearer. What was my party trick as a Rocket Frog? Nothing really hence my lowly status. I liked to think my unmistakably long legs gave me a kinda streamlined, superhero appearance. But in reality it was a brown birthmark that gave life to my nickname - Striped Rocket. I wasn't fond of it and although my stripe had never relegated me into the realm of 'freak' (we all had some random identifying characteristic, that's why we lived where we lived) it sadly did nothing for my chance to sit higher on that hierarchical ladder, or have any luck whatsoever with the laaaddies.

"Cr-a-a-aw-a-a-awk cra-a-a-awk crok crok". For Gaia's sake Boris, look UP.

My brain was dissolving under the stress. It was time to step out, figuratively and literally. Boris Bell was not my friend but he was the Area Alpha and this waiting game had become excruciating. It was time to branch out of the life I'd been living within my assigned sphere. Immediate action was required and it didn't seem like any other creature was interested in risking his or her neck, symbolically speaking. So I did. Sensible? Absolutely not. Regrettable? Too early to tell. I took a deep breath...

"Kuk-kuk-kuk" I signaled with more bravado than I felt. Harriet's head whipped up.

"Kuk-kuk-kuk" My second call confirmed to any creature within earshot that I had completely lost my mind. Heron to frog eye contact was made.

"Cr-a-a-aw-a-a-awk cra-a-a-awk crok crok". What? Was Boris competing with me? Harriet's indecision was apparent.

"Kuk-kuk-kuk". That last call had slipped from my throat without intention because it was a millisecond after this that I realised my highly admired specimens of legs, ones that were purpose built for a situation such as this, had in fact become inoperable. My bravery had been depleted. Fright had regained pole position and inopportunely for me had resulted in full body immobilisation.

Harriet Heron surveyed her choice of prey – a bright emerald and golden blotched, smooth backed morsel of plump delicious Bell Frog obliviously floating in the pond's brackish, still water verses a shaking, skinny, extra long legged, yellow throated, bony Rocket Frog.

In the end the choice was easy for Harriet. She dove her strong, grey-black bill towards Boris, seized him in an instant cutting off his next languid call mid croak, readied her blue-grey adorned body and took flight with a "graak" and slow, bouncing flaps. She flew East with the wind at her back and her prize secured in that sharp, deadly beak.

Boris Bell was still wondering where his bath water had gone.

I collapsed onto the wet leaf litter and waited for the blood spasming through my body to return to its regular cold temperature. "Kuuuuk-kuuuuk-kuuuuk" I weakly groaned.

# THE HONEYEATER

## by Naomi Currie

***************

The Honeyeater received an honourable mention in the 2016 Birdcatcher Books Short Story Competition.

### NAOMI CURRIE

FOR NAOMI Currie, writing short stories is both a hobby and an opportunity to explore and share life perspectives and meaning. She often explores themes such as loss, loneliness, mental illness and social justice, through narratives that, no matter how difficult the subject, seek to inspire and encourage the readers.

The Honeyeater, like most of her stories, started life as a picture; a childhood memory of sitting near a window of her family's Adelaide home and watching a honeyeater's antics nearby the morning glory vines twined around the neighbour's shed hour after hour. She remembers too, climbing up to investigate, and finding a "curious spot of skin-colour pink" near the base of the flower...

### THE HONEYEATER

THE HONEYEATER was back. David released the backspace key on his laptop and put his elbows on the desk to watch the bird better.

Sometimes the bird perched on an outer tentacle of the morning glory vine, twisting itself around a flower that made David think of purple water sprouting from a green fountain. Sometimes it misjudged the strength of a green strand and became a whirr of black, white and yellow wings. Sometimes it disappeared entirely into the vine and only a trembling of leaves when no wind blew betrayed its presence. And sometimes the bird threw itself out of the window frame and over the side fence, reappearing only when David had decided it wasn't coming back.

But what was the honeyeater doing? Not chasing insects – surely it would sit on the fence rail, head cocked, eyes alert, then dart, if that was so. But it wasn't collecting nectar because it wasn't thrusting its beak down the flowers either. Was it just showing off to some unseen friend? What friend? Surely it wasn't just enjoying itself?

Emily would have known, David thought suddenly. She would have known which of the three regulars it was, what it was doing, who its mate was, where its nest was... Emily knew those sort of things; Emily understood honeyeaters just like David understood the stock-market – a little, but far more than most people.

David, David what are you doing! He groaned and shook Emily desperately from his head. He mustn't think of Emily! The honeyeater. He focused on the little bird perched alongside another purple flower. From the angle of David's desk, the honeyeater's beak disappeared behind the flower.

He watched the bird jump onto a green strand that bounced it off onto the fence ridge. But where had the bird been aiming? Must have been that flower. Yes, there it went again, landing by another flower.

Something to do with flowers. But it wasn't collecting nectar because it didn't thrust its head down the opening: it just sort of perched alongside the base of the flower and tilted its head.

Unless... David slowly drew his right leg back from under the desk, his hands wrapping around the knee brace, and eased himself upright.

The honeyeater must have noticed the movement, because suddenly it arched itself up and over the neighbours' garage. The screen squeaked a little in its track as David slid back the side door. He must remember to find the oil bottle and drip it along the grove. His knee twinged suddenly at the thought – of course, he wouldn't be bending down for quite a while yet. Anyway, the door was hardly a problem, hardly a priority just now.

David stepped down through the doorway, slowly transferring his weight, putting his left leg on the pavers first, and bringing the right through carefully. The corner of his mouth twitched slightly in the midst of a grimace – Emily would have a fit if she saw the size of the step he'd gone down. Oh, well, he was down now. No harm done. Then he remembered – Emily didn't know, Emily would never know....

He pulled himself up sharply, and looked around dazedly. What was he doing out here? That was it, the honeyeater. The morning glory flowers. He moved slowly towards the point where the back neighbour's garage and the side fence collided and stared at the morning-glory vine twining itself around the garage gutter and cascading downwards.

He stretched up cautiously, but the nearest flowers remained a foot or two higher than his hand, pleated purple circles laughing at him. He couldn't jump. He considered the merits of tugging at a piece of stem. Too risky. You never knew which bits were main stems or what attached to what. Explaining to a neighbour he barely knew how and why he'd pulled half their vine down, or worse, how he's snapped the main stem and why most of the vine was dead...He shook his head vigorously.

A chair? Too high off the ground to reach unaided. And he'd probably only pull it down on himself. A step ladder? When had he used the step ladder last? Must have been before – a long time ago – he changed his thought to hastily.

In the shed? He limped down the concrete slabs looping around the house like felled dominoes and turned the far corner. He stopped abruptly. He'd forgotten about all this stuff. Old bike parts, lengths of wood, an old sofa, tarpaulin, garden tools and old pots, discarded furniture; all randomly tossed and dragged on top of each other, between the shed and back of house, blocking the shed door. Emily and he had dumped it all there, out of sight of the guests, the day before the party. When would that have been? For the 20th, January the 20th. So it would have been the 19th they had shifted everything. And today was? David frowned, and clicked the button on his wrist watch: 15th of April the watch informed him. A long, long time after the nineteenth...and the twentieth...of January.

David grabbed a stack of garden pots from the pile and tossed it against the side fence angrily. Pain speared his right knee and he rebuked himself with an exclamation. The second time he was careful to not twist his knee, but the wood crashing against the corrugated fence was even louder than the pots. A satisfying sound.

But would the step ladder be in the shed? Well, he knew it should be. It should be in the right far corner, between the workbench and the side wall. Alongside the tall ladder. It had to be there.

He attacked the pile again cautiously. He was off balance – leaning on the left knee, but throwing things to the right. Gradually he gave up throwing and walked the extra metre to drop his load instead. He felt less guilty that way – not that it probably made much difference on the knee. Still hurt the same.

He glared at the sofa. He would have to shift it about one, two metres before the door would open. Why couldn't they have upended it or something – anything, so it wasn't now sitting in front of the shed door? He would have kicked the sofa, but he contented himself with striking its smug maroon back twice with a length of wood.

He lifted off the last bike frame and gave the sofa a tentative push. Sodden. Of course, it had rained yesterday. It would too. Emily and he had found it heavy enough when shifting it together. Emily, of course, was only small – petite, they called it – but she deceptively strong. He grinned suddenly – strong in body and strong in character. That's why he'd liked her, loved her. One of the reasons, at least.

He scrunched his fists and shoved the sofa. Pain shot through his knee, setting his muscles on fire – but the sofa moved a foot. He paused, then another shove. Again. Again. Once more. Almost there. He pulled at the shed door. Locked.

Another slow trip back inside to find the key. He unlocked it and turned the handle. The door opened about a foot. Enough. He turned sideways and squeezed through, squinting in the darkness.

The ladder was there. In the corner, where he had expected it to be. Where it should have been and where – he could admit it now – he was worried it wouldn't be.

The morning glory flowers.

David limped back down the path and positioned the step ladder close to the fence. He pondered the problem carefully. Whatever way, he would have to put weight on his bad knee. Couldn't be helped. His fingers clenching the fence so tight the knuckles turned pale, he transferred his weight from leg to leg up the steps. He rocked slightly, steadied himself twisted off the closest flower. He stared down the bell of the flower.

Inside, the flower looked surprisingly ordinary. Perhaps less pollen was on the stamen than expected? He turned the corners of his mouth up at himself – how could he tell? He wasn't in the habit of studying morning glory flowers.

David rotated the flower again slowly. Curious spot of skin-colour pink about a centimetre above the base of the flower. As he turned the flower round another quarter-turn the spot became grey – the colour of his shirt. He upturned the flower in sudden realisation. There it was, a hole – speared by a honeyeater beak.

A very small hole – barely a few millimetres in diameter. Just large enough for a beak to reach the stamen and suck up the pollen and nectar.

Incredible. David shook his head elaborately. Such precision drilling! How ever did the honeyeater know where and why and how to bore? He examined the hole again - a tiny bird having such knowledge and insight!

He must check some other flowers. He stretched out a hand carefully.

"I am your worst nightmare! I am your worst nightmare!"

David started, almost overbalanced, clutched the fence and twisted sideways. Over the side fence, a little boy was running at him across the neighbour's lawn, yelling gleefully for the third time "I am your worst nightmare!"

Despite the aching the twist had generated in his knee, David grinned. Who had told the little fella that? The boy stopped close to the fence and stared up at David. He was small, all dark eyes and a superhero t-shirt. Three, or four perhaps, at a guess. Looked like the full-of-energy sort who could easily be a parent's worst nightmare.

"Hullo," said David awkwardly.

"Hullo," said the small boy.

David opened his mouth, shut it again and rubbed his chin with his hand. What did you say to a small boy who stared at you – through you – like that? At least adults didn't stare so much. Oh, boy, if only the little fella would say something, or at least blink! Oh, if only Emily was here – she wouldn't have stood and scratched her chin; she would have said or done something and the boy would have responded. Oh Emily, oh Emily, why –

David stopped and guiltily glanced around him. The boy's mother was coming across the neighbour's lawn. Too late to scramble down the ladder – even if he had a good knee. He knew her slightly – Mava, Mavis, some name like that. An old fashioned name, he thought irrelevantly.

"Mummy," said the small boy, "what's he doing?"

"Well, Thomas, he's..." the woman paused, her eyes slightly enquiring, slightly suspicious.

"I'm inspecting the morning glory vine," David supplied hastily. It sounded like a silly excuse in his ears but, he thought irritably, it was true.

"Indeed." Not doubtful, or reproachful or refuting; just "indeed" – a filler word when one doesn't know what to say.

"Mummy, why's he so tall?"

That was easier. "I'm standing on a ladder."

The boy pondered that for a moment. "Why?"

"Because I'm not tall enough."

"Why not?"

"Well, I'm just not. The vine's too high up."

"But–"

"Thomas, that's enough questions. Stop pestering the man and come inside."

David felt a slightly fuller explanation was needed. Some sort of explanation for standing on a ladder and blatantly staring over the back fence. "Actually, I saw a honeyeater doing something to the morning glory flowers, so I decided to investigate. It was drilling holes in the base of the flower and sucking out the nectar and pollen."

"Amazing isn't it? And we call them dumb creatures." Again a filler comment, an automatic reply created by pressing a button.

After a few more polite, meaningless exchanges the lady walked the boy back across the lawn to their house, Thomas' shrill voice carrying a final question, "Mummy, was he looking over our fence?"

David didn't wait to hear the reply. Still grasping the flower he'd plucked, he descended at speed. He gripped the fence for a few moments, waiting for the throbbing under the knee brace to subside slightly.

Well, at least he knew what the honeyeater had been doing. His curiosity satisfied – but at what cost? His knee was still on fire and the neighbour definitely thought him strange. Had she come out only because she thought her boy was pestering someone else? Had she believed his explanation? Well, it was true. But he could picture her telling her husband "that chap next door, he's weird alright. Perhaps it's because of you-know-what..."

David clenched the stem of the flower so tight his fingernails thrust themselves into his palm as he hobbled back inside. He fetched a cup from the kitchen – the vases were up too high – and half-filled it with water from the tap. He placed the stem of the flower in the water and carried the cup back to his desk.

David tapped the right buttons and woke his computer up. The graph on the screen, he noticed, had an extra squiggle downwards – perhaps he better advise that client to hold off selling for a bit after all.

The morning glory flower sat on his desk and died as he pretended to work. He watched the flower's brim sag and pale, then begin to curl inwards, to fold upon itself and drag the rest of the flower down with it – rather like turning itself outside-in. Soon all David was left with was a squashy, wilted, light blue tube.

Finally, he plucked the flower out of the cup and dropped it into the waste paper basket. He slid back the side door and clambered up the ladder. This time he'd already heard the car doors slamming, Thomas' high pitch and the garage door creak up and down; Mavis (and Thomas) were safely off doing the school-run.

Anyway, he would be quick. The flowers on the vine were still there, fresh and blatantly purple.

David picked another flower. He slowly returned to ground level and walked back to his desk before examining it.

He turned it over carefully. The honeyeater had not killed the flower. It was still the same fresh looking flower with a small hole down by its base.

One slight difference. The hole was rimmed by a thin band of brown – rather like the way, he remembered, Emily would edge an unobtrusive run in her stockings with nail polish, so she could get more wear out of them.

A seal, to prevent the hole from growing larger, to keep the scar small. So small that most would never see it. The hole was still there; there for those who searched for it to find; there until the flower died.

But inside the flower there had also been change. A much greater change – a re-composition, a radical inner makeover. A change that could never be undone; a crossroad reached and followed past no return. Negative or positive? Well, that depended on what the honeyeater did. Presumably the bird left enough for pollination – no, presumably it triggered pollination. Meaning seeds and fruit could grow.

Perhaps the honeyeater's actions were necessary for both; the plant needed pollination, the honeyeater needed food. Mutual benefit. Probably the plant didn't enjoy it much – a great beak spearing into you like that. Perhaps the plant realised it was necessary. That, even if it didn't want to be pollinated, even if the process left a scar, the honeyeater alone could force it to go from being a pretty flower to a seed bearer. Maybe it was grateful afterwards – that it could look back with pleasure on its time as a flower, but knew it was now fulfilling its destiny...

David frowned at the flower in front of him. Was life like that too? That you could look back and remember the past with pleasure, and yet understand...that things...even things that leave scars... happen to make us develop and grow into who you were meant to be. That those things become crossroads of no return...?

Suddenly he smiled – a smile that made his eyes feel like Emily had been cutting up onions. "God," he said slowly, "I think I'm beginning to understand why..."

He opened the drawer of his desk and dug for a ruler. Slowly he walked into the lounge room and gingerly half-squatted with his bad leg straight out in front of him. With the ruler he began to draw something that had fallen – or been dropped – between the bookcase and the wall toward him. He dropped the ruler and grasped it with shaky hands.

With the tail of his shirt he wiped the photo's surface. Emily smiled back at him – her hair windblown and her eyes laughing with the joy of being alive. Just for a moment, he felt again the wind, the energy of a wind whipping along the beach, filling one's soul with a desire to live, felt the sting of air-born sand against skin, felt the heaviness and recklessness of shoes filled with sand.

And, without grief, without sadness, without anger at God, without bitterness at world injustice, but with a smile that hurt only slightly and only felt a little unfamiliar, he let himself think of Emily.

# HANGING UPSIDE DOWN

## by Kim Horwood

***************

Hanging Upside Down won third prize in the 2016 Birdcatcher Books Short Story Competition.

### KIM HORWOOD

BY DAY, Kim Horwood is the good-humoured-coffee-drinking Executive Assistant in the engine room of a large boys' College, with a Certificate III in Education and a Diploma in Management.

By night she is an aspiring freelance writer and member of the Qld Writer's Centre. She is mother to the Fabulous Four, and wife to Mr Ed. (A human, not actually a horse.)

Find Kim at:

<http://horwoodk.wix.com/literature-blog>

<https://www.facebook.com/KimHorwood574Days>

### HANGING UPSIDE DOWN

I COULD hear them coming across the vacant block beside our house. Their feet shuffled through the long grass with a swooshing sound. If a house were ever built on that block, I wondered how I would hear Mum and Dad coming home.

Through the glowing gap in my curtains, the quiet moon was bothered by my father's voice with words too groany to understand.

In the softness of the night, Mum's words were sharp. "I'm bloody sorry... but you spend more on beer than I do on poker machines!"

Dad grumbled. That's what beer did to words; it punched and pummelled until words were mean grumbles.

Mum yelled words that skimmed across the night air, leaving ripples. "That bloody machine was supposed to jackpot!" She sounded certain about the jackpot. She was always certain.

I closed my eyes tighter; listening but not wanting to hear. I knew what sorry meant. Sorry, meant Vegemite sandwiches – not ham. Sorry, meant the car stayed broken. Sorry meant there was no money left.

And sorry meant I had to wear that school uniform with the frayed hole on the hip. Everyone could see the colour of my undies through that hole.

Bang!

"Stupid idiot!"

Dad's beer-words slammed at the same time as the front door.

My little brother nudged his face to my chest, his pointy elbows tucked into my ribs. I could hear a quiet wheeze on his chest. It crept in like one of those morning fogs. I wondered if Mum should take Noah to the hospital again.

"Darryl please!" Mum's pleading distracted me from my brother's raspy breath.

"Let me go," her voice softened. "I'll ring Aunty Anne tomorrow. She'll lend us the money for the car... please let go Darryl!"

Thud!

"Useless bitch!"

Dad's grumbly beer-words smacked my ears at the same time as Mum's body smacked the wall.

My eyes scared open. I pulled my little brother closer so I could concentrate on the sound of his breath. Instead I heard the sounds of other moonlit nights with Mum crying a sorry cry – the cry of a pretty purple bruise. I knew the cry of a broken arm was spikey and loud; a bleeding lip was slow and moany.

"Bloody poker machine," Mum cried, "It was... going to... jackpot... I know it was..."

I closed my eyes, picturing the poker machine with its greedy smile and rainbow eyes. Stupid bloody poker machine. I thought about its smile and I realised I had not seen Dad smile in a while. Did he smile last month when he saw my Report Card? Did he smile when I started Year Five? Did he smile last year when the doctor said he could not pour concrete any more because of his back?

It wasn't just Dad's smile that changed, his eyes had changed too. Brown and kind had become dark and worried, like the eyes of a bat.

We were learning about bats in school. Miss Noyce told us they were mammals like us and their wings were like arms, its skeleton almost identical to our own hands and arms. Miss Noyce read us a story about a bat who was born in a colony in Gympie. My hand shot up that day because I remembered Dad was born in Gympie.

"Maybe your Dad's really a bat," said Alexandra Abrahams. And maybe you're really a cow, I wanted to say. But I didn't.

Maybe my Dad was a bat? I decided that I liked bats.

Slipping quietly from under my blankets, I crawled to the bedroom door and peeked my face into the hallway. When Mum saw me she sat up very straight and plain. Tucking her hair behind her ears, she smiled with just her lips. "I'm sorry. I'm OK Hannah. I just need to wash my face." I kept my lips closed and crawled back to bed.

Dad did not speak the next morning, which I didn't mind because the pain in Dad's back sometimes made his words hurt too.

"Don't worry about the money," Mum's voice was soft as she placed a mug of tea on the table in front of Dad, "I'll go to the fruit shop today and talk to Gina... get another shift."

Gina stopped Mum's shifts after Noah had been in hospital, which I didn't understand because he didn't get asthma on purpose. The Fruit Shop should have missed Mum like I had missed her. Aunty Anne visited us every day for those four days. She came with bread and ham, and a book. She read the story of Rapunzel until I went to sleep, and then I dreamed I was a bat, hanging upside down in Rapunzel's tower.

Miss Noyce told us that bats hung upside down to conserve their energy and that standing upright was "defying gravity." I thought, maybe Dad was part bat and he needed to hang upside down to fix his back and stop his groany sound.

I felt mean for wishing Noah would go to hospital again so Aunty Anne would come with ham and Rapunzel.

I left for school that morning with a Vegemite sandwich, wearing the school uniform with the hole on the hip. Since the car had been broken, I had been walking to school. When Noah starts school next year, I will have someone to walk with.

As soon as class began, Miss Noyce gave us a work-book with a bat to colour-in. Alexandra Abrahams screwed up her face. She said bats just looked black and scary. Mum says it's easy for people to misunderstand something they're afraid of.

Bats did look scary. But Miss Noyce said that bats thought WE looked scary and that bats would normally choose to roost in a colony that was away from "human disturbance". I wished I was away from human disturbance – like Alexandra Abrahams.

While we coloured the picture of the bat, Miss Noyce played music. The more I thought about staying in the lines, the less I thought about melty beer-words and poker machines. While I wondered, should the bat's wings be black or brown, the less I thought about ham sandwiches and Rapunzel's tower. I coloured the bat's eyes brown and kind, not dark and worried.

The music and colouring that morning made us sleepy so Miss Noyce decided we needed to move our arms and legs to wake up our brains. We walked down to the grassed courtyard, around the corner from the playground, to do star-jumps.

Alexandra Abrahams was the first to notice my pink undies through the hole in my hip.

She laughed out loud and pointed. "Hannah's wearing pink undies!"

Everyone laughed.

"Stupid idiot!" I yelled at Alexandra Abrahams.

"Hannah!" Miss Noyce's eyes were wide. I felt my chin crinkle; I had to bite my lip to stop my face folding into a dumb cry. I hated dumb cries. They reminded me of Mum's purple bruises.

I tucked my hair behind my ears and smiled with my lips. Remembering Mum's words I said, "I'm sorry. I'm OK Miss Noyce. May I wash my face?"

"Yes Hannah," Miss Noyce replied, her eyes brown and kind.

Neither Alexandra Abrahams nor Miss Noyce would know about melty beer-words and poker machines. They didn't know about broken cars and the sounds of swooshing grass on a vacant block. And they didn't know about pretty purple bruises and the mean pain of a sore back.

I washed my face at one of the basins in the girl's toilets and stared back at myself in the mirror. Brown eyes; kind, not dark and worried. I was always surprised that my face never looked as sad on the outside as I thought it would.

On my way back to star-jumps to wake up our brains, I stopped at the playground. The swings hung still, the monkey bars were cold and empty. Inviting.

I started to climb. I did not stop climbing until I was sitting on the bars that crossed at the top. I pretended I was high in Rapunzel's tower, safe from human disturbance.

I hooked my legs over a bar so it stuck tight in the crook of my knees, before I swung down through the centre of the grid and hooked my ankles together so I couldn't fall.

I tucked my uniform into the sides of my pink undies so nobody could see them before criss-crossing my arms across my chest and wedging my hands tightly into my armpits. I closed my eyes and let the air leave my lungs.

Hanging upside down needed no energy at all. Hanging upside down, the only sound was my heart in my ears; it was louder than ever before. I could not hear the swooshing grass, the slamming door, or stupid idiot. I could not hear Noah's wheeze or Mum's cry or Dad's groany words. I could not hear them laughing at my pink undies.

I felt calmer than I had felt since Dad's back started to hurt from pouring concrete.

For a little while I thought a lot about nothing. Before long, I could hear nothing. There was only the air in my nose and the blood in my head. Hanging upside down, I felt nothing at all. Not even sad.

*

Alexandra Abrahams ran into the reception area of the school office as fast as her skinny legs could carry her.

"Someone has to come! Quick! Hannah's upside down! She's stuck on the monkey bars and Miss Noyce needs help!"

Janis Jones and Audrey Clark had been the administration ladies for a collective twenty-three years, and had survived their share of school emergencies with quiet capability. They had never had a child stuck to the monkey bars. Janis frowned at Audrey. Janis had the school accounts to finish that day.

"I'll go," Audrey decided with a sigh.

When Audrey Clark reached the playground, the entire Year Five class was standing in a circle around the monkey bars. She had to use the backs of her hands to part their shoulders so she could get to the girl upside-down.

Audrey eyed Hannah Everett's mop of sandy hair hanging loosely, her legs hooked over the top bar, and her feet crossed at the ankles.

Josephine Noyce, the Year Five teacher was staring at Hannah Everett's face, her knees half bent so her fantastically tall frame was in line with Hannah's face. Audrey Clark suddenly remembered the day she met Miss Noyce, earlier that year. "That one looks twelve," she'd whispered to Janis Jones.

"As we get older, they all look twelve," Janis resolved. Aha, Audrey Clark had agreed.

With her hand on Hannah's face, a wide-eyed Miss Noyce was gently repeating her name, to try to wake her. Josephine Noyce looked twelve again, Audrey decided. She touched Miss Noyce's shoulder hearing the distress in her voice.

"I'm guessing she's been hanging here for about twenty minutes, but I can't wake her!" Audrey Clark put both hands on each of Hannah Everett's criss-crossed arms and giving her tiny body a jiggle she called, HANNAH!

Audrey tickled the girls face and neck, watching for a response. She touched her icy ears and freckled cheeks, but Hannah did not even wiggle her eyelids.

"If I hold her body, can you push her legs up from the bar?" Audrey ordered. Josephine followed wide eyed, as she reached up to give Hannah's hooked ankles a nudge. She jiggled gently at first but then gripped Hannah's ankles and pushed with as much force as she could manage. There was no way she was going to straighten Hannah Everett's bent legs – her joints were locked in position.

The groundsman, a PE teacher and the Headmaster, Mr Toohey all tried but nobody could budge Hannah Everett from the monkey bars. Her arms stayed criss-crossed, her ankles stayed hooked and her knees stayed locked.

With arms folded, Mr Toohey suggested Audrey Clark call an ambulance, when no one knew what to do next.

When Darryl Everett's mobile phone rang he was lying on the couch watching a children's program that he could not name, while Noah sat in front of the television.

"She's what?" He was too confused for polite words. "Yeh, I'll come." There was a short pause. "Nah, ya won't get Kayleen, she's workin' at the fruit shop. It's OK. I'll come."

When Darryl Everett ran through the school gates, Noah and Aunty Anne were trying to keep up. He was grateful to Anne for coming so quickly.

Darryl's first instinct was to yell at his daughter. "Stop it! Stop now! It's bloody stupid!"

Why would she want to make such a fuss, cause such a scene? He wanted to shake her until her eyes opened.

The ambulance officer's furrowed brow made Darryl Everett's breath stop for a moment. Before he touched his daughter, he looked into her face. That mop of hair hanging upside down he'd once brushed and those criss-crossed arms had once hugged his neck.

When was the last time he'd brushed Hannah's hair or had her arms around his neck? He couldn't remember the last time he had looked at her face, with its wide cheek bones and freckled nose. Hannah reminded him of a boy who'd once looked back at him in the mirror.

With the image of that face his train of thought switched track.

A memory flashed; his body crouched into a ball in the wash-house of the home he grew up in. He remembered the fear that creased up his freckled nose so his eyes squeezed shut. If his eyes could not see, maybe he would not be seen. He wished he could not hear his father bellowing through the house in a tanked-up tirade. He would eventually be found and reminded again how stupid he was. He remembered too, wondering if he was ever loved or if his father was ever sorry about the belting.

Feelings simmered in that cold space in his chest until without warning he began to quietly cry.

"It's OK mate," the ambulance officer comforted. "Her pulse is steady, her blood oxygen levels good and blood pressure's normal."

Darryl Everett looked at him, confused.

"We can't explain it mate but her legs are locked over that bar."

He nodded like he understood, but he didn't really understand. What exactly was wrong with his daughter?

Then Darryl realised.

His own child was hiding in fear with her eyes squeezed shut so she could not see.

He couldn't remember if he'd ever said sorry. So he did.

He couldn't remember the last time he'd said he loved her. So he did.

He promised Hannah that her brown eyes would open to a life she deserved. He remembered the treasure of a daughter, the pride for a son. He remembered the love that had been eroded by the genetic sea of history repeating; the love that was now greater than the pain in his back. And so, the pain left him.

A crisp autumn breeze blew up from the bottom of the playground. Darryl Everett shivered.

Hannah Everett took a short sharp gasp of air as her big brown eyes sprung open.

# CONTINENTAL DRIFTER

## by Ambra Sancin

### AMBRA SANCIN

AMBRA SANCIN is a recovering arts administrator with over 25 years' experience in the cultural sector specialising in communications, marketing and public programs for festivals and government agencies. She has worked across art forms including films, literature, visual arts, performance, heritage and multicultural projects.

Born in northern Italy but whisked away to Australia as a baby, she has a special interest in working with diverse cultural and linguistic audiences, especially the Italian community.

Her 'encore' career is that of freelance writer for lifestyle websites and specialist publications, contributing regularly on garden inspiration, cooking, travel, health and aged care. She has also been commissioned to share her experiences of being a caregiver for her aged mother. Her short stories have been included in a number of anthologies.

She started her blog 'The Good the Bad and the Italian' four years ago and enjoys foisting her opinions and interest in food, films and growing up Italian-Australian on her loyal followers.

### CONTINENTAL DRIFTER

THINGS WEREN'T going according to plan for Giorgio Marmotta. Full of hope, the pastry cook had made a month-long sea journey to Australia from Italy to start a new life. He was looking forward to throwing himself into a job sponsored by his ex brother-in-law. But what he found on arriving in Sydney was a bakery that had folded amid a pile of debt. What he didn't find was his ex brother-in-law.

It was 1955 and he'd arrived feeling apprehensive but excited about a country Italians knew was going through a period of prosperity and growth. After a strong British immigration push, southern Europeans were encouraged to make new lives for themselves in post-war Australia. Giorgio, from north-eastern Italy, was not willing to stick around in a region whose borders were politically unstable. He was curious to see what this far away country had to offer.

With years of experience behind him, Giorgio thought he'd be showing off his pastry-making skills and bringing the secrets of Italian treats to Australian palates. Instead he was fending off a hostile landlord who held him responsible for the unpaid rent on the bakery. He had no-one to turn to for help and his English wasn't good enough to communicate with other lodgers at his emergency accommodation. Nor could he use any well-placed expletives in English like he did in his native Italian. He was floundering. Up the proverbial creek without a paddle.

He had no choice a few weeks later but to take a job as a builder's labourer and accept a room in a run-down boarding house near Kings 'Bloody' Cross. He had to get used to living without a nearby café serving good espresso coffee and ate sandwiches filled with a brown salty filling. Downing icy cold beers at the pub after work was a ritual he couldn't escape. And a glass of red wine with his counter meals was out of the question.

If he thought his English would improve in a short time, he was in for another rude shock. He understood little of what his knockabout Australian workmates said. Theirs were not the words he'd learnt from his young nephew's English phrasebook. Why was he told it was his 'shout' in the pub? Were they insulting or complimenting him when they remarked, "only dills play soccer"?

In the meantime, his new friends decided 'Giorgio' was too difficult for them to pronounce, so he became 'George'.

It was peak summer and the work was torturous. Aside from his first ever case of sunburn, he found spreading cement onto bricks not as satisfying as layering egg custard between sheets of flaky pastry. Removing excess mortar between bricks with a hand trowel was not the same as coating a liqueur-soaked layer cake with butter cream using a confectionery knife.

He settled into the daily grind but forced himself to sniff out weekend distractions and new experiences. Like the swims at ocean beaches where surf lifesavers wearing little Pope hats rescued him from something they called 'rips.' Or the occasional weekend away with his workmates prawning at night in the murky waters of south coast estuaries.

The one constant in his life was the cake shop landlord, still pursuing him for unpaid rent. He didn't care that George had nothing to do with the business, nor that he'd never even met his slippery relative: he wanted his cash. The landlord hunted him down and sometimes the mother and sister were dispatched to George's house, their charming Scottish lilt used as a weapon of persuasion. In time, George convinced them to give up the chase, and contrite – but rewarded with a bounty of pastries – they complied.

As Christmas approached he thought about Italy and how he missed the Sunday lunches with his family. He longed to be among his own community without the occasional racial hostilities and being called a 'dago'. Over the next weeks he agonised about returning home. If he begged off the post-work drinking sessions with his workmates a few times each week, he could save up for the trip. It would take some time to cobble together the fare but he could use the time to look forward to the month-long continental smorgasbord on the ship.

Almost a year since arriving in Sydney, George was ready to pay the fare deposit with his secret 'cake money.' To supplement his bricklaying wages, he'd started a nice little side business baking cakes and pastries for Italian families. He'd discovered these new Australians had brought with them the traditions of celebrating more than birthdays and weddings: there was a wealth of money to be made from people stuffing themselves with sugary sweets at baptisms, first communions and confirmations.

Leftovers from his baking orders were offered to his Australian mates who were only too pleased to dunk the biscuits into their milky teas. Some treats also made their way to Moira, the landlord's sister, who had become George's friend. He was drawn to her strange accent even though he found her Scottish colloquialisms at times harder to understand than Australian slang. And he got a kick from rolling his Rs when he pronounced her name.

The offer of a new job came out of the blue. A bloke in his boarding house had heard about job vacancies in a fancy bakery in Sydney's inner-western suburbs. He imagined working in an elegant pasticceria like the one back home. Turns out the bakery was a sprawling biscuit factory called Peek Freans, occupying an entire suburban block and churning out production line favourites like Honey Bears, Golden Puffs and Vita-Weats. George was tempted nonetheless as the work was close to home. He'd have to learn to love one of the brand's most popular lines: pink and white iced biscuits in the shape of clock faces, presumably to honour the Art Deco era factory's imposing clock tower.

With a new job to look forward to and a blossoming romance with Moira, George was at a crossroads.

This new country, with its space and blue sky was starting to get to him. The easy living, 'she'll be right' attitude was appealing and far removed from life in a large, industrial northern Italian city where people lived in small apartments and grey fogs and bitter winters were frequent. Besides, his mangled Italianish was improving with Moira's help. In exchange, he was only too glad to give her guidance on dinner dates to the local Italian restaurant. Her mispronunciation of Italian menu items made him laugh and he was proud to be the first person to point out to her, "you can't eat spaghetti with a spoon."

He surprised himself now as he questioned his decision to return home. He looked at his shoebox full of money as he took a couple of swigs of Italian fortified wine.

Cream buns or cannoli? Nescafe or espresso? A bucket of prawns or pasta boscaiola?

But more important: George or Giorgio?

# A LITTLE BIT WON'T HURT

## by Vicki Winter

### VICKI WINTER

APART FROM a 1950's childhood wish to be able to write stories, Vicki waited until the year 2000 before she did a creative writing course with the WEA in Adelaide. The resulting short story "Rescue" won a pleasing 2nd Prize in the Mini Story section of the Hastings Regional Literary Competition that same year. A keen observer of life and its circumstances it seems there was a wealth of untapped stories tucked away, until early retirement in 2013 brought the opportunity to give them voice when Vicki joined the Reynella Writers Group.

Born in Glenelg South Australia, Vicki now lives further south of the city with her husband and beloved Italian Greyhound.

### A LITTLE BIT WON'T HURT

THE BRIDE smiled and placed her hand gently on her uncle's arm as a large glass pitcher of iced tea was placed on the bridal table in front of his seat.

"There you are Uncle Ted, that's my best herbal tea, especially made to help me relax today. If you take regular sips of that for the next half hour you'll be just fine."

Up until a short while ago, the wedding had been a great success. The church was bathed in mid afternoon sunshine, both bride and groom had arrived on time and everyone, including the vicar, remembered their lines.

But as the guests began to take their places in the luxurious marquee set in the garden of the old manor house, anxiety had spread amongst the official wedding party. It had become apparent that Jack, the father of the bride, could not make his speech. His laryngitis had kicked in at the most inopportune of times and he couldn't make a peep.

With the band playing softly and guests milling around chatting, immediate family had gathered near the bridal table offering all sorts of remedies and solutions. But Jack remained silent, shaking his head from side to side, conveying the hopelessness of the situation.

The three pages of his carefully written speech were rolled into a paper tube that turned in his hands with worry, until in a moment of resolution, he smacked his palm with it and pointed towards his brother, the bride's Uncle Ted.

As all eyes turned to look at the very shy but lovable man in his immaculate suit, Ted took a step back, holding up his hands in protest.

"Oh no, I couldn't. I don't do this sort of thing. You know that !"

"Ted you'll have to," pleaded Jack's wife. "The speech is perfect, I wrote half of it myself and no one but a family member could read it. It has to be someone who knows her well."

Ted quaked in his shiny new shoes. He wanted to be able to help, but he was indeed shy. Most times his family took trouble to look after him in social situations. He didn't mix easily in crowds, and he certainly didn't want to spoil the day by stuttering and stammering through a speech about his beloved niece on the most important day of her life.

But when the bride's eyes began to brim with tears, he was startled to find himself saying, "Well, if you think so. I'll try my best."

As the marquee was filling with the last of the wedding guests, the family huddled in a small group, allowing Uncle Ted to read the speech to them as a short practice.

Minutes before this, the groom had taken Ted aside and explained that a nip of something from the bar would help settle his nerves.

When the bride's father overheard the answer of "Oh no. I don't think that could help" Jack took the first unnoticed opportunity to tip his neat double scotch whisky into the pitcher of herbal tea.

The best man, having agreed with his mate that a nip or two would help, stepped nonchalantly towards the table a few moments later and having reached for his hip flask, surreptitiously emptied the remains of his Bundaberg rum into the pitcher.

With Ted's practice read of the speech successfully completed, the small group was then distracted by the arrival of the Reverend, here to offer his informal congratulations to the bride and groom. At this time, Aunty Jean, forever impatient of her shy brother, took the opportunity to tip her full glass of sherry into the pitcher, whilst pretending to look at the floral centre piece on the wedding table.

The Reverend, who had been pressured into taking a glass of Benedictine against his will, placed his glass on the table as he was re-introduced to everyone. He was surprised but happy to find the glass empty a short time later, added quietly to the ice tea by the mother of the bride who saw it as a sort of divine intervention.

Finally, having consoled her best friend, one of the bridesmaids quickly tipped her Manhattan cocktail into the pitcher, just before everyone took their seats, retrieving the twist of lemon just in time.

As the first course began to arrive, Ted poured himself a glass of herbal ice tea. He took a sip, coughed in surprise and lifted his tumbler towards the bride, with a broad smile as the warmth spread through him. He would do anything for that girl and perhaps it was possible after all.

*

Ted's next moment of clear awareness was mid morning of the next day as he lay on the king sized bed in his hotel suite. He stretched out his arms in a lazy and luxurious manner having surveyed an untidy state of affairs around him, namely his new shirt, tie and trousers dropped on the floor, and his jacket untidily over the back of a chair. One pocket was clearly stuffed with paper serviettes carrying the names and phone numbers of people who wanted him to officiate at their upcoming functions.

He smiled in pride as he recalled the marquee full of laughing relatives and friends, the applause, and the fun he had had on the dance floor later that night.

"Yes." He smiled to himself. "I was a success, in spite of everyone's misgivings." More especially his own. He stretched out again and then rested his hands behind his head gazing at the ornate ceiling above him. But if he was honest he had to give credit to his dear niece. Her herbal tea was the very thing that helped him relax and to be his normal self. But, he was not sure he could contemplate ever trying it again. It worked for sure, but the morning after, he was finding, it left a horrible taste in your mouth, and he sensed the beginnings of a whopping headache.

Suddenly, he sat bolt upright when he became aware of what had woken him from his peaceful sleep. A female voice was quietly singing from behind the closed door of the en-suite.

A wave of fear swept through him and he pulled the blankets tightly up to his chin in fright as he looked around the room. In horror he took in the sight of the fabulous gown worn by the groom's godmother, the gorgeous Elanora, draped over the chair on the other side of the bed.

The bedside table was adorned with discarded jewellery including the pearl necklace he had so admired when Elanora had been introduced to him the day before. Designer shoes and handbag lay discarded on the floor as carelessly as Ted's own clothing.

Unaccompanied and blessed with a warm and engaging manner, the gorgeous Elanora was visiting for the wedding from her villa in Sicily and had taken a room at the same hotel. Reason enough to share a taxi at the end of the evening.

As the sweet voice continued to sing from the en-suite, disturbing visions and imaginings of the day ahead spun through Ted's mind. That is, until he considered, from under his blankets, that with his new found confidence and reputation, he might just be able to bluff his way through the next couple of hours until he could get his hands on some more of his niece's herbal tea.

He reached for the phone, dialled his brother's number and discovered from the bride's mother the essential information.

Uncharacteristically, he abruptly cut short her avalanche of probing questions and hung up the phone just as the door of the en-suite began to open.

Ted assumed a relaxed pose on the bed, and as he put on his best impression of a contented smile, it crossed his mind that life may not ever be the same again.

# THE GAME OF LIKES

## by Rebecca Perry

***************

The Game of Likes received an honourable mention in the 2016 Birdcatcher Books Short Story Competition.

### REBECCA PERRY

REBECCA PERRY is a YA and Middle Grade fiction writer. When she is not on a pirate ship she lives in Canberra with her family.

www.facebook.com/rebeccaperryauthor/

### THE GAME OF LIKES

MY HEART pounds, even thought its only two flights up to Mr Steerer's office. I don't knock straight away. I catch my breath, staring at the graffiti on the old bricks.

Hessler has no Likes.

I wonder idly who Hessler was. There's a wad of green gum wedged into a crack in the grouting. I think I might have put it there, years ago. Not in Year 7, I was a good kid back then. Maybe Year 8. I shove my thumb on it and it spreads out like a oversized full stop to Hessler's epitaph.

The bell rings, forcing the familiar crunch of gravel into my stomach. I'm going to knock, soon, but Mr Steerer opens the door first.

He doesn't look directly at me. "Hot already, isn't it?" His tie is askew. Sweat beads are forming below his receding hairline, even though its not even recess. He smells faintly of whisky, which isn't a surprise.

"Well, come in, James." He holds the door, but he's still looking past me, vaguely out over the quadrangle through the corridor's open arch, where the kids are jostling each other on their way to the next class.

I'm not sure if I should keep standing. He doesn't invite me to sit, but seats himself with a creak in his old chair. Without looking up from the papers at his desk, he says, "Your Likes balance is low."

"Lots of kids' are," I say defensively. This lecture again? I know my balance had dropped again yesterday, but I hadn't checked this morning.

Mr Steerer's grey eyes finally fix on me. His expression is without warmth. "I'm afraid, James, that we can no longer keep a place for you at Fairbrook College."

My heart pounds in earnest. My mouth is dry and I can't think of anything to say.

Mr Steerer sighs exaggeratedly. "It's how it is these days, you understand. I wish we didn't have to worry about Likes. But we have to compete with schools with averages in the one-fifties, two-hundreds even. I've got a queue of boys on well over one-fifty waiting to get in, and, well, your balance brings down our average somewhat."

"It's stable round sixty-seven," I say, my mouth like cardboard.

Mr Steerer glances at his screen. "Sixty-two."

I wince. Mr Steerer continues, "But what's more concerning is that you're doing very little about it. Frankly, you show very little promise." He stands abruptly and strikes out his hand as if to shake mine. "All the best, James. Clear out your locker by the end of the day. I'll inform your teachers."

I'm frozen to the spot. He drops his hand awkwardly. I let myself out and glance back. Mr Steerer is still gazing vaguely over the quadrangle.

*

Brody's the only one who says goodbye. I'm not surprised—by the time I check my screen at my locker, my Likes balance is dropping fast. Word's gotten out and no-one want to risk being seen hanging out with a sub-fifty.

"Don't sweat it," he says, giving me one of his wide, stupid grins. He smells like hamburger.

"Easy for you to say, Mr 300-Plus. My Dad's gonna kill me."

"Nah, you'll bounce back. And you hate this school. Could be a good thing."

But we both know it's not. Likes control everything—who you're friends with, your job, what you earn. Whether you get a girlfriend. Especially that.

I toss out a mouldy piece of mandarin peel from the back of my locker. My bag weighs a tonne. My empty locker stares at me accusingly.

I close it quietly. For the last time. "How do you do it, Brody?"

"Do what?"

"Keep your balance up."

He grabs his belly with both hands, squeezes it in a circle and puts on a silly voice. "They can't get enough of this!" I grin despite myself. Brody's podcast is insanely popular, which is pretty random because it's all just a bellybutton that does celebrity impressions.

"Maybe I should do a talking-bellybutton thing too."

Brody eyes my abdomen critically. "Nah, not enough fat on you. It'd be lame. You'll have to try something else."

I'll have to try something else.

*

I wasn't kidding when I said my Dad would kill me. I know what it had cost his career to Siphon a dozen or so Likes my way. Apart from risking being busted for Siphoning, which is totally illegal, the loss of those Likes, mostly from his oldest trusted friends, hurt his standing at the firm. And now I'd lost the place at the damn school anyway.

"Stupid, James," I say to myself. My bike wobbles from side to side. Damn bag. Damn everything. I yell at a magpie, just because.

When the Big Four social platforms got together and made a single Likes rating, that's when it started sucking if you weren't cool or talented or anything. But then when they allowed each person to give out only 100 Likes total, the game changed completely. Now Likes were competitive. If you want to Like someone's page you have to Unlike someone else's.

My screen pings. Trying to steer the bike with one hand, I see that Brody's just Liked a new page, some kid called Ronaldo. The vid plays—seems he's a hero for rescuing his baby brother from a house fire. I see the Likes count and nearly crash off to the side of the bike path. Nine-Oh-Two. Seriously? That's almost Mega status, the holy grail of the Thousand Club. I skim the comments. A few congratulate him on starting at Fairbrook College next week.

Some friend, Brody, you've just Liked my replacement. I know I'm overreacting. But I check Brody's Like is still on my page just the same.

I'm still swiping the screen when I hit the crossroads at the park, right by the old scout shed. Too late I see an old guy, looming out of nowhere.

He waves me down. I slow.

"Got any food?" The stench rolls off him. He's missing teeth, his hair is matted and his old jacket falling apart. One of the Likeless.

I swerve around him and don't answer.

I cycle harder, unnerved. There haven't been Likeless this close to home before. Mostly they sleep under the city overpasses. None of the shelters will take them—no charity can afford to drop their Like ratings by associating with the skulking underclass who've fallen so far that they've been disconnected from the system, losing first their pages, then ultimately their logins. No-ones.

Now there's one sleeping in the old scout shed by the park.

I glance back. The old man is still staring hungrily after me.

*

Dad texts. He'll be home at nine. His message reads "We have to talk."

I have to do something.

*

I watch Ronaldo's vid again and again. Hero.

Pity I don't have a baby brother.

*

I think about the man at the crossroads.

I think about the fire in Ronaldo's vid.

*

I message Brody a few times. He'll come straight round after squad's finished.

He'll come by the crossroads.

By the old hall where the Likeless man is sleeping.

*

An hour before Dad gets home.

I have to do something.

*

"Brody!"

He nearly flies off his bike. He skids to a stop. "James? What are you doing out?"

"There's a fire in the old scout shed."

"Cool. Let's vid it!"

Timing's perfect. The smoke's billowing out dramatically from the eaves. It'll show up good on the vid, even in the dark.

It's hotter than I thought it'd be, though. My palms sweat and it's not the heat radiating out of the old shed.

"You getting it?" I check.

"Yeah!" Brody's breathless with excitement. "I'm on live feed!" He edges closer to the fire.

Suddenly I swear loudly. "There's a man in there!"

Brody swears too. "No way! Where?"

I step forward, making sure I'm in the vid. I look back at Brody. "I'm going in there."

"Are you nuts?" Brody tries to stop me with one hand. But he doesn't put down the vid. Good kid.

I pull away, race forward, self-conscious of how lame my running looks. I grab the grey army blanket that just happens to be on the front step, and force the door in.

The smoke burns my throat. It's too hard to see. Damn. Where's that guy? I know he's passed out on the bottle I gave him. But it's smokier, and hotter, than I thought it'd be.

Damn! I was just going to grab him and run out. Vid done. But where the hell is he?

My throat's on fire, I can't take a breath. My eyes hurt too much to open.

There's a loud crack. The timber's splintering and crashing around me. I call out.

I reach out, grabbing anything, crawling on the floor, hunched under the blanket.

My head swims.

I can't breathe.

I'm drowning in smoke.

I black out.

*

I open my eyes in an unfamiliar white room.

"You did it." Brody's voice sounds forced. He stands up and leans over where I'm lying. I seem to be bandaged up. I try to move but it hurts like hell. "Your Likes are through the roof."

My stomach feels sick.

"Congrats on making the Thou' Club." There's no grin on Brody's face.

My throat is too sore to speak. "The old man?" I rasp.

"If the firies hadn't had to get you out first they might of saved him." There's a hard edge in Brody's voice. He leans closer and whispers, "Turns out you get more Likes if the guy carks it. Nice work."

I wince.

"I thought so," he says, and straightens up. "He was Likeless, they say. But even so, James ..." He leaves it hanging, unsaid.

At the door he turns. Behind him, through the glass, I see Dad shaking hands with Mr Steerer.

"I don't blame you, James," Brody says, no energy in his voice. "It's the only way to play the game of Likes."

# STASIA'S STAND

## by Jeanette O'Hagan

### JEANETTE O'HAGAN

JEANETTE O'HAGAN first started spinning tales in the world of Nardva at the age of nine. She enjoys writing fiction, poetry, blogging and editing.

Jeanette is writing her Akrad's Legacy Series—a Young Adult secondary world fantasy fiction with adventure, courtly intrigue and romantic elements. Recent publications include Heart of the Mountain: a short novella, The Herbalist's Daughter: a short story and Lakwi's Lament: a short story. Her other short stories and poems are published in a number of anthologies including Glimpses of Light, Another Time Another Place and Like a Girl.

Jeanette has practised medicine, studied communication, history, theology and a Master of Arts (Writing.) She loves reading, painting, travel, catching up for coffee with friends, pondering the meaning of life and communicating God's great love. She lives in Brisbane with her husband and children.

You can find her at her Facebook Page or at Goodreads or on Amazon or on her websites JennysThread.com or Jeanette O'Hagan Writes.

### STASIA'S STAND

STASIA SHIFTED the heavy yoke on her shoulders and allowed her spirits to soar. Her shadow fluttered in front of her, tall and skinny in the early morning light. Light, as liquid as the honey Baba collected from his hives, painted the vast landscape that spread out before them in soft gold and tan. Stasia was finally old enough to go with her father to the crossroads. No longer left behind to sweep out the hut, fetch water and scrub pots. No longer too young to sell Madri's baked goods and Patri's honey to the traders that passed through from all across Laurentia.

She was twelve and today was going to be the most profitable expedition ever. Patri would be so proud of her. A huge smile split her face and she skipped a step, her heart gambolling like a lamb in new grass after the rains.

Beside her, Stasia's older sister, Karenna puffed as she pushed the cart. The heavy cart caught in a deep rut and her father stretched out a hand to steady it.

"Almost there," Patri said, gesturing with his sturdy walking stick.

Ahead, the long shadows of the Tamarinth trees dappled the crossing where the east-west trade road crossed the north-south route—two long dusty roads that stretched across the flat plains. And several paces along the south road, a three-storey wooden building with thatched roof stood sentinel. The Tavern, it had to be, and the animal yards and stables behind it, were encircled in a wooden palisade of sharpened poles. Already travellers were yoking oxen or watering pack horses at the troughs. The rains were late this year.

"Keep close, Stasia, don't stray." Her father's voice was rimmed with impatience and worry.

Her patri was often irritated. Gramma whispered it was because he had no son. Madri scoffed. "The girls can care for the beehives as good as any man. Pushka is angry because he was born that way." Gramma would tsk, tsk though her mouth twitched up all the same.

Stasia smiled up at him. "I'll not get lost, Patri."

"Ay, but stay close. What if the Hrossa came?"

"Oh, Patri. No one has seen the Hrossa for years. Not before I was born." Her fingers tingled at the thought of the barbarians on their wild horses. She almost wished to see them. Almost – but not quite.

"Here's a good spot, though Katja has already secured the best one," Karenna called out. "Stasia, set out the trays. I'll set up the charcoal burner and steam trays to keep the cakes and dumplings warm."

"You'll be right then? I've got business to attend to." Hoisting a barrel of mead on his shoulder, Patri headed toward the Tavern without waiting for an answer.

Stasia and Karenna were still setting up when the hungry merchants jostled around, vying to be the first to buy Madri's mouth-watering honey cakes or the plump dumplings hiding a medley of fragrant flavours deep within.

*

The sun was half-way up the cloudless sky and Stasia's mouth dry with thirst. Business had been brisk.

"Two honey cakes, girl." She turned to meet Ondri's laughing eyes. At sixteen, he was years older than her; a strong, handsome lad and the headman's son. He handed Karenna a copper coin. Stasia dropped her eyes and curtseyed, her cheeks warming. She glanced through her lashes as she handed him the cakes in a grass-weaved platter.

Dong, dong, dong.

Stasia started at the deafening sound. The platter slipped from her hands, spilling cakes in the dust.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered. She dropped to her knees to pick up the cakes. The sound rolled on, keeping rhythm with her heart beat

Ondri's eyes widened, his mouth hanging open. "Hrossa!" His mouth snapped shut. "Forget the cakes, I must go."

Then Ondri was gone and Patri was running towards them.

"Hurry girls," Baba's voice boomed out. "Get to the palisade before the Hrossa arrive. Save as much stock as you can."

"Forget those. Help me pack." Karenna" voice was hoarse, her movements hurried. "Quick, get that one."

Stasia jumped up and grabbed the tray teetering above her.

"Don't spill it.

The metal seared her hands and she jerked back. The tray tilted. Steaming water sloshed out, splashing her face, seeping into her clothes. Pain scorched through her. She screamed and screamed.

"Stupid girl!"

Her father grabbed her, wrapped his cloak around her, muffling her screams. She felt him lift her, felt the jolting as he ran, felt her skin blistering until she became stitched together with pain and darkness and fear.

*

Stasia pulled her scarf to hide her face as the richly dressed Laksian trader approached her stall. She waved her unscarred hand over the tray, discouraging the flies zooming in on the honey cakes. The rains had been delayed this year, like the year she had been scalded. Gramma said it was a blessing that she survived the burning, but Stasia sometimes wasn't so sure.

She was no longer a little girl excited at selling her madri's cakes at the crossroads. Even now, after five years, she pushed down the sour taste of fear at the smell of dust, horse flesh and Tamarinth leaves. Harder still to sell alone. Karenna had married the farrier these three years and had a little one to care for. Her younger sister, Blanka was betrothed and helped her new family.

"Honey cakes, freshly baked this morning." Stasia forced her voice to carry.

The trader's jowls quivered and he rubbed plump hands on the silk brocade stretched across his stomach. His dark eyes hovered for a second over her mother's delicacies before raking her up and down. The look of greedy hunger dissolved into a sneer and he turned away towards Katja's stand of hot dumplings and steaming noodles several paces down the road.

Stasia's heart shrivelled inside her like a salted slug. Perhaps he'd glimpsed the puckered scars on her face or had this rich merchant from the west already caught up with the gossip in the tavern. She was a pariah, a storm-bird of ill fortune. There were no suitors for Stasia, nor would there likely ever be.

Stasia's shoulders drooped. The shade of the Tamarinth trees had already shifted and the summer sun, as hot as Madri's charcoal oven, burned her skin. Despite the arrival of a caravan from the rich farmlands to the south and merchants from the west, she had managed to sell only half her stock If only she could sell the rest, she could trudge back to the village and steal a few hours before she brought the ducks into the pens at nightfall and helped her youngest sister and baby brother with the night-time chores.

A shadow fell across her, chilling her skin. "Still selling honey cakes, Stasie." It was Ondri's confident voice, deep and resonant. "I thought you'd be married by now."

Stasia's face flamed at the touch of mockery in his voice. He had married the tavern keeper's daughter and was often away with the travelling caravans.

She found a smile and curtsied. "Freshly baked this morning, sir. And we have some waybread too."

"I'll take all the waybread you have." He pushed his wide shoulders back. "The Laksians have hired me as a guide to take them as far as Cheoria. Here."

He threw a handful of silver coins. They clattered against the cart, a couple rolling off into the dirt.

She bent down and caught the coins.

He stretched out a hand to help her up. She hesitated, then took it. As she straightened, her scarf fell away from her face. He pulled her close, his fingers tracing the burn scars, his breath hot on her face.

She pulled away. "How is your wife?"

"Large with child and sharp of tongue." He laughed. "And I'll be gone some cycles of the silver moon on this trip." He stepped closer. "We need a cook. Would you be interested? I'll pay you well..." He bent his head closer to her ear and dropped his voice. "... and keep you warm at night."

"Patri would never allow it." She blinked back the hot tears blinding her eyes. He had always been out of her reach, and this wasn't what she wanted. What would happen when he tired of her?

"Pushka would do well to consider it. You'll not likely receive a better offer. What man wants damaged goods?"

Hot anger seared the back of her throat. She packed the sage-leaf-wrapped waybread into a sack and thrust it at him. "What woman wants a man that would cheat on his pregnant wife?"

He laughed and swaggered. "You'd be surprised. I'm a prosperous man now." He grasped the ornate hilt of his sword. "Let bandits or the wild Hrossa try to rob us or injure you again, I'll fight them off. I'm now someone to be reckoned with." He lunged forward and kissed her before swaggering off.

She wiped her stinging lips with the back of her hand, disgusted. Not if the tavernkeeper finds out you are unfaithful to his daughter. But the bitter thought did nothing to fill the hollowness inside.

She rearranged the trays, wondering how long Patri would be in the Tavern and whether anyone had seen Ondri's disrespectful behaviour. The worst of it was, he was most likely right. Few now could look past the scars on her face. Yet surely she would always have a home with Patri and Madri or with her sisters and brother.

The loud tolling of the warning bell splintered the midday sleepiness.

Her hands froze, her heart stopped before madly racing with the strident rhythm of the warning bells.

Not again. Not again. Not again.

Where was Patri to help with the cart? Hands shaking, she packed the food, stacked the cart, emptied the steaming water, fighting the urge to run, to abandon the family's livelihood. All around her was a flurry of panicked movement as the other vendors grabbed their goods and fled toward the safety of the palisades.

She picked up the shafts and pulled the cart, the wooden wheels juddering along the rutted ground. In her hurry, the right wheel caught in a hole. She pushed and pulled but could not shift the cart. From the east, she could hear the thunder of hooves, the sound of galloping horses growing closer. She called out to her neighbour who was harnessing a goat to her cart.

"Katja, help me."

Katja bit her lip, her face a confusion of indecision and guilt. She looked over Stasia's head and her pupils dilated. "I have to go. I'm sorry." Katja got the goat moving toward the palisade gates. "Just leave your cart and run."

But how could she fail Patri's again?

Sobbing and calling out, Stasia put her back to the cart. On the third push, it lurched free. She staggered, catching the side before she fell face forward into the dust. She risked a glance over her shoulder and gasped at the red cloud of dust, like a billowing rain cloud close to the ground. Dark figures thundered towards them.

Ondri ran towards her, his sword shaking in his hand. "To the palisade." He was herding a group of Laksian merchants towards safety, his brothers pulling the reins to the pack horses.

"Ondri, help me."

"No time. I have to see to my clients."

They rushed past her, the horses pushing her off the track and into the long grass. She staggered up, her stockings torn, and righted the cart.

She was out of time, the Hrossa almost upon her.

Ahead, the travellers, traders and villagers were crowding through the open gates. Someone had lit the beacon fire to warn the surrounding villages.

The rumbling thunder of hooves swelled in volume. Stasia fought for breath, pushing the stubborn cart. She swallowed hard against the acidic terror rising in her throat like a wolf.

"Stasia, leave the cart, foolish girl." It was her patri's voice. He stood at the palisade gate, his arms waving wildly.

"Ondri stood beside him, guiding the last of his traders in. He pulled Patri back. "Pushka, we have to close the gate."

"My daughter is out there!" Patri roared, his face purpling with rage.

"We cannot risk everyone's lives for the sake of one girl."

Icy cold shuddered through Stasia. Not for damaged goods. A heaviness seemed to crush her to the ground. She sank down in the dirt.

The thud of the gates closing vibrated through her knees and hands. The beat of wild horses' hooves and the calls of the Hrossa shuddered through her, booming like thunder in her ears, stealing her breath, whipping her heartbeat into a frenzy. And then it all seemed to recede as though she hung motionless in the centre of a whirlwind.

In the muffled stillness she saw her Gramma. A worn and seamed face, drooping from a stroke long ago, her shuffling gait as she tended Stasia during the long nights of fever and pain following the scalding, her soft voice, "Stasia, precious child, everyone has a place, a reason for being."

And in a great rush, the shouts and snorts of the horses, the smell of dust and tears and fear, and the unforgiving glare of the sun came rushing back. She gasped, drew in a lungful of air and stiffened her muscles. If she was to die at the hands of the barbarians, she'd die a proud Genhazi woman. She pushed herself up off grazed hands and knees, brushed dirt and grass from her skirt and turned to her fate, her face uncovered.

*

The herd of horses thundered past her, towards the water troughs, urged on by mounted riders. The horses were bigger than she'd imagined, sharp hooves flashing in the hot sun and churning up the earth, strong necks lathered in sweat, manes and tails streaming out behind them. A wind whipped up by their passing buffeted her, but the horses parted around her and the cart like a river around a boulder.

Just when she thought that all had passed, two of the riders pulled up in front of her. Leaping off their horses, they grabbed her, their voices high with excitement.

Terror coursed through her, her legs trembling like leaves in the wind. Her breath caught in her throat. This was it. She lifted her chin and stared into their faces, first one, then the other.

"Stasia." Her father's agonised scream.

And then he was there, beside her, pulling at the Hrossa men, hitting them with his stick. They turned on him, knives flashing in the sun, faces predatory, hard as bluestone. They circled. One kicked out, the stick flying from Patri's hand. The other lifted his knife and laughed, a low, chilling sound that stopped Stasia's heart.

"Patri, no!" Stasia pleaded, tears spilling down her cheeks.

"Stada," a voice strong and cold, came from behind her.

The Hrossa froze, straightened and bowed.

A young man, his long dark hair in a ponytail, a wolf's skin over his shoulders sat on a shining back stallion.

"Finnen." The Hrossa who had kicked Patri's stick from his hand, spoke a flood of gibberish, his hands held open in front of him. The mounted Hrossa responded with stabbing gestures until the fierceness seemed to melt out of the other two.

The leader turned, his cool blue eyes swept over Patri and came to rest on Stasia. His eyes did not flinch though she had not covered her face.

He inclined his head. "Please, forgive my men. We mean no harm."

Stasia's eyes widened with wonder. Though his words held a lilting accent, he spoke in her language, the language of the Genhazi.

Patri snorted, pulled himself upright. "No harm. You come like locusts to plague us. Look what you did to my daughter when she was a child."

The man's fine eyebrows drew together. "We need water, fodder for horses. We roam when the rains not come."

"So you steal..."

"Steal?"

"You do not ask. You take."

"How to ask when always you flee like ants to anthill? No hospitality offered. You treat us like plague, with dishonour, then complain of ours?"

The tension in Stasia's neck and shoulders released. It was true what he said. Always, they'd assumed the Hrossa were barbarians, that there was no point in talking to them. Could he be tricking them, lulling them into a sense of trust only to betray it?

The horses huffed and whinnied as they crowded around the troughs, emptying them almost as quickly as the riders could fill them. The wind soughed in the branches of the Tamarinth trees.

The leader, Finnen, if that was his name, shifted in the saddle. "But if my people injured your daughter, I am sorry. Name your compensation. I will pay."

Patri shuffled his feet, his face uncertain. Ondri rushed up, his eyes on the horses. "Well, yes..."

Stasia glared at him and he fell silent. Always so quick to profit from her misfortune, but had the Hrossa really harmed her?

She stepped forward. "It is we who are sorry. It was my fear that caused my injuries." She took a deep breath. "Would you and..." She glanced at the other riders, some of whom she was sure were women, "your companions care to share a meal with us tonight?"

Finnen moved at one with his horse as it sidestepped, his pale eyes not leaving her face.

Her sudden confidence faltered. Had she said too much, been too bold? Wasn't she just the scarred beekeeper's daughter? She looked down at her dusty sandals.

She felt the soft thud of feet and felt his hands, taking hers.

"I am honoured, lady of the crossroads, to eat with you and your kin."

And, for some reason, Stasia's heart skipped like a lamb in new grass after the rains.

# LET SLEEPING DOGS LIE

## by Hugo Spooner

### HUGO SPOONER

HUGO SPOONER lives on a cattle property in Central Queensland, approximately three hundred kilometres west of Rockhampton.

He is a novice with no previous works published, although he has had some success in song writing and poetry. He has completed several online courses and, as an avid reader, he finds he is able to pick up some of the skills employed by competent authors.

### LET SLEEPING DOGS LIE

"THIS IS all I need!" I said aloud, despite the fact there was not another soul within ear shot. This was my family's land and I was infuriated that someone had been roaming, barefoot, through this remote corner of the property. That constituted trespass and it was frowned down upon in rural communities.

We had recently mustered this area of the property on horseback and noticed we were short on our count. It appeared we were missing six or seven head of cattle and I was here among the sandstone ridges, hoping to find their tracks. I certainly found tracks but they didn't belong to cattle. They were human in origin! Bothered by the discovery, I returned to my vehicle which I had left on a track nearby. Arriving at my house, I immediately rang our local police.

A tired voice answered, "Brandley police." I got the impression I had interrupted an unscheduled nap. A typical day in a small, bush police station wasn't exactly City Central in Sydney!

"This is Ben Ralston from 'Duncombe.' I thought you should know that I found some human footprints in our hill country today. Not something I'd expect. I am worried that someone might be lost, or it might be someone off his rocker, because the person was bare footed."

Having obviously shaken himself awake, he suggested I investigate further, and that he would initiate inquiries at his end by checking the state wide 'Missing Persons' file.

*

Early next morning, I drove to within about a kilometre of the prints then continued on foot. With the frost crackling under my feet, the bush silent and with the wonderful scent of the prematurely flowering Bancroft's Wattle in the air, I followed the human footprints for a considerable distance and came upon an incredible sight. In a small clearing, in the thick Lancewood country, I noticed an old pony tied to a tree near a rickety, horse-drawn cart. Beyond, was a large, hollow, fallen tree, from the end of which, rose a thin plume of smoke. It had obviously been burning for weeks, judging by the long line of white ash left in its wake. It was a dead Poplar Box, a eucalypt with a tendency to contain large hollows, even while alive. In the fallen state, they provide an ideal sanctuary for marsupials, dingoes and rock pythons - or even humans, should the need arise!

My heart pounding, I called out, "Anyone around?"

Dead silence – not even the pony flinched. I called again, my voice eerily resonating in waves down the valley. Suddenly, I detected movement at the unburnt end of the tree. I became transfixed and gripped by fear. A man, grotesquely covered in white ash, was crawling, ghost like, out of the log, his breath condensing in the freezing air. I battled the impulse to run. Fortunately, I recovered my composure sufficiently to inquire nervously, "W-what the h-hell are you doing in there?"

He stood there shivering, no shoes, wearing only a pair of shorts. Apart from the coating of ash, there were bits of coal, leaves, dirt and cobwebs embedded in, and clinging to his unruly, curly hair. He stared at me through wild, piercing eyes, as though I were the intruder.

"You woke me up, yer bugger!" he said, shouting indignantly.

"Hey mate," I said in annoyance, "this is my land. You're not supposed to be here."

Apparently he slept in the log for warmth. This was July, after all. What an excellent form of temperature control! Simply adjust your distance from the burning end of the log!

"Mate", he pleaded, "I don't mean no harm. I'll pay yuh. I'm a millionaire, y' know."

It struck me immediately that he had a screw loose so I decided to show some patience and maybe a little sympathy as well. It was pointless becoming angry with him. In fact, I was already intrigued by what he had said and wanted to hear more.

"Me money is in a bank in Perth but they're bloody crooks. They won't hand it over. Y'see I'm real famous. Y'know that song, 'Misty', don't yuh?"

"Yeah", I replied, "it happens that I do. A bloke named Ray Stevens had a hit with it in the 70's."

"Right, but the problem is – people think it was wrote by him. Well, it was me what writ it and I get paid them royalty things. It made me a millionaire."

I was wondering what approach to take as I moved from the end of the log. The smoke was making my eyes water.

After contemplating his story for a moment or two, I asked, "What do you eat up here?"

"Aw, possums, rabbits, y'know"

"I see – and how do you catch them?" I asked aggressively, having noted the beef ribs lying around, having been feasted on and now covered in meat ants.

"With me laser gun. Trouble is I'm gettin' short of laser fuel."

He wandered over to his cart, glancing at the restrained pony, then returning with a crash helmet – the early type that motor cyclists wore after their introduction - which he put on his head and turned towards the nearest tree.

"Yuh line it up with the possum; she locks on the target and 'boom', there's me dinner!"

He continued, "See that hole over there?"

I did. It was the legacy of some machine having constructed a firebreak in the past.

"Used to be a tree there. Cleared some trees for yuh. Zapped 'em with me gun. Vap'rised 'em!"

After gazing into the distance for a while, he said, "I been doin' you a favour, mate."

"How is that? I asked, suspiciously.

"Been zappin' dingoes for yuh. I hears them at night so I puts me laser gun on, point to where the howlin' is, and 'zap' – they's vap'rised."

At this stage, something niggling in the back of my mind was coming to the fore. I played cricket in the local area and I recalled a bizarre story I had heard one day from a team mate, who happened to own land next to us. It concerned a 'weird fella' who was in trouble with the law for stealing horses in some wild, hilly country away to the south-west of us. Apparently, he had moved to our district and temporarily hidden in some remote area. This could not be just a coincidence, I decided. I had also heard that he had a three legged horse. The horrific story was that this horse had been caught in a dingo trap for several days. The wound was badly infected when he found the animal so he cut the leg off with his pocket knife. Amazingly, the horse recovered. Had he not been bonkers I would have immediately reported him to the police.

I commented on his pony. I owned a horse that was half Welsh pony, half Quarterhorse and I saw some resemblance.

"It's one of them Welsh ponies, he said. "I made a heapa money outa them horses too. It was me what brung 'em to Australia."

"How did you manage that?" I asked, intrigued, but suppressing a smile.

"Well, y'see, they wouldn't breed over there in Wales 'cos the mares was in one valley and the stallions was in another, so they couldn't mate. They heard I was real good with horses, a expert, so they rings me and says, 'Cos you're a expert, we will fly you to Wales to sort out the problem, and it won't cost yuh nothing.' When I got there, all these real important people met me and I says, 'Hire me a chopper.' I waited and this chopper come, and I says to the pilot to take me to the valley where the stallions was. I told him to put the chopper just above a stallion, and 'cos I'm real good at ropin', I throws a rope around all four legs and winches him up under the chopper. The pilot reckoned I was a champion but I told him, 'No, I'm not. I'm a expert.' We flew over this real high mountain and when I saw some mares I tells him to put the chopper over them and I winched the stallion down and flicked the ropes so they come undone. Then we goes back and gets the next one. Took all day, it did. When we was finished all them important people cheered and said I was a expert."

He became a little vague at this stage and wandered towards the cart. I wanted to hear more and decided to prompt him a little.

"You sorted out the breeding problem but how did you bring some of the horses over here?"

"The horses?" He paused, with quizzical look on his face.

"Oh yeah, yeah. Y'know, they was that grateful for me fixin' their problem, they give me twenty of 'em. I needed a Jumbo jet, so I rings Jumbo and says, 'I want to hire a jet and I don't care what it costs 'cos me gov'ment is paying. Rip all the bloody seats out and put in horse stalls,' I says. 'Don't ask no questions 'cos I'm a expert.' They did it real fast 'cos they didn't want to see me angry. When the Jumbo arrives, I says to all the crowd, 'Don't come close,' and I loads the horses one by one. Then I climbs aboard and I couldn't hear meself think 'cos of all the cheering. I had a helluva time 'cos the horses panicked when we took off, but 'cos I'm a expert I calmed them down. When we landed in Australia, the Prime Minister and all these real important people cheered. I said, 'Stand back so I can unload them.' So many people was there cheering, the cops had to push 'em back. Then I says, 'I want one pony for meself and the rest are for sale.' Everybody wanted to buy them. I made a million dollars and put it in the bank in Perth, but the manager is a bloody mongrel and won't let me have it."

He turned and walked towards his cart again, muttering, "Got work to do - gotta make some more laser fuel."

I said, "You mind if I watch?"

Then I thought, I've got to be kidding, haven't I? This is MY land!

By now the sun was well up but my teeth were still chattering. He seemed unconcerned by the cold – maybe the ash, grass, cobwebs and filth insulated him.

He walked over to his cart and I followed. It was barely useable – tied together with bits of wire and rope. I guessed it was largely hand made. When I leant against it, it all but toppled over. He picked up a ceramic cup and showed me his 'laser fuel'. I concluded it was battery acid to which he had added a piece of galvanised iron. The resultant grey, watery paste indicated this.

He had mounted a magneto – the type used on bicycles to provide light for a head lamp – on to a wooden section of the frame, and had the rotating shaft engaged to the cart wheel. He proceeded to disengage the magneto for the purpose of the demonstration. With the negative lead clipped to the terminal of an old lead-acid battery, he spun the magneto and touched the positive lead on to the other terminal, producing, unsurprisingly, a series of blue sparks.

"See", he said convincingly, "that's how I makes me laser fuel. It makes heaps, 'specially when the cart is being pulled by me pony. He's Welsh, yuh know. I brung him to Australia. They..."

I interrupted before he progressed, "Wow! So that's laser fuel!" It was my best effort at a complimentary remark. After all, I did have my conscience to consider.

He said, "I'm bloody cold. Goin' back to bed."

I followed him and said, "Hey, before you go, what's your name?"

He stopped, gazed into the distance for a while, and then answered, "Well, I don't know what me muvver called me so I call meself George. Y'know, George Washington. He was real important."

I watched intrigued as he entered the log feet first. It was quite a spectacle because there appeared to be an art to the technique. Following his entry, there were puffs of ash, accompanied by a series of grunts, and then the bush was as quiet and as serene as when I had arrived at daybreak. The pony still hadn't moved. I supposed it couldn't be dead if it were still standing. On second thoughts, it might have been frozen! As if seeking some normality, I walked to the pony and gently rubbed her neck. The touch of her warm coat and her horsey smell did indeed offer me some much needed reassurance.

My mind was in turmoil at this stage. I moved out of the clearing, found a comfortable log, sat down, took a deep breath and considered my options. Shaking my head unconsciously, I did my best to rationalise the situation. I had quite a dilemma on my hands. On one hand I must consider the statutory law; possible harbouring of a criminal; obligation to the community and so on. On the other hand, there was the issue of compassion and the level of threat, if any, created by the status quo. After much deliberation and the tossing around of the pros and cons, I finally made my decision and headed for home.

*

As I sat on my back steps with my third strong coffee, the phone rang.

"Ben Ralston speaking."

"Brandley police here, Mister Ralston. We'll come out right away and take a look. There are three possibilities on the 'Missing Persons' register. Better check 'em out, I suppose."

I hesitated a moment then said, awkwardly, "Um... no need... I'm sorry to have put you to all this trouble. I... I have just returned home from out there and made a couple of phone calls. I discovered that a surveyor walked through that country a few days ago, um... checking some boundary coordinates. My neighbour had given him permission. Beats me why he walked around barefooted though."

I waited nervously for a response, hoping he wasn't going to complicate matters, but all he said was, "OK – if you are sure about that," and then immediately hung up.

On reflection, I decided that the most appropriate and compassionate action to take, was to subscribe to the old adage:

Let Sleeping Dogs Lie.

# LIKE SIAMESE

## by Emma Michelle

### EMMA MICHELLE

EMMA MICHELLE is a Canberra-born Melbourne writer. Her work has been published by Kill Your Darlings, Farrago and The Conversation.

As a writer Emma is most interested in themes of adolescence, loss, and grief. Her debut novel Rare Birds examines contemporary ideas surrounding femininity, mental health, and what it's like to be nineteen. The manuscript is in preparation to send to a literary agent.

Emma is also a postgraduate researcher whose non-fiction examines the work of J. D. Salinger as narratives of unresolved grief.

### LIKE SIAMESE

IT WAS three days before I left home when I saw Adam Harris outside my work. The thing was impossible, I knew, because I'd sang in the choir at his memorial assembly and knew a kid who went to the funeral. But in spite of that, in defiance of reason, Adam Harris stood there outside our shop in a t-shirt and shorts, peering through the window at the Easter chocolate display.

Ruth had been optimistic to set up that display, I'd thought. Valentine's Day had only just passed and already we were onto the next holiday. I knew why: we were hoping it'd give us more time. It wasn't that the store was doing badly, Denise had explained, just that the centre kept raising the rent and the newsagent closing had meant a big decrease in foot traffic. Which is exactly why I'd looked up at the window in the first place. People didn't usually stop. They just walked right past, probably not even realising the corner is a shopping arcade instead of another empty office or foyer leading to consulting rooms.

I looked nervously at Adam. He didn't seem like he'd seen me, and the bright sun outside meant he probably couldn't see far into the store anyway. The glass would act more like a mirror. Like a ghost looking into a mirror. A ghost taking a phone from his pocket, looking down and tapping the screen a few times, then turning on his heel to walk away.

Then he was gone.

*

"Hello!"

The humming sound of the overhead fan and saucepans bubbling in the kitchen, but no reply. Gran hasn't heard me. I close the front door loudly and step deliberately through the house.

"Hello!" I sing out again.

Gran turns from the stove. "Hello, darling. Would you set the table?"

I dump my bag on the bench, grab cutlery from the drawer and take out two placemats, their sun-faded fabric folding softly in my hands. I stare at them for a while then go to the dining room.

"How was work?" I hear Gran ask. "Did you get your letter?"

"Denise is sending it tonight," I reply loudly.

"Will it arrive on time?"

"What do you mean?" I yell back.

"If Denise posts the letter tonight," she says, "Won't it be late? Your flight leaves Monday and it's already Friday evening."

I come back to the kitchen and lean in the doorway.

"Oh, no, I meant she's e-mailing the letter so they'll get it before I even leave. Then I'll get some shifts to work there the first week."

Gran switches off the hotplates. "I tell you, I find the whole thing very strange. Getting a job without having visited the place or met the people. Setting it up through the internet. It's very odd, isn't it?"

She looks back at me and I shrug. Then I see her face crack into a warm smile.

"Then again, maybe it only seems odd to old fogies like me!"

"You're not an old fogey!" I laugh. "You know more about Facebook than I do!"

Gran chuckles and begins to ladle the stew onto two plates.

"Speaking of e-mails," I continue, "I heard back from the removalists. They're coming 'round at two if that's alright?"

"On Sunday?"

Gran picks up the plates and I notice the slight shake of her hands. I follow her silently to the table.

"Beck?" she asks again as we sit down. "Are they coming on Sunday?"

"Sorry, no, tomorrow. Which means two nights of sleeping on the floor, but that's okay."

Gran takes the salt and covers her plate before she's tasted the meal. "You can always sleep in my bed. I don't snore!"

"Thanks, but I've got my farewell tomorrow night. I don't want to wake you up when I stumble home at stupid o'clock in the morning."

Gran chuckles again. "That's quite alright. You're entitled to one last hurrah before you leave. Just as long as you're still alive on Sunday for dinner."

"Of course."

Then she sighs and rests her chin on her hand.

"It's a shame none of your friends can drive you down. I remember it being quite a nice trip the last time I drove it, although that was a million years ago and before all the bypass and dual carriageway business."

"Most people have already gone," I explain through a mouthful of stew. "Off on gap years or moved for uni already." What I don't mention is that I never asked any of my friends to drive me.

"If you'd just finished those classes," Gran sighs again, "You'd have your license and could drive yourself. I can't do it."

"I know. I'm sorry."

We eat in silence for a while.

"Anyhow," Gran suddenly says, raising an eyebrow. "You'd better get cracking with those boxes, girlie, if the movers are coming tomorrow. You've barely packed a thing!"

*

The reason it's taking so long, I realise later in my room, is because I'm packing myself away twofold. I'm removing physical traces, boxing away clothes and books and photos, but I'm removing myself online as well. Blocking contacts, leaving groups, deleting posts, un-tagging photos. On my laptop I open the group chat where we shared photos taken at parties, and then remove myself from it. I de-friend the profile of the guy I met one night outside Metro. Wall-to-wall posts of falling in love, e-mails back and forth with best friends... I delete them all, killing off pieces of my digital self in preparation for moving away.

Then I think of Adam Harris: the kid who really died. It happened before Facebook, before he had a chance to carve out a space on the internet that would be left behind in perpetuity. Probably a blessing, I think, because it meant that his legacy wasn't a bunch of embarrassing teenage selfies or angst-ridden song lyrics posted online. No, we remembered Adam for other reasons.

I type 'Adam' into the search bar of my e-mail inbox. Nothing comes up. This shouldn't be surprising, because boys and girls in our class wouldn't acknowledge each other until many years after he'd died. But I remember that assignment we had to do together for science, remember finishing it alone due to one of his famous absences from school. I search for 'assignment,' 'biology' and 'haemoglobin' but nothing relevant shows up. I close the laptop.

*

"I can't believe you're leaving!" Lizzie wails over the noise of the pub, holding her hands to her face in mock distress. "What am I supposed to do without you! Could you have picked a further away university?"

"Grace went to Berlin for her gap year," I laugh. "Did you guilt trip her too?"

She giggles. "Touché."

"So you're really going, huh?" yells Jules from the other side of the table. He's looking red-faced and jolly, probably because his girlfriend has gone to Sydney for the weekend and isn't here to tensely catalogue each of his drinks.

"Yep, I fly out Monday." I look at my watch, realising it's past midnight, so I correct myself. "Tomorrow! It's the latest they'll let me arrive before I have to start paying rent," I explain.

"That's wild," he yells. "How's Gran taking it?"

I look down at my pint glass on the table, nodding slowly.

"Pretty well. She's happy I'm getting out and doing something, not just hanging around in my sad retail job."

"Don't knock retail!" Lizzie interjects, "At least you're not stuck in hospitality!"

She holds out her pint glass for what must be the hundredth cheers of the night. Jules and I clink our own glasses against it solemnly and drink.

"I'm just worried," I say. "Gran's getting old, and it'll probably be really noticeable when I come home for Easter holidays."

"As if!" yells Lizzie, "Your Gran's indestructible! She'll be fine."

I nod, unconvinced.

"Hold that thought..." She stands up with her empty glass and looks at us both. "Refill time!"

"I'm good," I yell, shaking my head. "Gotta be fully functioning tomorrow."

"You mean today!" laughs Jules.

Lizzie looks at him but he shakes his head too. She heads to the bar anyway.

"Hey Jules," I say, scooting across the seat to be closer to him. "Weird question: do you remember Adam Harris?"

"Yeah, I went to his house after school a few times. How come?"

I look around the pub.

"I saw a guy who looked like him the other day."

"That's wild! You know, one time I saw our old maths teacher Mr George at the grocery store? He was wearing slippers and buying a frozen pizza."

"Oh man. That awkward moment when you realise teachers are people too..."

"I know! So real." Then his face turns serious. "Were you and Adam friends?"

"Nah," I say, spinning the pint glass on the table. "It was just weird seeing a guy who looked like him, like what he might have grown up into. It's bothering me."

Jules leans back in the old worn armchair and smiles.

"He was obsessed with that one song... What was it? Siamese Twins? Something Twins?"

"I dunno. I don't think we spoke more than twice."

"Man." He stares off into space. "So sad what happened. Adam's folks were the nicest too, they let us do whatever we wanted." Then Jules flinches. "Probably because he was in and out of hospital so much."

"You don't think it was related, do you?"

He turns to me. "What?"

"I dunno." I shuffle in my chair. "The fact Adam was in hospital all the time, then ended up in a car crash."

"What, like he caused it?" Jules gives me a weird look. "Parents don't let kids drive cars on the highway, Beck. Let alone kids like Adam."

"I know, yeah. Of course."

"That's pretty insensitive, dude, saying he somehow caused the crash. His parents were hurt too you know. That accident basically ruined their lives."

"I know – that wasn't what I meant. I'm sorry."

Now Jules shuffles in his seat, probably remembering who he's talking to.

"It's cool. What did you mean, then?"

But the question's interrupted by Lizzie arriving at the table with another jug and a triumphant smile. I grin back at her and make space while Jules cheers in appreciation, then quickly stare back at my pint glass.

I mean: If you really want to die, and you wish hard enough, does your wish come true?

*

When I get home I quietly step down the hall, using an app on my phone as a torch to light the way. I flick on my bedroom lights and instantly feel a rush of panic, then remember the removalists came during the day while I was working and took all my things.

In the corner lies a sleeping bag and pillow Gran has set up for me, with a pair of neatly folded pyjamas sitting on top. Next to the pillow is a bottle of water and something else. A chocolate frog, Gran's last one. I feel tears welling up in my eyes as I switch off the lights and crawl into bed, wondering how my new housemates could ever possibly hope to match up to Gran.

*

Where does sadness come from?

In high school when our teacher gently explained that Adam would be away for a while because he'd gone to hospital for depression, my jaw dropped. Why did he get to do that? I thought. Gran made me go to school every day the year my Mum died. I didn't get special treatment, kids ignored me just as much as usual and the adults hovered around Gran and I with a vague sense of pity. Adam had two parents, and I had none. It was awful how much I hated him when I heard where he was.

And then a year later, he was gone too.

Who is allowed to be sad, and why?

*

On the morning of the last day I duck into work to buy more chocolate frogs for Gran.

"Beck!" Ruth holds out her short arms for a hug. "I thought you were gonna disappear without saying goodbye!"

I laugh, hugging her back awkwardly.

"Are you picking up supplies for Gran?"

"Yeah."

"Hang on!" Ruth pushes her glasses back on her nose and goes behind the counter to rummage through a drawer. She retrieves a bag of frogs wrapped up in a curled gold bow.

"With love from me! I hope your Gran will still pop by even though you're moving away."

"Of course! Thanks so much, Ruth." Then I think of Gran navigating the buses here on her own once I'm gone, with her failing hearing and shaky hands.

"So how are you spending your last day of freedom, darl'? Doing some last minute shopping?"

"Yeah, running around, killing time. Might see Lizzie later," I lie. There's a worried text on my phone from Lizzie that I'm ignoring. She's realised I'm disappearing online. "How's the morning been? Busy?"

Ruth's face adopts the usual expression, the casual one we give customers that ask us the same question. "Yeah, steady. Lots to unpack and some big orders to do."

I nod, looking around and knowing the answer's well-rehearsed.

"Actually, we sold some Easter chocolates! The window display worked," Ruth giggles, "Oh ye of little faith!"

I laugh. Then I look down and see the e-mail list resting on the counter. It's another one of Denise's ideas to stay afloat, getting customer details so we can send out special offers and discounts. There's a new line that wasn't there on my last shift: the name isn't familiar but the e-mail address rings a bell...

LikeSiamese349@mail.com.

No.

"You know," Ruth says, coming over again to stand at my side. "Your mum would be so pleased you're getting out and starting university. People can say what they want, but she was always so proud of you."

I look up and see how intensely Ruth's staring at me.

I don't want to leave, I think. I don't want to leave and I don't want to go home.

*

Sitting under a tree outside I open my e-mail inbox on my phone. It's been stripped bare from days of deleting. I click on the 'Archived' tab and open a search, then type 'Like Siamese.'

The conversation with Adam Harris comes up. His e-mail address is different, but in the 'From' field he's set 'Like' as his first name and 'Siamese' as his surname, instead of just using his real first and last names. No wonder kids in our class thought he was weird. I scroll through the brief e-mail exchange:

"So your name's Beck? Like the Scientologist?"

"What? Do u mean the musician?"

"Yeh - the Scientologist musician."

"Lol. Well my Mum named me and she wasn't exactly religious, lol, so I don't know."

"K... what did you get for part one?"

"I'll bring it tomorrow, it's almost finished. Did you do yours?"

"Na not yet. I have a history essay due first."

That's it. My shoulders slump.

No clues to why he was always in hospital, no signs that anything was up with his parents, or any kind of foreshadowing to the terrible road accident. Just a bunch of teenagers deliberately misspelling words to look cool, acting like communicating with one another is an inconvenience. And then the real disappointment, I think. No indication that it was all a joke. No hint that he just made the whole thing up and later slipped away, disappeared quietly to live out his life as someone else, somewhere else, far away from the sadness that had engulfed it so quickly.

I don't want to leave. I don't want to leave and I don't want to stay home.

I want to disappear too.

*

Empty paddocks stretch in all directions and the scent of fine dust hangs in the air. The sound of the wind hitting the back of my ears and, occasionally, the sound of a car approaching on the road.

It wasn't long before I realised what the coach driver had meant: the way some parts of the old highway are in such a bad state they're impossible to walk alongside. A few times now I've had to cross just to keep going, but since only local traffic uses the road now long gaps of time pass in-between cars. When they do pass there's no sense of menace, just a shared awkwardness at the sight of a girl walking along a road alone. I keep my head down and try to look like I know where I'm going. At least there's no risk of getting lost when you're following one straight road all the way to a bend.

I look at my phone, realising I hadn't counted on how quickly the GPS signal would drain the battery. I switch it off, knowing there's not much further to go and that I'll need to save battery for the trip home to tell Gran I'll be late for dinner.

"People deal with pain in all kinds of ways," Ruth had said before I left. "We all take grief different ways. Your Mum wasn't a bad person, Beck, I think in her mind she thought she was sparing you and your Gran from a lot of sadness."

Dusk threatens to break over the next hill.

I don't want to go home. I don't want to go home and I don't want to leave.

*

Empty paddocks stretching in all directions, the scent of fine dust and the wind hitting the back of my ears. Further up the deserted old highway a slight bend, the gentle slope of a hill and the paddocks below concealed from view. And the stoic silence hanging over a roadside memorial where a single white cross has been fixed to a paddock fence

#  DIFFERENTLY COLOURED LIGHTS

## by Erwin Cabucos

### ERWIN CABUCOS

ERWIN CABUCOS is a teacher of English in Brisbane. Originally from the Philippines, he harvests life experiences from the two countries and tries to craft convincing stories about things that matter. His latest collection of short stories: "Does It Matter What the Dead Think?" is now available on Amazon. He lives with his partner.

Find Erwin at <http://erwincabucos.wixsite.com/author>.

### DIFFERENTLY COLOURED LIGHTS

CHRISTY DABS her eyes to dry her tears with the flannelette sheet as she pulls it up to her neck, tucking herself in tightly against the creeping chill of Hong Kong's winter. From her space under the laundry bench, between the washing machine and the refrigerator, she can see the kaleidoscopic glow of the lights reflected on Kowloon Bay, especially if she tilts her head up from her pillow. She inhales the peace of the moment, disturbed only by the intermittent whirring of the refrigerator motor, but she has learned to love the noise as a symbol of where she is and what she is doing for her family.

When she started work five years ago as a maid for the Chen Family, on the twenty-ninth floor of a building in Admiralty, the refrigerator noise used to rob her of sleep. But it's become a symbol of the importance of her job, of her ability to feed her family back in the Philippines, to send her daughter to study nursing at the Davao Doctors College, and to save money so she can send her son to a university soon. She has learned to accept the things she used to hate.

She yawns and rubs her feet together for warmth as she does every night before she falls asleep. Then she makes the sign of the cross – something she's done all her life as she thinks of the people she loves and prays for their safety.

Finally, she looks at the picture of her family on her iPhone. It is the last image she wants imprinted on her mind as she closes her eyes. As she outlines the faces of her loved ones with a finger, the latest FaceTime messages from her daughter Melody pop up: "I love you, Mang. Indi lang magkabalaka sa amon dire, kay okay lang kami, don't worry about us, we are fine here. Mag capping na ako sa sunod bulan, I'll start my work experience next month. Love you man daw siling ni Papang kag ni Jun-Jun. Didto ko kaina sa Carmen, Papang and Jun-Jun say 'I Love You,' I was at home with them earlier today."

"I love you too, Melody," Christy whispers. She feels her eyes start to water again. But before the flood of tears can come she stands to get some cold water from the fridge and gulps the liquid down, staring at the shimmering lights that filter between the buildings and the bay. The colours that pierce the darkness give her a sense of triumph, knowing that, despite their poverty and her having to work as a domestic helper far from home, she is able to pay the expensive tuition fees and textbooks needed for her daughter's education – which only the well-to-dos can afford in her home town. Holding the glass, Christy leans on the washing machine and stares at the City, hoping that one day her hard work will pay off and Melody will be the one to send her brother to college. Then, at last, she and her husband will be able to retire with a little help from their two children.

She sighs at the thought that behind the array of buildings, two-hour flight from this island-city, her family is also going to sleep. She wishes she were there now to advise Jun-Jun, her sixteen-year-old son, to stay away from bad influences, especially drugs.

The knock at the door jolts her. Christy puts on her slippers and slides her jumper over her shoulders as she walks through the kitchen and lounge room to get to the front door. She thinks it must be Kwok Wei, the Chen's only child, who always ignores his parents' instruction to study hard and to come home on time. He's always been a concern for Mr and Mrs Chen, and was even suspected of having been involved in illegal drugs last year, at the age of only fifteen.

The teenager's body rolls on the floor as Christy swings the door open. "Kwok Wei, are you okay?"

His eyes are half-open. He struggles to stand, then he braces himself with one hand as he sits on the floor.

Before Christy finishes her sentence a pinkish goo escapes from his mouth, spilling on his shirt and onto the carpet. Christy's eyes go wide. "Ay, yudiputa nga bata ni a, pa kuskusun pa gid ko sang carpet," cursing the prospect of de-staining and deodorising the carpet – one of many things she hates about this job.

"Sorry, Auntie Christy." He grabs the side of the door to pull himself upright and wobbles towards his bedroom.

Mrs Chen appears, trembling in anger. "Could you be any more stupid? Drinking at fifteen is not only illegal but extremely dangerous. You could have died!" Her high-pitched voice pierces Christy's ears. Mrs Chen's hand flies onto her son's head; his face twists from the impact. "Clean yourself. You are grounded! No more Internet. No more games. No more pocket money..."

Christy starts to sweep up the slime, trying not to gag from the smell.

"M-ma, it was only because of my friend's request. I couldn't reject him. He only turns eighteen once," the teen mumbles. He slips to the floor, leaning on the side of his bed.

Mr Chen comes out in his boxer shorts. "All right, listen," he says, pointing at his son. "This should be the last time I see you drunk. None of this stupid thing from now on, do you understand?"

Kwok Wei nods while looking down.

Mr Chen shakes his head. "It's probably bad influences from those friends of yours. Stop hanging out with them – kids. They don't do you any good."

"It's not about his friends, lóuhgùng. I know their families." Mrs Chen scuttles towards the teenager, avoiding the spot Christy is trying to clean. She stabs his head with her forefinger. "It's from his stupid head!" She crosses her arms and breathes rapidly. "Christy, can you also help him clean himself?" She asks in a way that makes it an order. "He's a mess!"

Mrs Chen hurries back to their bedroom, muttering and cursing at why, despite the other things she has to worry about what with the budgeting and forecasting she has to submit to her company tomorrow, the heavens also saw fit to give her a child that brings hell into her life.

"Get your act together, son!" Mr Chen says as he follows his wife to their bedroom.

After drying the floor, Christy now sprays the spot with a carpet deodoriser. She hurries to the bathroom and turns on the water before going to the teenager's bedroom to undress him. She pinches the hem of his shirt, pulls it up and throws it in the washing basket. Kwok Wei stands up, holding on to the side of his bedroom door, and pushes his jeans and underpants down. She hasn't helped him undress or change for years but tonight is different, confirming the fact that parenting teenagers does bring unpleasant surprises at times. When he was young she would wrap him with the towel, but now the teenager snatches it from her fingers, realising the awkwardness of exposing himself to her. As she follows him to the bath, Christy recalls her son and the time she has lost in not being there to care for him, and perhaps to get angry with him when she needs to, like most parents do when their children misbehave. Why, she asks herself, does she have to lease her love to others to show its genuineness?

Kwok Wei hands the towel to her and dunks himself in the bath. He stretches his legs while resting his head on the tiles, letting out a groan as the warm water soothes him. He closes his eyes and cups some water in his hands to pour on himself. Steam bellows to the ceiling. Christy lets some air in, conscious not to open the window widely. She squirts liquid soap onto a sponge and hands it to the boy. He simply dangles it, dripping soap over the edge of the bath. She takes it and rubs it on his chest, neck and face. He closes his eyes and moves his chin as she scrubs his skin.

"Thank you, Auntie Christy," Kwok Wei mumbles. He lifts his hands and wraps them around Christy's shoulders, wetting her blouse as he pulls her close. "Thank you very much; you're always here for me, more so than my mother."

Christy sees the redness and the brimming of tears in his half-closed eyes. She is touched by the words of her employers' son who she feels could easily be her own after the years she has spent helping bring him up.

"Don't cry, Kwok Wei. That's what I'm here for. Your parents pay me to do this. Wipe your tears." She stands up to get his toothbrush and squirts some toothpaste on it before handing it to him. "C'mon, brush your teeth before going to bed."

"You may just be doing your job here for money but what you do goes far beyond what Ma's and Pa's money could buy." He pours some more water on his chest. "You're more than that. A-and, thanks for being here."

"That's okay, Kwok Wei. I guess your parents are right. Don't drink, you're too young for that."

"You know, my friends didn't really force me to drink. You have no idea how much I hate my stupid life! I don't think there is any purpose to it."

"Don't say that."

"I left the party and walked and walked, feeling sorry for myself and thinking about ending everything. You know..."

"Oh, Kwok Wei."

"I called my friends but they were busy." He splashes some water on his face and sweeps it down with his palm. "I didn't realise I was walking along the busway at Harcourt Road. I was beeped at. I thought I was going to get run over."

"Really?"

"I was pulled over by the police near Admiralty. Luckily they didn't arrest me. Then I paid someone to buy me some beer and I sculled a few more bottles of San Miguel on my way home."

"You know my son is roughly in the same age as you. He wants to be a police officer after hearing that our new president will increase the salaries of the police." She wipes the boy's feet but looks at his face. "If you want, you can come with me to the Philippines during my next holiday. But it's very hot there."

"I like being in warm places."

"Not only that; we are also poor. Our house is very poor. You know – no flush toilets, no hot water. We only have hard beds made of bamboo."

"My teacher said it doesn't matter whether you are poor or not. What matters is you're happy. Are you happy, Auntie Christy?"

"Yes, Kwok Wei, I'm generally happy. I feel sad too, but more happy than sad. I'm happy because I can support my family in the Philippines out of poverty. At least they have something to eat."

"That's really good. I'm sure your kids are really proud of you, and your husband, too."

"Yep."

"And you shouldn't worry about being poor then. You know what you out to do in our life. You make others happy. Really, you are doing things that make you happy."

"I guess so. I guess, that's life." Christy smiles and breathes in deeply.

"I don't know what I want, Auntie Christy. What do you think I should do? I am pretty good at maths."

"You have plenty of opportunities, Kwok Wei. Your parents have money, your country is rich and you have access to good education. Use these things to your advantage, to make good future. Stop thinking of negative, nonsense things."

Christy mentions about possible courses he should consider, and she makes him agree to see his school counsellor the following day. Eventually, she tucks him in bed and turns the lights off before walking back to her narrow mattress.

She hears the tell-tale moans of pleasure from Mr and Mrs Chen's room at the far end of the apartment and thinks about her husband, and how she wishes she could be with him right now. She wraps herself once more with the flannelette sheet before spreading the quilt on top of her, and ducks her head under the covers before checking the photograph of her family one last time on her iPhone. It's 1:50 am; in four hours she has to get up again to make her employers' breakfast before they go to work. She thinks about what she will wear to take Kwok Wei to the school counsellor. Perhaps she shouldn't go for a motherly look, just jeans and a white top – the one with 'Undefeated' printed on it that Melody sent her last Christmas. Kwok Wei's words to her tonight are like balm that massages her aching back and feet, giving her warmth and strength in the isolation from those she loves.

Unexpectedly her phone vibrates softly and a text comes up. It is her husband, Lando: "I miss you, Chris. I love you, palangga."

She presses the auto response button that returns her usual message to him – her love. She hugs the phone to her chest and closes her eyes.

She is already asleep as the image of her family fades from the screen. Streaks of Kowloon light reflect on her face from the side of the fridge as its motor runs once more, un-noticed in the night.

# THE LOTTERY

## by Grace L. Sutherland

### GRACE L. SUTHERLAND

GRACE L. Sutherland is the fiction-writing alter ego of Lynn Fowler, owner of Birdcatcher Books.

Lynn's father was a writer, and she couldn't escape the gene pool. For most of her life she has written poetry and Christian non-fiction under her own name, but when she decided to venture into general market fiction she thought it best to do so under a different persona.

"The Lottery" is the story of an incident from her recently released novel, Next Year In Huntsville, told from the viewpoint of the character involved.

You can find Grace at gracelsutherland.com, and Lynn at lynnbfowler.com.

### THE LOTTERY

LEARNING THAT her boyfriend has won the lottery is not normally something that reduces a girl to tears - unless, of course, they are happy tears. These were not happy tears.

Peter and I met at the Monto High School graduation dance, which was quite a coincidence given that neither of us was graduating from Monto High. I had spent my high school years at St Brigit's College in Bendigo, my Mama's effort to remove me from the influence of my two best friends. Mama loved Sarah and Melanie, but they were Proddies \- Protestants - and Mama was fearful for my immortal soul under their ungodly impact. Peter had graduated from Monto a year before, and was attending the dance with his younger sister Julie.

Up till that night, my plan for my life had been to enter the convent. I hadn't wanted to go to the dance - after all, it hardly seemed appropriate for a soon-to-be nun - but Sarah and Melanie muscled me into it. We were all born on the same day, and had been best friends since we discovered that fact on our twelfth birthday. From that day on, we had seen ourselves as the Three Musketeerettes, and when I demurred from the dance they invoked the "all for one and one for all" principle: they had attended my school concert (all for one) so now I had to attend their school dance (one for all.) I was left with no choice but to go.

On the night I danced, rather reluctantly, with three or four boys. I figured as long as I was there I should at least pretend to be having a good time. Then Peter approached me and held out his hand.

"Want to?" he asked, pulling me to his side before I had a chance to answer. As we moved into the foot-to-foot swaying movement that passed for slow dancing in that era, his strong arm reached around my waist. My head just reached to his chest, and before long I was leaning against it. A sun-bleached blonde with laughing hazel eyes, he was every other girl's dream of the perfect catch. But I didn't have a dream of a perfect catch: I was heading for the convent. Until that night.

While we danced we talked, about everything and nothing. I learned that he cared about hurt animals and hurting people, that he loved music, and that he had big plans for what he would achieve when he inherited the family farm. I told him about Mama and Papa, and how they had fled from Italy after the war; about my seven younger brothers and sisters; about my love for music and especially for singing. By the end of the night, I knew that my idea of entering the convent was just a childhood fantasy. I was in love.

As might be expected, Sarah and Melanie were totally nonplussed by the change. Mama was devastated and Papa was philosophical, thinking this would soon pass and I would return to my vocation. Instead, Peter and I grew closer and closer, and at Easter announced our engagement.

We were blissfully happy until July, when Peter chose a picnic by the river with our friends to announce that, since his birthday was in August, he would have to register for the draft. I was horrified.

"No! You can't! They'll take you away from me! We have to run away ... maybe we could go to New Zealand ... or change our names and hide in the outback somewhere ..."

"Baby, Baby. Don't panic. It'll be ok. It's a lottery, remember. You know I've never won anything in my life, and I'm not likely to start now. I'll register, they'll have the draw, my number won't come up, and we will go on as if nothing had happened."

If it had been anyone else, I would not have believed him, but Peter had a way of reassuring me that I could never resist.

I wish I hadn't believed him. I wish I had insisted that we flee. I wish I could turn back time and do it all over. Two months later, Peter's birthday was one of those drawn in the ballot. Provided he didn't flunk the physical (little chance of that!) he would be off to basic training then shipped out to Vietnam. I was bawling my eyes out as I ran to tell Sarah about this much-unwanted lottery win.

Somehow, we got through basic with letters and phone calls, and all too soon it was Peter's final home leave before deployment. We had wanted to get married before he left, but Mama and Papa felt it was better for us to wait till his return, and we deferred to their wishes.

"I really want to know you are mine before I go," Peter said when we were alone.

"So do I. But Mama and Papa ..."

"I know. But marriage is not about the ceremony. It's about our commitment to each other. How about we make our vows to each other. That way we will be married in the sight of God, and we can have a proper wedding when I come home."

It would not be the same as a wedding in the church with a priest, but anything was better than nothing. So we headed to our favourite hidden spot by the river.

"I, Peter Brian Robinson, take you Theresa Anna Moretti, to be my wife, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health. I will love you and be faithful only to you as long as we both live."

"I, Theresa Anna Moretti, take you Peter Brian Robinson, to be my husband ..." I repeated the vows, and Peter slipped onto my finger a cheap ring which, after that day, would be suspended from a chain around my neck and buried deeply in my bodice.

As he pulled me down to the grass I tingled with excitement and amazement. I, a good Italian Catholic girl who from the age of 6 till 18 had only ever wanted to be a nun, was about to lose my virginity outside the confines of Holy Matrimony. Our lovemaking was tender and sweetly painful, and as we clung together I knew that I had won a much better lottery than the draft: I, who had never even looked for a man, had won the most wonderful man in the world.

Then, suddenly, it was over. Sarah and Melanie came with me to see Peter off on the train that would take him to Melbourne, from where he would fly to Vietnam. I wrote to him every day; he replied whenever he had the opportunity.

Just two months later the telegram came. Because Peter and I were not officially married, it went to his father, who brought it round to me. He stood at our front door with tears unashamedly pouring down his cheeks as he handed me the envelope. Private Peter Brian Robinson had been killed in action. I remember screaming, and not much else.

After I had settled a little, Papa tried to comfort me.

"Hush my darling, it was God's will. If he had not gone to war, maybe he would have been killed in a car smash or something. When your number comes up, it comes up. I'm so sorry." Peter's number had come up. Another unwanted lottery win.

But by now I already knew that I had won yet another lottery, though I wasn't sure whether this one would prove to be good or bad. Everyone said that it couldn't happen if you only did it once. They were wrong. I tenderly stroked my belly. Inside, Peter's baby was beginning to grow.

************
EPILOGUE

Introduced in 1964, the National Service Scheme required all young men turning 20 to register. Twice yearly a ballot, similar to a lottery draw, would select a number of birth dates, with those born on those dates required to report for a medical examination, interview and security check. Those who passed these checks would then go to basic training and on to military service, often in Vietnam. 15,381 national servicemen ("Nashos") served in Vietnam. Around 200 of them died there before the scheme was abandoned in 1972.

**********************

Want to know more of Tess's story? You'll find it in Grace L. Sutherland's novel, Next Year In Huntsville.

### MORE FROM BIRDCATCHER BOOKS

The following are all available from birdcatcherbooks.com

## CHRISTIAN

Real, Radical and Revolutionary by Lynn B. Fowler

My Little Chats With God by Lynn B. Fowler

## POETRY

Sonshine and Shadows by Lynn B. Fowler

Bush Ballads and City Songs by Henry Robert Fowler

## ANTHOLOGY

Fledglings (Best entries from the 2015 Short Fiction Award)

## FICTION

Next Year In Huntsville by Grace L. Sutherland

Just Grace by Grace L. Sutherland
