

OXY

By Andrew Spencer

Oxy

Andrew Spencer © 2013

Published by Skhetchy Brownsmoke Press 2014

Broken Hill Art Exchange NSW 2880

www.alexbrownsmoke.com

Cover Art by Vincent Gates

Cover design by Hannah Illingworth

ISBN: 978-1-304-90385-3

Copyright Andrew Spencer 2013

Spencer, Andrew -

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

This book is sold subject to the conditions that it shall not, by way of trade, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or other wise disposed of without the authors written consent in any form or binding or other; than what is published.

Oxy

by Andrew Spencer

Author's Note

The content of this novel is purely fictional. Stories, anecdotes andn ames are all the product of the author's imagination. Due to the graphic content and illicit nature of the novel, the author advises that this is a work of fiction. In no way does this novel wish to promote the abuse of illicit or controlled substances; nor does the author advocate that any of the activities and behaviours expressed in this novel be recreated. The nature of this book is of such as to highlight issues of mental health, drugs as a social and health issue (not criminal) and the steady increase of totalitarian attitudes toward law making, criminal and social justice issues. Oxy is a reflection of the reality that we are witnessing today and despondently predicting will befall our children's children.

Dedicated to the Writers.

Prologue

Our eyes met across the bar.

She was staring right past her boyfriend.

Staring right at me.

I had a faith in love back then. So when I saw those big belladonna eyes. Well that was it. I had a belief in giving it all for the one you love.

She had a boyfriend. That wasn't going to stop me.

Everything happens for a reason.

She put her fingers to her lips and gestured a cigarette. Her smoky mascara and knee-high fuck me boots were almost too much so I joined her outside.

Composure. You have to keep composure.

Outside the sky was dark, full of clouds. I inhale the evening air She could be the one, I thought. Easy.

Out over the balcony people are drinking and dancing. The air is thick with the making of a storm. I take a deep breath and wait. It's not long before I hear the door click open and she appears beside me.

"Hi", she says

"Hi", I reply

She pulls out a smoke, "Got a light?"

"For you I do".

I pass her some matches. She places the cigarette in her mouth and strikes a match. As the tip explodes she is red. For a moment she is illuminated red. Everything about her is red, her lips, her nails, her stockings and her bag. She could have been the girl on the matchbox cover except for the ringlets of curly brown hair and those god damn brown eyes. She tells me her name, Peachcake.

Peachcake; a pretty little thing with those eyes all smoky, dark and perfectly calm. Yes, I do believe there is a storm coming.

"You're a friend of Stan's, aren't you", she says exhaling a thick cloud of smoke.

"Yeah, how'd you know?" I ask.

"I've seen you perform poetry".

At this she smiles as though she is remembering a pleasant memory.

"What'd you think?"

"I thought you were hot".

Peachcake. She had borrowed my box of matches and in doing so, had ignited something deep within me. Perverted, as it would become, for now it was love at first sight.

"Where's the guy you were sitting with?" I ask.

"Oh you mean Jake. He's gone", she says shaking her head.

"Gone?"

"Yeah", she crosses herself in mock grief.

"That's a shame," I tell her.

"He won't mind," she adds flatly.

This was the first of many the lies Peachcake would tell me. In the months that followed, lies became the foundation of our relationship. I knew it was wrong. But I believed I was different, that I was stronger.

Peachcake's boyfriend was off somewhere waiting for her. He was a fool. To keep a girl like Peachcake you've got to command your presence. You can't just wait around.

Till this day I don't know why he walked off. It's like he surrendered before the first blow. I wish he had have fronted me then, fought for his woman. That he didn't was permission enough. He wasn't man enough to punch me, tell me to fuck off, do anything really. In the end, when the shit had well and truly hit the wall, the best he could muster was,

"Can you please stop fucking my girlfriend?"

Well fuck him. Jake was a strange man or as Peachcake liked to call him, a lad.

I asked her once, "How's your man, Peaches?"

She replied quite seriously "He's more of a lad than a man".

I suppose she was right. I don't think a man would let his girlfriend go out fucking other men while he stayed at home playing World of War Craft. I guess that's more of a lad thing really.

Chapter 1

Hugo broke open a pellet of Oxy onto the mirror. He used his ivory handled knife to cut it into two even lines. He moves like a locust, hovering with eerie concentration over the mirror. I can see his nostrils in the reflection, they are big, like train tunnels and full of wiry hair and chalky white flecks,

"So how was your weekend", Hugo asks.

"Good" I tell him, "making friends, good acid, the usual mess."

"Beautiful."

"How was yours my man?" I ask as I use my palm to open a bottle of beer on the corner of the bench.

"Ever tried to fix you're plumbing on Quintazapine?"

"No mate, can't say I have."

"Don't. It doesn't work".

I nod my head and Hugo snorts a line, his nostril makes a noise like gas pressure being released from a pipe.

We are sitting at the workbench in Hugo's shed. His wife and kids are in Sydney until Thursday. Hugo has taken it upon himself to let his hair down, not that he has hair. He shaves it all off because he realises he's going bald. Hugo is one of those men who could look like a lawyer one day or a hobo the next, pending his mood. He is thin and wiry like his nostril hairs, yet in a singlet his sculpted muscles betray his sometimes incoherent persona. Standing just a little shorter than my six feet, Hugo will intimidate those he perceives as weak. He takes great pleasure in the process of 'thinning' the social branches. It was widely believed for some time that Hugo may be of some South American heritage, or maybe he just tans easily. Still on a bad day you can see the tinge of hepatitis in the whites of his eyes. He says he's from Chicago U.S.A but no ones really sure. He is married to a clinical psychologist named Brigit and they have two children together. Hugo spends his time sampling various substances and avoiding the consequences. He once told me that he's too insane to see a psychologist, but marry one... Sure.

Brigit reads him like a book and when he's all stitched up she boots him out. He usually ends up at my house high off his head and prattling strange delusions of grandeur. Hugo is a gun nut and carries at least one handgun with him at all times. As we sit and talk an afternoon storm builds over the hills, outside the rain makes soft splashing noises in the guttering and puddles. The trees and grass of his yard are lush green from the spring rains. Hugo's house is in the bush and it's very comfortable: big lounges, polished floorboards, a huge deck. He has views of the mountains and a crop of dope hidden beside a natural creek that runs beside his property.

"I like this garage Hugo, you've done well," He nods his head in acceptance and cuts a wedge of lemon from a pile to his left.

"It's very homely, I like the jars of screws and nails"

"Yeah you never know when you'll need a nail."

"Or a screw."

"Indeed."

I lower my head and snort the lines on the mirror. The powder goes up my nose with a dry burn. It hits my throat the way the flu makes it feel sometimes. In a minute or so I am experiencing the carnage that is Oxycodone Hydrochloride. I begin to feel warm, then hot, then... a wave of euphoria begins to radiate from my core, wave after wave take me. I roll my shoulders and can feel each muscle reacting to the drug. I am consumed by the sound of the rain outside. Hugo's voice disappears into the background. My ears focus on the sound of my heart pumping. I lean back on my wooden stool and almost fall off. I notice myself sliding backward and save myself just at the last minute. I also notice the grain on the timber stool is very smooth. I think to myself whoever made this stool must have worked very hard to bring out the grain so well.

The first wave passes subtly after about ten minutes. And the second wave; which is a quiet mellow bliss, begins. Hugo and I chit chat and scratch ourselves as the nods begin to take hold.

"I met a girl."

"Really?"

"Yeah man... I think I'm in love."

"Love is dangerous," he says looking out into the valley.

"I disagree, love is beautiful."

"Did you get her number?" he asks.

"I think so."

"Do you have it."

"Yeah it's in my book."

"Have you called it?"

"No."

"Call her now then, lover boy."

"I'm a little too stoned. You call her if you want."

"Yes, Dammit" he says with a maniacal grin as he slaps the top of his thigh. Hugo snatches the address book out of my grip.

Hugo picks up the receiver on the phone. It is a big old thing from the mid-seventies, baby blue with the rotating finger key dial system, analogue and impossible to trace.

He dials in the number squinting as he tries to read my writing.

"Is that a seven he asks" confused by one of the numbers.

"I don't know bro, it could be a one."

"Well we'll soon find out."

He presses the receiver to his ear.

"By the way" Hugo asks, "What's her name?"

"Peachcake."

"Your little peach aye", he smiles elbowing at my ribs.

"Hold this real quick" he says as he tosses me the receiver.

"What the fuck, man. I don't want this", I say.

"You want it more than you know mate"

I can only assume the phone is ringing. I hold it in my hand.Wondering if I should put it to my ear. I don't have time to decide. In the gap of my thought Hugo has cut out another line. He hits it. Gas pressure release and his head kicks back. He snatches the phone waits for the other end to pick up. He twirls the cord in his fingers like a thirteen year old girl. No worries.

Then she answers.

"Hello Peachcake...Hugo Smith here, calling on behalf of Alex Brownsmoke..."

"Yes that's right Alex Brownsmoke... it is my belief you... find his poetry...captivating."

He talks with a formal demeanour, pouring smooth words down the phone. It was as though he was acting as my solicitor or agent. I am surprised by his cohesion considering his current mental state.

"Alex... he is unavailable to talk now. Yes... he's in deep in poetic thought, you know depression and ink never fade".

He pauses for a moment, "Alex doesn't want to make a bad impression."

"Yes, I think he likes you."

I lower my head, and bang it on the table. Hugo is destroying me.

"I'm sure he'd love to have coffee with you."

"Seven pm, that's a little late for coffee don't you think."

"Your right, time is a measure of our death."

"He will be there."

He hangs up the phone.

"You're meeting her at the Waterloo at seven."

"Thanks, mate", I tell him. He does very well in situations like that. He may go about it direct and unconsidered. But he never fails. His composure under pressure is infallible. For a mad man he could be Chief Advisor to the Authority and still run the country better than most of the current Authoritarians.

Eventually it stopped raining. Slowly the sun began to break through the clouds. Everything is glistening from the raindrops and cleanness. Then Hugo asks me if I want to go shoot some mangoes with his .45. I am very much inclined to concede. We spend the rest of the afternoon shooting mangoes out of the trees in his yard. I had never realised until I met Hugo, but guns are very powerful. They are scarily powerful. It is my recommendation that people on drugs should have their guns taken off them. Still, as the mangoes explode into a sweet sticky vapour I can't help but feel very nice, very nice indeed. I hope Brigit doesn't come home too soon...

Chapter 2

I am sitting at the Waterloo. It is a quiet coffee shop by the river. It has comfortable lounge chairs and a little fountain of a boy urinating into a fishpond, the waitresses are friendly and the coffee is the best in town. The Waterloo is a sociological feast, an eclectic mecca favoured by artists, dreamers, businessmen, tradesmen, high rollers and low brawlers. Sitting out the front every day is at least one bums asking for change. Along with this bunch comes the suits; sell outs, traitors, pigsand Authoritarians. The suits are bad news.

I wait for Peachcake, watching my coffee cool slowly I can't help but feel their eyes crawling across my shoulders, down my neck. The suits are always here.

The Waterloo; perpetually open sees many through its doors. The suits come under the guise of coffee and business. Their real purpose for being in The Waterloo is far more sinister. They see me. They don't like what they see. And although I oppose the suits in every way, causing these robots to gauge a reaction is enough to bring joy to the otherwise horrific realities of my situation. As I sit, staring at a fat man slowly being choked by his necktie. I hear the deeply sexual growling of a Harley. I turn my head to see Peachcake, breaking free of the sound. She is magnificent, dressed like Alexis Krauss all rhinestone and pumps. She kisses the driver on the cheek then skips toward me. He drives off without looking back. She strides toward me owning every step.

"Howdy stranger" she says as she pulls a chair at my table.

"How'd you do?" I say.

"Don't ask unless you wanna know", she says with an inclination that sounded dismissive but felt desperate.

"That good hey?" I laugh.

"I'd be better if you had a light?"

"Sorry Peaches, no go" I wink at her and point to the necktie guy.

She looks around and spies the fat guy with the necktie.

"Get it over with" I tell her, "Addictions a bitch, but if you want it..." She cuts me off.

Peachcake stands up; using her body to push sex towards him she walks slowly over and asks very flirtatiously for a light. The suit almost shits himself as he scrambles to find his illusive lighter. He slaps the pockets above his man tits looking for the light that brought such a beautiful girl to his lonely pig stink table. He finds it and holds it out to her.

'Click' the flame bursts alive, and for a single moment his life is lit up. Peachcake lowers herself to reach the flame. His eyes slobber all over her tits and then she is gone, out of his life forever. Well at least until tonight when he finds himself beating off to the memory of that one divine moment where a simple cigarette lighter brought a glimmerof beauty into his otherwise choking necktie world.

Peachcake re-joins me at the table. The suit looks across and stares so painfully in my direction. I give him nothing. Peachcake drags on the cigarette as though she gains life from its very combustion.

"I love to make love to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds," she says abruptly.

"My favourite poet is dead", I tell her with the same tone.

"You're one of those still waters run deep types aren't you", she says more as a statement, not a question.

"I'm an open book", I tell her with a vicious smile cutting across my lips.

I look at her face. Delicate features, soft white skin on high cheekbones, eyes like ground coffee, red lips. She stares at me for a moment as I absorb her beauty. Then she draws on her cigarette and blows the smoke in my face.

"I love words", I tell her frankly.

"Yeah", she says. "You love words, like I love music."

"I love music", I tell her.

"I am a musician, do you love me?"

"Peachcake, I definitely do"

"That's a shame... because I think poets are boring", she ashes her cigarette, "they're better off dead".

Peachcake was one of those girls. The crazy type you hear about in pub stories, or see in far-fetched indie drama movies. She'd go down places, bowery's, red lights districts, bikie bars. She'd go down these places, see stuff. Wander round just to have a look. Yet you'd never call her a tourist. She had grit. I liked her. She made me feel good. She was a new book I couldn't put down. I had to finish her.

We talked the hands around the clock. I learned that she came from a straight home. Mum, dad and sister. Her parents were the highly religious types. Her father was the sodomise her in the name of the lord type, while mum would bake assorted pastries and make pleasantries with the church social group every Sunday. Dad became an alcoholic in Peachcake's middle teens and the sodomy dropped off. Maybe it was the booze or maybe Peachcake got too old for his taste. She never said. Peachcake was such a new creature to me. She was so blunt, yet she could cut you to pieces if you made a wrong step. She was tough, but had so much weakness. She was incredible.

Our night went on and on. Peachcake began introducing bourbon into our never ending coffee cups. Sometime in the lushed haze my phone rang. It was a call to come to a party at The Warehouse. Peachcake was happy to join me. We left the Waterloo stumbling hand in hand to the party. We heard it before we saw it, fat, tasty beats resonated throughout our own wild vibrations. When we got closer we saw the party. Coloured fairy lights, smoke machines, acid trippers, crazy people cascading forth into the mouth of the beast. It was the beginning of a hideous gathering of love and lunacy. As we went to enter The Warehouse Spanish lady in a Pikachu one-piece stopped us.

"You must take commmmmunionnnn before you enter the temmmple", she said.

Beats and drops came crashing out the door in waves that washed over us. We had no choice, we were swept away by the enormous energy of the party.

"Take this", said the Spanish woman. She held two small cubes of sugar in her palm. Peachcake did not even question it. The Spanish woman placed the sugar on her tongue. Peachcake entered the building. Then it was my turn.

"Lord have mercy", I said to myself as the sugar dissolved on my tongue.

Later on, Peachcake had abandoned me for fresher conversations. I found myself wandering alone. The acid had begun to get metallic around the edges of my nerve endings. I sat on a couch opposite a chatty group of vague acquaintances. The waves of LSD gripped me to the corduroy couch, I felt like a piece of Velcro. A girl in the group on the opposite couch began giving me the eye. She had a man by her side and was wearing all this nice soft pink lace and a beret and vest. All nice and all, then every few minutes she'd spread her legs and re-cross 18 them. Not slutty or sleazy, but seductive, like silk sheets on naked skin. She moved her legs like a real woman, a woman who was the epitome of a woman.

She was a young woman in control and it was miraculous.

She was miraculous.

Then an acid eternity later Peachcake and I had found ourselves back at the Waterloo. The place never closes and is thus the only reliable thing in an otherwise unreliable life. Still, The Waterloo is a strange place to find yourself coming down off acid. It creates strange thoughts in the mind. It creates analysis, as all cafes do. Analysis: just a fancy word for bugs chewing at the end of your thought process. I can hear myself ranting but I cannot stop. I am talking and thinking completely separate thoughts. My mouth is explaining about the parade of patrons that have come there to drink at the Waterloo. I babble about the Mourners (I make a sad pun about the death of a good morning at the hands of a job- and fully realise how lame it is), the Nooners, the later Afternooners, then the Noirs, the Night Stalkers and finally once again the brisk morning people, the Mourners. They all have their hallmarks and all of them lead non-interchangeable lives. For you see in this world we are categorised into our little boxes and this is where we stay. Mourners rarely interact with Nooners unless it is by Authority of The Dollar. If The Dollar deems it necessary then interaction is acceptable. If The Dollar is not involved then communication remains within ones predetermined box.

I tell Peachcake that our box is hollow walled. That we have the unlimited freedom to interact on any level with anyone we choose. I tell her that our ability to unplug ourselves from the very existence of The Dollar, or better put, deny the respect it commands gives us choice, and choice is what makes us so rare and special.

Still my mind knows it is not safe to talk openly about the state of things in this world, especially with the acid floodgates open. But Peachcake rebuts with a scathing attack on The Authority. She begins with the question anyone who thinks, asks themselves constantly.

"Why are all things in our society controlled by decisions The Dollar makes?".

"Continue" I tell her.

"I know we were only babies, but how could The Dollar take control of Government."

"Peaches it's best to leave that stuff until you're straight" I say as I check over my shoulder, "keep your voice down."

"Yeah but... it's fucked. Our whole world, your life, my life, the ocean, dolphins, Africans!"

What Peachcake is talking about is the dissolution of the federal parliament, guised as a switch from monarchy to republic. It happened after ten years of bad war, during the GFC and an epidemic of that fucked up killer flu strain. Our country closed its borders to all nations except the United Americas. We accepted military 'protection' from the UA. When China called in its debts a state of fear and shock gripped the country. Propaganda about Australia being over run by the Chinese worked, the people let The Authority take control.

I was too young to take serious notice of the political spectrum but, from what information is left about that time, martial law reigned supreme. The Authority was voted in by referendum. It was a landslide victory riddled with corruption, propaganda and foreign interests. The Authority rewrote the Constitution, dissolved the Senate and House of Representatives.

We abide by the law set from The Authority. The law is dictated to us by the Chief Advisor to the Authority, s stuffy shirted puppet of man, with no integrity or honour to his own constitution. The Chief Advisor is merely a voice box for The Dollar.

The Dollar was introduced in conjunction with The Authority, it replaced all banks and credit institutions. It was a bloody coup d'état that left The Dollar in control of the complete flow of finance in our isolated island nation. The Dollar now controls all ex-crown land and dictates how, who, when and why we exist.

For Blanknotes like Peachcake and myself, life can be pretty tough. But we get by. If there is one thing that The Dollar fails to learn it's that we Blanknotes are extremely flexible. We didn't exist before it. We don't fear it the way older citizens do. They are broken. We are strong. We don't allow its rules to interfere with our existence. And for a good part The Dollar keeps out of our way. Sadly, The Authority doesn't share the same sentiment. The Authority indulges in its ability to brandish the whip of justice against us. The Authority took the place of the police, armed forces and border security. The Authority hates Blanknotes and The Authority are everywhere. From CCTV to helicopter mounted infrared spectrometers, it is almost impossible to move freely without being monitored. They run the media and regulate the Internet. They hate Blanknotes because like most divided factions we disagree on certain points. Mainly we like parties, free speech and other autonomous liberties. Let's just say we don't see eye to eye on many subjects. The Authority has the backing of the masses and is much better at spreading propaganda than we are; The Authority has the right to shoot suspected terrorists on site. Blanknotes are considered to be involved in possible terrorist activities, thus we can expect to be executed- period.

The Authority passed laws allowing the death penalties to be carried out on all criminals convicted of crimes of a category four or higher. This includes drug supply. However these laws also apply to rapists and so far 370 have been executed compared to the 124 drug related executions. The Dollar allowed the execution law to be passed in the hopes it would cut down on overpopulation and illegal dollar flows. Admittedly they have a point. Who better to kill off than the nonconformists, the rapists and the outsiders?

What The Authority will never comprehend is that Blanknotes are the candlelight in the core spirit of all humanity. No matter what checks and rules are installed Blanknotes will find a way to outsmart them. You may remember the microchip thumb print policy from three years ago. When The Authority decided to chip everyone aged between 18 and 65 (again to control the flow of money). You may also remember the spate of attacks leaving elderly citizens wailing in the streets, clutching the bleeding stump where their thumbs used to be because some Death Factory addicted monster had just hacked it off with a box cutter. That law was quickly over turned and the microchips removed or disabled, or so they tell us. You see no matter what system is put in place to control society, only those who wish or need to be controlled will be.

Myself, and my small group of friends, we don't fit into that category. We are avid non-conformists who proudly advocate our love for recreational freedoms. We have been forced down the bottleneck of society like everyone else. However somehow we manage to continue on our own path. We are the light and light moves too fast to be captured. Due to the nature of our freedom, Blanknotes naturally leak into illicit behaviour. Occasionally this includes drug use. Of course we are safe and responsible, but we are still lawbreakers, terrorists in the eyes of The Authority. Blanknotes live in constant in fear of being apprehended and even executed, just for carrying a small bag of Mary J. I lived with that fear my entire teenage life. Thankfully Hugo introduced me to a loophole in the law that stops us from being shot like dogs in the street. See, The Dollar has no qualms with large pharmaceutical companies. I therefore focus my recreational freedom on enjoying the perks of a medicated society.

Prescription medications, I feel these words need to have some holy light shining around them. They have already saved me from the firing squad three times. I have never used large quantities of illegal substances, especially not Death Factory. I have chosen the road legally travelled. And let me just say, there is nothing illegal that you can't get on prescription quicker, easier and cheaper. Have you ever heard of the six-degree's of separation theory? If you haven't, look it up. If you have you'll know that because of this theory I can access anything on the planet, from drugs to guns to limited edition original pressings of Pink Floyd's 'Animals'.

I'll put it this way; I have three friends who are prescribed or have access to every form of medication under the sun. My three favourites are morphine, oxycodone, and diazepam. However we can also access Dexamphetamine, Oxazapam, Tiazapam, Alprazolam, Hydromorphine, Fentanyl, Codeine, Ketamine, Quintazapine and pretty much every other anaesthetic, analgesic, sedative, and stimulant out there. Plus if we want to face the firing squad we can easily get speed, heroin, opium, MDMA, LSD... you know the rest, people taking these drugs don't fear bullets.

My illegal use extends to weed, speed, LSD but... I guess I've been lucky, so far. This is the beauty of humanity. It's what's gotten us to this point in our evolution. It's why we invent, create, earn and breed. Humans are resourceful, cunning and inventive. We are the only species on the planet that can tell lies. If humanity is the greatest miracle, then drug users are the pinnacle of that miracle. Our cunning and inventiveness borders on genius, its evolution. Sadly, we all end up dead or mad. Sometimes it's by choice or by force, but mainly by accident. It makes me sad to see a Blanknote die. Sadly Blanknotes are dying everyday and everyday another open mind closes forever. As I sit here looking at Peachcake I know that the satellites are watching us, filtering images to dark suited Authoritarians. Men who need no excuse to pull the trigger, men who revel in the idea of a world without a single open mind. We will slip up eventually. Everyone does. It's such a shame because we have so much to offer. We are the most beautiful people in the world.

"Wouldn't you agree Peaches?"

"Alex, I'm too high for this shit, can you please just shut up?"

"Sorry my bad".

Chapter 3

We were still at The Waterloo when I had this magnificent idea. I explained it all to Peachcake in between gulps of banana smoothie. Peachcake thought it was a great idea. The concept was to start up a poetry night at a local bar. Develop a collective of likeminded people who might stand up in front of a microphone and begin a counterrevolution of some queer nature, so to speak. I had fantasies of people speaking their minds about the things that were happening on the ground, testimonials of the fucked up state of things.

Peachcake and I had been up and together for thirty something hours. It was time to say goodbye. There was no awkward 'do we kiss moment'. She just pecked my cheek, told me I was on to something and that she'd see me round.

I waited until the motorbike guy picked her up then I wandered home, hit a couple of lines and my pillow like they were magnetic. Sleep was blessed and I awoke full of ideas and energy. I had no intention of stopping the momentum. Before I had even showered I had called the collective of my closest friends. Then I did all the necessary grooming for such an event. Hit some lines and got my shit together. In the 20 minutes from opening my eyes, I was sitting in my lounge room waiting on my friends to arrive.

The idea of the poetry night was bouncing round my head. I sat in an orange striped easy chair sipping a gin and lemonade. My very good friend and housemate Stan was sprawled opposite me in a matching three-seater lounge. He was stretched out with his feet up and looking quite content. He sipped on his gin and lemonade as though he was some form of aristocracy. Stan was a young painter, and as such loved to indulge. Whether it was in his stories, his images, the way he sat or indeed the very way he sipped his gin and lemonade. Stan believed that the basis for any good piece of art could be found in the bottom of a wine bottle. During the time we had known each other we had seen many, many wine bottles. We gravitated towards each other and formed a bond close enough to brotherhood. He was my housemate and my friend. Stan was an idealist and a romanticist who believed there was nothing more enjoyable than debating Foucault with a young poet willing to drink his own weight in wine. When we first met we would drink and talk about every little detail of every single thing. We inspired and learned from each other. He introduced me into his world of art. I showed him the beauty and power of words. In the nights we'd spend hours exploring poetry, philosophy, sociology and religion. Even in the bitter cold reaches of June we'd sit under the carport drinking until dawn. Soon enough Stan became my closest friend. He became my brother. Now we had graduated to bigger things, talking amongst friends was not enough. If we could pull it off, this poetry thing could change our lives.

We were bantering about the concept of starting such a night and enjoying the fine sunshine that graced our windows with its warmth. There was a light scent of frangipani in the air but sadly it was over powered by Stan's pluming chain smoke. Our ashtray looked like Mount Vesuvius would have just before the eruption, all black and stinking with death smoke.

A short time later a car rattled into our driveway. Stan poked his head out the window to see who it was. He then told me that William, Mika and Blue had arrived. After a flutter of anonymous activity our friends bounded up the staircase. As they entered the lounge room they brought with them a beautiful radiance that made our humble pad seem less like the dirt squat it was, and more like a communal home of the nineties. Mika popped in first, adoring us both with hugs and kisses. She was wearing a black singlet and a flowing skirt with flowers printed on it, cut in the middle with a red leather belt. The way Mika dressed can be considered an accurate depiction of her personality, extremely light and dark with a fine edge to define it. Her long blonde hair had just been shampooed and almost stifled Stan's smoke stink. It smelt like strawberries.

William entered next with hugs for us too. William is a fine young artist who makes a reasonable living out his painting. He and Stan went to art school together and graduated only a few months ago. William is one of the hardest done by blokes I've ever met. His sexual orientation means that The Authority pay extra special attention when they meet him. He is a good man, yet he has been arrested and beaten worse than the rest of us combined. William would often say that the sting of homophobia lasted long after the cuts and bruises had healed. Then finally Blue joined us. She had a bottle of poppy tea in her hands and sat down on a rug in the middle of the room. She was wearing a dress that followed the S shape of her body. Her long red hair complemented the smell of strawberries so well I spoke up and said, "Stan put that cigarette out in front of these fine guests, can't you see they come bearing gifts and sweet essence".

"If I must", he said in an exhausting exhale, "but you must make a cheese platter for our fine guests".

"If I must", I said mimicking Stan as I felt my eyes drawn back to Blue, sweet, Blue.

It is hard to describe Blue. She is a living memory, an indistinguishable string of every lovely moment, soft as poetry and gently as a lullaby. Blue is the calmest, sweetest young lady I've ever known. We call her Blue because she has eyes so blue that when you see them you go 'fuck they're some blue eyes'. She is lovely and too good for the likes of me.

Mika joined Blue on the rug and William sat down with Stan. He offered our friends a drink and they were all accepting. I went into the kitchen and rummaged through the piles of dirty dishes to find some cups. They were filthy with gunk and muck so I boiled the kettle and looked in the pantry. As I expected there were plenty of empty jars to choose from. On my return Stan and William were talking about the helicopters. Mika and Blue were lying on their backs smoking a joint. They were absorbed in watching the blades the ceiling fan as it cut the smoke and twirled silently on the ceiling.

"The helicopters, hey", I said as I handed out the jars of tea.

William answered. "Yeah, they have been flying all over, sometimes with the loud speakers on."

"Guess what the message was" Blue laughed, she put on her best robotic voice, "The dollar will pay fifteen cents for any information relating to the apprehension of drug deviates"

"Really only fifteen cents?" I said,

"Is that all they're paying?" Stan replied almost offended.

"You better be careful Blue, riding around with that morphine juice, they shoot on sight. Even a pretty girl like you."

"Fuck them" Blue said blatantly.

Then Stan said, "Why don't we get this poetry thing running, then we can get a voice out there about the Authority murders."

"They'll shut us down", said William "or arrest us"

"Hey poetry's not illegal," I said.

"Not yet."

Anyway this potato sack conversation went on for about half an hour. The gin was emptied and the poppy tea opened. Somehow the five of us, three artists and two poets had come to the arrangement that we would organise to hold a poetry night at The Regent; our local drinking hole. We spent the rest of the day jibber jabbing about all the things artists jabber jibber about. William explained that his plans to start a riot had failed because The Dollar had everyone just comfortable enough to not want to make waves. Even though he knew everyone was being exploited.

I told him that as long as the welfare system pays every underemployed person three dollars a week, they'd lap it up and forget that the noose around their neck is getting pretty comfy. Mika chirped proudly about the diazepam she had been given by her physician. She read the label, "A little stand against the stress of this modern life". They seem harmless- sure.

The three of them left at about four pm. As they were leaving I gave them all a fat permanent marker. "Use this to exercise our forgotten right to free speech."

Stan, who was now considerably drunk proposed the question,

"Why do you always give out permanent markers to people?".

"You know the reason," I say. Then I light a cigarette, inhaling the honest pure tobacco.

"But doesn't it piss you off when you read all the crap writing on the walls?"

"You know Stan, it did once" I say exhaling the smoke, "but then I realised that it was that crap writing that inspired me to get the markers and write what I write in the first place. So I figure if I give out markers some people will write crap and some people will be inspired by that crap to write good, maybe even give out markers of their own."

"Or even better yet" Stan said, "Plant apple trees"

"Maybe, my man... maybe."

Chapter 4

I wanted to meet with Peachcake again. She had been on my mind for the majority of the week. I tried to phone her a few times but she never answered. It was Friday morning and I had decided to go for a walk into town. I was hoping somewhere I'd bump into her. I needed to pick up some Oxy anyway, so I headed down town. The day was overcast but the humidity kept everything sticky. My singlet stuck to my chest, my shorts chaffed my groin, my hair was a hot mop to soak up the sweat.

I passed a fat man in a pair of footy shorts mowing his lawn. His back was hairy and he had a can of beer in a homemade holster on the mower handle. He made me smile and I almost wanted to sit down with him and have a drink. Watch some football. He reminded me of someone's uncle.

It took me about half an hour to walk from the suburbs into town. The walk is pleasant and flat and if you do it enough you begin to notice the gradual fading of greenery as the slathers of industry build up, until finally you reach the CBD. Which is mostly concrete with small designer parks and ergonomic picnic seats. Most of the shop fronts are fading and little weeds grow up through the cracks. The town is a confused contradiction. From the outside it looks almost modern. The streets are all kerbed and sandstone pavers run in indigenous snake like patterns up and down the footpaths. But from the inside you see the fading back alleys layered in graffiti. There are pigeons and ibis feasting on the litter of bigger beasts. Old steel railings still run up the stairs of some buildings and the old iron clock tower built in 1901 is an eternal symbol of the town's rural frontier past. I made a call to Hugo from a pay phone outside Dixie's pie shop. It's not safe to talk openly on the telephone so I tell him in not so many words that I am looking for some Oxy. He tells me he can drop off a box in twenty minutes. I hang up the phone and wipe down the hand piece. Even payphone calls are monitored. Luckily Hugo is very understanding about such matters.

While I wait I buy a beef pie from Dixie's. The lady who served me was sweating all over herself. Stuck behind the counter of the pie shop only meters away from the ovens. The little shop must have felt like an inferno. As the woman gets my pie I notice she uses the same towel to wipe her armpits as she does to get the pies out of the oven without burning her hands. It's a little off putting but Dixie's pies are famously delicious so it's easy to ignore her lack of hygiene. After I finish the pie I try calling Peachcake again but with the same result. Then, as fate would have it I see her wandering down the street opposite the pie shop. Hand in hand with some guy in a business suit. It was an unnatural sight. Peachcake wearing all spider web stockings and short denim shorts, while this guy was in a full suit getup, tie and all. He looked like a young real estate agent. Peachcake smiles at me as she passes by. The guy she's with looks over his shoulder and gives me a starving look. I hold my thumb and pinky finger out in the gesture that says 'call me'. He looks confused while she just nods.

Hugo arrives a short time later with a box of 20mgs; it is hidden inside a tin of chocolate biscuits. We sit down under the shade of a nice tree. Hugo cracks a bottle of beer in a brown paper bag and offers it to me. Then he cracks open another. It's Hugo's special home brew 8.5%. We chat about life while we finish our beers. Then I drop the roll of money in to the bottle and ask him if he can 'recycle this' for me. He puts the bottle into his bag but as he does a plain clothed Authority walks up to us. He flashes a silver badge on his belt buckle.

"Can you read?" He asks bluntly.

Hugo slides the tin of biscuits between his buttocks and the base of the tree. I look up at the Authority with goat like simplicity. This is to mask my fear and acrid contempt.

"Can you read?" he asks again.

"Yes." Hugo says politely.

"Yes I can too," I say.

The gun in his holster is a customised 7th Generation Glock-17 and the leather catch is unclipped. For an instant I plot to reach out and obtain the gun with my speed and element of surprise. I imagine unloading the clip to kill this man who questions me for no good reason. I have flash backs to exploding mangoes in Hugo's backyard and see this man's head as nothing more than an ugly, over-ripe and engorged mango.

"This area is an alcohol free zone," he says frankly, certainly.

"I know," Hugo replies casually.

"You know do you? And your friend... does he know?" He looks right at me, his eyes crawling over me. Penetrating my resolve. He is searching for a sign of weakness. I say nothing.

"Listen," says Hugo, "my friend and I are just trying to enjoying a little bit of cool shade, it's a muggy day and we're all a little irritated."

Hugo is being a smartass to this guy. We have got some serious narcotics hidden in a biscuit tin and he is being a smart arse. If he finds it we are both going under for a serious examination. I begin to worry.

"Irritated, irritated." The Authority says twitching a little. He is towering over us now.

"You wanna know what irritates me?" he squats down to meet us at eye level. His trousers tighten up and his genitals become visible. The bulge is small; about the size of a cigarette lighter. I notice the sweat patches under his blue business shirt. I also notice his eyes are very bloodshot and dilated. This agent of The Authority may just be high on Death Factory.

"Law breakers, that's what, and I bet what's in those brown paper bags is booze, which makes you two law breakers, which makes me irritated," he pokes himself in the chest as he says me.

I admit to myself I am worried. An Authority high on Death Factory with a loaded gun accosting us about our drinking, while we have a lengthy prison sentence at best hidden under our arse, is not my idea of a good time to start acting like Charlie Sheen. But Hugo continues to badger the man.

"Well, I'm sorry officer. That is I'm sorry to say, but this is just humble ginger beer." He slides the brown paper down off the bottle. To my relief the label says 'Winsome's Home Style Ginger Beer' and I smile.

The officer snarls and pulls his gun. "You think it's funny huh?" He presses the heavy chrome muzzle to Hugo's temple.

"No, I think the size of your package is funny."

The officer's face turns a sour form of ugly. His lips curl back and brow contorts as if he cannot conceive the words his brain has just processed. He grabs Hugo and rips him to his feet. Hugo struggles a little, but with the gun so close to his head he faces the ultimatum of cooperate or expire.

The officer cuffs Hugo and whist never removing the gun from within six inches of his head leads him towards his vehicle. In the ruckus I notice a little piece of folded paper fall out of the Authority's pocket. I look to my left and I see my bottle of beer and a tin of biscuits sitting calmly beside the tree completely oblivious to the trouble they had just caused. I scoop them up and put them safely in my bag. Then I pick up the paper. I open it. Inside are a few little blue crystals the size of match heads. It's Death Factory and from the deep sapphire colour I can see it is very pure. I flick the crystals onto the grass and toss the paper. Death Factory is too evil to even contemplate keeping. I accept that Hugo is gone for the foreseeable future and decide it's time for me to make a move. Soon there'll be more Authority down here. Whose only task will be reuniting me with Hugo- No thanks!

As I survey the situation I notice an unsupervised little girl on the park playground, she is wearing a pink frilly dress. Her hair is curly, and it flows backwards and forwards as she moves on the swing. She waves at me and I wave back. Watching her intently is a bum in a trench coat. It rubs me the wrong way and I think to my self 'it's too hot for a trench coat'. Then the distant warble of sirens appears and its time to go.

Chapter 5

I had to duck into a second hand clothes shop immediately. I decided to swap my singlet for a bright red collared business shirt. I roll the sleeves to the elbow. I then purchase a pair of business trousers and donated my pants to the store. The old woman who watches me carefully asks for the seven cents the shorts cost. I can see she is uncomfortable with my presence in her store. I gladly pay her, tuck my shirt in and wish her a wonderful day. She winces out a fake smile that becomes more genuine as I reach the front door. I feel safe in my new threads. I know from experience that The Authority would have put out a search and apprehend warrant for anyone matching my description. And just to be cautious I decide to catch a bus home. It costs me thirty cents but considering the money I saved by keeping Hugo's Oxy payment I can afford it. I am riding the bus when my phone rings. I answer cautiously saying, "Floyyd's Animal Wholesalers, how can I help you?"

The voice at the other end is female and asks, "Is that you Alex... It's Peachcake." She had seen what had gone down in the park and wanted to meet up. I tell her to meet me at the corner of Bright and Union streets in twenty minutes. She agrees and hangs up.

'What a strange morning,' I think to myself. I fish the biscuit tin out of my bag and open it. It is full of choc chip cookies. I sample one. They taste fresh and delicious, thank you Brigit. Underneath the layer of biscuits is the box of Oxy, thank you Hugo. I eat two and then lean back, resting my head on the window. The bus ride is nice, the people outside look like cardboard cut outs and all the cars still glisten, even though the sun's covered by the clouds.

"You're lucky you didn't get shot," she says.

We are walking back to my house. I notice as we travel that our shoulders are rubbing.

"I think he was high on Death Factory. Hugo's gonna have a bad time."

"Oh Alex, I am sorry. Do you think he'll survive?"

"He knows the law, and they had nothing on him, he'll be out by tonight," I say it but I doubt it. We approach my house. I live on the top of a hill, in a two story, mid sixties style, rendered box monolith known as Bright Street. It stands chalky white on the side of the hill, looking more like the last remaining white tooth amongst a mouth of brown and black pegs. The green tin roof pucks, clatters and sings in summer hailstorms, while the old federation windows moan and yawn on their internal counterweights. There is a small carport to the left of the house where we do most of our drinking. The large backyard keeps a mango tree while inside Bright Street there are seven bedrooms, a lounge room, kitchen and two toilets.

"Nice house" Peachcake says as we walk up the driveway.

"Thanks but don't speak to soon."

The downstairs door is wide open; as always. We walked up the spiral staircase that leads to the kitchen. I can see Peachcake looking around curiously.

"This is my pad" I tell her shrugging my shoulders. In the kitchen she gets a better idea of how we live. There are bottles upon bottles piled in the corner, they rest upon empty beer cartons full of rubbish and food scraps. The plates are piled up in the sink and it stinks like old grease and rotten vegetables. Peachcake doesn't seem bothered by the kitchen and takes it upon herself to walk around. She enters the lounge room.

"Watch your feet" I say, "there's broken glass everywhere."

"Where's your house mates?" she asks.

"It's just Stan and I."

"Do you want a drink?" I ask. She says no. I tell her I have to duck into my room for a bit and then get up and leave her. As I leave the lounge room I look in and see Peachcake on the lounge surrounded by broken cutlery and piles of open books. Half the floor space is covered in butcher's paper, which is covered in sketches done by Stan the night before. They are rough and chaotic. There are charcoal handprints all over them. By the look of them I'd say he'd done them last night whilst maddened by his endless insomnia induced frenzies. Stan was an insomniac and a drunk. It was a hideous combination that along with my drug habits forced everyone else to move out of Bright Street. Just like that. We had a seven bedroom two story old Queenslander to ourselves. Stan would sleep strange hours. That's if he slept at all. On any night of the week I'd wake up to his strange midnight rituals. So the state of the living room made me smile. Peachcake sees me smiling and I look into her eyes. She smiles. I catch myself looking at her. We have one of those awkward recognition moments, it's childish but I like it. The sparks between us threaten to fly everywhere and catch on Stan's drawings and that would burn the whole house down.

"Be back in a minute," I say. The room to my door is open and as I enter I close it. My room is clean and reasonably ordered. My room is the only part of the house that is clean. I like to keep it clean because normally I bring girls home through the front door, which is a short walk down the hall past the bathroom straight into my bedroom. That way they don't have to see the state of the house and if Stan's awake they don't have to meet him. I pull out my chair and open my top drawer. In it is everything I need. There is a six inch round make up mirror, a plastic box full of razors, three pens with the ends and ink removed, a knife, a rag and a tin full of Oxy pellets. I take out the mirror and a razor and place them gently on my desk. I wipe down the mirror with the rag and break open a 20 onto the round reflection of my ceiling. I use the razor to cut four lines then use the pen to snort two, one in each nostril. My nose is dry from the heat and dehydration and the powder burns and makes me cough. I shake my head and lean back. The sun is streaming in through the open window and I can see all the little dust particles moving aimlessly through the air. Then the door swings open.

"What's this?"

I look up.

It's Peachcake.

"What type of host are you?" she asks. I don't get a chance to answer. She walks across the floor and drapes herself over my shoulder.

"And playing games without me I see". She is referring to the two lines on the mirror.

"Kind of..." I reply.

She sits herself on my bed. "What is it?" she asks curiously.

"Its oxycodone." I reply.

"Is it good?" she asks.

"You tell me" I toss her one of the hollow pens. She smiles and shakes her head.

"No thanks."

"Sure?"

She tosses the pen back. I stand and walk over to her. She is laying on my bed now, her right leg is up and her skirt falls back around her pelvis showing me the lovely white skin of her outer thigh.

"I have a rule," I tell her as I lay down next to her.

"What... like you have to kiss any girl who lies on your bed?" she says without flinching.

"Ouch," I say, "that stings."

She is smiling and her body language tells me she's interested.

"Alex, you're gonna have to work harder than trying to get me high while I lie voluntary on your bed."

"You're right" I say, "nothing's that easy," then I laugh even though she's right. I sit up and look at her. I am completely at ease, "Sorry."

"Don't worry about it. Guys are always trying to get me into bed."

"You went into this one voluntarily."

"Maybe I just wanted to lie down", she says sardonically.

"Well, mind if I lay next to you?"

"Sure"

So we lay there in silence. I watch the fan spinning round. The situation has become awkward and I begin to reel back.

Then she says, "I was flirting with you."

"I know" I reply smiling.

There are footsteps in the hall then Stan appears at my door.

"Hey," Peachcake and I say in unison.

"Hey" Stan replies in his dusty voice. He looks like hell. His blonde curly hair sticks out at every angle. His eyes are bloodshot and even with his leather tone muscles; he is thin. He sways lightly on his feet as though he is not quite sober. He stares into the room for a few seconds, not exactly looking at anything, then waves his hand disregarding us and with a grunt walks away. Peachcake gives me a confused look.

"That was Stan," I say.

"And he lives here...?"

"Yeah just me and him" and with that, we hear the jet stream noise of Stan pissing in the toilet across the hall. It is almost like he heard our conversation and decided to enforce his presence by pissing as loudly as anyone could ever imagine. We can hear the shoosh-splash-pattershoosh, as his stream hits and misses the water and the bowl. Then we hear a holler, Stan screams, "Fuck this eternal hangover." Then silence.

"I'm gonna go" Peachcake says getting up and leaving my room. She looks confused and the normal toughness she exudes is almost completely eroded. I ask her to wait. She declines. I ask her if I can give her a lift, she says no she'll call Jake. Boyfriend; I think to myself, son of a bitch. I wait with Peachcake out the front of the house. We smoke cigarettes and say very little. Then as sure as the sun does rise, Jake appears. Not ten minutes after she calls. He is driving a white sedan with chrome wheels. They look clean and rich as they roll smoothly into the driveway.

I raise my hand and wave to him. He stares at me as though I am the epitome of everything that has ever gone wrong for him in his whole life. He does not wave back. He is not the real estate man or the Harley rider. He is the original. Peachcake kisses me sharp and suddenly on my cheek, then before I know it she is in the car. He leans in to try and kiss her mouth but she flicks her head to the side in a quick motion like a fish tail. Then he pulls out of the drive way and they are gone.

Chapter 6

I finish the other two lines on my desk then pack up my equipment. I sit for a moment at my desk reflecting on what just happened and decide I have no idea what just happened. I search for Stan. He is lying on the lounge room floor pouring wine on his sketches.

"You cock blocked me again."

"You cock block yourself by snorting that shit all day," he retorts.

"Well good morning to you too." Stan looks up at me from the floor. He is reclined in a pose of artistic decadence, his hair now tame and rolling in rich golden curls. "Why are you laying on the floor?"

"Gravity," he replies as he blows a smoke ring from his mouth. His hand collapses into the ashtray and little sparks scatter across his pictures.

"Wanna grab a coffee?" Stan asks.

"I suppose." I say cautiously.

God-damn Stan was something else, a strange man/boy-creature with long golden hair, crystal blue eyes and a mind that ran on coffee, cigarettes, cheap wine and sex. He was crazy about Charlie Parker and had an unhealthy fetish for women's clothing. Going for a coffee was never that simple with Stan. We could end up on a film shoot or drunk with the local wino's. Our energy was volatile, like idiots we always spurred each other on. He was Hitler's wet dream. The girls loved him. Some of the boys loved him too. I loved him, absolutely.

"You're driving," he winked.

Chapter 7

We sit beside the fountain in the front courtyard of the Waterloo. The little boy-pissing fountain makes a softer version of Stan's morning bugle call. The surface of the water is glistening with silver licks caused by the sun bouncing of the piss ripples. Every so often an orange flash will breach the shimmering surface as the koi gulp for food. Stan and I are waiting on our coffees. He looks me dead in the eye.

"Don't do it."

"Don't do what?"

"Don't do it man"

"What?" I ask frustrated by Stan's distance.

"Alex, I know Peachcake. She's trouble. Don't do it."

"Fuck mate," I tell him, "Why didn't you tell me earlier?"

"This is serious dude. She is dangerous. She feeds on men's souls."

"Fuck off Stan" I tell him.

"She has a boyfriend bro."

"I know" I light a cigarette in frustration.

"She's pretty," he tells me. He says pretty as though he's picturing her naked. I search his blue eyes for a sign he is planning a coup. The man is my friend, ally and poetic partner but it wouldn't be the first time we've loved the same woman.

"You think you can tame her?"

"Yes"

"I thought I could tame her."

"What?" now I am really confused.

"I didn't touch her mate, chill out. I just entertained the idea"

"And?"

"As I said, she's dangerous. Mate she's got men falling at her feet all across town. She will take you down."

I knew Stan was right. I knew he was doing me a favour by warning me. Still, I am a jealous man and I had to know who Peachcake was. I knew it was wrong, and dangerous. I've never had a healthy mentality towards women or love. I try to get inside their heads, dig around for a while. Stan knew this. He'd seen me break many hearts. Yet he knew I was going in above my head. How could I say no? It was the thrill of the challenge, the heat of new romance, the burning excitement of fresh blood. I was single and I felt powerful. I was a hunter. She was a minx. Stan's warning was like a red flag to a bull.

Stan sat across from me shaking his head. He pulls out a cigarette, sticks it between his lips and mumbles, "you're a fucking idiot" Our coffees arrive. The waitress places them on the table. Stan asks the waitress for a light in his deep sensual voice.

"Sure" she replies as she draws a book of matches from nowhere. She leans in to strike a match to his fag and as she does he cups the match to shield it from the atmosphere. He runs his hand over her hand, then down a quarter way of her arm, smiles at her, she giggles and he leans back, fag lit, the girl turns away blushing red like a budding virgin and Stan sits there, king of the world, legs apart, cock well aired like some fucking radio beacon.

"What the fuck was that?" I ask. He just smiles and winks at me.

"You're an animal" I say laughing, "If she had have seen you when you woke up this afternoon..."

"I'm the animal? Hey I'm not the one trying to get clean on the married woman."

"She ain't married."

"Petty justifications mate, in the eyes of the lord you're a sinner."

I am a little cut by his lack of positivity and religious contradiction.

"Sweet nothing's Stan." I say, "All's fair in love...". He sips at his coffee and looks up at the aching blue of the sky. The clouds bulge in clusters like steroidal muscles desperate to stop the sky from falling in. "...and war Alex," he replies, "and war."

We spend the rest of the afternoon at the Regent Hotel trying to organise a stage for the poetry night. The owner is coked off his skull and hustles from one end of the bar to the other playing with bottles and picking at labels. He is all "yaasss, yassss" agreeing to our ideas in a not quite there, overzealous, money in the eye sockets kinda way.

"Bring in the business," he says slamming his white knuckled fist down on the counter top. Every thing pauses, he stares us straight in the eye. He clears his throat, "Bring in the business and the joint is yours." Then he turns and begins to rub incessantly at the immaculate mirrors behind the bar.

"Okay, thanks" I say.

"Cheers" replies Stan.

We pondered a beer, considering how long the day had been. But the coked out manager was a little too enthusiastic for our liking. So we decided to get a running start on the night; at home. It was Friday and my mind would have been hurting from the lunacy of it all, except the Oxy still prevails. Stan seems complacent to head home and asks only to stop at a bottle shop on the way there. No worries.

Chapter 8

We sit in the lounge room. Dusk mingles on the horizon, flirting between night and day. With all the windows open I can see the whole town. The lights from the houses on the hillside twinkle like stars in the valley below us. Stan rests easy with a bottle of wine under his belt. Even though it is dusk the world is still very bright and the full moon makes the whole night seem pregnant with an awakening energy. I send a text to Peachcake, and wait for a reply. It never comes. Stan has The Doors playing on the stereo. We are kind of just gelling here. It's the Friday night limbo. Neither of us know what to expect or even if we should expect anything at all. The air is restless. We wait for calls to come in, to grace us with the evening's plans.

William and Mika arrive around seven and preach that the night is but a budding flower from which we as bees must wait to pollinate. I am a little too high to understand the meaning behind this message. Then William receives a call from one of his friends telling us about a gay party down at the Regent. His eyes light up at the prospect of meeting some likeminded men. Mika asks if there will be acid. She is straight but loves to take acid. William answers that the gay community have the best drugs on the planet and due to the prejudice and bigotry of the Authority, they are too intimidated to search or arrest any of us. So yes, there will probably be some good acid.

Stan asks me what I think and I tell him I'm a little too smacked out to be handling flamboyant gay's, sprattled out of their skulls on black jellybeans. He considers this, then disappears. Ten minutes later he reappears dressed in an unbuttoned white blouse with a black undershirt and black stockings that run the length of his skinny legs and grip viciously at his package.

"Thank you Lou," He says as he uncorks a fresh bottle of wine and declares another social experiment underway.

The trio leave in a whirlwind of drunken banter. Suddenly it is just me and The Doors. I switch off the stereo and then the house is silent. I run a bath and boil myself through. Then I put on a pair of slacks and lay down on my bed. My room, of the entire house, is the only calm place. The only place I can sleep. The rest of the house remains in a constant state of chaos. It's like the energy of all the people that come and go remains long after they leave. The floors although dull, still tingle, the walls although solid, vibrate. Sometimes I wonder if the house is haunted. This wonder chills me a little and to dissolve the fear I cut a diazepam with half a pellet of Oxy and snort it before I retire to sleep. I check my flick knife is beside my bed and slip the barrel bolt through my bedroom door. I still haven't received a reply from Peachcake so I turn my phone off. Then I lay back and let the noises of the spring night wander through my window.

I do not know if the tapping woke me up, or if it was the sense that someone was in my room. My eyes shot open the moment my body sensed it. Moonlight shone through the window but due to the Oxy my night vision was hopeless. I could hear breathing and I reached for my knife. Then a voice spoke up "Alex, it's me. I got your message to come over."

My mind was too asleep to conceive the words.

"What?" I said sitting up.

"It's me, Peachcake," she whispered.

"Hey", I said relieved and relaxing back into a state of abandon.

"What are you doing here?"

"You said come around. Stan let me in. Do you know he is dressed like a sweet transvestite?"

"Party at the Regent" I tell her.

"I know" she says, "We had a chat."

"Well" I say to her, "Do you want to get into bed?"

Peachcake moves into the rectangle of moonlight cast by the window. I see her clearly. She is wearing only a red slipover. It is silky and hugs gently at her body, curving lightly under her breasts. She climbs into my bed and rubs her cheek against mine. I kiss her ear and smell the intoxicating aroma of body. She was a mixture of pheromones, femininity and ocean. I asked her if she had been near the sea. She kisses me on the mouth and whispers that she is a mermaid. I close my eyes and let my senses take over. I become every touch and every movement. In the epic darkness I fall asleep, her naked body pressed closely against mine.

Chapter 9

I awoke on Saturday morning bathed in a swathe of honey coloured light. For an instant that seemed to last an eternity everything was perfect. A pleasant stillness lingered about the air and I gazed out the window silently spying on the trees as they whispered to the breeze. Then I noticed the fly mesh was missing and the memory of the night fell upon me in a wave that was so like the feeling of post climax, that for a moment I stopped. I knew she had left. I had sensed it from the distance of my dreams. She had kissed me goodbye in the blue hue morning just before the sun and the birds awoke to call her greeting. I rubbed my face in satisfaction and switched on my phone. Then I drifted off into a dreamscape of yellow coloured leaves.

Around midday I decide to get out of bed. The air is humid and the temperature sits around twenty-eight degrees. I dig a blackening banana out one of the kitchen cupboards. The heat is making the kitchen stink with all the rubbish piling up and the unwashed dishes. It almost puts me off eating. But to be poor is to be hungry. When you truly know hunger you will see, we eat to survive, to get by. I head down stairs to get some fresh air. In the back yard I find my friends lazing around on a few picnic rugs. William is asleep in the shade of the mango tree, there are several mangoes ripped to shreds around his head. I assume from the state of the mangoes and the juice stains on his face and hands that he attacked the tree in a blind frenzy some hours earlier. Stan is sipping lightly on a beer holding his head gently. His stockings are striped with runs and his blouse is tied to one of the rafters that hold up the carport. Mika is still high on acid and when I walk into the backyard, she smiles and whispers 'hi Alex' the words exiting her mouth like smoke, she then crawls over to William and draws on his face with lipstick. I sit next to Stan and eat my banana. William begins to stir and groans as he sits up, Mika bolts behind the tree trunk

"Oh man I'm hung over," he moans.

"I feel like I've been hung over for a year!" Stan wails clutching at the sides of his head.

"Man... Man... What the fuck happened last night?" William laughs half delirious.

"I don't know man" Stan replies, "I think my brain's bleeding."

"And who was that chick who was here when we got home?"

William laugh's confused and struggling to keep his head up.

"That was Peachcake." I say.

"Man she's one weird chick," William says shaking his head "and that's not coz I'm bias or anything."

"How do you figure?"

"Well..." he says, "she was waiting out the front in this white car with some guy, he was crying and trying to hug her and she was all 'knee high fuck me boots' and saying 'you wont even go in there and kick his arse' and I was like what the fuck, kick who's arse and anyway she gets out and slams the door and goes and walks straight past Mika and I, we were laying just there." William points to the mattress under the car port, "She opens the door and walks inside so I call out to Stan."

"That's right" Stan livens in. "I remember, Dude!" He gets excited and looks at me, waving his hands as though he is preaching the revelation. "She comes upstairs, I'm on the lounge talking poetry to myself and she comes in and sits on my lap. I'm wearing this get up and she sits right on me, then I freak a little and slide her next to me and she says 'where's Alex?' and I say, 'asleep', and she kinda fixes her hair and asks to use the bathroom, then I hear the shower running and when I see her next she's in this little night gown thing, she's looking all sexual and I'm thinking WOW, but I say 'you better go see Alex now' and she's almost climbing on top of me. I don't know what she was on but it was creepy man. She walks out the front door then I hear her banging around the side of the house and I realise she's climbing into your room."

"Yeah" William butts in, "and the dude in the car's still parked out the front... It was fucked up man."

I'm listening in awe. "What the fuck?" I say. "I thought I dreamt that."

"That's some weird shit!" Mika pipes up from underneath a picnic rug.

We all sit around for a moment and agree, that's some weird shit.

"Did you...?" Stan asks.

"I did." replying cautiously.

"Be careful man. That chicks not right in the head."

"You don't even know her" I snap back. I see the sting of my retort hurt Stan, but I cannot help that I need to defend Peachcake, plus I'ma little worried about his comments on her straddling him. As I sit amongst my friends I think of the night before. The story the guys tell me doesn't bother me. It's strange to think she was coming onto Stan but I keep flashing back to the smell of ocean and the flicker of soft skin under moonlight. I cannot wait to see her again.

Chapter 10

They were right. The white car man was just waiting. He is still waiting. Since Friday night his car has been parked out the front of the house almost every afternoon. He isn't scary. He strikes me as the type to have a hollow chest and acne craters that run across the outsides of his cheeks all the way down to the bottom of his shoulder blades. His hair is long and he looks like a metal head outsider. He sits silently out the front of the house just waiting and watching. He just sits there, waiting and staring.

This doesn't scare me as much as it weirds me out. Peachcake will appear while he waits, she will make love to me and treat me like I'm her only one then she will get him to drive her home; it's just weird. Stan agrees that it's getting strange. He is getting angry that I am getting laid while he has too shoo off the white car guy. But I assure him that it is all going to be fine. He tells me yeah, until white car guy loses his head and stabs me to death. I have visions of white car guy's pasty white skin peppered in freckles trying in vain to mount Peachcake as she turns to the side and ignores him and I think, maybe he will go insane and try to kill us. Then I feel jealous that she leaves with him, that he possesses something I don't and that I am not the only one. Peachcake had made three more visits during the week, each time I would hear Stan yelling that white car guy was waiting and each time Peachcake would close her ears to my pleas that he should be released from this torture. We had made love so fully and passionately on her visits that I found it hard to imagine why she'd even bother to stay with white car guy. I asked her on her last visit if she would stay, but she refused to talk. She lowered herself and gave me head. It seemed every time I tried to talk to her she'd use sex as an excuse to escape the conversation. Eventually I yelled in frustration her that her boyfriend was stalking out the front of my house, but she cut me off with a kiss. I could feel myself becoming attached to her and this is what scared me. I began to notice little things about her, things that told me I was too close to the flame. I knew that she had three freckles on her left breast and always placed the salt outside the pepper on the left side of her coffee cup. The inconsistencies in her stories drove me crazy with jealousy and I knew I was just one of many. But I had fallen in love with her and that was that. I knew that I too would find myself waiting out the front of someone's house just hoping for a kiss even if her lips did taste like the end of another mans cock.

Stan told me I was making a mistake, but I couldn't trust his words. I knew he looked at her with lust. I could see that if given the chance he would steal her from me, but I had to ask myself was this real or was I just not thinking clearly. Then her boyfriend would sit out the front of the house just waiting. He was like a lonely dog and Stan would say "I don't want this fucker stalking my house" and I'd shoo the bastard off with a length of timber and Stan and I would fight about him or Peachcake or drugs or boozing. Peachcake would sneak in my window and soothe my tired head but leave it feeling worse by creating more questions than answers and in between. I'd hit Oxy in lines the size of caterpillars.

Chapter 11

Hugo knocked on my door about mid-day a week and a half after he was arrested. He had just been let out of lock up. He had a fractured jaw and two black eyes. He told me he'd been pissing blood. I hooked him up with some Oxy and we sat down to catch up. After he told me about his time with the Authority I explained the strange happenings between Peachcake and I. I tell him about the white car guy then Hugo says, "That fucker's out there now" and I say "He's always out there, he just sits there."

"So he's your girl's boyfriend hey..." He ponders to think,

"Can I scare him?" he asks.

"Sure." I say thinking Hugo was gonna use his mashed up face to scare the guy. Then he reaches into his bag and pulls out a handgun. He gets up and walks out the room.

"Hugo," I say, "What the fuck are you doing?"

But before I can stop him Hugo is out the front door. Like a maddened gunslinger that's just crawled out of the western desert, he points the gun at the car. There is a moment of swearing and Hugo lets off two rounds into the air. He looks back at me grinning.

"To get his attention!" he yells.

The guy in the white car is staring directly at us now. Pure terror drips from his eyes. Hugo unloads three rounds into the air. The shots amplify through the valley and send the birds scattering into the air. Then the air is filled not with gunshots but with screeching tyres and the white guy is off. As we walk back up stairs I am muted with shock.

"Don't worry about it mate." Hugo tells me, "They'll just think it's a car backfiring; anyway thanks, I needed that... really eases the tension you know. By the way can I stay here tonight? Brigit ain't too happy I got done by the Authority, I need to let her cool down."

"Sure" I say, numb to the spectacle. "Join the madness, just put the fucking gun away."

Chapter 12

Hugo, Stan and I are sitting around the table that night having a few beers. It's a casual ferocity common to our last minute endeavours. We've been writing material for our debut performance poetry night. A useless carpet of paper covered in bad poetry surrounds us, beer bottles like the smoke stacks of industry rise from the table. Out of the silence Hugo says to Stan, "this idiot doesn't use a condom" while pointing at me.

"What?" Stan says looking at me astounded.

"She's on the pill." I say.

"You're a fucking idiot man," Hugo says.

"Yeah." Stan agrees.

They're right- of course, but I'm too high to care. They banter and prattle at me about the increasing amount of danger that comes with my situation. Then I strike back angrily.

"I'm not the one firing guns into a suburban street."

We argue for a bit about the consequences of firing a gun into a stranger's car. We agree to disagree, then finish the case of beer and fade off into separate yet similarly drunken and unpleasant sleep.

I awake as I always do, alone and confused. The writing from last night is scrunched and balled across the lounge room. Spilt beer sticks the pages to the hard wood floor. I salvage what I can, then have some breakfast, which today is an apple, two points of Gas and 100mg of Ox. Since Hugo's been staying he's been supplying me with Gas. I have added it to my morning ritual and I find it helps me get an active start to the day. I had half expected to see Peachcake last night but she doesn't appear. I call her but she does not answer. When I look out the window I do not find the white car either. In the lounge room Hugo lays face down, his cheek smeared across the timber floorboards. He still clutches half a beer in his right hand. I consider cleaning up but there is just too much mess. I ignore the house and try to get a head start on the day. Our poetry night is the Wednesday before Christmas, under two weeks away. Still there is so much to organise. In the bathroom I wash my face in the basin. I splash the cool water all up and over my neck and shoulders. I pull back my heavy fringe and enjoy the gentle tug of the knots as I try to remove them. As I shower I let the rush of the water engulf me, I find a solace in the hot pins of water. Christmas... I wonder pleasantly to myself. Where does the time go? I feel a little compelled by the forthcoming Noël and buy a Christmas tree. I put it in the lounge room and place a few bottles of stolen whiskey and wine underneath it. The tree brings a little colour and festivity to the room. It stands almost to the ceiling and for a short while makes the room feel friendly and warm. I named the tree Rebecca. I wrapped her in tinsel and fairy lights. I dressed her as though she we're a very beautiful woman and for a few days Stan and I worship Rebecca like chained hounds to a big old ham hock. Hugo paces the room constantly eyeing the wine and whiskey like some vicious Doberman. We told ourselves we wouldn't drink the booze. Told ourselves we would respect the tree. But Hugo persisted and eventually got his way. He was good at getting his way. Maybe it was the Yank in him, but he would push and push until you snapped and gave in. We drank the liquor before Christmas. And in a misty drunken fervour we threw Rebecca out the window and burnt her in the back yard. We couldn't keep her once the booze was gone. It would just remind us of how weak willed we were. So we burnt her.

Chapter 13

Hugo left a few days before Christmas, remembering he had children and holding his head like it was cracked porcelain. He seemed really freaked out and jumpy. At first I put it down to the Gas but I soon learned how wrong I was. Stan and I had the house to ourselves and we basked in the silent glory. I hadn't seen Peachcake in almost two weeks and the weight she had left in my chest was beginning to subside. Her boyfriend had not been at our house either. I had begun to think that Hugo's little scare had worked on both of them. I was saddened that she had decided to disappear on me, but I had known deep down that she would. Without her midnight visits I was able to focus on arranging my life into some sort of order. I was considering this new future when The Authority hit. We knew it was bound to happen but it had still rattled our cages pretty badly. It was about six am when two cold angular faced officers with metallic grey side arms burst through the front door. They screamed at us and waved their guns at our faces. They didn't have a warrant but searched the entire house anyway. One of The Authority worked over the house, while the other one had us cuffed and bleeding within minutes. They ripped apart every drawer and cupboard to find a gun or drugs but had come up empty. They punched our stomach to make us squeal but we held our lips tight- only pigs squeal. At one point they were beating Stan so badly I wanted to tell them anything to make them stop. When he looked up at me from underneath his blood stained mop of blonde hair and spat between mouthfuls of blood, "You look about as hung over as I feel" this made me smile and I copped a baton to the shoulder blades but kept my mouth sealed. I wanted to scream "I can't feel it you fucks I'm too high on Oxy" but I kept my mouth shut. By nine am they had done almost everything to extract a confession. At one point I thought they were going to rape us but they didn't. So with a lack of evidence they took their cold smiles elsewhere, they may have not pinned us but they had got the message across. After they left, Stan and I were silent; almost broken. Then with his devils charm Stan smiled at me and said, "Never give into them, never tell them a thing and if it comes to it, die with the truth on your lips."

I smiled back, "did you know your truth is just our truth without the y?"

They were watching us, and of course if it weren't for Hugo we would have all been shot for drug offences. He had gotten the heads up through his P-scanner. He had hidden the gun and drugs. Naturally he did this without our knowledge, being the mysterious feck that he is. Still The Authority had found a thousand beer bottles and piles of garbage that stank worse than the insides of a dead cow, but they had found no evidence of criminal activity. I don't know if that makes Hugo a shithouse friend or a saint but either way; that was Hugo.

In the calm confusion post Authority I called the man and vented my rage as best I could. With my broken mouth the anger sounded mushy and I lost most of the impact.

"MOO FUCK, MAOW DARE YOU!" and so on.

He replied, "Relax, now you know what your up against, I did you a favour. And another little favour is buried in the front garden under the frangipani."

I could imagine his face as he coolly smiled.

Fuck you Hugo- God dammit.

I hung up the phone and limped to the front garden without considering if we were being watched. I dug furiously at the fresh turned earth. There in the biscuit tin was my Oxy kit, 1500mg of Ox, twenty diazepam tablets, a gram of speed, two 100mg Quinnes and a quarter ounce of grass. The note at the bottom of the tin said 'thanks for the stay. This should help you recover, your friend Hugo'. He could be a royal cunt sometimes, but little care packages like this really made me smile. Hugo earned his keep.

After the Authorities visit we had decided to clean up properly. The bastards had scattered rubbish and junk everywhere. The room looked like our bodies felt, and our bodies felt like shit. Stan was pretty shaken up and drank bourbon straight from the bottle. He grimaced with each sip that filled his bleeding mouth with clean biting alcohol. I poured him a shot and mixed in some Oxy and diazepam. After that Stan seemed a little better, his hands stopped shaking and his body melted into the lounge. I felt guilty about causing the trouble so I decided to speed clean the house. After four hours and a carton of beer the house smelt like lavender toilet spray and shined like a showroom. I even scrubbed the sprays of blood off the ceiling. It felt good to have a clean house. I sat back with the last of the beer and rested my bruised body. I didn't want to look at my wounds, I was afraid of what I'd find. Just because I couldn't feel them didn't mean they weren't there. I popped some val's and half a qunnie then slept for twenty hours. During my sleep I was plagued with strange nightmares I couldn't drag myself from. I barely remember them now, yet I know inside my mind I was terrified. I recall falling off a desolate stony outcrop into the blackness of forever. It's hard for me to say but I think Peachcake visited me during this time. Whether I dreamed it or not is uncertain to me. I remember her soft voice breaking through the nightmare the way God's light breaks through dark clouds. I heard her say, "I am here to look after you". I think I remember a cold cloth cleaning the blood off my weeping wounds. I think I feel gentle kisses on my lips, soft hands rubbing along my groin. I never opened my eyes or escape the torment of the deserted stone blank nightmare. But the scent of Peachcake somehow made it into my mind and that alone stopped me from never returning.

When I finally awoke, hungry and dehydrated it finally hit me that Hugo and his speed were gone, Peachcake and her boyfriend had disappeared as well. I asked Stan if she had visited while I was asleep. He said she hadn't. Stan had mentioned in conversation that maybe Peachcake was dead. I thought about it for a moment and sadly agreed that yes she may be dead. I searched all the newspapers, checking to see if any notification of Peachcake's death would surface. No reports did. Sadly on the front page of one of the newspapers was a picture of the little girl with the curls from the park. She was dead, murdered the afternoon that Hugo was arrested. It was all bad news. Peachcake had left without a trace and little girls were being killed in parks while The Authority were trashing my house. I called her phone one last time just before our poetry opening. A pre-recorded voice told me that the number I had called was disconnected.

The poetry night was huge. We spent all Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday printing and putting up posters. Stan and I practiced our works with each other and worked out some little skits to fill in the gaps. We were still bruised from the weekend attack but as they say, the show must go on. We organised to have the lighting and sound set up by Jesus. A music production student with a knack for electricity and beer, he worked miracles and made the stage glow with colour and life. We lit candles on the tables, put free beer on the bar. Then at six pm on a Wednesday in December the time had come. The people came in small groups. By seven there were at least fifty people in the bar. All our friends had arrived, Blue, Mika, William, Jesus and a host of others, too many to name but all unique, beautiful and free, truly free. Stan and I screamed and ranted for almost an hour and a half, bouncing off each other's energy. We were on fire. We heckled the Authority and told our account of the weekend, explaining the mash of our faces. We opened the stage to the public and had people from all walks get up and speak their mind. They were all so brave and empowering, people uniting for a common good. The stage was filled with love and good energy. Until ten pm we were roaring. We made a lot of good friends that night. When the bar finally closed we moved the party back to Bright Street.

We walked the few hundred meters home in the summer air, a massive group of love and laughter. People from the poetry night stayed until about midnight. They began bailing in drips and drabs as the hours wore on. Finally, at the time when even the summer night air becomes callous, colder, nature's lockout arrived. Only Stan, myself plus three lovely girls we met at the poetry night remained. Their names were Rosie, Constance and Ashlee. We were drinking red wine in my room, listening to music and chatting casually. Slowly things began to turn lusciously sexual, as they usually do in the dark morning hours. We lit candles and switched off all the lights. We necked the wine and watched the girls kiss each other first, then they pulled Stan and I into the mix. We all ended up together that night. No inhibitions. We fucked with poetry in our movement, soft flesh and gentle hair pressed against skins of another. The candlelight cast our shadows across the walls. We slept in a tangle of arms and legs. The smell of human musk lingered in my bedroom for a good few days afterward, reminding me of that one glorious evening in December when the universe smiled on us.

Chapter 14

Christmas passed without a cheer. It was hot. Not even the shade could get comfortable. Flies were too lazy to fly and the wounds on my face stung when the sweat finally found its way down my frown and brow. Stan and I had called around to organise a Christmas Day BBQ but everyone was too busy or too exhausted to bother. We spent our Christmas sitting under Bright Street spraying ourselves with the garden hose. The water was cool on our skin but it tasted like plastic. I received a call from my friend Walter inviting everyone to come to a New Year's Eve party in the bush. The news made me smile; it was exciting to know we had something better than spraying each other with a garden hose to look forward to. We had been spoilt for activity and attention in the last few months, depression loomed on the horizon, the dark clouds of doubt cracking with angry thunder, their borders electric green with hail stones of life neglected. The only seemingly avoidable way to circumvent this final hailstorm was to keep moving. So we did.

New years eve seemed like the perfect opportunity to run wild once again. Between Christmas and New Year's Eve I had forgotten about Peachcake. She was gladly out of my life. I had begun to fall in love with her enigmatic charm but I could tell all too well that she was getting the better of me. She left a large hole in my heart, and I did miss our talks, our kisses, our childish little love games. I thought she was gone. That was until the day before New Year's Eve.

I awoke that morning happier than I usually would. I was high and wandering around casually in just a towel. The bruises were down to a dull bruised fruit violet. The sun was still low enough for it to be cool in the sunshine and I ate my breakfast warmed by golden sunrays. The air was fresh and the paint on the walls radiated opal white. I had worked up a little sweat in the few minutes of sitting in the sun and could smell the B.O lingering. I didn't even think about what was happening. I quietly opened Stan's bedroom door to grab his deodorant. I didn't want to wake him so I just crept in. Veiled by the darkness of drawn curtains I saw Peachcake naked and Stan standing at the edge of his bed with just a shirt on. She had her lips wrapped around his cock. I froze for a second as I took in the scene. Stan had his hair out and wore it like Dionysus. Stan flicked his head towards the door when he noticed the increased light. My eyes met his and the look of cold simple indifference cut me open. I felt the blood thin and drain from my body. At that moment everything I thought I knew about trust, about friends and lovers fell to pieces. Peachcake didn't even stop sucking his cock, she just kept moving her head up and down his shaft. The gentle sounds of salvia and suction rung in my ears as I clicked the door closed. I felt concussed. I couldn't believe what I had seen. In my hand I held a can of deodorant. I didn't even remember picking it up. Peachcake was alive and well, she was in Stan's room giving free oral examinations.

I grabbed a beer out of the fridge then sat down in the sunshine where I had eaten my breakfast. The sunlight was burning now, unforgiving against my skin. It barrelled down sharp into my eyes and I knew if I could cry, the sun would eat up the tears faster than I could make them.

Chapter 15

There was no explanation. The simple progression of the situation became this. I had the house during the daylight hours, Stan during the night. The next day was New Year's Eve. I awoke at lunchtime so drugged out I could have fallen off the face of the earth and not even have noticed. I had no real conviction to enter the day. I hated everything like a Nazi. Since yesterday I had been alone. I laid in the bleak shadows. Listening to Stan and Peachcake fuck. I had wanted to open a rage against them, but I couldn't muster the passion. I had erased her from my life. I had no reason to care. I trailed down the line of so much Oxy I could barely move. Stan hid himself from me after Peachcake left. His silence only served to fuel my anger. Still the thoughts circled, the doubts, the weakness.

'What would you do anyway!' it said. The voice in my head was cold, aggressive, and meticulous, factual in its account of my memory. I crushed more Oxy with some Val's. I kept to my little preparation ritual and tried to relax. After snorting a 50/50mg mix my nose bled but I didn't much care anymore. I stood up and walked into the kitchen. Stan was in there. His hand reached down to steal a can of my beer. He looked at me with his icebergs and I had nothing.

"Take two," I told him, which he promptly did. Then without word he crawled back into his room. I took a cask of wine out of the fridge and went to lay in the sunshine. On the grass in the full beauty of the day I could hear the faint roar of a lawn mower and the echo of the Authority's loud speakers. I am high and free, I should be happy. It's funny though, because I'm not. I feel as though I'm trapped in the rain. I feel as if it rains too long I will start to forget what the sunshine feels like. And that's what my happiness is, sunshine. As of today the rains have come and sunshine is more like a distant dream. Like a place I went once when I was a child. There are bird noises and lamps in the windows of warm houses but the sky never brightens and the rain makes everything go mouldy and rot slowly. Later that day, when the wine and beer had run low Stan and I had the fight. He walked into the back yard without knowing I was there, my rage unleashed. I jumped him, laying three quick hits on him before he could respond. He fell to the ground coughing and holding his gut.

"You fucking cunt!" I stare at the crumpled heap. I have to stop myself from spitting on him. Stan is curled into a foetal position. He spits blood from his mouth. This is the blow out. There will be no tears. No peace between us. I hate this man. He violated my trust for sexual lust. He is a fucker and now he is fucked.

"Fuck you Alex," Stan tries to stand up, as he does I kick him in the side. He goes down again. He spits more blood from between his filthy lips.

"Did you eat her cunt you fucker?" I roar.

"I fucked her hard and she loved it!" he says laughing. Then Stan springs up suddenly, turns and hits me in the face. I don't see it coming and I recoil back. We face each other, the lion and the scorpion in their final battle. I swing my tail, crashing it down on his back. He claws at my side, ripping a gash that fills instantly with blood. I grab his hind paw with my pincer and squeeze. I squeeze so hard I crush the bone. Stan lets out a gruelling roar and paws me across the face.

We battle for hours, until finally we just stop. We are covered in blood, whose blood I'm not sure. My arm is broken, it hangs limp by my side. Stan is missing a foot, he has tied off the stump with a piece of ripped up shirt. We are both dying now, there has been too much blood spilled. The heart of brotherhood is torn. We lay on the grass.

"Why did you do it?" I weep.

"I love her too," He answers.

"More than me?" I ask. He begins to cry.

"I love you mate," he reaches out for me. I let him embrace me.

"I love you too," I whisper. We both die, arm in arm, brothers one last time.

Chapter 16

Walter's arrival was like cool redemption for my burning soul. I was in the backyard resting my tired head, sipping lightly from the cask of wine. I was staring at the gum leaves as they wilted in the heat when into my field of vision steps Walter. Glorious Walter, who is not really named Walter but nicknamed this because he looks exactly like the late actor Walther Matthau. Except the real Walther Matthau wasn't bordering seven foot tall. I have to squint to look up at him. His face seems so far away.

"Come on, get up." He kicks me lightly in the side.

I am wondering 'what the fuck is this? Here I am resting and now I am being kicked, kicked out of a beautifully poignant depression.

"If I move something bad is bound to happen," I grumble.

"No, it won't, its New Year's Eve, come on."

"It will eventually," I say as I sit up.

"Everything happens eventually, now get up! There's a party on tonight."

"I suppose you want me to go?"

"No my man. You're already there..." He grins stupidly, nodding his head like a boob. My friends are idiots, but they have good intentions.

"We need to get pills, Alex." Walther says with the seriousness of a doctor, like he's saying, 'Now Alex, the cancer is very aggressive.'

"No Walt..." I say, "You're forty eight years old, you'll have a heart attack, plus The Authorities are picking at me like bloody vultures."

He gave me that child like look that says, 'I do not understand'. Fifteen minutes later we are chasing pills. He makes all the calls. Due to my current state of mind I feel ineligible to attempt to heckle with drug dealers, they're just so grimy and low. Drug dealers remind me of swamp eels, you'd eat them if you were starving but otherwise you wouldn't even fish for them. Walter tells me that he has got a hook up. We jump in his truck. The sun is bright and lovely and with every meter we head away from Bright Street, I begin to feel better. With the window down and the wind cooling my arm, I sit back and enjoy the ride. About an hour later we are parked outside a brick tenement house. There is no picket fence on this quaint abode. And the owner keeps his Rottweiler in the front yard; the dog is held by a length of one inch chain, which springs taught when we walk towards the door. There are children's toys scattered across the yard. Some are chewed to pieces, others look burned or sun rusted. A shitty old Commodore sits quietly on four cement blocks.

We have driven for almost an hour north to get these pills. A reliable connection Walther tells me, a friend of a friend he tells me. Yet as I walk up the concrete path I can't help but feel that this is not a friendly place. Even through the layers of Oxy, Diazepam and pot, I can tell that something about me being here feels stupid. It's the kind of stupid feeling you get when you let a travelling salesman talk you into buying the extra insurance even though you never wanted to buy the crap they were selling in the first place. And I'm sure the dealer felt just like that travelling salesman.

But then again who am I to define stupidity. Is there nothing stupid about leaving the comfort of a warm sunny yard complete with wine and Oxy to drive eighty kilometres to meet a dodgy looking guy in a V.B singlet? Is there nothing stupid about getting your hopes up that the crumbly little blue things he hands you could possibly ever be ecstasy? Is there nothing stupid about handing him the money with a smile and a "thanks man" when they're turning to powder in your hand. Absolutely nothing stupid about nodding politely as he says, "They're really good, take a while to kick in but they're really good." Really, is it stupid to drive off happy that you have pills, even though you know they're sugar, if not rat poison? As I said, who am I to define stupid?

Walt and I ate the pills on the highway back home. They did nothing. I can safely say we purchased the most expensive sugar pills ever. But it's all run of the mill in the illegal drug game. It's ninety percent of the reason why I switched to pharmaceuticals. I don't know how many times I've kicked my own arse waiting for drug deals, drug people and drug fuck ups. The New Year's Eve chase was one of the biggest fuck ups I have ever seen. Still if you're not at the top or at least in some good connections, then that's what you get. And if you were like I was that night, smacked out and doing friends a favour, then I suppose its all part of the great roller coaster called life. I consider it character building. Chalk it up to experience. The most negative thing about the whole experience was listening to Walter grumble all the way home; and to think about it. I bet he had a great time grumbling. Strange enough the whole trip, Walt didn't ask once why my face was puffed out like a blowfish. Besides, we still had the doof. We could chase pills there.

A doof is a huge party in the bush. Cities have raves and the country has doofs. The New Year's Eve doof is the biggest party on any outsider's calendar. Its location is the biggest secret of the year. The organisers withhold the details until only hours before it starts, with the theory that it stops The Authority from catching on.

The New Year's doof starts on New Year's Eve and runs until the third of January. Walter and I discovered its location at around 8pm. We had taken some acid I had been saving for an emergency. Driving had become blurry. Walter makes the call to our young friend Sarah, he asks her if she wants to drive us to a party. After some mumbled words, Sarah agrees to help us. Then before I knew it, we were on a mission into the heart of the beast. Walter tries his luck at touching up on Sarah. But she's a hard toothed eighteen year old and slaps him openly when his hands even think about wandering. I whisper into Sarah's ear all the memories of the times we got clean together. She gets a little embarrassed and tells me I have no chance either. I remind her that the future's a big place and she smiles at me in the rear view mirror. It's a fuck me smile and it feels good to flirt with another girl, even if it is just for kicks. I can still remember her little poppy now, all tight and musky. We had history.

It was almost mid-night when we arrived. Ill-timed fireworks burst above us in random streaks of colour. We were at least fifty kilometres from everything man made. The stars burned bright and everyone was in love. Walter had cheered up on the drive out. He was pleased that his driving was over. We sat back and indulged in some more acid.

So it went that with a head full of acid and an Oxy kicker we stumbled into the scrubby darkness. We had a vague idea that we were on a cattle property somewhere west of Grafton. I was beginning to see strange colours and as we got closer to the party people began sprouting out of the hallucinogenic paste that was my vision. For two hundred meters we tripped and stumbled down a narrow dirt track, guided only by the thumping of the music and the flashes from the neon's and lasers. Then under the low explosion of another firework we were hit by the intensity of the clearing, fifty-meters round, centralised by a massive bonfire and darting strobes. To one side a dance floor and walls of speakers, amps and decks.

It was a ravenous party. Imagine wild images of topless girls in their underpants waving glow sticks. Men with rope like dreadlocks twirling fire at super human speeds. I felt the music enter my body, a spiritual possession. I was acutely aware that everyone at this doof was connected as one spirit moving all parts of its consciousness together. I had lost track of Walt and Sarah. I swayed and rolled with the music. The acid had become very real. For hours I felt myself being tossed around this sea of madness like a sailor caught in a tempest. Then in the middle of the clearing I saw a girl standing completely still. She held her arms out like Christ and stared up at the infinite sky. I tumbled towards her and fell to my knees under her ethereal glow. This girl looked down on me. She put my hands together as if to make me pray to her. Then she smiled and I smiled back. She held out two little white pills. She picked one and placed it in her mouth. She stood there ushering me to take the other. Inside the maw of this raving beast I had met this strange harlot and she was offering me an ungodly communion I'll never forget. For a moment I couldn't breathe then I picked up the jellybean and swallowed it. The girl's name was Gypsy and she was lovely. She was short with deep brown hair that fell dead straight down to her middle back. Her skin was a lighter shade of brown from her mother's indigenous blood. Once we met we ran wild together. For the rest of the night we were five again, playing kiddie games and giggling. I looked upon her beautiful round face and found sweetness there like fresh fruit. We kissed and touched in the epic bush darkness. We broke open glow sticks and splashed each other with the goo. It was pitch black all around but we were lit with a crazy blur of orange, lime green and hot pink. Then it was dawn. We lay down together on a picnic rug under a huge blossoming callistemon.

Gypsy was still peaking and she chatted to me about the whole wide world. The horizon was a soft grey blue as the sun barely licked through the trees that stood like black old watchers upon this scared site. Pinpoints of sunlight hit the small patches of twigs and leaves giving them a magical energy. Gypsy and I laid arm in arm, a couple of humans, as humans should be. As we talked the sun rose higher we began to see each other for who we really were. Gypsy told me about all the littering the doofers had left, and how sad this made her. I just sat and stared. She was an indigenous girl, from the Bundijlung nation of the Northern Rivers. This was her people's land she told me, and it broke her heart to see it decimated by drugged out inconsiderate hippie wannabe's. She didn't much like white people's attitudes about land use or abuse. I sat with my ears open hearing every one of her words over the steady drumming of the music. Later, when the sun was higher, we swum in the tea tree lake. It was amazing, this tea tree lake was only five meters from the main dance floor but in the darkness of the night I hadn't even known it was there. As I looked at it I was amazed at how beautiful it was. Everyone was getting naked and swimming. There was no persecution, no sexuality, just freedom everywhere.

"Do you like me?" Gypsy asked as we swum about together, she dipped under the surface before I could answer as though she was nervous.

"Yes," I told her when she popped back up. She burst into an amazing wide smile.

"I like you too."

The tall old paperbarks and smaller scrubby bushes lined our Eden and listened in as we whispered our hopes and dreams to each other, fallen branches made great seats for those who dared not swim. Everything was just perfect.

Chapter 17

We began to come down around ten. By lunchtime we wanted out. The mood had significantly changed. People had begun to stagger around. Everywhere I looked the beautiful people of last night had become brainless zombies, pale and gaunt with excess. They emerged from cars and trees with looks that are usually carried by the hopeless and the dispossessed. Dirt and muck clogged every pore, shirts were ripped and shoes were lost. Above it all the music continued to hammer at our brains, things were getting edgy.

As I searched for Walt and Sarah I noticed a beautiful girl squatting between some trees, pissing like a horse. She scowled at me as I watched her. I kept searching and noticed some guys shooting up in the back of a station wagon. As I looked at them I wondered if it were Death Factory in those syringes, if so this place was going to get really bad really quickly. Another pretty blonde girl sat fascinated as she watched the men inject, then it was her turn and her eyes grew frantic as the needle entered her arm, she seemed to breathe terror then a look of melting pleasure came across her almost instantly. She made eye contact with me and even though she had the look of perfect serenity I could tell that she was crying somewhere inside. I closed my eyes to the car full of Death Factory and moved on. I was in the middle of the morning after. It was New Year's Day. The spit and the growl had arrived, as it does after a night of hard partying. Dry dust etched into the sweat marks of every pill popping dance fiend. There were people swigging bourbon, others were smoking cones, spewing or sleeping. One guy was hunched in a ball screaming 'help me, help me'. His pleas went unanswered and were barely audible over the music. I couldn't bare to look into the eyes of this poor creature, who somewhere in the misty hours had got lost within his own muddy mind. This is not the first time I have been at the end of the line. We are the poor hell riders who cannot see the edge until we have stepped off it. Many of these people lead semi normal lives and blow out when they go too fast. Just like truck tyres in the mid-summer heat. Mostly they end up shaking, huddled into a ball and staring like a zombie at the new arrivals who are still clean enough to pick up the torch and keep moving. As the hours pass the party moves with an invisible tide. The drug dealers appear the same way mosquitoes slowly arrive at the coming of night. They recharge some of the zombies with the ol' Death Factory. The rest are left behind. Either too broke, abandoned or blown out to continue. To see the lonely misery of these poor souls is heavy. Good people; who've for all year, anticipated this moment. To see them deflated jaded, dirty. It really gets into you. It chips away at your inner self. To know that only a few hours ago these people were the peak of spiritual wisdom and the earth's last hope at peace. Now they are little more than a few broken promises and a mighty headache. We were all in the same boat and it was sinking fast. I needed to split the scene, not even the pellet of Oxy I gobbled at dawn could help ease the ugliness of this place.

I found Walter and Sarah by the truck. Gypsy was with me. We rolled out of there before it got any worse. As we did a zombie pressed his gruesome face against the window. "Give us a ride man," it moaned. It was a bad scene indeed and the party would rage for another two days.

Chapter 18

I don't quite remember the drive home. I had decided to drop out. It was a rational decision. The night had beaten us all and the pain in my temples was incredible. I found it necessary to escape consciousness. So before we left the doof I ate and snorted the famous Oxy and Diazepam combo, and before too long the old familiar feeling of lazy indiscretion had crept into my veins. We sat in Walter's truck as it bounced along the dirt roads, scrubby desolate bush flashed past the window and my teeth rattled in my head. The whole car was full of negative energy and we shuddered along that dirt track for what felt like hours. As every painstaking minute passed we began to implode on ourselves. Small cracks began to creep across our minds the way glass begins to break under the pressure of heavy water.

"I need a drink." someone would whine and the crack would grow.

"I need a piss." someone else would say and the crack would leak begin to leak some fluid. I couldn't tell but I was sure it was leaking sanity. I was wrapped in the black cottony haze of semi-conscious drug sleep. Still, every pothole that slammed the cabin felt like a personal attack on my life. Gypsy said that the potholes felt like roadside fucking bombs. Other than that everybody was too decimated to talk. Sarah was shivering wildly then bursting into hot sweats. I was starting to really worry about her, and then she passed out. This truly was a car of the dammed. There was no water on board and the temperature in the cabin sat at about 30 degrees. The clouds above weighed low in the sky and their black electric green swelling promised a storm.

Walter continued to flee toward home. He did not succumb to our demands to stop; he had become possessed by the mystical oasis of his cosy bed and the heavy sedatives underneath it. He kept telling himself, "We're gonna make it, we're gonna make it," as he pushed the truck down the narrow road at a good 130 km/h.

"We're going home!" he roared, bursting with a desperate energy mustered in the form of some dex-amphetamine.

"Yee-haw!" I felt like I was in a scene from Dr Strangelove.

All of us bar Walther sat in silence. As I looked at the worn and dirty faces of my friends I could tell each one of us was breaking. In the spotlight of reality we were forced to piece together the fragmented memories of last night's massacre. I was desperately hoping for a cure to this horrid torment even if that meant a car crash. I looked across at Sarah, who had lost consciousness. Her normally gentle head jerked fiercely from left to right, for a minute terror overcame all other feelings.

'She's dead.' I thought, O.D or thermo-meltdown. Then I noticed her chest rising and falling steadily, she was not feverish. Sarah had managed to get to sleep. She was lucky. I unclipped her belt and let her rest across my lap. Gypsy petted her head cooing "there, there's..." I not sure who she was trying to soothe but her voice helped lift the whole car.

We arrived at Bright Street around three in the afternoon. My head felt like the sky, which was bursting with black clouds and stabs of white electricity. I was in a muttering state and cannot remember talking to anybody about anything. We jumped from the car like sailors from a burning ship. My mind was set on my bedroom. I clambered up the stairs and heard both Sarah and Gypsy calling out to me to come lay in the yard. I ignored them. I knew I had something special in my room. I had been saving for a special occasion, but I wasn't thinking. I didn't realise I had had over 200 mg of Oxy already in the last fifteen hours. I fished through my top drawer ignoring all my sacred rituals. In the back, hidden in a bottle of laxatives was the big one. A silverback, 100 mg morphine sulphate tablet, I really didn't even feel myself do the prep. Before I knew it I was lining up and then they were gone.

After that things became very hazy. I could hear the girls calling for me to come watch the storm. I ignored them because I needed a shower. I remember being in the bathroom in a towel. Then Sarah's face popped around the corner and blackness closed in from all sides and I collapsed. I awoke naked in the carport, lying on a foam mattress with the soaker hose blasting cold water all over me. Both Gypsy and Sarah sat over the top of me slapping various parts of my body in the hopes of reviving me. The looks on their faces when I opened my eyes would have broken my heart if I had one. Underneath the drawn out exhaustion I could feel their terror. Confusion and tears spread across their face, they had just saved my life.

Gypsy later told me that I had collapsed at the top of the stairs, and rolled down them in a lifeless slump losing my towel along the way. She and Gypsy had to drag my skinny naked body outside and spray me with water. Neither of the poor girls knew I was smacked out and they were coming down hard from the night of partying. Nobody was thinking clearly and somehow they had managed to get me to wake up. I had survived an overdose.

Later on I explained to the girls what had happened. After a little cussing and tears we all laughed like mad children. Then Gypsy and Sarah decided to strip down to their undies and there we lay, on the mattress. Together, almost nude, soaking wet until the streetlights came on and fruit bats filled the air. I was still so very high and above me the water trickled and gurgled. I was happy.

Chapter 19

Serendipity is the consequence of cause and effect. It is the hope that the dice will come up lucky when they have been knocked from your hands. My dice were bouncing along the table long before I had met Gypsy but she had her money on the same numbers. We got to talking- as you do. I figured that maybe we could play this game of chance together. She was young and street wise, happy to ride the currents of life with me. She was magnetic and I was never going to escape her influence. I didn't really want to. I was lonely and searching for something and what I found was extraordinary. Gypsy, a lighting bolt of raw essence, all woman, fast, beautiful and dangerous. She was sex, drugs and a shoulder all at once. She was so desperately hopeless and perfectly lovely. Everything about her was a train wreck, from her abusive past to her mental state, still she understood me. She understood what it was like to be empty and full all at once, to be screaming in silence and have everyone looking but nobody listening. She felt the pressure and knew how to stop the pain. As my closest companion we became entwined. We ripped open minds, pants and baggies of those around us with graceful abandon and hopeless conviction. I had found my equal. I had found Gypsy. Gypsy had saved my life. And maybe it's because of this reason that I didn't mind having her around. I was heading into uncharted water and I didn't want to go alone. I never saw Gypsy as somebody I could love. That I had reserved for Peachcake. But I was fond of her company and she could handle herself in sticky situations. She wasn't afraid of The Authority and was just as broke as I was. We had become very close in a very short amount of time. I was truly thankful to have her around. She was the only person I knew who could match me one for one with drug use and we shared that desolate raft of depression and addiction together. I'm certain she knew we were drifting into the endlessness of an ink black sea, where the sky can't be told from the horizon and everything is overwhelmingly dark. Maybe she was riding this raft long before I hopped on. She seemed to know what she was doing. Or maybe it was her maternal instinct. No matter what, she could always keep herself, and I, alive for just another day and another day and that was all we ever wanted. Gypsy had decided to stay with me after the New Year's fiasco. She said she didn't want me alone with all those drugs and razors.

She walks into my room on the second of January and says, "If you send me away you'll be dead by the end of the week."

I look at her standing there in a beautiful sundress with faded prints of hibiscus flowers and black rings under her tired eyes and I tell her, "Yes you can stay for as long as you want."

Her heart commanded a lunar power, with warmth that prickled my skin like sunlight. I could never say no to her and after I let her in we spent a week straight high and naked. We locked ourselves up in Bright Street and binged on everything we loved and hated.

Chapter 20

She would always spring things on me in the most direct way. It was the fourth or fifth day of our indulgent week. We were in the shower together after making love all afternoon. I remember steam billowing in the air and her pretty tired eyes looking up at me. Then she began to cry. And I said, "What's wrong" and she says, "I was raped when I was thirteen" then cries harder and harder so it's almost like the shower is finding it hard to keep up with her tears. She falls weak against me and I hold her.

"I was raped," she says as she buries her head against my chest. Her nails dig into my sides but I hardly feel them. I think to myself that I have to be strong now, but my blood goes weak and I can barely stand up. We are both high. I am too high to react and I just stand there and let her cry. For what feels like hours she cries and then the hot water runs out and as quickly as the temperature changes so does Gypsy. She becomes cold and distant. She leaves the shower with a shrill anger. I say nothing and stand there naked with the cold water running over me like my thoughts were doing on the inside. Hearing Gypsy telling me she had been raped was the most isolating feeling I have ever felt. The power of her pain hollowed me from the inside out. I wanted to crumble as unimaginable feelings of guilt flooded me. I felt like a river that was swollen to breaking with heavy rains. As I stood there the guilt flooded me. Because I knew I could not do anything. I knew everything had been done. I felt guilty that I hadn't noticed the signs. And I felt guilty that I complained about my petty problems to her. I turned off the shower and slowly dried myself. I was in a state of shock. I put on some pants and went to find her. She was in the kitchen trying to make soup. She had mixed a can of tomato soup with some tuna and pasta in a big silver pot. She was shaking as she stirred the pot.

I say softly, "Are you alright?"

She looks at me with hard heavy eyes that were still wet.

"I'm making soup," she sniffles and wipes her nose. Then in a rage: "coz there's no fucking food!" She slams the pot down in protest of her emotions. She looks away when she tells me and exhales a little, "It was my fault anyway."

"No." I say as I embrace her little figure. I lift her chin to see her face and try not to let her sadness break me. I promise to her that nothing like that will ever happen again. I hold her tight and tell her that it was not her fault. In myself feeling sick that I could not save her or even imagine what had actually happened in those brief decisive moments. I hold her and stroke her head gently. Later Gypsy said she was sorry for her outburst and told me that she doesn't hardly ever cry about it anymore. She said that it has become more like the unpleasantness of a far away place or a bad dream. But even when she says that, I can hear her voice waiver and crumble all over again. I hold myself together with the knowledge that I have to be here for her, and that I will kill anybody who ever tries to as much as touch her. Gypsy is my companion and I wonder if what I am feeling will become love. Gypsy is so brave, her strength makes my heart sing out.

"Can I have some Oxy?" she says after she finishes cooking the soup.

"If you like," I say. Gypsy, now glowing with happiness, walks off and comes back a few minutes later. That night we sat and watched television. The NEWS reported that it had scheduled 4 executions for suspected rapists in the first four days of the year and 12 indefinite terms for suspected drug suppliers.

"There'll be no one left soon," she says with sober and painfully accurate insight.

Chapter 21

Days passed across each other the way dancers move across a ballroom, precise with their steps amidst the controlled chaos. We were just like dancers as we slid through the days, never colliding and always moving to the beat of the drug. We thought of our excess the same way we thought of hot water in the shower. That it would never run out. For a short time we never thought we would ever come down. The conversation about the rape had disappeared into the fog of life in much the same way as all other matters of conversation did. We just forgot about it. It was easier to forget, easier to just hide away from our problems. So that's what we did. We hid inside the fog. Even simple tasks like stocking the fridge seemed not to matter anymore. Gypsy and I had been surviving off cigarettes and Oxy since we met. What little food we ate turned to concrete in our bowels. We were constipated and becoming restless.

Inside the drug fog a desire for change was coming. I could see it faintly at first like headlights far off on a lonely country road. I could tell something was there. It wasn't something graspable yet. We were still happy enough. Maybe it was in Gypsy's look when I dropped another spoonful of baked beans and rice onto the plate. It was a look that said 'Really? Baked beans and rice?' we'd been eating baked beans and rice for three days straight. Gypsy sat at the table looking almost horrified at the glumpy mess I called dinner. She flicked beans with her spoon the way a five year old would.

It was shortly after this that I looked out through the drug fog and I saw it. A great monster of steel and diesel, eighteen wheels tearing at the narrow road of my mind. The roar of the engine vibrated my heart and set the fear right into my bones. It was then it hit me; not the truck but an idea. We wanted food, real food. And we wanted to drink fine liquor. The need for evolution had forced us to act. We finally realised that all too soon the hot water would run out. We were going to make the most of it. The idea itself doesn't sound so glamorous. It sounded really bad the first time I said it aloud. I looked at poor Gypsy sitting like a child behind her plate of gruel and said, "Honey I'm going to get us some dinner."

"How?" she replied flatly.

"Take what you can; give nothing back. Ned Kelly said that!"

"You are an idiot."

Chapter 22

Of course there were risks to stealing. The Authority for one would lock us away for a few good years. Security in most shops was deadly accurate. And if we were ever caught we would never be allowed to enter the shops again but besides that... no worries. That night I jammed some steaks down the front of my pants. It was lame and awkward, reminding me too much of the night I lost my virginity. Wet in the front of my pants, the blood. Still as I ran further and further away from the store I realised I had done it.

"Who's the idiot now." I said as I dropped the hunk of cow into the skillet. Gypsy didn't say anything right away. She just stared at the meat and smiled.

Roughly a fortnight later Gypsy and I had perfected the art of shoplifting. Being a game where a single mistake can be fatal it is practical to learn fast. We had decided, considering the rest of our illegal activities, that we may as well save our few dollars for what we desired rather than what we needed. We learned to steal with only a few little hiccups. The minor stumbles we had when we started rather than get us arrested or deter us only inspired us to hone our skills and work at achieving perfection. Considering that we did little else with our time we found that focusing on stealing techniques became almost as intricate as developing the perfect mix of Oxy, Diazepam and Speed.

Gypsy and I tried out our techniques on a beautifully clear-aired morning. She was reading Charles Bukowski at the time. She had just read about the flour-water pancakes he and his lady would eat in their wretched hangover mornings. My stomach was growling and she wanted to do something nice for me. She called out that she could try and make flour-water pancakes and I happily agreed that that would be nice but we had no flour, butter or milk.

"What should we do?" I asked her.

"Let's do it." Gypsy beamed.

"Money?"

"No money," she smiled cheekily, her eyes glowing with excitement.

We drove down to the shops in my truck and entered the supermarket with the intent of getting food for free.

"Here goes nothing," I said as we burst through the supermarket doors. As I mentioned I had done this once before but that was spontaneous, this was a planned attack. For that reason it seemed that there was a lot more pressure, a lot more eyes on us. The supermarket seemed to be quite negative, the fluorescent lighting, the sedative music. It was all a little too nice.

We were paranoid on that first day, it wasn't obvious under the layers of drug fog. In hindsight however, it was running thick in our veins. I'm surprised those docile bastards couldn't smell the fear oozing out of our pores. I admit we weren't prepared on our first run. Partly due to our naivety, part due to our diminished brain function. We looked shifty in our raggedy clothes and bare feet. We lingered around the products for ten minutes before we had the courage to jam them into our pockets. I took the butter, which when in my pocket looked about as concealed as a brick in a pillowcase. Gypsy had a shelf stocker boy come up to her and ask if she could please take the vanilla essence out of her bra. She must have hidden it while he was perving on her tits. As I said, we weren't graceful that first day, we would have looked like sitting ducks on the camera. If there had have been an undercover security guard on duty that day he would have eaten us for breakfast. Luckily fate smiles on the meek and vulnerable. And it's true; necessity does breed creation. Within a few days we had honed our shoplifting skills to the point of perfection. We were neurosurgeons working on the brains of capitalism, and just as the neurosurgeon must master his craft almost instantly we too worked quick and clean leaving little to no scars. Over those delicious first pancakes, now fluffy with butter and syrup, deep red strawberries sliced on the side, Gypsy and I realised we had made a life changing step into the unknown. We had made the leap, now there was no going back. We would never pay for food again.

"What would you look for...?" I said between mouthfuls of pancake, "If you were a store detective?"

Gypsy looked at me with a cheeky smile "Us." she laughed.

"Exactly... us, and how can we fix that?"

Gypsy scratches her head and thinks for a minute, "By being someone else?"

"Exactly! Now how do we do that?"

"We dress up. I mean we dress nice, fit in. Look normal, we get a bag... like a satchel or something and we dress clean and wear shoes" Gypsy's eyes light up.

"Yes you crazy beautiful wild eyed... I love you." I plant a big wet kiss on her forehead.

"We go in as a nice young couple, we chat to the cashier, we build rapport." Her eyes shine with ideas, I can see them running across the back of her mind.

"Gyps this is fantastic."

"But we also gotta be confident," she says.

"Confident?"

"Yeah, quick and justified, like it's our duty to take from them, we can't stall like this morning. I stalled with the vanilla and that kid seen me."

"You're right."

As we sat in the kitchen, surrounded by luxurious syrups and fresh fruits I couldn't help but dance with joy. I pulled Gypsy out of the chair and spun her around like a top. We twirled and laughed and smiled. Then I kissed her with every ounce of joy I have ever known. We made love shortly after then showered together. After we showered we cleaned ourselves up and prepared to try again. We walked into the supermarket as different people. I was clean shaven and my hair was combed, Gypsy looked polite and church like. We moved fast, not stopping in front of anything, our hands moved smoothly and purposefully placing items of our choosing into a bag we had found in a cupboard at home. Within ten minutes the bag was almost full of everything imaginable, meat, dairy, garlic, tuna, tampons. We had kept a conscious thought to where the cameras were placed and avoided them but also figured it would cost the company a fortune to have someone manning them all the time and didn't worry too much. We also kept an eye out for store detectives. When it came time to leave we decided to up our chances of success by purchasing some small items. We went through the checkout with some seven cent beans and a two cent bag of pasta. The lady smiled politely and we chatted quaintly in return. Gypsy removed her purse to pay for the beans and then placed it on top of the goods. Then as we walked out like royalty the checkout lady asked almost with embarrassment if she could check our bag. I felt my throat tighten and knew that we had been caught. I prepared to run but Gypsy with her eternal radiance turned and said in her most pleasant voice, "Why of course, I wouldn't want you to get in trouble with your supervisor."

The lady smiled and glanced quickly into the bag, what she saw in there I don't know but when I had a look to see myself all I could see was a purse, it covered everything perfectly. She said thank you and we walked away. It was beautiful. As the days passed we got better and better at stealing. We began to test our skills out elsewhere. I swiped a bottle of Irish whiskey from a bottle shop while the clerk was busy flirting with Gypsy. It was amazing how easy it was to distract the eyes of the shop keeps. If they were young we could flirt our way around them. If they were older, a domestic argument would easily confuse the most Nazi of storeowners. My hands became like the hands of a magician who learns his card tricks so well he can do them blind folded. We had discovered a new way of survival. We had evolved. We were no longer hungry.

Chapter 23

"Where did you get all this?" William asked as he sat over the spread of cold meats and pasta salad's.

"Gypsy and I have decided if we're going to eat we are only going to eat the finest."

"But prawns?" said Mika as she dipped one into the seafood sauce. She munched it down hungrily.

"We would rather not get into how we got the food, just know that it is fresh and wonderful." Gypsy raised a glass of wine to toast. Everyone at the table raised their glass to cheer our good fortune. Even Stan, who had joined us halfway through the meal raised his glass to us and smiled. He looked apologetic and vague as though he knew something I didn't. We still hadn't talked about what had happened with Peachcake, but it was all water under the bridge as far as I was concerned. There was no reason to let the anger consume us. That day our world was perfect, we were the grains of sand reflecting the glorious sunshine. Washed clean by the body of the ocean. We didn't care how tiny and insignificant we were. Nothing mattered. We were full bellied, drunk and high. Blue fumbled with the records trying to find the perfect song. Walter turned his nostrils into MDMA freeways and Hugo popped his head in to say a brief and confusing hello. Gypsy and I played host to this little party like upper class socialites, we had wine on tap and fine whiskey abounding. By dusk everybody was in a fantastic mood. The music swayed and played and everyone had a smile on their face. More people arrived and the gathering had soon become an outright party. A bonfire was lit in the backyard and all the wooden chairs were used as kindling. The fire leaped and danced to the music. I was doing the 'funky chicken' with Gypsy and Blue. Mika was kissing her new boyfriend Jesus and everyone was having a ball. Thick juicy beats were bouncing throughout the house and people were swigging wine and whiskey from the necks of the bottles. Someone fell over and a bottle broke. Nobody minded.

Blue said, "Do you ever think how if we could take our money into the past we'd be rich right now?" she had an almost genius look in her wild eyes.

"You know you're right!" I shouted and then kissed her on the mouth quickly. I had always wanted to do that. Blue then slapped me and laughed madly.

The slap hurt a little more than I liked so I headed to my room to cut up a line. I had left Gypsy with Blue. They were kissing and touching each other on the lounge. Normally I would have tried to join in but the energy in the air was so fantastic I couldn't possibly wish to interfere with their fun. I walked into my room and closed the door, sliding the pad-bolt across as I did. I sat down at my desk and prepared to begin my little ritual when I heard a noise behind me. I turned around and there was Peachcake sitting on my bed. She sat almost professionally, like a lawyer or a doctor would. Not slouching or looking down but directly at me. She wore glasses that made her look like a businesswoman but behind them I can see the faint traces of tears. She looked beautiful sitting there, and she seemed almost harmless. For an instant I almost ran to her. I wanted to fall to her breast and beg that she never leave. Then I remembered who she really was. I pushed the thought of touching her out of my mind and endured with my Oxy ritual. I could hear her weeping behind me, the sobs sounded forced and made me angry.

I ask indifferently "What do you want?"

Peachcake didn't reply, this was typical of her cryptic head fuck.

"Has the guilt got to you?" I asked sharply. Still she didn't reply. "Stan's outside, why don't you go see him?"

I lower my head and snort a line with one nostril then using the other nostril I snort the other.

The Oxy burned a dry path down my throat. I stood up and headed for the door. I almost had my hand to the doorknob when Peachcake muttered the words "I'm pregnant."

My hand fell from the door and the blood seized up in my veins.

"I'm pregnant." she said again. For a moment I was stuck in this agonising limbo. I had been bombed by the news and by the drugs. I felt like I had been punched, my ears started ringing with a piercing alarm. I rolled my head back, cracking it from side to side, letting the Oxy do its work. Then I exhale.

"And this is my problem how?" I say to her exhausted.

"Because it's yours."

I stop to think. Peachcake is sitting on my bed claiming that she is pregnant. So what? It could be anybody's. Why was she dragging me back into her sick game? Who the fuck let her in anyway?

I say, "Peachcake get the fuck out of my room."

I don't want to see her face, or her eyes or hear her lies. She doesn't move, she just sits there blank faced like a tax accountant or a statue. There is no emotion in her eyes, just a warped notion of justifiable fact.

"Peachcake" I say again, "the day before New Years I caught you fucking Stan."

"I wasn't fucking him..." She says sheepishly "I was giving him head."

"Ha!"

"We never slept together!"

"Peachcake, when I look at you I want to kiss your mouth, I want to hug you and say that yes I will help you through this, but then I see you see you sucking Stan's cock, I see you bent over the bed being fucked at any angle by Stan, or your boyfriend or any other cunt who you take a fancy to."

"It's not like that," she pleads.

"What's it like then?" I ask pushing my fingers into my eyes until the sockets hurt.

"I always use a condom," she says weakly.

"Except with me? Or is it that you don't want to bring home diseases to your boyfriend?"

"Look Alex." she says, "I did the math, I was with you when I conceived."

"Peachcake, get out."

I open the door for her to leave. She stands and walks to me. She moves in close and whispers into my ear, "I need you now" then kisses me on the side of my neck, almost hangs her whole weight off me when she hugs me.

"Please go," I say quietly.

Peachcake leaves and I am alone in my room. All around me I see that everything is still neat and ordered. My books are all placed neatly and ordered in rows upon the bookshelf. My bed is made neat and the brown bearskin blanket that had aroused so many bodies stretches quietly across the king size mattress. My dirty clothes lie heaped in a small pile at the foot of the bed, everything in this room is pleasant. It is clean and nice. Somehow even though the walls are caving in around me, this room remains the one safe place I can lay my heavy head. I pack away the razor and the mirror. 'What has happened to me?' I ask myself. Terrible thoughts circle around my head like vultures waiting for me to crack. I have been given a burden just now and no matter what I do to ignore it, I know it will remain. The truth is Peachcake may not be lying, and if she isn't, this is very bad.

Outside the party continues. I can hear laughter and things breaking under the wrath of drunkenness. In these times of despair I feel an uncontrollable urge to submerge myself in water. The joy that has been stolen from me is replaced by waves of sadness. I undress and wrap myself in a towel. I go into the bathroom only to find Mika and Jesus making love in the shower. They are high as kites on something or other and have no shame in being naked in front of me. I tell them I need a bath and they don't much mind me running a bath while they screw each other on the basin next to me. Normally, I would be aroused watching two young lovers getting clean together; but not tonight. I cannot shake Peachcake from my mind. I stare at my reflection in the water. I look okay. I tell myself 'everything will be just fine.' I am naked and I can feel my penis instinctually wanting to rise at the sound of Mika and Jesus but instead I hide under the surface of the water. A feeling worse than losing control had taken hold of me. The thoughts weighed me down. I was betrayed by this girl- deceived. She was gone, forgotten. I had moved on. Still, if she was pregnant. If it were mine I had to help her. Then again anyone could have got her pregnant. Then again she may not even be pregnant. This could just be another one of Peachcake's head fucks. I find myself in this brief period of consciousness wondering how something so sudden could hit me so hard. My friends told me this would happen, but then again my best friend fucked Peachcake too. Am I losing control of my life, the objects, the order, they mean nothing anymore. Underneath the reality a slow motion disaster unfolds. Gypsy cannot be my rock, she cannot even know about this. Stan can't help. I could never trust him. My lungs feel as though they are filled with concrete and as I look at Mika kissing Jesus's neck. I decide not to think. Jesus's buttocks muscles contract and tighten with each thrust as he drives them both to ecstasy. I slowly get an erection and masturbate. I nod off in the water as the silence finally slows my body and blood. Time passes beyond my reach until suddenly I am ripped awake. Gypsy shakes my shoulders violently. We are only inches apart when she opens her mouth.

"You fucking arse hole!" she screams and she slaps me hard across the face. The blow sounds like meat hitting a chopping board. I focus then notice Gypsy has cuts down her left cheek.

"Gyps what's up?"

"What's up you fucker, you know what's up", she looks at me in a way I've never seen. Her face is drawn back in an ugly scowl and her eyes are wide. "Your whore hit me. She says she's carrying your baby!"

"Gypsy that girl is insane, she is just..."

"The bitch hit me and said if I go near you she'll kill me!"

I explain to Gypsy what happened. She calms down when I tell her that it is all lies and that Peachcake is just trying to get attention. Gypsy glares at me trying hard not to let out any tears. Her skin is perfect and smooth even when she is bent with rage.

"Don't worry" I whisper, "Don't worry"

Gypsy allows me to hug her and when I do I get a feeling like all the animals are silent before an earthquake. The party ends in the early hours. Gypsy and I make love and sleep heavy. When I wake up there are 17 messages on my phone. All of them from Peachcake, they say I need to call her, meet her, be with her. I take a few val's and eat breakfast. Gypsy wanders around in nothing but a shirt and she makes me smile. It hangs down just a few inches past her buttocks and I know its her way of saying lets fuck, but I've got too much on my mind. The scratches on her face remind me that last night was real and that I need to make this go away. I text Peachcake and tell her to meet me outside the women's clinic in half an hour. I throw on a pair of old blue jeans and a button up shirt. As I walk towards the front door Gypsy jumps up behind me and yells "surprise". She kisses me wholly and knocks me against the wall. Before I can say stop she is pulling down my jeans and running her tongue along the underside of my penis. She pulls me to the ground and mounts me. She grinds hard and fast, her pussy is not fully lubricated and I can feel it tearing at the soft skin around our genitals. After a few minutes she is done. She kisses me again and says, "Have a beautiful day" then hops off and goes into the kitchen. She doesn't even ask where I am going. I leave before she thinks too.

Chapter 24

Peachcake draws on a cigarette. The smoke floats like a mystic jellyfish before a breeze catches it, obliterating any trace of its existence. She sits on a bench besides the newly resurfaced road. The smell of tar fills the air and every so often a council worker give her the wolf whistle. Her leg is shaking as I approach and she looks nothing like the exotic vixen I met back in September. She is weak now, broken. Her game has played her now I am supposed to be her get out of jail free card.

"It's yours Alex," she says stubbing out the cigarette.

"Don't even try and pin this on me. You're lucky I came. This is not my responsibility."

"Please Alex, you're all I have."

"Bull shit Peach."

"It's true, it's not Stan's and I only ever use condoms with my boyfriend... It's yours." Peachcake looked so sad sitting there on that bench, her smoke dying limply in her fingers. Tears falling down her face in heavy streams that mix with the mascara making messy tracks down the sides of her face. She looked so small sitting there, so impossibly innocent of being anything but wonderful. I knew I was being coerced. I could feel the acting, the deliberate pauses in her sentences. I did not want to sit down. I should have not sat down. I wanted to walk away. I should have walked away. But I caught the scent of her hair over the smell of tobacco. I froze. Then I melted. I should have left this hunched over stray to spill her litter all across the burning hot tar. Yet I could not forget that part of me that loved her. I sat down and put my arm over her shoulder.

"It's alright Peachcake, I'm here."

"Thank you Alex," she whispers up against my ear. She rubs her leg against my leg and puts her hand up into my groin. My cock notices instantly and I want her. I lift her hand and put it in her lap.

"I'm with Gypsy now." I tell her. She slides away from me; clearly offended.

"But I thought we..."

"There is no we."

At this we both fall silent. Our relationship is a game of chess. We need silence to plot our next move. I stare out at the street. Cars roll by, people wave at each other. I look at these people, each one's life controlled by The Dollar, each one destined to live a perfectly mechanical life. They will never know the truth of a real life. Everything will be orchestrated. But this will not happen to us. Peachcake will carry the baby. She will give birth to it. She has no choice. With abortions being a felony against the Authority I know she is going to hitch herself to me and never let go. I should have walked away then. Instead I let her manipulate me. The breeze died down as we sat there deciding what to do. The heat from the sun burned down flat and hot. The road smelt like tar. A golden Labrador padded past dragging its lead behind it. Peachcake let it lick her hand and she smiled weakly. I was looking at her face. She had such an innocent beauty. I patted the lab.

"Good boy" I said, "Good boy."

Dogs are great. I love dogs. It's cats you have to watch, they'll claw you any chance they get. I'm a dog person really. I never liked cats. Then the owner comes running up and thanked us for holding her dog, then she left and we were alone again. I didn't know what to do, or how to help. We could terminate if we found the right doctor and got some cash. We made strange plans to be together but knew that they were all just fantasy. Our dreams were like the ghosts of lovers, haunting the process of nature.

"I've got to go," I tell her.

"Bye." she says smiling that smile I loved so much. Smiling that smile of victory.

Chapter 25

In summer the sun stays up all day and at seven pm it is still sunny in a low way. I had let the time slip away from me. I had left Peachcake sitting alone on the park bench. With a bottle of whiskey under my arm I had wandered the town searching for answers. My phone rings while I am sitting at Lucky Box Chinese. I had ordered fried rice and fortune cookies. Gypsy's on the other end.

"Where the fuck are you?" She roars.

"Lucky Box." I say.

"Are you with her?"

"No."

"Fucking whore!" Gypsy explodes into a rant that lasts for minutes. I put the phone down and break open another fortune cookie. In little black letters on a piece of paper half the size of a matchbook I am told 'the willingness of fox is no match for shell of tortoise'. I hang up the phone without saying goodbye. The whiskey looks good. I finally stumbled home around midnight. Gypsy had been waiting for me and when I walked through the door she exploded. I was greeted by a glass of water flying through the air. I tried to explain myself but my tongue was stumbling over itself and projectiles kept whizzing by my head. The situation was dire.

"Fuck Alex, it's not yours and you know it. She's just using you!" Gypsy screamed as she smashed plates and threw empty bottles of beer at me. I looked briefly to her feet and I noticed the large stockpile of cutlery and bottles. I've got to say something in my defence but my brain is too soggy to comprehend the situation. I stumble again.

"And you're drunk!" she screeches. Gypsy is staunch and ready to strike, her bottom jaw sticks out in a sign of primitive anger. Her brow folds along her eye line in a deep crease. Then with an explosion of frustrated anger Gypsy punches the wall in three quick blows that cut her hand wide open. Blood begins to trickle onto the floor. She doesn't seem to notice her injury and when I try to approach her, nay even move from my spot she flicks her tongue, "Don't you fucking move!"

"You need a rag, your hand..."

"What I need is my boyfriend to be here, not off fucking that insane little slut."

I say nothing. Gypsy's hands are trembling and her eyes are black, like they go on and on forever inside her head. She shakes her head a bit then looks down.

"Look what you made me do!" she roars, the words barely audible almost sounded like another language. She bends down and picks up a bottle. Blood continues to flow freely from the top of her hand. Then she charges at me. It all happens so quickly I don't have time to move. Gypsy brings the bottle down on my head in a quick arc motion. It shatters and my vision lights up with a flash of white light. Then I am stunned and after a few seconds my scalp is drenched with a hot wet river of blood.

"Fuck." I pant as I gain my senses.

"I'm sorry darling, I'm sorry..." Gypsy's pleading, kissing me and trying to inspect my head. There was blood everywhere. "I didn't mean to, I didn't... You just work me up so."

"Is it bad?" I asked her.

"Does it hurt baby?" she says. Gypsy is now fretting over me like a mother bird.

"Is it bad Gypsy?" I yell in frustration.

"Oh honey," she says kissing my head soothingly, "we need to get you to a hospital."

I looked at Gypsy's face. Where she had kissed me she wore a beard of red. Gypsy took off her top and used it to mop the blood. Then she tied it around my scalp, stemming the fast flowing river of red.

Before we left we downed some Oxy and Gypsy wrapped her hand in the white linen bandage she used for her art projects. We spent three hours in hospital. I had to get pieces of glass washed out of the cut and five stitches in my forehead. Gypsy got those little butterfly clips over her knuckles. They gave us some Endone for the pain, the cheap bastards. I was supposed to stay overnight for observation. We left when they handed us the drugs. On our way home Gypsy looked real sad and remorseful. I could tell her mind was filling with black eels of doubt and jealousy.

I said, "Don't worry Peachcake will be gone quicker than she came."

Gypsy was sniffling a bit, wiping her nose on the sleeve of her shirt. She looked at me for a long time before she said, "I don't believe you Alex... I see how you talk about her. You would never talk about me like that."

"She's gone Gyps," I add trying to make her believe it.

Gypsy smiled with a face that reminded me of warm days, a look that would smell like fresh bread. If you could smell looks that is. Gyp's was weak but honest, she didn't fuck around and said it how she saw it. She didn't believe me one iota that Peachcake was gone. But what choice did she have? What choice did any of us have? When we got home we talked for most of the night. She was certain that the pregnancy was a cry for attention. A plot to destroy everything we had. She had a valid point. It was already threatening to rip our world apart. I didn't know what to do, and Gypsy was just following me. In the end the drug fog consumed us. We bombed out on diazepam and Speed and forgot all about Peachcake. We fucked on the kitchen bench in the twilight dawn. I had Gypsy bent over the sink and she kept saying, 'Hurt me, rip my pussy open', and I said 'you like that you dirty bitch'. I was standing there holding Gypsy's waist driving myself deeper and deeper into nothingness. I was conscious of nothing else and then something happened. Somewhere in that shameless act of fucking we lost ourselves. And I think now, that is enough.

Chapter 26

A few days later we had begun to run out of supplies. Things were abrasive. I had not heard from Peachcake. I had locked myself away. Gypsy and I lay in my bed. The pain knocks steadily on the inside of my skull. Drumming the word 'Peachcake, Peachcake, Peachcake'. My nose runs like a tap.

"What are you thinking about?" Gypsy asks.

Things had changed now, no matter how much I tried to deny it the world had become a different place. I stare at her, bleakly repulsed by her curiosity. "How can I answer that?" I bark at her. She sits there, looking blankly at me then she shrugs her shoulders.

"You just look sad that's all."

She is right. I feel worse than sad. But I say nothing. All I can think about is the thick black hairs above her upper lip. I want to yell ' have you're fucking moustache'. They sit there like thick greasy leaches and I hate each one completely. This is what I have become, looking through the haze of a month long Oxy binge. I am coming down, hard and reality has me cornered. Gypsy sits in front of me smiling wide, trying her best to pretend we aren't falling to pieces. She spreads her legs. She has no panties on. Her cunt is thick lipped and hairy.

"You wanna fuck me?" She asks rubbing her hand across the little patch of brown.

My eyes see Gypsy, but my mind strays again. All I can think of is Peachcake. Somewhere across town she waits for me. She calls and calls but I ignore the phone. I cannot stop thinking of her. I know that she wants me to feel this way and I know I should fight what she is doing. Yet I cannot help myself, I long to see her.

I slide across the bed and carefully move the mirror away from Gypsy, onto the dresser. I move slowly, careful not to spill the last of our supplies. I cut a line from the larger mound of white.

'The last of the drugs' I think as I look at the mound of powder. A part of me wants to throw the mirror across the room and rid us of this evil. But the junkie in me uses my hands to work the razor and hold the hollow pen steady. I snort two big lines. They do nothing. Gypsy takes off her top. Then she is naked. As I look into her, I ask myself 'Do you want to do this'. It's the same question I've found myself asking more and more frequently and I cannot answer either way. I don't know what I want. I like the drugs and I like the freedom. But I'm not free and I cannot get high off the drugs. I am trapped. I am lost in the fog that is my life. Gypsy was supposed to be my messiah. Now she is just as fucked up as me. She was my saint, now she is my vessel for sex and drugs. We fight and complain. It's falling down. All I want to do is take a crap, but I can't even do that.

I look into Gypsy's eyes. I know she cares about me. I know she sees me as her lighthouse in this storm. But she is wrong. I am a rock, and I will smash her open and bring her sinking under the waves. I will bring her down until she drowns with me. Gypsy is strange, violent and broken. I don't know if she could handle a heartbreak. So when I ask myself 'Do you want this?' why do I fall into her breast? We share each other. She is naive and truthful. She is the exact opposite of Peachcake. I know she would never lie to me or betray me but I cannot love her. I don't even want to touch her.

I don't know why we ended up here, or how we are so naked. We are stripped raw and all we can do is fuck the pain away. She holds out two little pills in her soft brown palm.

"Want one?" She asks.

I look at her body. It's smooth and curvy. Her breasts are full and sit perfectly on her chest. There is something peaceful and maternal about them. I imagine the dark skin of her thighs giving way to the pink entrance to her vagina.

"They'll help you keep it up," she says kindly.

I take them. They stick in my throat, filling my mouth with a poisonous taste. Gypsy begins to kiss me and I use her saliva to help wash them down. Then she gently strokes my cock with her hand as though she can feel my torment and wishes to soothe it. I want to fight her comfort. I want to be away from this girl. I don't want to sleep with her. I don't want to fuck her. Yet I need her. She is all I have. She is the love I never had. Without her I am lost. Everything feels heavy. The bed is cold and empty. It is an empty field of dried semen loneliness and sweat-drenched heartache. I want to fight her advances, but I don't. All around me the walls begin to melt and my muscles become heavy. Purple smoke fills the room. A pink flamingo in a top hat stalks through the mist. It looks at me with an indifferent glance then raises its foot up to tip his hat. Gypsy mounts me as I lay there hypnotised. I feel her pussy slide over me. She rolls her pelvis back and across my cock, absorbing me. She grinds her clitoris against my pubis. A neon halo appears above her head and the room bursts into flames. The wallpaper curls from the heat. Gypsy smiles wickedly as she comes hard, ripping my hair with her long fingers. All around me I hear sirens wailing, people screaming. Then I hear tormented weeping, like a mother watching her child die. Then I hear a baby. The faint sound of a crying baby, the sound is distant yet all around. It gets louder, closer, louder, then louder, then closer and closer. Then the baby is in the room. The crying pierces my ears with unending pleas for help. Then with a blink the vision is gone. Gypsy is straddling my waist wiping the sweat off her forehead; she is gently saying my name. She notices my awkwardness and asks "What is it?"

"Just a flashback." I reply.

"That's the third one this week, I'm worried about you."

I ignore her worry. I am sweating all over and my skin is crawling with invisible lice.

"I don't know Gyps, let's just have a shower or something," I say.

We get up and Gypsy wraps herself in a sarong. In the afternoon light Gypsy did look beautiful. The impression I knew of her, from before was completely contradicted. We showered together and I felt safe. I was surrounded by the scents of the shampoos and the static sound of the water. In this safeness I got to thinking. Once not so long ago, when I fucked Gypsy I was free to live in the oblivion that violent hard fucks provided. All the worry just exited in my load. Now that was changing. Sex was the second best escape. It may have only been a short high, but it was so powerful. It was matched with no other drug in its ecstasy. It helped escape the pain of coming down, and passed the time between pickups. Admittedly sex for us most days was nothing more than a great waste of time. After dosing up on the usual cocktail we'd do no more than roll around, making a mess of things. We'd move with each other until we were both exhausted. Then we'd be pitted with beads of sweat that stained our sheets with the familiar scent of our bodies. Neither of us would cum, but we could justify the exhaustion as being as good as the climax.

This was once the glory of sex, the exhaustion. Now I am haunted in sex. I cannot maintain wood, and if I do I am hijacked by visions. Visions that steal away whatever sanity I have left. Whisking me off on a flash to the brain. Just the way a magician would take the tablecloth away before your eyes. Exhaustion was a good place. It was a place where nothing could penetrate. In exhaustion the seconds became forever and I could forget the endless need for drugs. I could forget that I am fucking Gypsy. In exhaustion I could swim past the waves of life that bucketed me with relentless fury. I could swim free in the oceans of nothingness. Away from her shore, Peachcake was gone. In exhaustion I didn't love her, for there is no love in nothingness. In exhaustion I do not miss her, or long to hold her. In nothingness I do not imagine her as I come in Gypsy. Surrounded by exhaustion I know the sweat is real. The blood is real, but Peachcake is not. In that climatic moment of exhaustion I am free of it all. Gypsy is the only other body in the room and that is just fine by me.

When we finish fucking Gypsy lies with her eyes closed, breathing deeply ignoring the moment when time returns. Gypsy would lay there open and completely free, rubbing the insides of her thighs slowly in nondescript circles. During the period of exhaustion time stops and this is beautiful. But then at a pace that is almost visible. Time stretches around our bodies. The arms begin to move on clock, as the clock begins to move on the wall. A heavy wave of backlog builds up, rising over the bed frame. The coming weight of time hits down on us with such a suffocating force that it envelopes me in a wave that crashes over my whole body and makes me lose my breath.

I open my eyes and inhale deeply. I am back in the shower. Gypsy is covered in soapsuds, the water runs static in my ear.

Later we are mewing in the bedroom. I am stoned, wandering through the superthoughts of a daydream. I'm not thinking anything in particular when Gypsy barks, "Fuck Alex, you're like a fucking puppy." She jumps off the bed and reaches for the plate of powders.

"I know you're thinking it," she says as she smashes the razor against the mirror, "and I'm telling you, it's not yours."

"Take it easy, Gyps." I say her as she cuts a line of MS.

Really I'm too fucked to care, but I don't appreciate being accused of things I haven't done. My words come out hazy like, "Taaakee it eeezay" and this makes Gypsy's anger rise instinctually. She bends over the dresser. I gaze upon her and see her for what she truly is. A young girl who's grown twisted. The way a tree grows when dwarfed by bigger trees. In Gypsy's case the bigger trees were neglect, abuse and pain. She is so young, yet so old all at once. She has seen so much, been through so much. If life had theme songs hers would be 'Venus in Furs' by Velvet Underground. She breaks my heart, with her patchwork attempt at life. Gypsy is a fallen angel calling to the heavens for help. Yet they ignore her. She is pretty, not beautiful. She is knowledgeable, not intelligent. She is the girl who will always come second. It breaks my heart that she will always be this way. She is right in a way; Peachcake is on my mind. Not in the front but somewhere in there. Until she is gone, Gypsy will never come first and she knows it.

Chapter 27

A few days later and we are crashing down. We had run out of opiates and my head felt like it was being crushed between two slabs of concrete. My nose was running and I spewed twice before breakfast, then three times after, my eggs and toast filling the sink in a chunky mess. I could hear Gypsy in the shower moaning. We were drying out. The next three or four days were going to be bad. Peachcake had tried to break in sometime during the night. I had slept through it, thus the beauty of Quintazapine. But Stan told me she had beaten on my door for almost an hour. Gypsy had no recollection of it either and when he told us she had stayed in his bed, Gypsy smiled and I shook my head. I wanted to ask him if he knew about her pregnancy but since she had come between us we rarely talked.

I had to get some Oxy fast but Hugo was away on business. Which meant he was non-existent. Which meant we had to face the pain of coming down. Gypsy and I snapped and bit at each other all day. She was moaning and screeching and eating codeine pills by the half dozen. By noon I had buried myself in a bottle of whiskey. I had drunk the whole bottle by three and become numb to the yearning pain of withdrawals. I stayed drunk to ease the pain. But Gypsy could not take it. Somewhere in the black drunkenness Gypsy said she was going out. I was snapping at everything and didn't bother to ask her what she was doing. All I could think about was getting high. A few hours later Gypsy comes strolling in looking fine and acting sheepish.

"Why are you so healthy?" I say suspiciously. Gypsy ignores me and starts to make a sandwich. She cuts a tomato with a sharp knife. Her hand is as steady as a heart surgeon. "Don't fuck with me Gypsy," I say, "What have you been doing?"

"Well you were passed out and I..." she begins.

"You what?" I asked angrily grabbing the knife out of her hand.

"I'm high okay, fuck. I'm fucking high."

"Did you save me any?"

"I couldn't." she says.

"You bitch." I say through clenched teeth, "Where did you get the money?"

Gypsy avoids eye contact and tries to get past me.

She says, "Move I need to use the toilet."

"How did you get the money?" I yell into her face. I am so angry she has gone behind my back. My head is pounding and I can barely see past the brightness of the day. "What did you do Gypsy?"

"I don't want to talk about it." She slaps me across the face and pushes past. The next minute I hear the shower running.

"I think I'll call Peachcake, see how she's holding up!" I yell. It's a low blow but not lower than Gypsy scoring without me. The shower stops. Gypsy bursts into the kitchen wrapped in just a towel.

"Go back to the cock sucking bitch then!" she screams. Her eyes are pinpoints and they burn into me.

"Fuck you Gypsy, tell me how you got high or I'll call her."

"Fuck you, how about you shut your fucking mouth. All you ever do is bring me down. Turn anything nice into fucking shit."

"Fuck you Gypsy, who'd you fuck?"

"Someone who fucks better than you!" she yells.

"I knew it, you fucking whore!" my words are slick and venomous.

"Don't give me that shit, you're still in love with that psychotic bitch, and you expect me to wait around?"

"We go up together and we come down together, that was the deal."

"The deal ends when I see her in your eyes every time we fuck, I've found someone who likes me and fucks me properly. His cock is bigger and thicker than your shitty piece of string and he can keep it up."

"How long?" I say, "have you been doing this?"

"Fuck you Alex, I don't need to tell you shit."

"You fucking bitch, you sit there talking about thick, long, fucking cocks reminding me that mine is no where near good enough. Cheating on what we had. Fuck you!"

"No fuck you Alex, I'm sick of hearing this shit. You don't know how to apologise, you always put me down, you always have that bitch on your mind and to top it off I found your secret stash of Oxy. I'm sick of it, and I'm sick of you!"

Just like that Gypsy and I are at war. She claws at my face and I try to hold her wrists. She becomes so violent she tries to head butt me. She attacks me the moment I put any weight on her forearms. I get hit in the nose and I feel the warm wet congestion of blood in my sinus. Then she is out the door and gone. Blood pours down the front of my shirt. I clamber down the stairs after her.

"Wait!" I yell sounding weak and nasally.

"Fuck you cunt!" she screeches. The words echo through the quiet street. I decide not to follow her. Instead I get in my car, start the engine. Just before I leave the driveway I look at myself in the mirror. I think to myself 'What a mess'. I drive with blood all down my shirt and no place in mind. I do laps of Peachcake's last known address, hoping to see her. I don't. I drive home at dusk, tired, sore and soaked in blood. Really nothing has changed. In the fridge is a bottle of wine. Stan is sitting in the lounge room. When I walk in he bursts out laughing.

"Shut up." I tell him. I don't need his shit-not now. Before he can ask what happened I am in bed. I eat four val's and am consumed by blackness midway through my bottle of wine.

Chapter 28

The next morning I awoke hung-over and aching, I am wet and sticky from spilling the wine in my bed. I have a shower and inspect my nose. Besides a little bruising it looks okay. I had breakfast and wandered around the house. I was anxious and bored, it was too early to drink and I was out of opiates. I sit in the backyard and think to myself. I think that I find myself wandering a lot these days. I am barely ever here, wherever here is. It is almost like I am sitting in a window box to my own life. I see the tree or the road but they don't exist to me. I am slowly fading into non-existence. I hear people say, talk to a friend, have someone there for you. I feel like I am totally alone. It is a scary feeling, almost like vertigo. I am standing on one spire of cold stone surrounded by nothing, just empty air on all sides for as far as the eye can see. My feet kick pebbles into the nothingness and I never hear them hit the ground. Is there even ground out there? I wonder how long I can stay out here; out on this rocky island prison no bigger than a coffee table. Every time I close my eyes I imagine falling. I feel the air rushing upon me then hard impact of certainty, finality; relief. Still when I open my eyes I am standing on the ledge and relief seems so far away.

When these thoughts take me I cannot fight the low depression. I felt nothing when I made the call. It was a possession. I picked up the phone. I dialled her number. Then I hear her voice, metallic and interfered by Authority wire taps. I tell her to come see me. She agrees. And although I should be feeling something I notice only the absence of anything. I sit in the lounge room while I wait for her. The morning music show Rage plays some beautiful music but I hear nothing. Sickness fills my stomach and I feel eyes weighing heavy. This is wrong, yet compelled I ignored the feeling. The wrongness and the weight pressing down from invisible heights, I ignore the warnings. Then just like that. She bursts through the door. She doesn't knock. I hear her footsteps rumbling up the stairs. She is saying, "Oh Alex, I missed you" all giggly and childish.

"I'm in here." I reply flatly as Peachcake sweeps into the lounge room. The way her eyes fall upon me, they could have easily had been talons. Our eyes meet. Peachcake sees what state I'm in and I see in her eyes that she sees. It's an odd moment of reality. In those coffee bean eyes I see the satisfaction, the recognition. I see an artist gazing upon her sculpture-'yes this will do'.

She asks, "Where's Gypsy?"

One word falls from my tired lips "Gone."

The smile I loved so much rises across her lips. Peachcake moves in to kiss me. It is then, between the smile and when she tries to kiss me that I feel it, a falsity, forced empathy. I smell it as an intrusive odour I cannot ignore. I catch a glimpse behind the mask. I see malice the same as you'd see someone's age beyond their plastic surgery. Peachcake kisses me, thrusting her devils passion upon me but I feel nothing. This is not the action of someone who is pregnant. I start to think that Gypsy was right. No, I accept that Gypsy was right. This woman doesn't need me. She just wants to fuck my life up. Then again how can I be sure, I have not been sober in weeks and that makes decisionmaking impossible. But whose fault is that, hers? Mine? I let her kiss me. I am a wreck. Why does this girl want to kiss me? Something is very wrong here.

"Stop." I say, but Peachcake continues. She latches herself onto me and holds steady. "Peaches, the baby," I continue.

"Your baby." she replies.

"No." I tell her, "I've called you here because I'm telling you it's over. Do what you want but leave me out of it, don't come here in the night and don't threaten Gypsy."

Peachcake pulls back in anger, she hasn't expected this from someone so weak. Still she doesn't say anything. Her eyes scan mine for any remaining weakness. She finds nothing and instead slaps me. The strike stings but awakens me to how far she is willing to go. How desperate she is to win her trophy.

"I'm going to disappear tomorrow. You won't see me anymore."

"You can't."

"Yes I can, and I will."

I look at her. She is still beautiful, a living poem, red hair, gothic eyes and an endless autumn of mystery. Her skin is flawless and her breasts shine through like two perfect dewdrops. Before she tries to trap me any further I say, "This is how I see it. You're not pregnant, and if you are it's not mine. You're using me for your own sick games and I don't want to be a part of it. I thought I loved you once. I thought we had something, but you're just a fucking liar and probably insane as well. I'm done."

"Okay..." she trails out, stuck for words.

This is it. I kiss her cheek and say, "I didn't want this from us" then I walk to my room, pack a bag of clothes. Peachcake doesn't say a word. She doesn't leave either. I sling the bag over my shoulder and walk out the door, leaving Peachcake sitting in my lounge room. I turn my back on Bright Street and think, 'maybe Stan will have better luck'.

Chapter 29

I had found my way to the park. I had also found myself three quarters through a bottle of whiskey. I was sitting under a huge camphor tree. Its roots were as big as park benches and I was nestled nicely with my bag as my pillow. I felt like a rat in a filthy nest. I had planned to head to Gypsy's house at dusk but the whiskey hadn't mixed well with the Diazepam and I passed out under the branches of that great tree. I awoke to a cold hand on mine. I snapped awake and jumped until I caught my heart; which had jumped three feet in the air. In front of me a pale thin creature of a man stared down on me. He looked about my age but had a hue of death all about him. He snatches the bottle of whiskey out of my hand and pours himself a generous half into his open blue lips. He has no shirt and his jeans are ripped at the knee and buttocks. A long black trench coat hangs off his shoulders.

"Who are you?" I asked.

"I am Floyyd," he says, his voice sounding like the rattling of dice in a cup.

"Where did you come from?" I ask.

"I come from here," he says with a shrug. His energy is heavy and black. I immediately want to get away from this man. I shift my weight to stand up and he jumps on me. His skin is leathery and even though he looks light, he is strong.

"I'm here for you Alex," he pants. His teeth are stained yellow and black his hands grapple for my genitals.

"Get the fuck off me!" I shout.

"No use screaming," he says, "I'm not even here."

Then he disappears. I am alone in the park. The tree is big and green waxy. I am small, confused and scared. My first night on the streets and I get molested by a demonic homosexual hobo, the fuckingcontemporary grim reaper, no doubt.

Chapter 30

It was well late by the time Floyyd had got me. I had nowhere to go. I was thin like a drowned cat and broke, sick, half mad. I contemplated calling someone but pride stilled my hand. My heart yearned to call Gypsy but we needed time. I was ready to accept my place on the street. I laid back down and got comfy. Thoughts of Floyyd still lingered in my mind, yet the whiskey made it heavy. I was almost asleep when I got a call from Hugo. He was ringing to see if I wanted in on a deal he was doing. I told him I needed a place to crash. He told me I could stay in his shed for a week if I needed. I said yes. A week would save me. I drove my XF out to his property. When I arrived, Hugo was standing in his driveway. He had his .38 in his left hand and a bottle of rum in his right.

"You son of a bitch!" I yelled as I killed the engine.

"What the fuck happened to you?" he laughed.

"Me, what about you? Rum and a gun, Brigit must be away."

"You know it buddy." he laughed.

After that we got on it big time. I told him the story of my current situation and he laughed the whole way through. He then told me about his first wife and I laughed. Somehow just being away from Bright Street, away from Gypsy and Peachcake. I felt better. I felt normal. I still had massive drug in my blood but I was all right. That week I slept soundly. I had no hallucinations. Floyyd didn't return. I worked on Hugo's gardens and cleaned his gutters, as my way of thanking him. It felt good to be motivated. On my last night at Hugo's I decided to call Gypsy. I was outside, under a great infinite blackness staring up at the pinpoints of light. No moon, so the stars shone bright. Then almost like a voice, with the chill of fresh winter and de''javu something made me call her. The phone rang and my heart curled up in my chest. 'My god, please answer' I thought. She answer and the words came tumbling out. I asked her if we could meet up. She told me she was living at The Warehouse and that I was welcome if I wanted.

I put the phone down and lit a cigarette. I inhaled deep as the adrenaline washed back into the sea of chemicals in my brain. The Warehouse, I thought. Then I looked up at the night sky and said "Thank you".

Besides the parties, I hadn't spent too much time in the Warehouse. I heard stories though. The place was almost mythical, embedded in the town's folklore as a mad and wretched sin. Forgotten in the back streets of rural suburbia. Revered by the underground as a safe haven. Free from the influence of the Authority. The Warehouse was She was a big old hulk, built in 1929. Her ornamental skirtings and brass hinges had felt every day of her eighty-year history. She's the last vestige of freedom in this ugly world. An outlet for artists, junkies, musicians, a safe haven for the dispossessed, the liberated and of course those hunted by The Authority. The Warehouse only has one rule: if you're not an outsider, you're not inside. We never speak to pigs. And although her shadows breed mental illness faster than the moss can crawl up the aging timber beams, we remain true to the virtues of The Warehouse. Like an old grandmother from some bygone slave era, she makes us feel safe. Immune to the world that surrounds us. Protected by those few of us who hold onto the dream. The Warehouse has no real power but the power we give it. And for that she is immortal.

I left Hugo's on 140 mg of Oxy, a half gram of speed and 11 beers. I drove all the way to The Warehouse white knuckled and sweating across the brow. The road writhed and twisted under my wheels and when I pulled up under the great fig tree out the front of The Warehouse I kissed the steering wheel and thanked the universe that The Authority hadn't come upon me.

As I looked upon The Warehouse I saw its massive bulk, the great glorious squat pad and saviour of all who dwell there. Comprising of two ramshackle buildings, a small derelict house on the right and a huge old factory on the left, The Warehouse contained all the broken promises and manic virtues of every artist and musician who was always just going to make it. The Warehouse is one of those unique places where everyone's welcome. It has been this way for at least twenty years. Before that its history is uncertain. The general consensus is that between the twenties and fifties the factory produced wire and copper piping. Then it became an auto garage until the eighties when the owner died and it sat vacant for almost a decade. Possums and junkies found refuge there until the mid nineties when an eccentric artist dreaming of Andy Warhol grandeur bought it for a few thousand dollars and turned it into an artist sanctuary. This was Gypsy's home. I enter The Warehouse through the side fire exit and am instantly overwhelmed by sculptures and paintings.

There is graffiti on the wall that preaches "HALF AN HOUR TO NEVER" and "HERE WE PRACTICE CUNTISM". The building is two stories made into a dozen shanty studio rooms. The whole building is massive, and reminds me of an old timber aircraft hangar. As I walk through the make shift halls I trip on broken televisions with eyes painted on them. Rolls of wire hang down from the roof and some artist has hung dolls by their necks from the rafters and it reminds me of the footage from the first days of the Iraq war. I've always felt uneasy in The Warehouse. It manifests a black energy that consumes its inhabitants. As I mentioned it's a breeder of mental illness. The rooms in the back have been the scene of a half dozen overdoses, with two fatalities. The hardwood pillars that hold up the rusting iron roof are covered in a moss that feels like slippery vertical carpet. Razor lines of sunlight cut through the gaps in the timber and punch through the nail holes. I can hear music coming from the labyrinth of rooms and corridors. I follow the sound up the ramp to the second level. There are mirrors as tall as me in rows along the corridor. For the first time in months I look at myself in the mirror. The light is dim and I see a skeleton in baggy jeans with a shirt tucked in the waistband holding them up. I see eyes like a panda bear and skin that is drawn tight across my bones. My hair is an oily brown mop that falls across my shoulders. It takes me a second to recognise myself and I become afraid at how thin I am. Gypsy's studio is at the end of the corridor and I don't hesitate any longer. I pull back the tie-dyed curtain and there she is as simple and serene as I had ever seen her.

"You look like shit," Gypsy's says as I walk into the studio. She's laid out upside down on an old lounge in the corner. Her head where her feet should be and her feet are like wise. I walk over to her and give her a kiss, I have to hold myself upside down to do it and get a head spin then fall down. Gypsy begins to laugh. "Alex you're fucked."

"It's all relative," I tell her as I lay on my back. "I'm so sorry" I say.

Gypsy starts to crawl towards me. Her smile is so bright it could light up the whole world.

"I missed you," I say as she climbs on top of me.

Her dress is the colour of fresh cut dragon fruit and she smells of pina colata's. In her hand is a bottle of pineapple juice. "Drink this," she says.

I take the bottle and gulp three huge mouthfuls. The taste of vodka fills my throat and I cough hoarsely. "You trying to kill me Gyp's?" I ask her.

"No silly, pineapple juice makes your semen taste good."

I laugh "Now how'd you learn that?"

"A magazine."

It's good to see Gypsy again. We both just sit for a moment and take each other in.

"What the fuck did you do to yourself boy?" she says inspecting the cuts on my hand. There are bruises all down my back and she goes over them the way a mother would.

"Gardening." I tell her, "I was with Hugo. I have been up for five days I think?"

"Nobodies heard from you... since that bitch... we thought you were..." She hugs me tightly. "It's okay, you're safe now."

"Thank you Gypsy, I need to lay low, Peachcake is insane." I say in between more gulps of juice.

"I told you that bitch was bad news," she says sharply.

"I know. I was just so fucked up."

"So is she keeping it?"

"I don't know, I told her what I think."

"And what do you think?"

"I think she's lying about the whole thing."

Gypsy beams a triumphant smile.

"You're thin, want some food?" she says pinching my belly.

"Yes," I tell her, "if I can keep it down."

She pulls me up by my arms and gives me a hug. I hug her back.

"It's good to have you back."

It was good to be back. In that moment when all the sharp and pointy bits of life had slashed my bubble to rags, I had never felt safer.

"It's really good to see you," I said as Gypsy's warmth flooded over me.

Chapter 31

She cooked Spaghetti Bolognese for me that night and I ate it with fervour.

"Tell me what happened to you?" Gypsy asks. Her face is round and holds a puzzled look. Her straight hair sits flat from its roots at the top of her head, pulled and bundled into a ponytail that reaches her lower back.

"You tell me dear, firstly how you managed to get high before we had that fight?"

"Don't dig too deep boy." she says firmly, "you think I whored myself don't you?" her eyes are bright and they hold my gaze.

"It crossed my mind," I mumble into my chest.

"I'm no whore Alex."

"I'm sorry Gyps. I really am. I was just, you know, all fucked up and down."

"I know honey" she pauses for a second hardly able to contain herself. "I found a croaker."

"You found a croaker?"

"Sweetness. I met this lady whose back was all cork screwed and I paid her twenty bucks, for her X-rays and CT's."

"What! You paid twenty bucks!" I couldn't believe it, twenty bucks is a lot of money.

"Shhh darling..." Gypsy hushes me. "I paid for her scans, then I went in and showed this croaker who Jesus told me writes. I was limping mind you, and he wrote me a box of 40's. He gives me one box a week now."

I was dumbfounded. She was smiling so wide and proud.

"Gypsy that's..."

"That's gonna pay itself off in four weeks!"

All I could do was kiss her. And I did. She was my rock after all. I felt a heat like love growing inside me. Her smile was simple and she sat there without secrets, without judgment. She had taken me in when I had nothing to offer.

"Alex it's the best scam ever, I just bat my eyelids and I get what I want."

"Gyps you are a goddess!"

We sat there at the dinner table all happy and smiling and good. She looked so proud. For the first time ever I saw Gypsy proud of herself. She stood there all chin high and looking neat and fed. If it weren't for the pins in her eyes you wouldn't even tell she was addicted.

"So can I have some?" I ask.

Later on Gypsy began talking about what we could do tomorrow. How we could make bits of money together and ultimately how we would find love in each other. I sat there a stranger in this girl's house. Around me Gypsy's generosity was overwhelming. The scent of fresh cooked food and the laughter we shared made me wonder. How could I not see it? How could I let Peachcake turn me against my closest friend?

Chapter 32

I had been back at Gypsy's for a few days when I get a call from William, he had been wondering where I'd gotten to over the last few weeks.

"When's the next poetry night?" he asks.

"Yeah... not for a while." I say.

"Why, what happened?"

"My best friend decided to fuck the girl I love, then I got a heavy opiate addiction and became house bound with Gypsy. Then that girl I love, I didn't love her so much anymore. So she began stalking me, preaching to me that she was pregnant with my child."

The phone goes silent. I can imagine William's face, set to a profound simple nodding as he takes in my words.

"Then I wandered around for a while, to get away from it all. But I lost my mind. Gypsy took me in. She's put things into perspective."

"That's quite a story" he says, "very literally."

"Yeah, but you know how it is."

"Yeah. So when will we catch up?"

"We'll I'm living in The Warehouse now."

"I'll drop in."

"Please do."

The phone goes silent for a few seconds and I think to myself. It is good living in a new house, away from the hell of Bright Street. I was anonymous here. The Authority couldn't find me. Peachcake couldn't find me. I missed Stan an awful lot but we needed to stay away from each other for a while. I found myself wondering if Peachcake and he were sitting in that big old house on the hill. Satisfied with their decisions. Most likely they were drunk either on whiskey or each other. Probably both. Peachcake said she intended to drink so much that she'd kill the foetus. I want to tell William all of it. Yet I remained silent. To speak these truths was impossible. The words turned to concrete in my throat.

"You know what you need mate?" William said in his bright effervescent tone.

"What?" I say

"A night out... A party."

Chapter 33

You can depend on friends when things get tough. I learned that shortly after moving to The Warehouse. There is no substitute for good friends. William was one of those friends who went out of their way to help you. He had invited me to a party at the Regent Hotel. He told me I was to have a good night. He had organised some MD and LSD. I brought Gypsy along and it wasn't long before all my friends had arrived, happy but surprised to see me alive. We all got on the dance floor and began to dance. The music was alive and moved inside me. It was good to get my old muscles working again. I've always had a soft spot for dancing, especially to David Bowie. I had been at the party for about an hour I'd say. I had danced up a storm and needed a rest. I was sitting at a table on the balcony when this thin spindle of a man sits down opposite me. He is staring at me intensely as though he expects something from me. I don't know this man and he makes me feel uncomfortable. His hands are balled into fists so tight that the knuckles have become ghostly white. Reflecting the type of person he was, more ghost now than man.

"You see," he jitters, "Zeitgeist is the most important word of our generation."

Every few seconds he pauses and looks around nervously, almost as if he is checking to ensure nobody is listening. He bumbles on about the zeitgeist with passion, but nobody is listening. His pupils are the size of dinner plates. Intermittently they roll up into his head, showing the off white of his eyes. Talking, like this. Even now is dangerous. I do not want to talk to him, but he had entered my moment and that was it.

"You'll help me wont you Alex? Give me five minutes on stage."

"Look mate," I replied, "I'm going to go get a drink."

"Oh okay," there was a sadness in his voice.

"Okay" I told him, "Come see me tomorrow, we'll talk."

But that where I left him. I knew I wouldn't see him. This strange creature was experiencing the lonely distain of someone who had gone too hard, too soon. His night would probably be characterised by more pills more conversations he wasn't really a part of. Then later on he may meet a girl, or get in a fight. He was just another one of many in a world that doesn't remember. He will finish sometime tomorrow, masturbating to ease the pain in his head. Then he'll dope up on val's and getting some well-earned sleep. But I wont see him.

"See ya later Alex." he waves like a child, sweat patches under his arms bigger than his saucer eyeballs.

"See ya mate," I said.

I still don't know how he got to know my name. Drug people have a tendency to do this, they always just appear. In their mad desperation they see you as an anchor surrounded in every direction by movement, a crutch for their broken minds to lean on. They know everything about you and want to discuss Socrates' philosophy on love for six hours and if you don't comply they threaten to stab you with a very real knife that strangely appears from nowhere. If there is one truth to partying it is this: drug people are unpredictable. When an encounter occurs try to escape peacefully. Always use realistic excuses and lay low until they finish peaking or find another crutch to yap upon. This could very possibly save your life.

I left this ghoul to sweat out all his strangeness and squeezed my way towards the bar. I made it cleanly to the front of the line quickly using the delicate art of crowd manipulation, sliding and weaving my past the drunken mob. I waved to one of the friendlier barkeeps.

"Alex" he smiled as he came to serve me, "what are you having?"

"Double karma bourbon over ice, thank you Tony."

He gave me a nod of parallel recognition. If you ask for karma bourbon they put a point of speed in the drink for you.

I paid with a ten, which he slipped wickedly into the front of his pants.

"Thank you Tony."

"No worries." he winks at me.

That's enough for me. I turn and I take a sip to steady my nerves. The place is pumping so I decided to look around. The scene in front of me unfolds into a vision of Hunter. S. Thompson depravity. Which is to say, I was standing in the centre of some sort of madness. The pub had been turned into a raging, wild party, completely eccentric and oblivious to any conventional reason or normality, the likes of which any self-respecting establishment should maintain. There were hundreds of people, all high on acid or speed or MDMA. They were baboons and goldfish. Electricity shot from their fingertips. My friends were somewhere in this surging rip. They, the universal surfers were riding the lightning and I yearned to be with them. Then from the corner of my eye I could see the zeitgeist guy preaching to a group of stoners sitting by the stage.

Look at these mad kids, burning it up for the crystal generation. Their time will come, I thought. When William had told me this was a party. He failed to mention what to expect. The purpose of this heathen abyss; as the banners pasted across the face of the pub explained was the welcoming party for the returning of a distant race of aliens coming home to earth. Well, for the believers this was the purpose. The rest of us, we just wanted a party. So at exactly 22:22 on the 02, aliens were supposed to make contact. The believers were telling fantastical stories as they handed out badges and stickers. Dressed entirely in alien costumes they must have believed, or else they were certainly crazy. It must have been 35 degrees inside the suits.

"We await the peace loving aliens, who are attracted to earth by love, peace and loud psy-trance music," a blue alien with a basket ball head explained in a tinny microphonic voice.

I personally didn't buy the spiel, even with a head full of acid. As I stumbled around the patrons smiling and chatting, or ranting and screaming I began to smile. I couldn't help but think, this is where all the good people go to die.

When the world gives up on you. Make your own world. This was our night. The people's night, it didn't matter why you were there. For some it was a chance at new hopes, for others escaping the drudgery of the week that was. Our night was just another humble Friday night at the Regent hotel. Yes, the pub was at full capacity. Yes, we expected an alien invasion. Yes, we were no longer in our right minds. There were seven DJ's spinning decks over three dance floors. Coloured party lights draped like cooked pasta over every horizontal surface while the music jived through your body from 100 meters outside the pub. It was life, a celebration of truth. It was what we lived for. It was what we would die for. It was freedom.

I walked outside onto the open deck balcony and looked down upon a half-acre beer garden that looked like a 1930's circus had invaded Pan's Labyrinth. In the centre of the beer garden was a dance floor in the shape of a giant X, a landing pad for the aliens. Above the dance floor hung an inflatable UFO saucer. It was at least four meters across. The centre swirled with coloured lights spinning, whizzing and flashing above it all. Silver vents spewed smoke down on the writhing dancers below. As I stood on the balcony, lost in the jitter of a thousand conversations I could see my friends down on the cross, dancing to the beat. I waved but they didn't see me.

Then a voice invaded my ears.

"Hey Alex man, what cha doin?"

I closed my eyes hoping it wasn't another zeitgeist enthusiast. I turned around and to my relief there standing in front of me was Mitch.

Mitch the nicest guy you could know. Here was me in this madness, without an anchor, without a crutch, acid all creepy in my head. Then Mitch arrives to save me. Mitch, who is only sixteen but looks twenty, Mitch, my old friend for years and trips alike. He is clearly very high.

"Thank fuck for you" I blurt. I am really feeling the sound, it fractals against the panes of my eyes. I can barley move without triple checking myself.

"Yeah gnarly party hey," he was bopping and moving, the stupid grin on his face made me smile.

He was happy, really happy. He kept dancing on the spot.

"Have you got any chewy?"

"Sorry man, I doooon't." I say this as euphoria takes me. Someone is massaging the back of my head, running they're lovely fingers through my hair. Then I realise it is my hand.

"Cigarette?" he asks

"Not on me."

"Bugger, alright I'm going to go dance." then he's was off again.

That's the conversation you get on nights like these, beautifully friendly but pointless in most ways. Mitch is underage and sneaks into the Regent every off weekend. Not that he really sneaks. The Regent has a pretty loose door policy and most of the time he just walks in. Tonight the door is really loose. It's only really closed to the Authority. They didn't touch us that night, just too many people, too many fags. If the Authority tried to break this down they'd do no more than incite a riot. The newspapers would have a field day with headlines like 'Fag party was a riot'. They couldn't have that sort of attention. Tonight they would just have to watch. Standing around and sitting in their cars with their lights on. Waiting for us to leave. So they can try to pick us off one by one.

I wonder if they realised that their lights enhanced the atmosphere exponentially. I could see the envy in some of the men's faces. I did a peace symbol to one officer and he did the same back. That was nice. Really the whole night was nice. Sure we broke the budget, spending what little Dollar we did have. And all that happiness left Gypsy and I to eat baked beans and tomato soup for the next week or so. Unfortunately I was not blessed with the gift of foresight. But I'll tell you, the baked beans tasted just as good as those two dollar bourbons. We were all flying on a good high. That night every little cog worked just right. The summer night was lit with a great glowing moon and a thousand electric fireflies. The ghastly thoughts that had been plaguing us had receded into the shadows of the night. We knew they were peering maliciously from the edge of the mind's horizon. Patiently waiting for us to come down. Eventually we'd have to switch on the bathroom light and see what we had gladly forgotten. But not yet, we were high and strangely enough the horizon seemed so far off. Our night ended when the beer garden, second and third stories of the Regent were closed off. This meant three hundred people were crammed into the main bar, an area about the size of a tennis court. It must have been about a million degrees in there. Everyone sweating on each other, slobbering and flailing to the endless beat, it was starting to get ugly. Then when the happiness began to fade from the eyes of the peace lovers they began to get snappy. Just like angry little Jack Russell terriers, people began to bite. The scene was marvellous, people still up and floating around with their alien buddies, boppin next to people way down licking the devil's own. There were claws and scowls. The scrambling for more, the money being passed around, it was some sort of loathing. With the scene getting worse by the hour, and the night still with us, we left. There were seven of us in total, to laugh, jest, and billy our way back to the house. Never a dull night, that is for sure. It truly was a good party and just what I needed.

Chapter 34

As we walked home I found myself thinking super thoughts. My friends were ahead of me chatting and stumbling around. Gypsy was doing cartwheels down the centre line of the road. I was alone at the back of the group. In the weirdness of the acid hue my mind began to wander. Gypsy was moving like a ghost and I couldn't help but thinking. You can strike it up to sheer stupidity or divine insight. Maybe these people see the current frivolity of life. Or maybe they are just really high. But it is these, the maddest of people with whom I walk, who seem always to have their finger closest to the pulse of reality. But it scares me. They scare me, losing them scares me. With things the way they are. It would take nothing for any of us to become ghosts.

The rules have changed. Laws that were once designed to protect us now, are now used against us. The public servants paid to protect us are corrupted by the Dollar and death factory, they terrorise us and threaten our way of life. Everyday. I watch the gap between Outsiders and Authoritarians widen. I cannot understand why but so many Outsiders nuke themselves with legal and illegal drugs. So many brilliant Outsiders destroy themselves and their loved ones with substance abuse. It makes me wonder. Is watching television really any different to dropping acid? If you're going to waste 8 hours, what's the difference? If doctors are just educated drug dealers, why are the people still shooting black tar? Outsiders are more willing to stand up for human rights or climate change than any others. They try to make a difference and believe there are alternatives to the world we see today. They want to revive the dream and expose the filth behind the ties. Mind you it is ironic, that most of these people survive off social welfare and need the system, just to survive. They realise that life is fleeting. They enjoy more moments. They notice the colours of flowers and denounce 8 hours of television a day. They may just be mad crazy bastards but boy do they live. I'm not sure. It's all just acid talk. It's no more than just TV talk. Gypsy tumbles out of her cartwheel and sprawls on the road. She opens her mouth in a marvellous laugh that echoes through the silhouetted avenue. Gypsy is incredible, but as I look at her laughing. I get the cold feeling that she is never coming back. And that's scary because I don't even know where she's going. I wonder, is it sane to mourn a life wasted or celebrate at a funeral. I guess people tripping on acid can't answer that. I shake the coldness from my soul and walk on. Looking at my friends, loving them, seeing them stumble. Goddamn! They're a beautiful bunch. Gypsy gets up and does another cartwheel. She is a white dove.

Chapter 35

Somehow I slept that night. The rest came as a surprise to me and I let the dripping sweet nature of tiredness flow all around me. Gypsy was still excited and she slowly licks my cock from underneath a thin sheet. I smile as I watch her head bounce in the semi-dark. I don't know where she gets the energy. I slip off in a wild, fantastic dream just as she slips on me. I hope she's had a good night. I wake up feeling surprisingly good. The sleep crust glues my eye closed. For a few second I struggle to open them, then they bust open and I am blinded by the brightness of the room. I moan in pain then roll toward Gypsy but she is not beside me. Instantly my stomach drops and I feel real fear. My eyes adjust and the first thing I see is Floyyd lying at the foot of my bed. His reaper fingers reach out and run up and down my stiff morning cock. He has the look of a porcelain minaret. Red lips, rouge blush on his cheeks. He is wearing a clown suit this time. Blue, red and white stripes, three orange pom-poms running vertical down the breast.

"What the fuck are you doing here!" I yell.

"Let me suck your cock." Floyyd says back in an evil purr.

"Where's Gypsy?" I yell demandingly. Floyyd ignores me and lowers his face toward my unconsciously erect penis.

Before I have a chance to stop him he is kissing the soft skin at the base of my dick. He runs his tongue the full length of my shaft and smiles a wicked cruel smile.

"Peachcake taught me that one." He winks.

"You fucker!" I kick at his head. I want him away from me, the filthy mother fucker. My kick misses him and the over swing flips me out of bed. It is then I notice Gypsy.

She is on the floor, unconscious. A pool of dark brown vomit is spread about her head like a halo. I jump to her aid yelling "Floyyd you fucker, why didn't you help her," I turn to him but he is gone.

"Gypsy." I shake her

"Gypsy." I put my fingers down her throat, thankfully her airway is clear.

Still her breathing is so soft I can barley feel it. I call to William who is passed out across the hall. He doesn't come. I call to Mika. She is passed out in the kitchen. She doesn't come. I pick Gypsy up by her shoulders, and try moving her into the bathroom. Her head rolls limply as she bounces in my arms. We are a tangle of naked arms and clammy skin. I fall down and she hits the floorboards with a terrible thump.

"Jesus Gypsy," I try to lift her again. Then Floyyd is there. He grabs her feet and directs me to her arms. He gives the directions with precision and authority. We lift Gypsy off the ground. Floyyd is naked now. His thin muscular body is accentuated by the strain lifting of Gypsy's weight. She is naked too, as am I. We shuffle her out of the bedroom and into the bathroom. We place her gently into the bath. She fits in the bath as perfect as she would in a coffin. Floyyd brings his face close to hers at first I think he is going to kiss her lifeless lips. I notice his hand is right up between her legs, I begin to feel the rage. This is your fault. No, he is checking her breathing. He turns on the cold water. After only a few moments Gypsy's eyes flutter and she is awake. Her eyes are a golden brown and a little blood shot,

"Good morning handsome." she says with a smile.

Hell, he did it. The crazy bastard woke her up.

I turn to Floyyd, "Thanks mate."

"That's alright." he pats me on the back.

Gypsy laughs and says, "Who you talking to?"

I look around. He's gone.

Chapter 36

Gypsy notices me grinding the razor against the glass. I do this over and over. The gear was a fine powder long ago.

"Alex?" she says. I barely hear her.

"Alex."

"Alex!"

"What?"

"I think the stuff's ready."

"Sorry,"

"Are you mad at me?"

"No Gyps of course not."

"Then what's wrong?"

"I saw something... I've been seeing... When you were sick..." Gypsy looks at me with gaunt fear and concern.

"What do you mean?"

"There was a guy, our age. I think he molested me and then helped me save you."

"He what?"

"He tried to give me head, and I think he might have touched you, but... he wasn't real. He was just my... imagination, something. I don't know."

"Fuck Alex, do you think he'll come back?"

"I don't know."

"Alex... You're scaring me."

"He says his name is Floyyd, I'm sure he's the grim reaper... He's coming for me."

Gypsy looks at me. The concern is written across her face.

"But he helped me save you."

Chapter 37

It had been an unnerving morning. I was losing my marbles and Gypsy had almost choked to death. This was on the back of a big night and how many endless days of consumption. A rollercoaster on repeat, no grease, no safety harness, just a white-knuckle grip and a prayer to the sweet nothing and a son of a bitch god. It was my first ambition to re-establish our morale with a lot of Oxy and some speed. It was getting on in the day and Gypsy and I had to work. Well by work I mean sell some jellybeans. Our expenditure had succeeded our intake. I had to focus. Simple commerce. Since we had a bigger budget than a real job could provide. Anyway we had given up on trying to get 'real' jobs. And realistically who would hire such strange deformed creatures. Sure we could lift boxes for 5 cents an hour if we had too, but there was no possible way we would.

We had been given some jellybeans as payment for a script we sold. We had been selling the jellybeans over the last few days, trying to get money in. We anticipated making $50 dollars if we could sell them all. We have several incomes; but welfare support and shoplifting just doesn't pay for the life we live.

Selling is an interesting business. It's a sad business, pathetic in many ways. I lay awake at night thinking about what Gyp's and I do to get The Dollar. You know this mans dollar, the good dollar, the one thing we are not to have. All this suffering and wasted energy for The Dollar, worthless plastic that helps us wade deeper into that murky swamp. We know, somewhere out there, beyond the mosquitoes, the earth rich decay and the wet stink. There is a warm house with a bed of white sheets waiting for us. Just beyond the next thicket of lantana Nirvana waits for us. All the while we imagine the soft bed for sleep, and the smell the cottage flowers on Sunday and fresh bread baked at home. We hardly notice how deep we wade into that somewhere else. Hoping, just hoping that that muddy and stink doesn't stick. But really, even if we made it home we couldn't stop the mud from ruining those sheets.

I know we're not getting any closer than those we sell to. We're just a few years ahead. We've learned a few more lessons, worked a few more nights in the cold. It's a dirty job. A dirty, weak mans job. But we all gotta get The Dollar. By stone or lambs blood; we all gotta get The Dollar.

Gypsy and I left The Warehouse at around midday. The sun was relentless and acid flash backs kept bursting through the speed; making colours jump and straight lines bend. We were headed out to meet our first buyer, a little friend of Mitch's.

The deal is ten pills at three dollars each. They were good pills so we marked them up by a dollar. Our buyers turned out to be a group of barely teenage girls. We met them in the car park of a local pizza shop. They were with some older guys, though Mitch was absent. We got into talking before we made the deal. They told me all about how they can't get any booze from anywhere due to The Authorities new drinking laws. They were pretty girls and I found it hard to believe they couldn't flirt themselves into being sold a goon sack. The brunette explained to me that pills were their only option. She explained to me how their parents were strict and straight. Wouldn't let them drink at home. She said they'd tell their parents that all the girls were going to Cindy's house for a sleep over, or doing an assignment at Beth's house. Then they'd all go into town and hook up the pills, fuck some guys and sneak home horny, happy and with no-one any the wiser.

"Pilling is easier." she told me,

"No open bottles, no fines, and it's cheaper."

They were pretty girls. Smart for their age. They talked a lot older than they looked. I admired their balls. I was a stranger, not just that, but a drug dealer. They held their own like pros. I'm sure they'd done this before, or worse- naturally.

Chapter 38

Kid's taking drugs worries the hell out of me. I hate promoting drug use. Knowing that nothing good will come to any of us. The stories that filter back through the channels get harder and harder to hear. The guy who gave us the jellybeans told me a story about some of his 'conquests'. He's a thick wanker who thinks he's cool. With pucks and scars of teenage acne that have clearly left him with some psychological damage. Between injecting steroids and looking in the mirror, his other hobbies include rape and male group masturbation followed by regret and deeply penetrating rage. He is the type of guy who will punch you first and not bother with questions. This guy is in his early thirties. A mean creature who thinks that spiking people's drinks with ketamine, then beating them to a bloodied pulp when their fucked up is a good night out. Well, this guy had a 'party' a while back. Some young girls came along. They were the usual cocky horny young ones. The ones who wear a mini skirts and think they're too pretty to get raped. They were way out of their depth and had no idea. There were four of them, four fifteen year-old girls partying with thirty year-old steroid junkies. Now the guys, they're not idiots. They don't want to be done for statrape. They sell the girls some jellybeans or some really good MDMA. They're all having a good time enjoying the music, dancing. The girls flirt and tease the men. Then some guy tried to feel them up, pull off their dresses and grab at their cunts. The dealer stands in this time and protects the girls from the drunken gropers. Turns out the gropers passed out an hour or so later and the dealer did what he does best.

One of the girls was pressured in taking Death Factory. She spent the rest of her night in the back room giving head to the dealer, a guy fifteen years older than her. Word spread around the party that, 'some chick' was out of it and giving it out.

By three am she had been covered in the semen of at least ten guys. She had no idea who was fucking her or where she was being fucked. The room smelt of semen and shit, dirty socks and human sweat. They fucked her until dawn. Ten guys on death factory in a rotating cycle, some of them recorded it on their mobile phone. They were snickering, laughing... laughing.

In the morning she awoke on the floor. She was naked and covered in dry semen. There was blood on the concrete where she lay. She looked around for her underpants but they had been stolen. A cold terror filled her. She couldn't remember anything after the blue crystals 'like your eyes' the good dealer had given her. She went to the laundry basin and washed the stains out of her dress. She left the house in silence and went home.

The image of that poor girl, barely enough tits to fill her bra standing naked at a strangers basin, scrubbing her dress to get it clean, tears streaming down her face. It haunts me the knowledge that she stepped over the bodies of her rapists as she left. It haunts me that she looked upon her friends, asleep on the lounge. Unaware of what happened. She goes home. The house is empty. Her parents are at work. She frantically searches her parents en suite for a pregnancy test or an STI booklet. Instead she finds her mothers diazepam prescription. Five weeks later, after she has had three positive pregnancy tests she drinks a bottle of vodka to wash down the bottle of diazepam , her parents didn't even notice it was missing. It just haunts me.

Chapter 39

Gypsy and I sold jellybeans on and off to make our ends meet. It wasn't pleasant and we constantly had the fear that the Authority would come down on us with everything they had. I kept dreaming about our bullet-riddled corpses lying slumped in the kitchen after a surprise raid at dinnertime. But essentially we needed the money. We rarely watched the television so we hardly knew what new laws The Authority was passing to finish the likes of Gypsy and I. The only time we turned the thing on was to check every so often for stories about The Authority, The Dollar, social inclusion, social exclusion and at the end of the broadcast, always; execution. They're just headlines. But what they really do is tectonically shift the attitudes of society. Slowly shifting the public's opinion, generating fear so that surely and eventually social attitudes will be divided. Once divided; the people are conquered.

Chapter 40

It was a Friday night at the Warehouse. A party was happening with all the usual suspects and a few new drop in's. I had had taken a lot of Oxy and Opium so I was feeling drowsy. The acid I had taken for lunch had worn off leaving me in a strange scene of isolation. I sat inside alone. Outside I could hear the voices and laughter of the party. I had lost track of time and Gypsy. I'd seen her chatting with a group of guys on one of the mezzanines. She was speeding hard and I could sense some hostility in her presence so I chose to relax elsewhere. It could have been minutes or hours but somewhere in the night Mika found me.

"Alex," she said looking at me with her huge doe eyes.

"Mika, my lovely... come here and give me a kiss."

"Alex, you'd better get a hold of your woman, she's pawing at some strange guy."

"She's alright Mika, Gypsy would never cheat on me."

"We'll how bout you come join the party then?"

"Sorry Mika but I'm pretty much finished for the day". Mika gives me a look of 'suit yourself, don't say I didn't try'. I lie back and take a hit from the opium pipe. I want to investigate but am too stoned. I go to the bedroom to sleep it off. I wake up alone. I get a sense that something isn't good here. Memories of Mika's conversation hit me hard bringing with them an adrenaline rush my body hasn't known in a long time. A feeling of ill runs down the base of my skull and a nervous fear fills me. From the corner of my eye I feel Floyyd watching me. I knew it was bad when I saw him. It had been over a week since his last visit.

"You better go find her buddy," he says with a grim resignation.

I don't give him the satisfaction of a reply. Instead I go to search the whole Warehouse. In the pre-dawn light I see bodies are passed out on lounges, mattresses and futons. There are scattered pockets of people still awake, but Gypsy isn't amongst them. I reach the upper studios, and finally at the end of the hall; Gypsy's studio. There I hear the tell tale panting of sex and moans. It's Gypsy. It hurts to hear her in the next room fucking. The slowly increasing thumps as the backboard hits the wall. She had let this stranger fuck her because I left her alone. She had led him to her studio. Now they were fucking and I stood outside like a sick dog without a bone.

"You should go in there." he said from behind me.

"And do what?"

"Scream, punch, let it out."

"Who the fuck are you?" I yell into his dead face

"That's not important now."

"Well fuck you very much then."

"Alex?" Gypsy voice rises from behind the wooden door

"No it's me Floyyd" I growl, "...Alex is passed out downstairs."

Chapter 41

I returned to our bedroom. Floyyd joined me. Outside the sun was just rising and the room was filled with fresh light. I had decided to open up to Floyyd. I needed to talk to someone. I turned to where he stood and noticed his corner of the room was impossibly dark, like he absorbed all the light within a two meter arc.

"Look I don't care." I tell him.

"I can tell you do," Floyyd reclines on my bed as I work the razor over the mirror on the dresser.

"The bottom line is she fucked him, it's done."

"And it hurts so bad you can hardly think around it."

"She has stained us." I snort a huge line of MS Silverback to enforce my anger.

"Thanks for this Floyyd." I tell him as I cough back the powder.

"Don't mention it, you did all the work. I just remembered where you hid it."

"You know... she gave it away. I treasure her so much and she just went to some stranger. I keep seeing her in my mind, opening her legs and letting him cum in her cunt. It hurts worse than a punch in the chest.

"All I want is to be able take it back."

"Done is done." Floyyd replied flatly.

"And fun is fun", I say.

Chapter 42

Noon came and Gypsy was awake when I got up. She sat at the kitchen table all showered and fresh. She didn't look any different. She just said, "Good morning sleepyhead."

I ignored her.

"What's wrong?" She asked.

"Are we going to keep doing this?"

"Doing what?"

I began to laugh at her, an uncontrollable mad laugh.

"You just keep going don't you?"

"Alex you're scaring me," Gypsy said as she moved towards the lounge room door.

"I didn't sleep you know..." I tell her. I can feel the blood rushing up the sides of my face.

"I was up talking all night, listening too. Yeah listening and talking."

"Yeah okay..." says Gypsy, "Well now you're creeping me out so I'm going to go."

"Okay... bye-bye," I wave. My hands are ash grey and clawed over. She doesn't notice. I feel fine though, not too distressed. I feel a little too dead to feel stressed. I walk to our room. The room Gypsy and I share. It is cleaner than usual. Floyyd is sitting on a pile of clothes in the corner.

"Hey man," I say as I see him.

"Alex, how'd it go?"

"Not great. Not bad... just bullshit really."

"I like what you've done to your hands." he says gesturing to the bluish black claws stretching out from my thin arms.

"Oh that, yeah.... I think I'm getting sick."

"No, no don't think of it like that mate, it's a good thing, like evolution." Floyyd smiles his dead mans grin.

"You reckon?"

Of course he does.

Chapter 43

Having Gypsy cheat on me crushed the little flower growing up through the concrete of my soul, so to speak. It had been little over a day since we last spoke and I had nothing too say too her. I tried very hard to keep out of her way. Over the day I think Gypsy began to notice my absence. I'm sure it was Floyyd's idea to call Peachcake. The thought had been with me since the shock of the fuck had worn away. But it was Floyyd's idea to call her. I couldn't say no to him. He tapped out her number and threw me the phone. It barely had time to ring then I was connected with her. Peachcake's voice flowed out of the telephone and I gorged on the sweetness of the sound.

It was only a matter of our meeting before we fucked. It was incredible how simple it was. An hour later with Floyyd in my ear, Peachcake and I were in bed. It felt good to fuck someone else. The scent of new sweat and the shape of her body made my cock run rampant. I clawed and bit at her, came and clawed again. When she winced in pain I only fucked her harder. Floyyd stood on watching.

"That's it mate" he said, "Sweet fucking revenge". Then he burst into laughter. I turned to look at him but Peachcake gripped my hair and rolled me over as she climaxed hard, running her nails down my back for all to see. Maybe Gypsy sensed it, or maybe it was a snap that was always bound to happen. But Peachcake and I were lying in bed still catching our breath when the phone rang. It was William. I was hesitant to answer but compelled to know why he would be calling me so late.

The conversation went like this:

"Hello."

"What the fuck have you done Alex?"

"What do you mean mate?"

"You told Gypsy you were fucking Peachcake... are you insane?"

I had nothing to say. I turned to Floyyd. He just shrugged. It was the truth. I had snapped but apparently Gypsy had snapped harder.

William's voice was frantic like he had been wrestling with something far greater than his strength. He blamed me for his predicament and told me I'd better get round to The Warehouse and sort the shit out.

"Mate it's beyond me." I told him.

Peachcake looked on and listened. What was she thinking I wondered? I had half the intention to drop the phone and get back into some wild oblivion sex. But William explained that Gypsy was pacing around the house with a large kitchen knife. She was stabbing and swearing at the air. I didn't want to go to her aid but William needed help dealing with her.

"It's not my problem mate..."

"Fucking aye it's your problem, you dickhead, why the fuck would you do that."

"Alright," I said reluctantly, "I'm on my way."

Peachcake must have picked up on the conversation because she said very little as I got dressed.

"I'm sorry," I said as I left. I felt like I was on the way to my execution. I swallowed a handful of dexies before I drove over, hoping the energy could counteract Gypsy's electrical storm. It wasn't long after I'd left Peachcake's house that I began to worry about Gypsy. What if she killed herself?

I pushed my foot through the floor to get to The Warehouse. When I arrived Gypsy was barricaded in her room. William was pale with fright and livid with anger.

"You better fucking fix this." he said turning his back and wiping his hand of the mess.

I knocked on the door and said, "Gypsy, its Alex."

"Go away!" she screeched. Her voice was wild and razor sharp, it cut a line for my ear to my heart. Gypsy was gone replaced by some strange maniac.

"No." I said reluctantly. To this the door burst open and a great shining steel knife was thrust at my face.

"I said fuck off!"

"No."

She slammed the door again. Then the end of the knife plunged through the door in three quick bursts. I jumped back, the glint of steel disappearing into a fine slit in the door. I sat against the wall opposite the door and patiently talked Gypsy out of harming herself or anybody else. She finally came out of her room crying and telling me she was sorry. I ignored her apology and instead took the knife off her and led her outside. She seemed to not acknowledge that only hours earlier I had fucked Peachcake. That I still had fresh sex all over me. She had entered some sort of psychosis. Tears streamed down her face and she could barely talk. We sat on the footpath at the front of the house. Above us a billion small stars burned, some long dead, some still dying. I stared at them contemplating much in my mind this night. Time passed slowly and after an hour Gypsy began to speak. She told me she had taken her lithium but she was still in a bad state. I sat and watched as she punched herself in the head and cried for her life. She wailed and pleaded, she couldn't understand the pressure inside her head. She was hurting, shaking, terrified of the world. There's nothing you can do when someone's in that sort of headspace, except be there for them. I had no other choice.

"Why Alex?" she pleaded

"Why is this happening to me?" she screamed as she hit herself hard in the temple.

"I just want to end it," she sobs looking up at into night's sky. Her pleas to the universe are callously swallowed in a gust of wind.

"Come inside." I beg her.

"Fuck off!" she screams.

I sat, I watched. She spoke at me. She screamed at me. I answered in presence only; it was all I could do. She needed no more voices filling her head. In time she did calm down. And it pains me to say it, but her eyes never looked more beautiful than when they were streaked with tears. She told me she wants to stop it all. She told me of others who have stopped, she said that it helped her to feel less alone. I asked her what she meant, but she just hugged me, so I held her. I held her tight then, knowing that if I held her she would be safe. She would be with me as long as I held her. I knew though, that I would have to let her go eventually, sometime. But I forced that thought out of my head. Enough shit had gone on already. It's a scary thing to see someone you care about in such a state. For now, the quiet calm was enough. So I held her, I let that calm enter me. Gypsy and I talked when the tears dried. I put her to bed and gave her a few diazepam .

Later on William thanked me for my help and gave me some weed. I smoked it at Bright Street when I finally got home in the early morning hours. Having no tolerance to weed, this new stone engulfed me and I thought back on the night. I thought of Gypsy and Peachcake and what we do to ourselves. I fell asleep thinking of Gypsy as a link. If all people are pieces of chain, we are useless. But when people like Gypsy are in our world we are linked, joined by smiles and warmheartedness. It's just so sad that the links are usually so easily broken. And you know mental health problems are rife. We think it's okay. It's not okay. These poor souls with their bi-polar and their drug psychosis are destined to struggle. I remember back to another time, a previous fight we must have had. I couldn't tell if it were real or an amalgamation of our many comedowns.

"I'm so sorry Alex," she had cried over and over as she clung to my shoulder.

As she held me I smelt her hair and remembered what she said to me. She could feel my sadness before I noticed it. She said to me that I needed love that I craved it and lapped it up. She was stroking my head at the time, running her fingers through my long hair, every now and then she would tug at a knot.

"You just need someone to care for you."

I instantly disagreed with her and explained that I was fine, but she knew. Being the day before the anniversary of my mothers death, she asked "are you gonna go see your mum?"

"No," I reply, " I can't go back there."

"You just wanted a mum, didn't you Alex?"

"I don't know Gyp's. Its just life I guess."

There were many beautiful things that girl had inside her. She was intuitive and aware, yet still so broken. She could fly off the handle at the drop of a pin. There was no compromise or discussion when she was in those states just pure blind rage. But when she was soft she was an angel of endless forgiving and empathy. We'd both fucked up and we both knew it. An eye for an eye had left us blinded. I fell asleep alone just as dawn crept up over the world. We were destined to be like this. Gypsy and I. Destined from the beginning, destined to the end.

Chapter 44

Like the tide, dragging the ocean back and across the sandy shore. The lunar rake as it dredges life into the churning of the great sea from which we came. We are every eclipse blotting out the light, causing a brief moment when all stop to watch this unfamiliar moment. We were lost in the pulse of a good dream. We lingered on the edge of reality. I could see it. Foggy, hazy, it was not really happening but somehow we just went there anyway. We were the truth. Reality was all lies. Madness envelopes everything, I hide, I escape, I run but my body stays prone. We pass in and out of consciousness, asleep and awake. Divided only by the changing nightmares. After Gypsy's meltdown I took her back. If she were going to weigh anyone down it would be me. She would be my rock, my burden, mine alone. She was the only thing I had left to hold on to, and again we fell into our old ways. Floyyd had made it clear that he wanted Peachcake. He lusted for her constantly, ravenously. He loathed Gypsy and haunted me constantly. All through the night he would whisper, his mouth against my ear, his stubble scratching. He would say,

"Go to her, she is waiting for you. Leave this train wreck. Taste her, feel her, go... go."

His power would spread across my body. His voice deep and sinister.

"Leave her or I'll make you."

Night after night Floyyd would sit on the end of my bed, perched like a vulture, scowling at Gypsy while she slept. You're not real, I'd tell myself. You're not real.

"The hell I'm not, Alex..."

Chapter 45

What the fuck am I doing? My hearts beats so hard my chest hurts. The chemical taste leeches down my throat. My hands are covered in blood. In the seat next to me, her body rolls limp. Her head bashing against the passenger window as the car mauls the road. Somewhere in the dark a motor roars underneath my feet. But the heat I am feeling is not from the engine. Out here the earth is so dry. The creeks run thin, their banks parched. Adrenaline draws my eye to almost perfect vision. I see the landscape crackle in flames as the bush fires burn uncontrollably down the edges of the highway. Flames eat through the kindling looking like bones and iron-bark skin. The landscape races past us, a smearing blur of dry yellow, bush brown. While above us, smoke overcomes a vacant blue sky. The windscreen is dusty. My eyes catch the speedometer; it kisses 200 km/h. Peachcake is next to me. She looks like she has been dead for a while, her skin is waxy and the colour of a bad bruise. Her hair is all matted and doesn't look to nice. Blood covers her face and chest; her breasts are pushed to near under her armpits by the bulge of her pregnant belly. The full moon of stretched skin under the floral print of her summer dress is taut like a drum skin. I put my hand on the centre of her belly. It is firm. I look ahead. The road has merged into national park now. I have out run the flames. I can dump the body before it burns. The trees here are gnarled from lack of water and what little shade they provide speckles the cabin and eases the heat. The road turns to dirt and I am forced to slow down. The car kicks up dust and makes the vehicle look like a meteor. I rest my hand on her dead belly, when I feel a kick. Fear hits me with the force of an electric shock. My hand retreats from her lifeless stomach as my eyes pick up on the movement. It was only a tiny vibration at first, gently bumping up the floral dress, but then a thumping push. The baby kicked. Alive... it's alive!

Inside her dead belly, a heart still beats. The kicking becomes more visible as the dress rises more and more. My heart stalls and sickness grips me as the kicks become harder, violent.

The baby starts breaking through the skin. Blood spreads across the floral pattern. Then Peachcake bursts awake. She inhales gasping for breath. Her dead hand grabs onto my wrist. Her dead eyes stare into mine. Her cold steel grip digs into my warm flesh, her nails snap off as her grip tightens. Her mouth opens and she screams a hideous cry. Her mouth is all bloodied and full of missing and broken, jagged teeth. The sound she makes is the agonising wail of a banshee. Before I can stop her. She grabs the steering wheel and pulls it towards herself. I watch as her eyes light up. Alive with hatred, lit by the flames of intent, revenge. There is still bloody residue under her left nostril. The car crashes over the saltbush and scrub, careering towards a wall of trees. The knowledge that I am going to die causes my heart to freeze. In the sheer moment before the black I look forward. Peachcake is standing there in front of the trees smiling. She is semi-transparent and more beautiful than ever. The trees race upon me. The crunching of metal and timber fills my ears. I look to my left just before impact; the seat is empty. Then everything is a crush black.

I awake covered in sweat. Gypsy lies unconscious next to me. Moonlight pours through the open window. Beams of light give her face a delicate glow. She is at peace and for this I am grateful. I do not wake her. She deserves a good night sleep. Gypsy's instincts can normally sense when I am having a nightmare. But tonight she is unreceptive. In the shadows I sense Floyyd but cannot see him. I take some deep breaths to steady myself and wipe the sweat off my face with the thin bed sheet. Though I desperately want her company. I decide to let Gypsy sleep. I quietly get out of bed and sneak into the kitchen. My hands are shaking as I switch on the light. The fluorescent orb bursts to life above me. The sudden explosion of light burns my retinas and my instant response is to close them. The moment I do images of the nightmare return. I decide to face the brunt of the fluorescent brightness. As my eyes adjust to the light, I look around. The room seems unfamiliar and sharp. There is ugliness here. The toaster, fridge, cat dish I recognise nothing. I see only ugliness. What is this place? Who created this nightmare? Slowly my bearings return and I notice the cat dish is empty. When did The Warehouse get a cat? I begin the menial task of filling it. Believing that by doing this chore I am participating in a real life. I get a can of tuna from the pantry, pop the pull ring and slop the minced fish into the silver bowl. I sit on the kitchen chair. The lino is sticky under my feet. My back sticks to the vinyl chair. All is silent for a moment. Slowly the sound of the cat eating works its way through the blaring silence. I look down at the small creature.

"I know you," I whisper. Of course The Warehouse has a cat. He's always been here. What is happening to me? On the table is a sheet of Oxy. How and why it is there, I do not know. I immediately attribute it to Floyyd and wish that I were not reaching for it. Still the nightmare is in my blood now. I must replace it with something nicer. I break a caplet onto the tabletop and cut it into two lines. I bite off the end of a pen and use it to rack up then I fish some Diazepam out of the bottom of the fruit bowl. I crush it blandly between my teeth and swallow hard. Then I begin the long journey into processing what just happened. I think about my subconscious. Is my sanity experiencing some cruel drug entropy? I remember Gypsy telling me earlier that week that she had stopped dreaming. I had told her that I hadn't dreamed in months. Clearly I was wrong. I take a beer from the fridge and pop its lid on the corner of the table, foam bubbles gently from the neck. Maybe I am just like a beer, with all the crazy shit bubbling to my head. I take a swig. The simple pleasure of drinking a beer loosens up my throat and I try to remember of my last real dream. I think long and reach back in time to find it. I cannot remember. Slowly the drugs kick in and I'm ready to move my mind towards the nightmare.

It shook me up.

I cannot lie.

It seemed so real.

Peachcake was there.

She was pregnant.

The baby was alive but Peachcake was dead, screaming and haunting me. She killed me or I killed her, then she watched as I crashed. Her eyes were so cold, so empty. I take another long draw on the bottle. More cool relief. The clock on the wall tells me its 3:42 am. I feel like I'm beginning to loose my mind. Maybe I'm going a little too hard. Maybe I can't stop. Maybe I don't want to stop. You know what they say, living fast and dying young. It's never that easy.

I sit full nude at Gypsy's kitchen table. My arse sweats into the vinyl chair. It's too hot for clothes and too hot to care. My note pad and pen mock me from behind the ornamental saltshakers and arty magazines. I pick up the pen and try to hold it steady. It shakes between my fingers. I slam the tip down and disappear into the white pages. I only realise I have been writing when I hear footsteps in the lounge room. Its Gypsy, she is naked too. She comes into the kitchen all sleepy and grumpy.

"Did I wake you?" I ask her.

"No." she replies as she brushes behind me.

She fills a glass of water in the kitchen sink. Some of the dirty plates slide off the counter into the sink. They scrape with a noise that would normally hurt my ears but I am really smacked now.

"Fuck it!" she yells, hitting the counter top.

I watch as she throws a glass into the sink, where it shatters.

"What the fuck are you looking at?" she snarls at me.

I don't answer. I look back down at the table. The note pad is full of scrawling. My handwriting is childish and perturbed, I have written.

The dust is sorry,

the mute stays silent

all the closed fists fall frail and

eyes cannot be seen pass the weeping

for whose come out on top.

If I cast back a tired mind

and swim through it all

the litres of booze

fish through

the burnt and snuffed

back before it was stuffed

you wore a brown dress

I vaguely hear Gypsy asking me something but I am too far away to hear her. Then she belts me across the back of the head, finishes with a "fuck you" and storms out the room. I am still yet to say a word. I feel myself getting turned on as I watch her peachy arse and sweetly maternal breasts all hot with rage disappear around the corner. I can almost smell her cunt waiting under a soft layer of fine fur. I absorb the view of her brown skin as she leaves the room. Under the table can I feel my cock, rising. It's throbbing. It's been so long since my cock has risen so quickly. I leave the nightmare and the beer at the table.

"Gypsy!" I Call, "Wait!"

Chapter 46

In the morning I awoke fresh and clear. The only evidence of the nightmare is the broken glass in the sink and the mad scrawling's in my note pad. Gypsy and I fucked hard in the early dark hours. I cannot remember the fight or the sex so well. But my dick hurts at the base and my prostate is swollen. I have scratches all over me and I stink like sex. There is calmness in me now, completely unexpected from last night's horror. I sit at the window peering out into the sunny street. The overgrown front gardens look more like a fanciful paradise than the neglected weeds of an artist squat. I can hear Gypsy is in the kitchen preparing breakfast. I breathe in the summer air. It is dry and warm. It carries with it the sweet scent of life.

When I wake up, sometimes I have good days. Days when the birds will seem to chirp around me, like the animals in that Alice in wonderland cartoon. The sun will break through the cracks in the curtains and I find myself just staring out at it all. I get caught up in just watching the dust particles float and dance. Maybe outside a child will yell out or bounce a ball. Walkers and joggers will maintain a healthy life style and yes I will smile and be happy. Yes, on those days the world is shining and all the woes, even the simple ones, are gone.

There are bad days too, more than good lately or so it seems. Days when the cracks of light burn my eyes, when dust gives me allergies and the children are loud annoying little shits. On those days I will crawl outside holding my head and a coffee, stare at those healthy people and hate them. Hate them for all their happiness and their damned smiles. Hate them for their complacency, their apathy. Hate them for allowing The Dollar to do this to us. I hate them because it easier than hating myself.

Despite last night, today is not about hate. Today is me waking up to beautiful Gypsy. Making love from behind, feeling her tighten as she comes then coming hard on her back. She says rub it in, it's good for her skin. Today is her washing my hair, which is the most enjoyable experience on earth. Today is Gypsy having her shit together enough to make me breakfast, muesli and fruit, banana and kiwi. Today is not last night. Today I have cleaned the broken glass, and emptied the garbage. Today, sunny warmth makes The Warehouse seem like a rainforest retreat. We get high and climb the fig tree. We pick oranges from out the back. We rub sun cream into each other's naked bodies and wait for Mika and William to get ready. Today is Nimbin markets. Today, last nights dreams are forgotten. Today I do not need to worry. Today is a good day.

Chapter 47

We left for Nimbin in no real rush. I drove smiling and flying. The sunshine helped me to concentrate on the road ahead. It is all too easy to forget it you know, the road I mean, and it's easy to forget the road ahead, always passing underneath you in an endless grey blur. Sadly not everything is so easily forgotten. Gypsy sits on the middle of the bench seat in my white chariot. She kisses my neck and plays with the knob on my radio. We looked great and felt even better. Colour in our cheeks, Morrison aviators styling my face, a silky scarf adoring the soft flesh around Gypsy's neck. We rolled over the hills and drifted in and out of the bends of consciousness, making our way up the winding roads to Nimbin.

When we arrived the community markets were in full swing. Wild haired hippies beat homemade cowhide drums and smoked yarni in the street. People wandered all across the roads slowing traffic as the pace of the town took its effect on the locals and visitors. We strolled loosely through the markets with William and Mika, who we met up with out front of the HEMP Embassy. They were both stoned to the eyeballs, enjoying the street drums and buskers. I rolled a joint from William's stash and wandered into the dream. We sifted through the knick-knacks, old bead necklaces and second hand books. I kept forgetting the finer details of what we were doing and instinctually went to steal half of everything I wanted. I found an original publication of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas signed by Hunter S. Thompson. It was totally illegal, worth $1000 and probably a fake but boy did I want to own that book. Being Nimbin, the stall owner left his stall regularly. Stealing it would have been simple but I just could not do it. The first rule maybe 'don't get caught' but our ethos remains 'Never steal from individuals'.

Later on we were sitting at a small table eating lunch. I was complaining about the lack of definition between honest thievery and immoral stealing when Gypsy lent across and kissed my mouth stopping my words with her tongue.

"That's enough of that." she said as jumped up off the seat and began to twirl with free joyous ecstasy.

"Look at this place Alex, it's magnificent."

Gypsy twirled and twirled until she was exhausted. I jumped up and hugged her around the waist, stopping her twirl before she collapsed. I held her close and looked into her eyes. She smiled. On days like these Gypsy would be happy. She would make jokes, dance, sing and laugh. As I watched her playing, giggling and holding the breezy skirt to her waist I saw the side of her that years of abuse could never kill. Never truly kill, but take its toll. Certainly. Gypsy was a special one. Her eyes glistened and shimmered as though natural creeks flowed across her irises. She had a special sense for peoples feeling. She worried about others as though their problems were hers. She stood for and supported other lost souls. Yet for all this beauty inside her, there was another side. What pieces of her personality were left after the physical, sexual and substance abuse had become fragile and hard to predict. It was hard to tell if the drugs had done permanent damage or if she was always going to be this way. Her pain and the abuse seemed too deeply entwined. Gypsy was tough though. She had done the hard work, trudged through the shit from when she was young. She knew men before she knew puberty. Sometimes the memories got too much for her and she'd just break down. She'd cry that they liked her better back when she was younger. Someone once told me that Gypsy had victim written all over her. She was strong, but so scarred. She was a lover but full of so much fight, and if she couldn't fight she would fuck the pain away. Always fucking the pain away. And if I wouldn't fuck her she'd rape me; or finger herself with a bitter loathing. That girl had a hairpin trigger. She would throw into rages that ended in broken windows, slammed doors and looks of sad disappointment. She was a holy angel fucked over one too many times and maybe I did love her. But none of that mattered today. Today was a good day.

When we got home we realised the house was empty of food. I rummaged round in the back of the cupboard and found an old pack of mi-goreng. I went to cook it but the water in the taps came out a rusty brown all over the noodles.

"We can't have this." Gypsy pouted.

"We can go to the shops?"

"No Baby, the shops are closed."

She was right the shops were closed.

"The bottle-o is open?"

"Magnificent darling!" I said. Smokes and booze was what we needed after all.

Gypsy and I decided to take a stroll to the bottle shop. It was late afternoon and the sun was not long off the treetops. We walked the couple of hundred meters to the shop hand in hand. All was very peaceful and calm. We hit the Oxy hard before we left and the rush was on us. Like that the world's problems no longer seemed to scare us as much. When we arrived at the bottle-o the guy behind the register eyed Gypsy, so I eyed him likewise. He was a middle age bloke with a greasy mullet. I couldn't tell if he wanted to kick us out or try his luck flirting with my girl. I had had plans to steal a bottle of whiskey, but threw those plans out of the window the moment I saw him perv on Gypsy.

His eyes said, "get the fuck outta here you rats". His nametag said, 'Hi my name is Daryl'. You have to know your adversary when you're stealing. A good thief knows that psychology plays just as great a role as stealth. Trying to steal while Daryl is having subconscious whinge over an alpha male entering his dominion. Because I command Gypsy's attention, Daryl instantly dislikes me. So no matter how much she flirts or no matter how I am polite. Daryl will still be onto us. A good thief knows when to say no. So instead of stealing Gypsy and I lingered for a while. We knew it was close to closing time. Daryl would be itching to knock off. Gypsy started asking the poor man ridiculous questions about expensive wine we clearly couldn't afford. Daryl was starting to get frustrated. Every time Gypsy would ask Daryl to check out the back for 'special wines' I'd duck down and crawl to the end of aisle. Then I'd stand up and Daryl would look to me like 'fuck you, little shit'. It was cruel and childish to torture this poor bloke on a Sunday night, but it felt so good to act like cunts.

Gypsy latched onto me in the wine section. She kissed me with a big wet open mouth. I held her tight and slid my hand over her arse. I could see Daryl watching us. I could see his Adam's apple bob as he gulped at our actions. I fell back at this point almost knocking over a wine rack. We decided then, that we'd had had our fun. We wandered to the counter. "Pack of champion ruby thanks" I said. He said he needed my ID before he could sell them. I told him I didn't have ID. He looked at me with a barbaric eye.

"Do I look seventeen?" I said bluntly.

After a few seconds of silence, his eyes burning into mine he said, "Four bucks."

"Four bucks?" Gypsy parroted in protest.

He wanted four bucks for a pack of champion ruby.

"No way buddy."

We kindly told Daryl he was a rip off and walked out.

"How much tobacco's in the pouch?" I asked Gyps

"A few grams yet." Gypsy said with a smile.

"Bugger it, we'll get some tomorrow."

We began our lazy trip home when suddenly I witnessed this most beautifully strange event. We were just about to cross the road. Gypsy was carrying the precious last of our tobacco, the papers and filters, as well as her wallet. When she saw a pure white rabbit stuck on the roadside of the concrete barrier running parallel to the road. Without hesitating she yelled, "That's someone's pet". She dropped all her stuff right there in the middle of the road and ran to save the rabbit. I picked up the stuff before any cars had the chance run them over. Lucky it was Sunday or things could have been very different. I ran to join her. Gypsy was off the road about three meters back from the rabbit trying to coax it.

"Here little rabbit, here fella."

It was a beautiful rabbit with cocaine white fur and bright black eyes. She was so sweet trying to catch it. She was close to it now, within reaching distance.

"Here little fella," she said putting her arms out to catch him. But as she did a car raced past and the rabbit not knowing what the fuck was going on, hopped down a storm drain. I caught up to Gypsy just as it's little back legs kicked down into the blackness.

"What are we gonna do baby?" Gypsy turned to me and asked, tears forming in the corners of her eyes, "Domesticated animals die really quick in nature." she said defeated.

I tried to explain to her that if any animal could survive in the wild it would be a rabbit. But I could tell she wasn't buying. Then a cheeky smile crept across her face.

"Can we follow it?" she asked looking very much like an excited child.

"Okay Alice." I laughed.

It was then something strange happened. Gypsy tapped her heels three times and we began to shrink. We shrunk to the size of the rabbit. I looked across at my wallet and tobacco. They were now the size of large suit cases.

"What the fuck Gypsy!" I yelled.

"Sweetheart don't you know that when you're in love, anything's possible?"

"In love you say?"

"The magic doesn't lie." Gypsy was all bubbles and chewing gum, her eyes moved in kaleidoscope vision. Her pupils were big black discs holding the entire world. She jumped first. Straight down into the darkness of the drain, I followed. We landed in water. It smelt strangely like the inside of wet work boots. It was dark down there but Gypsy clicked her fingers and made me glow an electric blue that lit up the whole drainpipe. We searched for hours in those drains, looking for the white rabbit but he was nowhere to be found. Poor Gypsy, she wanted so much to save that rabbit but all we could do was search in the electric blue maze of human wastage.

"He couldn't have stayed white down here," I told her

"You're right," she said, "at least we tried."

Anyway by now we were coming down and getting home had become priority. We left the drainpipe and to our surprise the tobacco and wallet were still there, three giant suitcases in front of us.

"Don't worry baby," Gypsy said. She got out a little pocket mirror full of pink dust. She took a pinch and snuffed it. The she sneezed and the powder went in my face. So I sneeze. It's impossible to keep your eyes open when you sneeze. When I did we were regular size. Gypsy had already picked up the tobacco and was walking ahead.

"So how bout that huh," I said as I caught up to her.

"How bout what?" she said.

"The rabbit."

"The rabbit."

"Nevermind." I said

"Nirvana 1991."

"Very funny sweetheart."

Gypsy and I were happy living our life this way and things continued on for some time. I cannot recall how long, but it was a beautiful. I recall that much. Trips to the beach, sex on the bonnet besides the cane fields at sunset. It was an epic happiness, and I lived off it. Then one day the phone rang. As it buzzed on the nightstand I felt a supernatural urge to leave it. My mind told me that all was well and there was no need to ruin it by speaking with anyone who was not Gypsy. She was so beautiful asleep beside me that my instinct was to not let it wake her. So before my mind realised what it was doing. I answered it. Her voice was a punch in the face. I was so suddenly taken by her voice that I barely had time to place myself. Her voice, her mind, her hair, her every breath, God damn it. Images of Peachcake flooded through me. She filled the empty spaces inside me with a rush that took my breath away. It was then I noticed Floyyd .He sat in the corner tisking me.

"Tisk, tisk tisk," he whispered waiving his blackened thin index finger at me.

I put the phone down to tell him to fuck off.

"She wants you buddy remember?" his voice was low and thick like his words were bubbling through molasses. "It's what you always wanted."

"Fuck up Floyyd!" I snapped.

Gypsy stirred then, sensing the threat no doubt.

Beautiful Gypsy. Everything in my heart told me to stop. I swore to myself that I would keep it dead. To remain silent and only do what I thought was right. What was necessary. I knew Peachcake was losing herself inside a black hole of deceit. I knew my involvement would only drag me down with her. She was almost two months along and still hadn't told her boyfriend or her family. She was keeping the pregnancy a secret. After that first phone call, many more came. Firstly she asked me for lifts to the doctors and alike. Slowly her requests became more frequent and so did my lies. I should have never gone back. I should never have answered that phone. That night like so many others I told her not to call me. But even as I said the words my resolve was eroding from underneath me. Floyyd made sure he was there to spur me along. He had conveniently been staying up late, waking me when the phone would ring. Making sure I never missed a single call. Night after night Peachcake called me. She had been drinking a lot, calling me up in the middle of the night drunk off her head with promises of fidelity, escape and love. She was desperate, in pain. I could hear the strain in her voice, down to her last few cents on the pay phone. But I had my own troubles. Gypsy would ask who was calling and I had to lie. I don't know if she was suspicious but I dropped my phone in the toilet and push the flush button just in case. I was coming apart, torn in a wayward direction. Who would have thought it was as simple as I hanging up the phone, walking calmly to the toilet then, 'Sploosh' done.

Destroying that phone almost felt like atonement for all I had done. Still I knew Peachcake existed phone or not, my mind became absent of all other thoughts. I was unable to please Gypsy. I couldn't talk to my friends. I was eating Oxy and Diazepam like jellybeans and racking speed to keep my heart beating.

Chapter 48

Peachcake wanted one last favour. She'd tracked me down. Relentless like a blood hound, she just kept on coming. I heard the knocking and when I opened the door. I never expected to see her.

"Hi," I said, more out of shock then pleasantries. I fell instantly sick to my stomach as though I'd been kicked in the balls

"Before you send me away," she blurted, "please just let me talk." She looked scarred so I said okay, but be quick. Peachcake told me that she was bleeding down there. That she needed a doctor and there was only one doctor sensitive enough to deal with her unique situation.

"You mean abortion?" I said.

"No Alex, I'm bleeding... down there, constantly."

Of course I was going to help. She knew it too. I had to lie to Gypsy about where I was going. We had to drive up the coast to see the doctor and get some ultrasounds. I was pretty high on the drive up. I kept nodding off on the highway. Once I came-to as the car was beginning to veer towards the oncoming traffic and had to swerve hard to stop from killing us. I had felt like spearing the car into the trees on the roadside. Then I remembered the nightmare and my gut became sick with fear.

Peachcake said, "are you sure your okay to drive?" I ignored her so she went back to staring out the window. We didn't talk on the way up. The radio played song after song oblivious to how close death had been.

Then when we arrived at the doctors we found out what the bleeding was. Peachcake had miscarried. Simultaneously at that moment when the doctor handed us the confirmation I felt great joy and great sadness. It was all over. The days of emptiness, the nights of sleepless worry all over. I could if I wanted, never speak to her again. As I looked at her I knew I still loved her. I just couldn't understand why.

"Its over." she whimpered

"Yeah." I said.

With the end of the pregnancy we pretty much ended our relationship, friendship whatever it was. It was over. I wanted to call Gypsy and tell her the news but knew I didn't want to see her either. I was done. A hollow void opened up where I used to feel love. I was exhausted, and I didn't give a fuck. Alex Brownsmoke was signing off for a while. That night I sat down in my yard with a cold beer. I held my hand out to the horizon. It shook unsteadily. Then my knees started shaking. I wanted to cry but I felt no tears. I downed the beer then another, as I sat there watching the condensation dribble down the bottle all I could think about was getting high.

Chapter 49

I often wonder about the point of anything. These wonderings make me sad. I wonder why for instance we have to pay to live, why people orbit their lives around money. I wonder why men beat women, break their noses then expect a greater from of mercy set upon them. Sadness is everywhere in this strange world. It seems as though existence feeds off it, like a cancer or a junkie. A man has to eat to survive, but the fuel he ingests only helps the cancer to grow. Drug use on a constant basis is much the same. I thought drugs helped me, but now the whole thing has grown so big. I don't see how I can possibly survive. These days, the only thing drugs are good for is passing whatever time we have left in a fast and forgetful manner. On a lifting run, I got caught up staring at two gothic teenagers, a girl and a boy. They were maybe sixteen or seventeen. The girl fascinated me so much I couldn't help but stare at her, when she noticed she smiled a little and turned away from me. She was a pretty girl. Not overly attractive or noticeably different to any other gothic teen yet something about her made me want to watch them. The guy clad from head to toe in black seemed to fade into the scenery as though he was just a stage prop to contrast the girl. He was of little importance, although his reasons for being gothic may have been due to the weasel shape of his head, and half-inch gap between his eyes. But the girl, the girl she was something, she had energy, aura. Purple tights grew from heavy buckled boots. Black frilled tutu covered her slim curved waist and her sexy cat like body rose like a black flower into my vision. Her hair was dyed black but I could see from her freckles and white skin she was a natural redhead. In any other part of me that existed closely to the imagination of these pages I would have loved to speak to her. Know why she wore black and carried the "don't fuck with me" cloud with her where ever she went. Instead I said nothing, I watched.

Chapter 50

I had lost track of current events, days, dates and time. Everything just seemed to dissolve into the periods between sunrise and sunset. When I was with Gypsy we spent our time laying around or chasing our tails. The gang wasn't partying hard anymore. We had had enough strange nights to fill our hungry bellies for the near future. I had reclined to a slow storm like dream. It didn't really matter where I lay my head most nights. I'd drink my cheap wine, gobble Oxy and Diazepam , and just watch the clouds float by. Gypsy asked me once just before the end if we were clouds. I told her we were. We were very special clouds that sailed above it all. As time went on and the seasons changed I found myself squatting in The Warehouse again. The autumn leaves began to fall. Gypsy and I walked through the mist of life free from the ugliness of the world. Gypsy and I had found a happy place. We were together. Sometimes we would kiss on the corner of a busy highway, then when we didn't even realise the cars existed. Those cars racing past us at light quick speeds while we kissed and all the pretty leaves fell down.

Chapter 51

We could hear the soft ugly sound of time winding its gears tighter and tighter. The ropes we used to climb to great heights were now binding our wrists and choking our throats so subtly. Our fun became misfortune. Our love became hate. If only I had just stopped to listen. When it happened, it happened. Tomorrow came upon us ever so fast. She died on the 19th of June. She just stopped breathing. She was on the edge of herself then she slipped. When it happened it was loud and raging. Like a tornado throwing all of life into the air then nothing, everything settled in chaos. Like a little pin had popped the whole earth and everything gushed out into space. The roaring, the snapping of the vacuum was Gypsy screaming out, 'I'm here', then silence. I think Gypsy wanted me to find her. I had woken to an empty bed. Normally having a line is the first thing I do in the morning. That morning despite the cold, I felt hot, panicked. Gypsy's side of the bed was cold. She had been gone a while. I knew where she was. There was no Floyyd, no rush. I knew. I remember her hair. It was long, really long and silky beautiful. It floated in the water around her face. She looked mystic, serene. With the water covering her face Gypsy seemed eternal. She could stay perfect, submerged and lovely forever. I reached out and held her hand. Our fingers interlocked and I squeezed her so tightly. Gypsy was dead. I broke down. I cried and cried and cried.

Chapter 52

When we buried her nothing changed. I stood by the hole. The headstones around her were lashed with rain. We sheltered under black umbrellas. There were maybe twenty-five of us. The sadness was all around. Overhead the trees wept and grieved, the ground sunk into a depression and the birds couldn't even fly. This life had stolen another gemstone. We lost another link. Gypsy's coffin was covered in native wild flowers.

Chapter 53

"She was the sweetest girl I'd ever met."

"So beautiful."

Condolences fill the silence from before. I am surrounded by the people I love they comfort each other. There is crying everywhere. I fight against the nods. Her coffin is the colour of deep rosewood timber. Someone had worked hard to bring out the grain so well. Then it slips into the ground. Gone.

Rain runs into my mouth and I taste the water. It tastes soft and earthy. It tastes like Gypsy's kisses.

"Don't worry mate, I'll look out for her." it's Floyyd. The weight of his dead hand falls on my shoulder.

"Fuck off." I tell him.

I stare up at the sky and all sounds fade away. I notice the weight disappear.

"Thankyou." I whisper to her.

We had a small wake at Bright St. The gang was there and they drank sullenly. It was a long day and our friends gave their respects and faded off. By 8pm only Stan and I remained. We didn't speak. Stan drank bourbon from the bottle. I got sick of looking at his miserable face. It was hard being alone with him. For half an hour I glared off out the window. That fuck wouldn't know half the pain I was in.

"Goodnight." I said blankly then I stood up and I walked to my room without a word, leaving him alone with his precious bottle. I hit some lines and the pillow hard.

I open my eyes and take a huge breath. Had I been breathing? I am awake after what seems like an eternity. I look down at my body. I'm thin and sick and white. I see the room as I left it the last time Gypsy was here. Her clothes are still draped across the writing chair and her little trinkets sit patiently on the dresser. Outside, the grey sky drops rain in steady thrums against the window. I'd guess it's about midday. I stare blankly at the roof. My room is big. I'd never really felt its size before, but now there is so much room to remember. The roof seems far away, the four walls seem far off as well. My bed is an island in the sea of floorboards and waves of junk. I have no urge to move. I am a cunt. My body is swimming from a hard night on the M. I feel like my whole body has been massaged over night, it is an amazing feeling and Gypsy rots in the dirt.

Who the fuck have I become?

After about half an hour of watching the rain I decide to drag myself out of the mattress and into the future, a gamble at the best of times.

I stumble out of my room, still groggy from last nights Morph/Diazepam combo. As I walk the hallway I notice bloody footprints dried into the timber floorboards. There is a trail of broken glass following the footprints into the kitchen. When I round the corner I find out why. Stan has lost it overnight. He is slumped in the corner looking corpse like. He is dressed only in his underpants. An empty bottle of bourbon lies dead by his side. His feet are badly cut and covered in blood. There is garbage and broken dishes scattered all around him.

"You're gotta be kidding!" I yell.

He grunts at me.

"Fuck Stan, you better not be dead!" I say as I kick him in the side.

"FUCK OFF!" he roars bursting to life and throwing the bourbon bottle in my direction. I dodge the bottle and it explodes on the wall behind me.

"Fine you prick I wont help."

I step over his train wreck of a body and go lay down in the lounge room. The T.V. is set to static, a bloody handprint is smeared across the screen.

"You better clean up your blood too!" I yell back to him

"FUCK OFF!" he roars then something else smashes.

Chapter 54

I can't help but feel so sick, so tired, and just empty. My body wanders through the hours of the day as though I am trapped in an endless wasteland. My stomach hurts, my mind hurts. My friends seem so far away. I cannot trust anybody and the loneliness is only amplified by the opiates that I cannot stop taking. Gypsy is dead and everyday I wonder if I should follow her.

I needed help. So I did something I never thought I'd do, I did it with the memory of Gypsy's sunray life shining in my heart. I went to see a doctor for help, not just to scam drugs, but for real help.

When I arrived at his office he instantly gave me the disapproving look that told me "If your chasing drugs, I won't help you" and I wanted to walk out but somehow Gypsy's memory held me there. I sat in front of this rich doctor with his clean shirt and his diagrams of hearts and framed diplomas. I sat there with my palms sweating and my legs shaking then I told him everything, all of it.

The doctor, once I'd finished my story almost fell off his chair. His look of disproval had melted into a combination of sad pity, and reluctant fear.

"I understand your going through a difficult time." he says looking over his glasses, smoothing his moustache.

"I just don't know what to do." I say.

"Alex," he pauses and hands me a pamphlet, "I want you to enter the A.H.A rehabilitation clinic."

I look at the pamphlet, it has a friendly cartoon of a young man being welcomed into a sterile building. Across the top of the pamphlet the words "Addicts Helping Addicts" is written in graffiti style font.

"We can make you an appointment now if you like?"

"No, doc I think I'll go down and see them in person."

The doctor smiles but his eyes say he has no hope for me. I wonder how many times Gypsy saw those same eyes. I consider asking for a script but I guess that's just force of habit.

Chapter 55

When I stood out side the A.H.A building I was almost confident this was it. I was done. The sun glistened off the windows giving them a diamond effect. The sandstone bricks seemed so rich with optimism. The shrubs around the entrance were trimmed and led like a guiding hand to the tinted sliding door entrance.

I had a bag of clothes over my shoulder. This is what I needed, I thought to myself. Then as I entered the building I felt the creep of fear. I saw the middle aged women in white coats with smiles that seemed genuinely to be genuine. Posters on the wall that said things like "Every day is a success" and "Jesus forgives all". I began to get jumpy but then I thought of Gypsy.

The lady behind the desk looked at me with beaming blue eyes and said, "Welcome to A.H.A, would you like some help?"

Taken aback by the beauty of her eyes framed neatly by rows of wrinkles I meekly replied "yes."

"Okay, we need you to fill out some forms then we'll get you to have a quick chat with a counsellor."

She passed me the forms and I sat down to read them. The forms besides the usual name/d.o.b/address read more like a list of rules, forbidden contraband and strict regimes in which all addicts like me must follow in order to become a healthy members of society. As I sat there reading the lists of rules a woman maybe in her thirties shuffled through the door. She looked like death on legs. She had scabs and her eyes were so deep in her head you could barely see them. Her hair was matted and falling out in places. She was the result of death factory; maybe only six months. She was ravaged. By her side was an older woman with grey hair and a young boy of maybe fifteen. They both had a look of such agony in their faces. The woman in her thirties had no expression, for all she knew they could have been taking her to the electric chair. As the bright eyed nurse handed the forms to the woman I got up and walked out. This place wasn't for people like me. I could make it on my own. I left the pen sitting on the clipboard. Where it said name, I had written Alex Brownsmoke. That's as far as I got. I walked out.

Chapter 56

After Gypsy died I decided to drive. My plan was to find a new place. Somewhere I could be anonymous. I had called Hugo to supply me with enough gear to get me by. He was waiting for me as I walked back to Bright Street. The moment I entered the house her memory hit me. I promised myself I would try. I promised her I would try. And I asked her once more; why did you do it?

Floyyd was gone and all seemed calm. I arrived home to the smell of pot in the air, that pungently sweet aroma wafting from the lounge room. The scent was almost over ripe, the taste lingering on my tongue. I find Hugo sitting in a cloud of smoke, no doubt showing his condolences the only way he can.

"Hey." I say as I enter the room.

"Sorry about..."

"Don't wanna talk bout her." I am stuck for words so we sit in silence. Pink Floyyd plays on the stereo.

Then Hugo lights up his pipe and pulls a lung full of smoke into his body. His pipe looks like a dog whistle. He calls it the bitch. He's had it since he was sixteen and if he lets you smoke out of it then you can consider yourself worthy of the damage it causes. When I asked him why he called it the bitch he just looked at me saying, "Brother sometimes you hit the bitch, and sometimes the bitch hits you back."

I guess the same goes for life.

The End.

Afterword

It is strange to try and decipher the blur of life, make sense of the inconceivable, I feel I shall hold mine, in the years and events too many to remember and even more forgotten. Yet all of them with their effort and excitement of which at the time I probably gave my all to make happen yet now barely remember. For the sad truth now is that I cannot decipher the real truth from the imagined, yet I can look back with a single memory at all the craters of my bombardment, the burning wreckage and smouldering ruins. I shall not return to these lands so soon but to the open stretches of tomorrow, and with this, only time can tell the future.

Andrew Spencer

Broken Hill, Dec '13

About the author

Andrew Spencer was born in 1987. He grew up on the beaches of Coolangatta. The attitudes and values depicted in this first novel came about whilst Andrew was studying sociology at Southern Cross University. His integration into the university art scene fostered and inspired Andrew to begin writing drug lit and grunge fiction. When Andrew is not writing he practices performance poetry across Australia. His work has taken him from Darwin to Sydney

His website ( alexbrownsmoke.com ) contains all official poems, short stories and writings of Andrew Spencer.
