Fiction

A branch smashes on a nearby mudstone slab and the leaves do not rain down politely like this is a wholesome and earthy wedding, they spark as if they are flaming green from an explosion. But the red-haired man is chatting about all the books that are best-selling and wonderful, especially the one about the explorer who climbs the smallest mountains in the world that are still called mountains, and how funny it is!

The doctor they’d made him see had called it catastrophising but it was hard to believe that guy was a real doctor and not just some uni student with a bunch of brochures, and Lucas doesn’t want any of the medication now because it makes him feel like a stupefied bullock, shuffling down the ramp at the abattoir, so this doctor says it’s all about changing the narrative, what he has to do is practise visualising a different outcome or future.

When he left last time and he told her they’d likely be apart a month, she kissed him and said Why don’t you move here and let us see if we can make this a life? And these words are with him on the plane, they are with him as he lands, they are with him as he opens the store and greets people by their name. He looks at the market as if to farewell it. It is the place he has known his entire life, and Khaled does not believe he is ready to walk away.

Last night, in the charming, converted barn, as we swilled red-black wine in long stemmed glasses, she said: “I just feel when I get up for the fifth or sixth time that night, I just look at her and I think that maybe the one way it could end, that I could get some sleep would be just to suffocate her, that’s what I think about in the middle of the night.” Everyone laughed, a grim laugh that made the heart quicken, a tears-at-the-corner-of-her-eyes laugh. One of them slipped out and over the edge, making a bid for the floor, but she wiped it so quick it never was.

- Find mother’s ring
- clean – silvo?
- buy metal cleaner or get professionally done?
- Cancel house-cleaning next wk. (permanently??)
- new sprinkler timer
- Book accom. – Perth

We were there most days, light chat lapsing into comfortable silence. A dog would pass, or a squirrel run up a man’s leg, and that would set us off again. Then the sun would go and one or the other of us would say he had better be off. Always soon, never tomorrow.

She smells like adrenalin and painkillers, antiseptic and ointment. She has been irradiated. Across the left side of her back is another pink square, flecked with uniform dots of red rash. The radiation has gone straight through her body, straight through her heart. She’s holding your hand now the way you used to hold hers as a child, crossing the street, weaving through crowds. Gripping tightly, not wanting to get lost.

My father’s position simply said that humanity over millions of years has had long enough to assess its surroundings and has done so pretty well; and that – taken as a line from humanity’s beginnings until today – the period within which animals have been regarded with affection is infinitesimal, not even a whole percentage point; and, therefore, the likelihood is strong that it is wrong. This is where my father’s argument stands. This is its foundation. So when he ran through his list of animals to me as a child, always with the same examples, it was to illustrate this position using the same pictorial imagery as the liberals and fantasists in the guise of artists and writers had used to create the current delusion. This is how thoughtfully crafted his argument is.

For the last class they were asked to bring along a soft toy, but Monica didn’t have one at home. Judy had told them to find something that spoke to their “selves”. At the toyshop was a brown bear in a tutu and a large fluffy dog sitting on its haunches. There were dolls that stared and stared. The only one that appealed to Monica was a round purple ball with a stitched face that looked as though it was pressed against glass. It didn’t resemble any animal she knew. It fitted neatly into her torso when she held it and its strange multicoloured ponytails brushed her face. This creature, in its weirdness, spoke to her.

Up here, the cold permeates. It presses against you and breathes itself back in. You like the way it stings your fingers, how every inch of your body is forced to feel. Arterial, the roads pulse you along, each town you pass fleeting and unacknowledged. You think that every place must have a road named Station Street. You cross Old Orphan Creek. The air is thinner than you’re used to. It’s evening when you pull in. Your headlights cut through the mist, tyres grinding the gravel. You sit in the car, unmoving, as it ticks and cools around you. You don’t know for how long.