Home

I've written this story about a thousand times over the last year - it was my standard Belonging Creative, so I've adapted it to every stimulus imaginable. This is, however, the only one I could find on my computer since I gave away my notes. The inspiration is Home.

Home

Tom’s room was packed up the day after he died. At exactly 7:32 pm, he stopped breathing. By 8:49 the next evening, I could hear the rustle of a nurse carefully placing each of his personal affects into a large cardboard box through the paper thin wall. I wonder what his family will do with them. Will they open the box? Will they go through each item, looking for things of use or sentimental value? Or will they just dump the box into the nearest charity bin they can find and be done with it.

They couldn’t. Shane would never let them.

I wish I could have been there for Shane when they told him. Or at least Angie. We were all told separately – Shane and his parents by a word perfect doctor, Angie by the rumours which breed in the hospital like a cancerous mould, me by the piercing sustained harmony of a metal box. He was still warm when I checked his pulse, even though the machine already told me he was gone.

Then again, what could I have done for Shane? Or Angie? Promised that everything would be alright? That I could be there for them, to look after them, to make sure nothing happened to them. I couldn’t promise any of that without lying through my teeth and both of them already know it.

The clock ticks over to 8:57. The click of the next door along shutting is clear as a gunshot.

I don’t hesitate, ignoring the nausea which always comes when I stand too quickly after treatment. My hand goes to my head, an old calming trick, only to find there is no hair to run it through.

I know every corridor of the hospital by now – mine is watched over by a nurse stand and whoever is on will see me. Then again, I’ve been here long enough for every nurse to know that I was Tom’s best friend. Angie and I used to sneak into his room every night, helping Shane climb in through the window so his parents didn’t know he spent every sleepless night with his brother in the cold, clinical ward.

No one reacts as I push open my door – was it always such an effort? – and sneak along the corridor towards Tom’s room.

No, not Tom’s room. Room 1427.

This was home. Once. Back to an empty pristine condition, it still can’t hide the marks of two years worth of late nights, early treatments and steel friendships. The window latch is loose and the frame slightly bent – Shane’s efforts over the years. The disinfectant they must have poured over every surface can’t mask the old smell – woollen blankets spread out across the floor, picnic style, piles of sugary and salty contriban all over the floor, the ridiculous Lynx body spray which almost sent Angie into the ER with an asthma attack.

This was home. Just not anymore.

I know the door is going to open before Angie even touches the handle. I know it’s her too – Shane would have knocked on the window and no one else has any interest in this room.

“Hey.” Her voice is weak – God, she’s weak, her body pumped full of toxic and radioactive substances in some perverted effort to make her healthy. Twelve years old and already faced with the reality that the next funeral might well be her own.

I don’t answer to her, just plonk myself down onto the plastic matress and look at her. She’s too young – I remember when she was admitted ten months ago, a soft young face marred by the very real idea that this may be her last admittance. When Tom and I ‘adopted’ her, she was terrified at first, certain our offers of sweets and piggy backs were designed in some way to hurt her. It took her more than a month to trust us, but when she did, it was all worth it. We read to her, taught her card games, treated her like the little sister neither of us had. Tom always did practical things, like bike riding, while I always had the little facts for every situation. I’d call it wisdom – Tom called it useless trivia. Shane loved her almost as much as us – if I didn’t know she could die any day, I’d have said they’d make a great couple some day. Then again, I’m only sixteen – my judgement might be a little off.

She sits next to me in the oppressive silence, both of us acutely aware of the yawning chasm left by Tom. She looks at me, almost expectant, wanting some form of reassurance, even if it is a lie.

“Got any wisdom for me?”

She rings her hands slightly, the only outward sign she ever displays of her intense intrinsic fears. Hope isn’t something she’s used to.

In Tom, she found it. So did Shane. And me.

“Yeah, I’ve got something. Something Tom,” my throat jams at his name and it takes a few attempts to keep speaking, “once told me.”

She’ll need me. I’ll need her. And whoever moves into this room next will need the both of us, in the same way we needed Tom.

“Life’s like riding a bike – to keep your balance, you have to keep moving.”

Angie can’t help laughing – neither can I. The advice is so futile, so insignificant, and so much what Tom would have said.

I walk her back to her room, where the luminous stars we stuck all over the ceiling glow brightly. I decide mentally that this is where we’ll have the new all night parties, without the old torches, just the glowing stars.

And maybe, just maybe, this can be home. 

The Beach

This was one of Crime Fiction practise creatives - it's based off an incident in P.D. James' "The Skull Beneath the Skin" (don't read it, it's thick and dull as a footballer). Simon's father drowned but from there on, this is an original.

The Beach

“My father drowned when I was just a kid. Went off one morning for a swim, never came back. I want to know what happened – was it an accident? Did he do it himself? Or did someone make him drown?”

I look evenly into the eyes it took me so long to find. My Uncle Geoffrey – gambler, alcoholic, black sheep and general scoundrel. The last person my father contacted before going off to Austinmer beach and filling his lungs with salty water.

“How old are you?” He looks at me with doubt and condescension, but behind all that, concern.

“Seventeen. You sent me a birthday card.”

It was the first contact I’d had with him since I was a toddler. I only remembered bits of him – bushy beard, worn work boots, stale cigarettes. Not long after that Mum had stopped us seeing him altogether.

Until I started asking questions about what happened to Dad that misty 2002 morning, I hadn’t though about Geoffrey for years. Until I started trying to decode the tiny letters in my father’s journal, and he’d cottoned on to the fact that I was looking for him, Geoffrey probably hadn’t though about me either.

It’s cold on the beach – tiny particles of half-dry sand wedge themselves between my toes, and a shivering sea-breeze washes through my hair. It’s the only place he would meet me. The only place I never wanted to go.

He lights up a cigarette and takes a long drag, then points out at the waves.

“There’s a sandbank there. It pushes the current in, makes the rip real strong.”

He traces the thin curve of the waves to the heavy rock outcrop with the glowing butt of his cigarette.

“Leads straight into those. No wonder Austinmer’s one of the most dangerous beaches in the country."

“If only he’d hit the rocks. Then I’d know what killed him”

Geoffrey exhales a grey mist which rises to blend with the overcast sky.

“How much do you remember of your old dad?”

I straighten, almost in pride. “He was a doctor. He saved lives. He never drank, never—“

“Not what you’ve been told – what do you remember.”

This is harder. I run through my memory.

“I was only eight when he died... not much, really. He used to pick me up from school. He’d buy me ice-cream on Fridays. He was always so active, running, swimming, piggybacking me—“

Geoffrey snorts. I stop. H gestures apologetically.

“Go on.”

“He’d read to me. And if I ever wanted something, no matter what Mum said, he’d get it. He got me a GameBoy Advance two weeks before he died. And.... that’s it.”

Geoffrey nods, tosses the fag into the sand and buries it with the toe of his old work boot.

“So this is the bit where I ruin all your memories.”

I almost ask him to stop. Almost. I’ve suspected for nearly a year that there was something wrong about the circumstances of my father’s death – maybe there was something I didn’t know about him.

But did I really want to know?

“How bad is it?”

Geoffrey shrugs. “As bad as you want it to be. Crime is usually a relative thing. Personal perspective and all that.”

“So it was crime? My Dad was a criminal?”

He lights up again. “All relative, sweetheart.” He takes a deep breath through the filter and looks me in the eye.

“Fact is, your dad was up to his eyeballs in coke.”

Of all the things I’d imagined, suspected or even guessed, this was the last. Gambling debts, another woman, tax fraud, theft – but never drugs.

“But... he was a doctor. He wouldn’t—“

“White collar professions have the highest usage rate of stimulants. Helps them thing. Ever wonder how your dad was always so active?”

No, I didn’t. I was eight.

“In a way, I blame myself. He started with someone else but came to me for more. Black sheep and all that. I didn’t sell to him, but I pointed him to people who would.”

I take a deep breath, salty air tinged with cigarette smoke. So my Dad used drugs. I accepted it, sort of. But still...

“How could that get him killed?”

Geoffrey gives me a concerned look. I recognise, for the first time, that under the red spider webs, he has the same green eyes as my father. Same green eyes as me.

“Are you sure you want to know? The rabbit hole ain’t pretty this far down.”

I could leave now; take my bare feet through the sand and far away, with an almost untainted view of my father. But that’s not why I started looking.

“I need to know.”

Geoffrey shrugs, recognising my mother’s stubborn determination.

“Most people are only occasional users, but your dad, he got hooked real bad. And when you’re racking up a bill like that, you start considering new ways to make cash. Fair bit of money to be made selling in hospital. Feed his habit, and everyone else’s, with a bit of cash on the side. That’s probably when your GameBoy came from. Anyway, after a while, the police started asking questions around the hospital. Some rehab kid had told them about a doctor offering to sell to him. Your dad panics – hasn’t got long before someone turns him in. Your mum has no idea, and the blokes he’s selling for aren’t exactly cupcakes. So who can he call?”

“You.”

Suddenly, the marks in my father’s diary make sense. Left hand column, local landmarks – supply. Letters on the right – users, or buyers. Then G. Geoffrey.

“He called me a week before he went, asking for help. I told him if he didn’t mind being an untrustworthy bastard he could sell his suppliers to the cops in exchange for his acquittal. He organised that quick smart – 6 days later, there’s a raid. Unfortunately, the thugs put two and two together and work out who sold them. Your dad gets a warning – meet them at Austinmer the next day, or they’ll go to him.”

“And he calls you again. And you tell him...”

Geoffrey looks away, almost ashamed. This is it.

“I tell him to go. Because these guys are dangerous – if they could track him after he sold them out, they could find him anywhere. And they could find—“

“His family.”

Dad’s final goodnight – closer than usual. Looking back, more desperate.

The last time I saw him alive.

Was I the reason he was dead?

Geoffrey seems to see what I’m thinking.

“Don’t blame yourself sweetheart. No one knows what happened. Maybe he was early and swam himself out to the rip. Maybe they knocked him out and put him in it. No one knows.”

He stubs out the cigarette and looks at me, imploring.

“I don’t know what happens next.”

Of course – he wasn’t at the funeral.

“The police came, asking questions. I thought it was just about the drowning. Then, last year, there’s a story in the paper about a drug ring from Coledale being busted. Implicated in four deaths – one of which was a drowning off Austimer in 2002. Mum stopped answering my questions, so I went through the stuff she kept of his; find his diary. And when that stopped making sense—“

“You called me.”

I nod.

“Do you feel... different?”

I think hard on the question.

“A little. But not much. It’s all in the past, I guess. But it’s better knowing.”

Geoffrey holds out a hand. I take it. I know that now, with this weight both off and on his mind, he’s unlikely to contact me again.

When he’s gone, I pad down the beach to the water’s edge, wondering if any of the moisture at me feet contains the same molecules that pulled my father into the tide’s embrace.

Then, pausing only to toss an old Nintendo GameBoy Advance into the surf, I turn and go, leaving the ghost behind.

The Choice

This is one I wrote a while back, from an idea that sort of formed itself.

The Choice

“You lied to me.”

Her knuckles stood out white against her dark skin, gripping the steering wheel like a last link to reality.

He chuckled, low and menacing. “You lied to yourself.”

The road was slick with midnight rain – droplets on the windscreen distorted the multiple hues of light and refracted them dully into the cab.

“You never said anyone would die.”

She kept her eyes fixed on the road, long and deserted, traffic lights winking at empty air. Anything to avoid looking at him.

He didn’t bother with her anger – perhaps he didn’t even notice.

“He got in the way. I had no choice.”

There’s always a choice.

“Jesus Greg, you didn’t have to kill him. What if the cops find out? What if they saw you? What if they saw me?”

Her voice edged towards hysterics as her fears mounted. Inwardly, she faced other questions – those she wouldn’t dare voice to Greg. What if he had a family? How will his wife find out? Is there such a thing as heaven? (because if there is, she was no longer going there)

He laughed again, the baritone plosives grinding her nerves against one another.

“Relax Indonesia. People die. The cops never find anyone.”

Indonesia. Does he call her that to distance himself?

“They never find you.”

She should have known. Nothing could be this simple. He must have done it before.

“How many others?”

He shrugged, water proof jacket crumpling against itself noisily. “More. I don’t exactly keep a running tally – 

I’m not a sick bastard like Malloy.”

Oh aren’t you?

Her mind slips into its records, the backlog of information she’s tried so hard to hide. Ndari, lifeless body bloated and fly struck, lying in the hot sun. No one stopped to move the body, save a few who checked her pockets for loose change. Ndari lived and died on the streets of Bekasi – she did not haunt that world alone.

A red light jolted her back to Sydney – the streets devoid of one more life and full of those who did not deserve to live. She tried to decide her path. They had been cruising for over an hour – keeping distance to the botched factory job without making an escape obvious.

To the left, where nothing’s right?

To the right, where nothing’s left?

She never had a home here. She worked for those who had smuggled her in, confined to a crowded apartment packaging drugs. Greg had seen potential for a slave and had taken her. He’d taught her to drive, to wait outside buildings and speed away whenever he or Malloy appeared. Until now, it had been simple. She knew it was crime but what was driving a get-away car to the horrors she had seen? Would punishing her crimes somehow punish the men who had killed Ndari?

She was too far gone now.

The last thing in the man’s eyes had been a plea. She hadn’t seen the bullet enter his skull but she had seen the desperation in his face – or what was left of it – as she had driven away. Greg had barely managed to scramble into the car – she’d left Malloy in disgust.

She turned right, smoothly sliding the wheel towards Lang’s Crossing.

Was she responsible for the man’s death? Had it been forced upon her by circumstance?

There’s always a choice.

“You’ll get used to it. It’s tough the first time, but after a while you learn to live with it.”

Learn to live with it. Funny, you didn’t give the security guard a chance to.

“Really, we’re helping them. You of all people should know that life’s a curse, not a gift…”

So that was how he rationalised it. The Greater Good. Ultimate release from the pains of the world.

Sick bastard.

She knew what she was doing. She paused on the precipice of the crossing  – the river had lifted by the winter inundation and split over the road and small concrete barriers.

She let the car begin to coast.

“You’re right,” she said breathily, looking at Greg for the first time. She tried not to physically recoil in horror at what she’d once thought was her salvation.

The car began to pick up momentum.

“I lied to myself.”

She turned back to the road as the front wheels kissed the water-line – just in time to wrench the steering wheel to the left and over the barrier.

She might have heard his screams. She might have screamed herself. But all she knew was that she was finished here.

There’s always a choice.

Finally, she had made the right one.