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.

Welcome to the Fallout

This one isn't belonging, which is always good (although, if I twisted it....) It's actually quite similar to the belonging scenario I've been working with for exams, but came from the idea of nuclear apocalypse (yeah, real original Tansy), the idea of being alone and finally, of owing someone an unspeakable debt. The title comes  from a Switchfoot song.

Welcome to the Fallout

So this is what it feels like to be truly alone.

I should probably savour the few minutes I have left, feeling some sort of pride, or satisfaction that I had outlasted the rest.

Instead, it’s only grief.

I hadn’t known Jordan well, but in the last few days we’d spend together, almost certain that we were the last people left, I felt like I knew every thought he had – probably because I shared each one. It was sad to see him go. I’d almost felt a tear welling up in throat, but I’d cried all I had when Phoebe died. Seeing the last bit of life seep out of her eleven year old body had been too much. I swore that nothing could be worse than that.

Except maybe this.

No one knows why we survived to the last – technically, I suppose, we didn’t know, and as the only people left alive, no one else could offer their opinion. Jordan said that we’d gotten some sort of vaccine before the panic set in, when they’d tried to immunise students against the Fallout. Too many batches of the vaccine had already been tainted though, and it ended up doing more harm than good, bringing about the events which led to panic.

Irony. That’s what it was called.

The Placebo didn’t work for very long either. When news of the Fallout was just starting to break, the 

government had assured us that they’d saved the water, that it was safe to drink. They told us that taking the pills would keep us healthy until we could be taken somewhere else. We’d all believed them so blindly that we’d tricked our bodies into believing it too, holding back the illness until it manifested, horribly, in thick swellings and ugly growths. Placebo can hold back a headache; it was no match for the cancers.

I’d been able to talk to Jordan. He’d been around my age and had somehow escaped the Fallout not just with his life, but a sense of humour. He was a breath of fresh air in this stagnant, toxic environment. We could be philosophical, funny or just plain stupid – it was just a relief that the only other person alive wasn’t a raving lunatic. I supposed he could have been, and I was just too mad to notice. I don’t think self analysis counts for much in psychology, but I think I’m sane.

We’d camped out in the old bunker, surviving on the contents of tins long past their expiration date, wrapped in multiple old sleeping bags, just talking. After so long of solitude, and fear of making any connections lest they be severed too soon, it felt… normal. Like we weren’t both dying. Like we were just two people, getting to know each other, without the risk of radiation sickness or rouge cannibals (although they’d mostly died out) or impending doom.

Like one of us wasn’t going to have to bury the other.

Buried. That’s what he’d said. He wanted to be buried.

“If I’m this sick I want the earth to get sick too.”

He’d said it as a joke but I knew it was really a command – if he died before me, he would be buried.

So, with these last minutes of my life, each breath becoming heavier as the thick cancerous lump presses at my oesophagus, that’s what I’ll do.

There’s a shovel in the bunker and Jordan was still wrapped in a sleeping bag when he’d taken his last breath, so I can drag him. I don’t have the strength to carry him. Decency is long gone.

I can’t bury him in the yard though. Feeling my minutes tick by slowly, I drag the bag to the gate and open in onto a street in broken shady suburbia. The trees are sick too – they feel the Fallout, just like us.

There’s a little park across the road. I don’t bother looking for traffic – the lump seems to be expanding every second, making it harder and harder to inhale. I’ve got less time than I thought.

There’s a lake in the park. Years ago, I would have called it kitch and tiki-taki, but right now, with the sun setting through thick smog in a deep red, it’s breath-taking. The only place.

I summon the last of my strength to dig a shallow grave. It’s definitely not six feet, but no one cares any more. I feel like I’m burying Phoebe to give her a mermaid tail at the beach on a summer afternoon – my body gets hotter and hotter and my breaths get shorter and shorter. The shallow ditch hardly fits the body, but I do him the dignity of taking him out of the sleeping bag. If he’s going to poison the earth, I’m not waiting for the polyester to decompose.

I collapse next to the lump of earth, feeling an even bigger lump in my throat. Is it the thyroid cancer? Or is it emotion? Are the tears in my eyes for Jordan, Phoebe, the whole of humanity… or just myself, alone in the world, the end of humanity.

I wonder if, in the future, another civilisation will rise from our poisonous ashes. Will they find us, beneath their feet? Will we become an archaeological dig, catalogued and classed from our mass grave of millions? Will they know that I was the last person alive, or will I just be tossed into a pile of bones in a greedy dig for oil?

In my final moments, with my last, choking breathes, I sob. Just twice. Then my throat seems to close over and my body stops mid breath – all I manage is a barely audible cry before the dancing black worms of my vision eat away my soul.

……so this is how the world ends……..

………not with a bang………..

………..but a whimper………

Free to a Good Home

Yes, I know, it's been ages. I've been doing my HSC, supposedly. That means nearly every story I write over the next seven months will be about belonging. What can I do? This one's inspired by "Free to a Good Home", the song "Maybe This Time" and the contrasts of old and new.

Free to a good home – one female. Aged, mature, some memory issues. Previously used. Would make good addition to any home.

Maybe this time, I’ll be lucky,

Maybe this time he’ll stay.

The café was a jumble of old and new. French polished tables with fluorescent orange placemats, covered in the crumbs of yesterday’s sandwiches. Smooth jazz leaked softly from speakers the size of tea chests. A waiter wore a top hat over his mohawk.

For the first time, she didn’t stand out. Just another relic of a bygone age, struggling to fit into a world she no longer understood. Clashing with the décor, so to speak.

Her dress was a little old, but no one would notice unless they came close enough to see the fraying edges. She could remember a time when every woman in the office had looked at her in envy when she wore this dress. Now it wasn’t even old enough to be retro.

She looked awkwardly around, just in case she’d missed his entrance. He’d said in the email that he’d arrive at one. It was already twenty past. What was it he’d put? A black suit jacket. A little formal for most lunch dates, but that was probably why he’d picked the café – nothing could ever look out of place here.

And, the small voice of doubt whispered to her, no one can see him here. No embarrassment, no explanations, no one to answer to if he doesn’t come.

She ignored the niggling of doubt and stirred her tea. It was black, no sugar and already strained, but she still stirred it none the less. Habit was habit, and this was hers.

Maybe she should have asked for a photo. It was always embarrassing when she didn’t recognise them. There was always that moment of confusion, as what seemed to be a total stranger stared at her, scrutinising her every detail like a prospective buyer. She’d even once asked one for another cup of tea please, no sugars, add it to the bill.

Needless to say, that meeting had remained awkward.

Maybe there would be a present again. They often bought her things – little trinket from far away lands (yet somehow always made in China), boxes of chocolates from shops she didn’t know, scarves that would only go into the growing pile of things she never wore anymore.

She was getting old.

Another glance at the clock, which was actually a bicycle wheel with ticking hands attached, revealed that it was almost half past. No more than 45 minutes late, that was her rule. By most accounts, it was desperation, but she’d always assumed the best in people. It was her fatal flaw.

She should  recognise him. After all, they’d spent more than 18 years together. While all other relationship had fallen apart, she’d still had him. Or so she’d though. Work, life, midlife – all had only moved them further apart. It had been more than a year since she’d last seen him. Subconsciously, she felt for the gold band around her left ring finger, only to find a light circle of unmarked skin.

All things must come to an end.

She waited.

Suit jacket. No sign. The waiter attempted to juggle some wine glasses for the amusement of his pretty co-worker, only to fail in a spectacular shower of sharp confetti. She allowed herself a smile, catching that of the young waitress. They shared a brief, bizarre moment, before the waitress wandered over.

“Any more drinks?”

“No thank you.” Her voice was weaker than she’d expected – it took two attempts to even get the first word out.

“Well I’d better warn you, we close at two for some cleaning. Is there anyone you’re waiting for?”

She checked the bicycle wheel. It was 1:50.

“No. Well, yes. My name’s Grace. If someone comes for me… well, I can only wait so long.”

The waitress nodded sympathetically. “I know the type. Do you need any help?”

Grace shook her head, reaching for the supportive walker herself.

“Who would be asking about you, just in case?”

The waitress had sparkling green eyes. Grace could remember when her eyes had been that alive, shining on fresh, smooth skin. Now crows feet, wrinkles and bi-focals had masked and disfigured the beauty.

“Oh, just a man named Robert. In a suit.”

“Your husband?”

“Oh no,” she said, shuffling along with the walker’s assistance. Frank was long dead.

“Just my son.”

Fermata (A pause, or held)

In the theme of music-titled short stories, this is a decidedly non-Gothic attempt. I'm not sure what I could use it for, but it was a good excersise in imagery and all the stuff English teachers love, so I'm posting it here for your enjoyment. This one is dedicated to Bella, my violin virtuoso, and inspired by a fermata, my instense fear of snapping my wrist and never playing clarinet again, and Bella herself.

Fermata

As a child, she’d wanted to be a bird.

Before the accident, the idea had slipped into the back of her mind now and again, remnants of a distant and foolish past. She was no longer one for wishing of birds and immortality in the air – she had important things, like shallow materialism and cold human indifference, to focus her mind upon. The birds would bring a slight smile, maybe even a laugh, but sometimes a slight longing, a wish to return to the innocent days, because everything is far more beautiful in retrospect.

Now, immobilised and strapped to the cold hospital slab, she wishes for nothing more than the ability to crane and twist her neck so that she can stare longingly at the birds once again.

There was no denying she had been beautiful. But the medics had not cared for beautiful as they worked tirelessly to conserve something far more precious. The scars were misshapen and ugly, running far deeper than her skin. One annoys her more than the others, just under and through her eyebrow, twisting the shape and permanently disfiguring the flesh. The fine hairs will never grow back there, changing the shape of her simple face forever.

They don’t give her mirrors very often, but whenever they do she focuses on the eyebrow, as if to drown out the rest of the scars. She even begins to obsess over it, mutely signalling her terrified yet determined younger sister to redraw the shape of the brow, as if it will repair all the other damage to her body.

Like it will return the arm which had been stolen.

Some of the nurses are confused by her silence. There had been no damage to her vocal chords when the car had wrapt itself lovingly around a telegraph pole. Yet she had not uttered so much as a syllable since her admission, except to groan in pain as nightmares pervaded her sleep each night. The hospital’s psychologist is called in, but can determine nothing from the empty air she gives as answers to his questions. Eventually, it is the boy who answers for her.

He’d visited her at least every second day, only because he could not afford the bus fare to see her more regularly. He knew her through school, and perhaps from something deeper, even though the question was never raised. At any rate, he always stood silently, communicating on some level other than the crass audible with her. Never sitting, never speaking. Never there for more than an hour.

She has been lying there for close to a month when the psychologist and the boy’s visits finally coincide. The boy is surprised at the lack of knowledge.

Don’t you understand what she’s lost? He asks in shock.

The physiologist is not in for a lecture. An arm, three toes, damage to her neck vertebrae and some of her motor communication. It could have been a lot worse – I’ve seen a lot worse. If it weren’t for the shock and this inexplicable depression, she’d have left the hospital weeks ago.

So you don’t know?

Know what?

He looked at her then, as if searching for confirmation or even approval to share her secret. She nodded with her eyes and let him finish.

She was a violinist. Sydney Youth Orchestra Concert Master. She’ll never play again.

Suddenly, everything makes sense to those too blind to see or ask before. She does not merely pity herself for the loss of an arm and some of her beauty, but grieves her aspirations and future as they slowly became less and less real, fading to blips in her past.

Lost aspirations and dreams.

Like the birds.

Even she can’t explain it, but somehow he finds out. Less than a week later, the boy convinces a younger, less sturdy nurse to help him adjust the television set so that she can see it. He’s found an old tape, some sort of nature documentary, with bad sound and flicking pictures. But she only has the strength to watch it muted, preferring the swooping and diving of the exotic birds it documents without the intrusion of a commentator. He sits and watches it with her, staying close to two hours in silence. As the credits roll, naming narrators they will never hear and cameramen they will never care about, he stands and prepares to leave. She makes a noise – something between a gargle and a plea, but the first sound she’s directed at a human being in close 

to 6 weeks.

He leans down to kiss her forehead, understanding fully. The tape only goes so far. The footage has its limitations. She cannot hear the wind and feel the dust as she watches the birds, but it’s close enough.

By a silent agreement, he never brings anything with music. He screens the tapes beforehand and they watch them either in silence or with the sound on low so the main sound is the static keening of the video, which he eventually mutes anyway. They sit closer each day, until he watches with his fingers gently resting on her few remaining. Heavy, protruding violin calluses on her hand slowly recede to the uglier marks of a milliseconds misjudgement on a sleeting road.

When the doctor says she is ready to go home, she knows she isn’t. She still hasn’t spoken, and has no intention to. The doctor suggests she return to school, with additional tutoring, to try and pick up the tattered fragments of her old life and glue them back together. She wonders silently when he thinks he is fooling. Trying to piece her life back together is like solving a jigsaw that has half the parts missing. She might get a vague idea of what the image should look like, but will never get back all she has lost.

He’s waiting for her when she arrives home. Her room is clean and smells sharply of disinfectant. It’s like being back at the hospital.

They say nothing, their relationship on built on something far more than words. When he holds open his arms, she steps forward on broken feet and into his embrace. He runs gentle fingers along what was once her bow arm, making her wish for nothing more than a set of wings to escape. There’s a long, slow pause and he holds her, reassuring yet invoking questions of the future.

And with this fermata, she realises that maybe, just maybe, there is something left.

Olivia

This is another Gothic story, written in preparation for my upcoming yearlies. The inspiration came while playing a game with my friend Olivia in Ancient History - she would write down three random, unrelated things and I had to link them into a sentence. A few Gothic critera later and here it is:

Olivia

“That’s a very beautiful necklace, Miss Stanmore.”

Olivia Stanmore raised a slender hand to toy with the large red jewel that hung on heavy silver chain from her neck.

“Thank you. It was given to me by my… by Tristian.”

The man sitting opposite her paused slightly, embarrassed.

“Yes… I’m sorry,” he said awkwardly, staring intently at his wine glass. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“Do not worry, Mr Kingstone – you meant no harm. And please… call me Olivia.”

Kingstone cursed himself for the awkward situation. There was no denying that his dinner companion, Olivia Stanmore, was one of the most beautiful – and desirable – women in London. Her father was rich, her family blue blooded and her appearance stunning. Long, perfect ringlets of gold hair fell onto narrow shoulders and a fashionably low cut dress showed off the red pendant against her pale white skin. The red backlight of a cavernous fireplace only added to her mysterious beauty. She’d spent some time in Africa with her father, it was said, when she was ill as a child, and come back as a changed, radiant young woman.

The light within the plush room flickered and dimmed as candle flames ate away at their wax housings. It was late, and both of them knew it, but neither moved to leave.

Olivia took a slow sip of rich, scarlet Tokay, the glass hovering by her lips far longer than necessary. Her face was a mask of careful consideration. Then, with swift purpose, she set down the glass and faced Kingstone directly.

“I imagine you’re wondering why I asked you here tonight, Mr Kingstone.”

“The question had crossed my mind, Miss… Olivia.”

“I wish for you to know a little more about me before our marriage. You know, of course, of Tristian,” and again, her fingers reached for the red jewel, “but I fear there is much more to my character which you should know before committing yourself fully to the engagement.”

Ah. The engagement. Kingstone had thought it might be about that.

“Olivia, if it is too soon, simply say so and I will delay our marriage or even end the engagement. Just know that I will always be willing to –“

She held up a single finger to silence him, then smiled slightly. “No, it is not that. While I still grieve for Tristian each day, no amount of grief or self denial shall return him to me. And I am sure that, were he able to speak to me, he would encourage both of us with happiness. No, what I wish to speak to you of is something which has burdened me for quite some time – my whole life, one may even say.”

“If there is a burden to your soul, then it is my duty to bear it for you, Olivia. Tell me.”

Instead of speaking immediately, she took a moment to stand and step carefully over to the fireplace, examining the swords over the mantle, even though they’d been there her entire life. Then, her skin dancing with scraps of coloured light, she spoke.

“You must know that, before Tristian, I was engaged more than once. After all, a woman hardly reaches the age of twenty one without a suitor, and I had many. Do not look so worried – none of my engagements led to marriage or consummation. But only for a single reason – I have been cursed since my birth.”

“Cursed?” Kingstone could hardly hold the incredulity from his voice. She turned to face him, her expression one of grave seriousness.

“Yes, Mr Kingstone – cursed. You know my father had spent considerable time in Africa?”

Kingstone nodded – it was common knowledge that the Stanmore fortune had been built on African diamond mines.

“Many years ago, while he was there, he had something of an affair with one of the locals – quite a 

tempestuous affair too, by all accounts. She was the daughter of the village shaman, who already disapproved of my father – he said Father was ‘robbing the earth’. So, when the shaman learnt of my father’s… actions, he demanded that Father marry the woman and become part of the tribe, lest his family line be cursed forever.”

Kingstone shifted in his seat slightly – he felt uncomfortable and just a little bit sympathetic for the girl, who so clearly believed in this story.

“Of course, my father refused – he soon returned to London and married my mother. The curse, however, had been no empty threat – my mother died in childbirth. Father was in Dublin on business at the time. He learnt of her death weeks later, and of my birth – the useless daughter. I could never carry on the line – I have been treated all my life as an object of contempt, to be sold to the highest bidder when the time comes.”

“Didn’t your father ever marry again? Why, I met your step mother two years ago, just before her death!”

“Yes, I have had step mothers – she was my third. My first one died, again, in childbirth, giving life to a still born boy. The second drowned near our house in the Lakes District. The third was, as it turned out, infertile – she never had any children. And thus, the family line is only to be continued by me, leaving me with this wretched curse when my father has left this earth for peace!”

Kingstone stood and walked over to her, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder. She was becoming distressed.

“But surely, Olivia, this ‘curse’ shall die with your father. Once we are married you shall take my name, and leave this cursed linage.”

“If only it were that simple. The Africans recognised blood, not name, as family. I am still my father’s daughter, the victim and carrier of this curse.”

“Olivia,” he said gently, careful not to startle her, “if you wish not to have children, you can say it plainly. I already have a nephew I would gladly name as my heir –“

“NO! You do not understand! I said Tristian was not my first betrothal – I must tell you of the others!”

Her direct, almost violent speech shocked him. He kept his hand on her shoulder, should she faint or leap into a rage, and listened.

“The first one was my father’s choice – almost three times my own age, not just old enough to be my father but older than Father himself! Frail, white haired and scholarly. I was seventeen. We’d been engaged for three months when he was robbed on the streets – the shock was so immense that his heart stopped beating. The second one was much the same. Chosen by Father, too old and boring. He died too – in his sleep he simply stopped breathing. Once again, my engagement was parted by death. And then -”

“Tristian.”

Kingstone knew the next part. Tristian had spoken of it almost every day at the offices since the day he’d first been reunited with Olivia, running into her (literally) at the post office. Childhood friends quickly became social acquaintances. They began to appear together at parties, dances, dinners. She the radiant, mysterious beauty, he the smiling, grateful fiancé, unable to believe his luck.

“My father did not approve at first,” she said, hand once again on the jewel, “but I’d earned something of a reputation as a ‘cursed bride’. He bought home countless men, each once wishing to court me. I paid them no attention – why should I? I had Tristian. At last Father relented and allowed the marriage. But then, of course…”

She trailed off, grasping the pendant tight. The unspoken words hung heavy in the air.

There had been rumours, of course, that she had been there. And in that moment, Kingstone had to know.

“Were you there? Did you see him?”

She looked up at him, the burgundy firelight from the embers glistening on silent tears and transforming them into rubies. Her grip on the pendant only grew tighter.

“I went to see him – at night, while my father slept. I was at the foot of the stairs – he was at the top. He was almost halfway when I stepped up to meet him, then –“

She looked directly at him, a confused yet furious countenance playing for dominance in her gaze. She stepped back slowly, forcing him to release his grip on her shoulder.

“I told you there was something about me that you had to know. I am not merely the cursed bride – I am the curse!”

With lightening speed she drew a sword from it’s housing above the mantle and thrust it forwards, aimed at Kingstone’s heart. He twisted aside, shocked and confused, an inch from the blade, and threw himself at Olivia, grabbing her wrist and squeezing. Forced to drop the blade into his waiting hand, Olivia jumped back and out of his reach, pulling the other sword from its scabbard above the mantle with a fluid, practised motion.

With an animalistic snarl, she faced him – just out of reach, each with a sword in hand – the beautiful Olivia Stanmore, in all her fury.

“What happened to Tristian?”

Again, the free hand flew to the necklace.

“I demand to know!”

She snarled once again, sword extended, eyes dancing demonic hues in the firelight. “What will happen to you soon enough!” The voice came from Olivia’s body but was not of her soul – deep and demonic with anger and hate.

“Did you kill him?” Kingstone kept his balance perfect, trying to distract her.

“He sealed his own fate.” With that, she made another attempt at a wild stab – Kingstone barely parried and 

maintained his distance.

“You threw him down the stairs, didn’t you?”

Olivia cocked her head, like a jackal, and answered. “Threw him, yes. And made sure he was dead. Yes, I bashed his head against the corner of those stairs until my hands were red with the blood. I keep the memory close to me heart.”

She had killed all three of them. The realisation came to him in a moment of horrific clarity. She had killed all of her fiancés and she was going to kill him!

“Why?” Stall her, distract her, anything to stop this thing which had taken over Olivia. “You loved him – why did you kill him?”

The creature in Olivia’s form narrowed its eyes. “I had to kill him. I have to kill all of them. You have no concept or even measurement, for the amount of torture I undergo each day as I wear this ring. This line cannot continue. It was cursed for this generation and the curse cannot go on. The curse cannot go on-"

With speed of light and surprise on his side, Kingstone suddenly leapt forward, grabbed the necklace, pulled it so hard the clasp snapped and jumped out of her range once again.

Now the creature was angry – it hissed and scowled at him, then pointed an accusing finger.

“Do you have any idea what that is?”

“No,” he answered honestly, “but I know what to do with it.”

And with than, he dropped the jewel to the ground and stamped on it with all his strength.

The glass casing of t he pendant shattered, leaving only the red within to ooze, slowly, from the dead casing. Kingstone suddenly had a graphic thought that this must have been what Tristian looked like when Olivia was finished with him.

But suddenly, Olivia calmed. The red flicking left her eyes as they focused on the glass ‘jewel’, staring intently, fearfully and almost reverently.

“Tristian.”

Her voice was just a whisper, barely audible, but more powerful than a shriek.

“Tristian. Oh, Tristian…”

Her voice, once again the soft spoken voice of Olivia, choked with a sob, staring at the crushed pendant, at the red liquid oozing into the plush carpet –

The red liquid.

Tristian’s blood.

Then, fearfully but with entire conviction, Kingstone leapt forward, sword before him, and plunged it through her body.

They were as close as they had ever been. Breathing in choked sobs edged with finality, she slowly raised her beautiful face to look up at him.

“Thank you,” she sobbed.

Her grip on his arm slacked. Her body became limp.

Olivia Stanmore, and her beautiful necklace, were dead.