Guns N’Coffee (A.S. Patric)

I work in the middle of the damned city. I start when every other son-of-a-bitch is about to clock-in as well. It doesn’t matter where I go, I can’t get a coffee without waiting for fifteen minutes in a line. No one likes lines, right? I’m not saying I’m different, but lately, these coffee lines seem to be slowly moving us along like a hissing snake, swallowing all our minds in a milky swirl of white poison.

These days there’s less space in front and behind. The breath of those who haven’t eaten or brushed since the day before, spiced up with a cigarette or two just before coming into the crowded café and snuggling up just behind my shoulder, is the kind of stuff that is going to challenge the most equanimous. Me? I only know what equanimous means because it was word of the day on my screensaver yesterday.

If it’s not that, then there are those women with the angry industrial-strength perfume that burns like a corrosive through my nasal passages and leaves a chemical taste on my tongue. I used to think they had lost their sense of smell, but now I know it’s an attempt to get some space in these coffee lines.

None of this is going to explain why I brought a handgun along with me today. I’m just saying, there’s too many people in this damned city, and they’re all starting work around the time I need a coffee.

*

It’s a modest gun. I’m not a closet Dirty Harry wanting someone to make my day. I just want someone to make my coffee.

When I pull it out for the first time the woman in front of me just kind of blinks sleepily and goes back to daydreaming about her strong latte with two sugars.

“Hey,” I say to her. She’s ignoring me so I give her a wave of black steel near her right ear. “Hey,” I say again. “I’m not kidding.”

I fire the gun through the wide doors of the café and out into the street. The shot travels just above the heads of the masses of people pushing along the footpaths. The bullet shatters a pane of thick glass across the road in the fashion store. People get a bit cut up from the crashing glass and a man begins screaming like someone has cut off his toes. The pedestrians keep passing, barely pausing, crushing the glass beneath their shoes as they make their ways to work.

My wrist is limp from the kickback but I transfer the gun to my left hand as though it’s all the better to display the weapon. The double sugar latte woman steps aside. The rest of the folks in the line follow her example.

Bradley the Barrista knows how I like my coffee. His arms move with speed and precision, a perfection of machine engineering translated to human form. It’s as though I press his fast forward button and then the stop button when he finishes my ristretto strength long black with three grips and three sugars.

I pay him and tell him he can keep the change on a ten dollar bill. It’s only polite to show an appreciation for good service.

“How’s your day been Brad?” I ask after my first satisfying sip.

“It’s been pretty busy Mr. Bushnell. This is the first time I’ve had a moment of stillness for two hours.”

“Are you enjoying it Brad?” I ask.

“I am indeed, Mr. Bushnell,” he replies, and adds, “There’s something about a loaded gun that makes one appreciate a moment like this. Thanks for that, Mr. Bushnell.”

“Glad I could do that for you Brad. I’ll now have the pleasure of strolling to work rather than the unwelcome power slalom through those frustrated crowds outside. I’m going to have a lovely amble to work today, Brad.”

As soon as I move away from the counter the line resumes its shape, longer and angrier than ever. A rattler of a line extending outside the front doors, the furious tail shaking with the anger of twenty mobile phones, palm pilots and planners going off simultaneously. It’s a soothing sound when you have discovered the ways of the snake charmer as I have.

*

I come in the next morning with a smile in my stride and a spring in my face. I’m eager to display my Kimber 1911 Compact again. I want to get that snake dancing out of my way.

I don’t have a problem until I arrive at the head of the line and a high-powered exec smiles like his teeth are made out of diamonds and he eats crystal croissants with his coffee. He’s been held in the purgatory of the line for the last fifteen minutes and can’t swallow me moving past everyone with a royal wave of black steel. Maybe he didn’t see my warning yesterday but I can tell he is a natural born hero.

“You are not going to shoot me for a coffee. That’s ridiculous! It’s only a few dollars and a few moments. You can’t kill a human being with such little motivation.”

“What’s your game, Mr. Suit?” I ask him.

“I don’t want to play. I’m just going to get a coffee and go to work.”

“Well, Mr. Suit, I’m not going to go into a lengthy analysis of the situation here. But I will say this — it’s not about a few minutes or a few dollars. It’s about an accretion of time that mummifies my brain and turns my thoughts into sand. More than anything it’s about the brief, black, bitter taste of liberty in those cups. You’re standing in the way of my freedom Mr. Suit. I advise you to step a side and give me a moment with Bradley the Barista.”

“I don’t think so,” Mr. Suit tells me with his diamond grin.

“Mr Suit,” I say and step forward. I raise the gun to the height of his heart. “Reconsider, please,” I say and wiggle the Kimber 1911 Compact. I polished it last night and I know it has a lethal gleam to its black metal.

He looks at it like it’s a water pistol and turns around and asks Bradley for an affogato. It’s more of a desert than it is a coffee. An affogato! It also happens to be the most time consuming thing he could have asked Bradley to make him. I take it as a personal affront. Mr. Suit says he also wants two scoops of ice cream and not just one. I give him two bullets instead and I’m not sorry.

Mr. Suit dies in a very elegant creaseless crumple of the best Italian fabric and design. A macchiato stain of blood spreads across the immaculate collar of his white shirt and drips to the black marble of the café’s floor. Everyone lines up behind me. Bradley’s hands fly to the handles and dials of his Deco D Dosata Gaggia espresso machine.

*

The next morning I walk into the café and feel sure there will be no more need for gun waving and I won’t have to kill anyone to get a coffee. I had a difficult night getting to sleep. For hours I tried to rest my mind and body. Even when I managed to drift away I found myself waking in a fevered state, my sheets wet right through and my pillow soaked. In short, too much coffee. There’s got to be limits even to these dark pleasures I suppose.

The line is long and I can barely get through the doors of the café. I announce myself but no-one moves.

The double sugar latte woman stands before me again and I tell her, “Surely, my mettle has been tested. My resolve can’t still be in question.”

She turns around and a wash of her perfume breaks over me in a dizzying ocean of petals and pollen, bouquets of sweet smelling chemicals rushing down my throat. I take a step back but I stumble and grab a café chair to steady myself.

“You don’t look good,” she tells me.

“I didn’t sleep very well,” I explain. “Frankly, my experiences in the toilet haven’t been too pleasant either. I’m sweating a lot and my stomach feels uneasy. Queasy, I feel very queasy.”

“Coffee’s not for everyone. Perhaps you should drink tea instead. Take a few moments every morning perhaps — treat yourself to a pot of Orange Pekoe leaf. You’ll find it’s a lot more suitable to your nervous system. Our culture has so many problems and diseases that stem from stress and anxiety and there’s nothing that generates and promotes these things as does the addiction to the coffee bean.”

I’m starting to feel disorientated. People are pushing past me to get into the store and others are coming out with steaming take-away cups filled with the delicious beverage that will give me the boost I need to get through the next few hours of my life.

“Shut up, you scandalous hypocrite. You’re here for the same reason I am. You need the coffee bean as well.”

“I drink decaf.”

“Decaf?” I say. “Decaf!”

“Yes, Decaf. Decaf indeed.”

“Don’t talk to me about decaffeinated coffee. It’s like taking a shower in a raincoat.”

“I don’t think so,” she says.

“It’s like eating one of those burgers made out of lentils and cabbage.”

“No, it’s not,” she says, looking at me like I’m someone to be pitied.

“Should I remind you I’m carrying a weapon?” I reach below my arm and remove my Kimber 1911 Compact from a holster I bought for it yesterday afternoon. “You don’t require further demonstrations do you?” I pull it out and hold it before her.

“It’s not a good idea. There’s a room full of coffee drinkers here after all. Every single one of them desperate for that first hit, just like you. There’s no way you can keep a trump card like that in a room full of losing gamblers.”

“What?” I blink at her. “Just move!” I waved the gun with two sharp movements to the right.

She steps aside with a sorrowful expression. I see the line has changed. Everyone in it has removed a firearm from a pocket or handbag and they all have these guns pointed at me. Thirty barrels are trained on my head, chest and stomach. I blink but I can’t really take in the image of all these respectable city workers armed with such deadly weapons.

I look over to Bradley the Barista and ask him, “What’s going on here Brad? Didn’t I invent the game? It’s my ball isn’t it? I get to say how we play. Bradley — tell these people!”

The Barista wipes his hands with a tea towel and a regretful look passes across his face. He says, “I’m sorry Mr. Bushnell. No more coffee for you.”

“What?” I ask the question meekly but I feel my heart kick in my chest at never having another morning jolt from Bradley’s beans. “What?” It comes out as a roar this time. “You don’t get to decide on something like that. I’ve been coming here for years. I’ve been working in this damned city…”

*

My anger had begun to foam like milk in the bottom of a metal jug and I was spitting with my eyes closed when I said ‘damned city.’ My weapon might have been raised but it was more a gesticulation than an intent to harm anyone. Coffee drinkers are jumpy though and their fingers get twitchy.

*

‘Guns N’Coffee’ is the winner of the 2011 Booranga Short Story Prize. It is published in Issue 22 of fourW.

Bicycle (Les Zigomanis)

‘You’re stressed,’ my GP told me following a check-up. ‘Is there anything bothering you?’

Bothering me? Hmmm. Let me see. Relationship in the shitter, no social life, and work … ah, the inanity of work. People dropping in on me. Constantly. ‘Can you take a look at this?’ Courteous. Exquisitely. ‘Write this up for me. Cheers.’ Behind their fake smiles. Their plastic expressions. ‘How’s that report going?’ Their ongoing demands, always their demands, never-ending, never-stopping, never—

‘No,’ I said.

‘You need a way to unwind. A hobby! Everybody needs a hobby! Find something you enjoy doing, something that’ll help you relax. Preferably something physical. Get rid of that nervous energy. Spend it. Leave it all out there. It’ll do you a world of good.’

I tried the gym, but company annoyed me – people offering to spot me, asking me how much I could bench, wanting to talk. I exercised in my garage, but found it claustrophobic. I tried jogging, but my feet were pounded into surrender. On and on my search went, through a variety of endeavours, until I discovered cycling. It was just me and road before me. That’s when I believed I’d found the one, and I even bought all the gear – bike, helmet, reflective kit, pump, chain-lock, water bottle, and even a pedometer. The whole lot set me back almost a thousand bucks, but it was worth it.

The first week my muscles burned with every metre pedalled, protested at every hill, and screamed for relief the further I pushed myself. Conditions that seemed mild – like a cool breeze – were exacerbated at high speeds on my bike. But I was invigorated – reinvigorated. I controlled the pace, cruising when possible, and speeding whenever the urge took me. Most of all, I revelled in being uncaged, open and free. By the second week, I couldn’t wait to finish the daily tedium of work to get on my bike.

Then I learned the most disturbing thing. Or maybe I just started noticing it – noticing it in a way that it becomes impossible to un-notice it, and which makes every subsequent incident cumulatively aggravating.

Cyclists have their own little sub-societal etiquette.

Whenever I passed somebody on a bike, they’d nod their head in acknowledgement – acknowledgement that, hey, they were a cyclist just like me (in case I hadn’t noticed). If we were going leisurely enough, it wasn’t just a nod, but an entire ‘Hey’; or even a, ‘Hey, how’re you doing?’

And on and on it went.

I tried to ignore it initially, tried to conveniently look the other way whenever these exchanges loomed. But they became inescapable, gnawing at me, overwhelming me through their sheer weight of repetition – pressing, demanding, smothering.

Nod. Nod back.

‘Hey.’ Hey.

‘Hey, how’re you doing?’ Good.

Somebody even had the audacity to stop to talk to me one evening when I’d paused at a park for a breather. He pulled up right alongside me, hopping off his bike even before it had come to a halt, and rested it against the bench by which I stood.

‘Hey.’

Hey. I checked my pedometer. Three Ks so far.

‘Nice bike.’

Thanks. I took a drink from my water bottle.

‘Looks pretty new.’

Yup. I took my chain-lock from my bike.

‘Haven’t been riding long, have you?’

Uh uh. Surreptitiously wrapped my chain-lock around my right hand.

‘You’re probably only just starting to feel the benefits – the muscle tone in your legs, the increased fitness, the mental well-being.’

Hmmm. Closed my right hand into a fist.

‘But what is it they say?’

What? Cocked my right hand back.

‘Healthy body, healthy—’

And punched his fucking head in.

The first blow hit him – literally hit him – right between the eyes. The flesh popped, like a burst water balloon, with a splatter of blood; there was an almighty crack, which must’ve been the bridge of his nose shattering; and yet what registered first on his face was surprise.

That would teach him.

Something must’ve clicked in his head then, some survival instinct, because he tried pulling away. He wasn’t quick enough. My next punch caught him exactly in the same spot as the first, and he stumbled back, hitting the bench, and falling onto his butt.

I kept punching him and punching him; punching him until he was lying back on the bench, and I had a knee planted into his chest; punching him until his face was pulped, the way an orange gets when you grind it; punching him until his skull seemed to shimmer within the flesh of his head, as if it had shattered and lost cohesiveness; punching him until I had nothing left to give, and no rage left to spend.

I got up from the body, and took a moment to compose myself.

Then I took him and ditched his body in some thickets, covering him with branches until he was hidden. I had no illusions: he’d be found, and much sooner than later. But I didn’t want him lying out in the open like that. What if kids stumbled upon him in the morning, when they were crossing the park to get to school?

His bike I set against a pole on the far side of the park, by the road. Unchained, it was sure to be stolen. It was just a matter of time. Damn neighbourhood. You really can’t feel safe anywhere nowadays.

I was about to get on my bike when I realised that I felt different. Something had changed. I stopped, gave myself a moment for reflection, and found that my mind was remarkably clear. I was filled with a peculiar but intoxicating euphoria.

For the first time in many, many months, I felt awesome.

Getting on my bike, I rode from the park.

My GP was right.

Everybody needs a hobby.

 

Each morning (Louise Pine)

Each morning I get off the train at Spencer Street station to go to work. I’m part of the crowd that pours out of train carriages onto asphalt platforms, that ignores the yellow painted safety lines signalling the barrier between safety and train-struck oblivion, and that sweeps down the wide concrete stairwell onto the street. I wait most mornings until the crowd moves on without me, opting out of the wave of bodies. When you’re in that wave, there’s no need to check the ground in front of you for trip hazards, or look either side for oncoming traffic, or peer around for exits signs; you are protected from such concerns by the flock moving as one around you. Only those on the perimeter, those most vulnerable to attack, need to worry.

Two homeless men on the platform argue about a cigarette. The first one dangles it on his lip and lights up, and the second one bellows at him for the theft. The crowd is fluid, and dips in to give them the space they demand. The two men are like a shark swimming into a school of tiny fish that moves as one out of their way. The men are unaware of the threat they pose, which is a shame really. I’m sure they’d be delighted.

I’m claustrophobic. I don’t cope well on peak hour trains which means I get into work later than everyone else. I get off the wrong end of the train, the one furthest from my station exit, and hover by the metal benches buttoning up my jacket. As the last of the crowd makes its way up the eastern escalator, I skirt its edge and head west towards a quieter exit. I swipe my rail pass at the barrier. The gates slam shut behind me. I breathe in, and breathe out, and head towards the stairwell that will take me down to Spencer Street and into this city that I love.

I’m a slow walker. Joss says he can walk from home to the station in ten minutes. I can do it in 13, but like to leave myself a little over 15, just to be safe. When I cross the road, I factor in how long it would take the oncoming car to brake if I were to trip in front of it. And I won’t run across because that increases the chances of me falling.

I always wear at least a singlet and undies to bed, even in summer when the sheets cling and the heat thickens and stills the air, in case of an emergency. I watch news footage of bodies being pulled from the wreckage of bombed out buildings in Kabul, or of teams of emergency servicemen lifting slabs of concrete to reveal people trapped by earthquakes, or of neighbourhood women on the streets, shaking in front of their burnt down homes. I don’t want to be caught short and undressed should such disasters occur. I know which shoes and bra would hold me in good stead if we had to escape our house late at night on foot. I won’t let Joss lock us inside at night unless he leaves the key dangling in the lock. I learnt about fire hazards when I was young. And witches who were burnt at the stake. And Nazis.

These things make me sound neurotic, but I’m not. I function in the world. I perform well at job interviews even though I’m not particularly career focused. I’m comfortable with how I prioritise the spending of my paycheque. I work hard most days, with only the occasional afternoon secretly surfing the net for cheap flights to exotic places. Everyone has quirks and behaviours that they keep to themselves, including all of these individuals that make up this new crowd that I meet up with at the intersection of Spencer and Bourke. A tram dings its bell, warning us of its intention to run the amber light and over anyone in its way. We cross Spencer Street as one, and I duck and weave to get to the left of the pack so I can make my escape into a side street before I’m swept up Bourke St with the rest.

I’ve always taken side streets. And I’ve always preferred to walk than to take short trips through the city in trams. It stems from my claustrophobia.  When I cut up Little Bourke, I slow and turn my face up towards the sky. High on the wall of an old red brick building are bold back words painted onto a white backdrop. Nous le regrettons. We are sorry. It is an apology to the stolen generations. Every morning when I pass it, I am moved by it. I breathe deeply and furrow my brow, my throat tightens, my eyes become a little damp. Another little quirk of mine.

I keep meaning to bring Joss here. I know he’d like it. This city is littered with surprises like this. I learn that there is in fact a map of all such surprises. Joss and I could come into town and follow the map. We could see all the council commissioned artwork. We could stop spontaneously for coffee, or find somewhere unexpected for lunch. But it wouldn’t really be a surprise then, if we were following a map. We wouldn’t have that initial reaction, where we look around to see if anyone else has noticed what we’ve noticed, where we try and figure out if this is meant to be here for us to see or if it’s a wonderful accident that we’ve found ourselves in the right place at the right time. It wouldn’t be the same, so I never get around to taking Joss on a walking tour. And besides, then I would have to share this moment that I steal each morning on my way to work, this little piece of me.

I pass the apology, its bold message constant even when I’m not there to see it, like waves eternally washing up against the shoreline. I pass the Australia Post depot and peer in to see the jumble of bright yellow express post delivery vans, parked tightly together. I pass the giant crater that will one day be an office block and the tiny construction workers who all nod and point at the crater in their fluorescent hard hats and high vis vests. I pass the backpackers hostel and the backpackers sitting on the doorstep sending text messages to Japan and sucking on cigarettes. I pass the strip clubs and the court houses, which are located unsurprisingly close by when you think about it.

A new throng has emerged from one of the underground stations and is headed straight towards me. I cross the road and cross another road. I pass through two sets of automatic glass doors and smile at the man at the cafe in the foyer who will make my coffee later that morning. I take the lift to my floor and pass through another set of automatic glass doors. I say good morning to my colleagues, drop my bag beside my desk, and switch my computer on. I login, check my email, am asked how my weekend was, and do the same back. I hook my grey jacket on the back of my chair and open up the document I was working on Friday. I smooth the front of my grey slacks with the palms of my hands while I wait for the document to load and I think of Joss and our flannelette sheets.

White Goods (David Cohen)

So you have a question for me? I hope it’s about white goods. You are no doubt aware that I specialise in washers and, to a lesser extent, dryers. Look at my showroom – the poetry of all of those smooth surfaces! I believe in making things to last. People still appreciate quality. How else do you think I got where I am? But don’t imagine for a minute that it was easy! I started at the bottom, as they say. I came here with precisely fifty-four dollars to my name. I barely spoke the language. Ah, but do you know what transcends linguistic barriers, my friend? Love! That’s what! Love and, to a lesser extent, white goods. After I got married, I went to work for my father-in-law, who sold – yes – washing machines. In this way I found a completely new vocation, a new life. I was reborn, as they say. Fifty years have passed and there are still days when I must look in the mirror twice before I recognise myself: a successful businessman, a great-grandfather, a worthy citizen – if I may say so – of my adopted land. I have been blessed many times over, my friend. So tell me: what’s your question? … For Heaven’s sake! Why must you ask that? Why? I’ve already been asked that a hundred times and a hundred times I have given the same reply! We were at war, and when you’re at war different rules apply. They do and they must. War is a dirty business. But despite the dirt, I myself am clean. Clean! These people who go digging into the past, trying to make mud stick, as they say – these people are wasting their time. I am clean! I will maintain that until the very end. I will go to my grave without a stain. But for now the subject is closed. Please, ask me something about white goods – anything at all. Take a look through my showroom. Perhaps I can interest you in a nice washing machine?

Dear Dolly (David Finnigan)

Q. Dear Dolly, I am a fifteen-year-old. I have lots of guy friends but I have never had a boyfriend or been kissed. Do the pubes ever stop growing?

A. Dear Fifteen, no the pubes never stop growing. When the incorruptible body of St Augustine was found, more than a thousand years after his death, his pubic hairs had grown through the lid of his coffin, up through the earth and out into the sunshine. Peter of Brussels, in his 1605 Treatise, describes the discovery:

“The villagers of Antwerp were sore distressed by a gruesome Thicket, which somefuch had naught but tangled black vines and a grim prospect. Most perplexing was the ravishing of some young Maidens, who had stumbled into the tangled vines and been put to a regrettable Disadvantage, also to their Fathers and Brothers who bemoaned their loss of Purity. When the villagers took unto the woods with an Axe, they were shocked to hear a Moaning, as if of a living beast. Upon the advice of that most wise Priest [Peter’s mentor Cuthbert of Toulouse], the villagers uprooted the vines and located the source of the Thicket, which to their amazement took root in the Genitalia of a corpse. That Incomparable Father of Knowledge [Cuthbert again] swiftly identified him as Saint Augustine, whom we thought rather to have been dwelling in the City of God these last thirteen centuries.”

18 play ideas from 2002 (David Finnigan)

1.

the protagonist wakes up in the middle of the night and sees that the moon is too bright

– that means the sun’s too bright

– that means the sun’s gone nova

– that means the other side of the earth’s been vaporised

– that means we’re dead come morning

he/she heads out on the town for one last party

2.

it is a play about a magical cigarette that gives whoever holds it unbelievable skills at dentistry. it is therefore a quandary, because to have the cigarette in one hand is bad for business, and sooner or later the board of medeceins will want to know why you insist on holding an unlit cigarette between two fingers while you’re performing dental surgery

3.

there is the black plague going on

4.

there is a school full of ghosts

5.

there is a parliament full of politicians preparing to commit seppuku

6.

a play about assassin rock – a rock jutting out of the surf on a windy beach – if you petition it in the right way, one of your enemies will die

7.

J-pop musical. a routine underwater expedition finds hulking machinery at the bottom of the ocean. the machines suddenly come to life as huge robots, divided into two warring camps. the robots DANCE and SING merry Japanese pop

8.

on-stage surgery – trepanning?

9.

on stage trundles a canoe on wheels, paddled by two likely sorts. it is a play set in the final tailspin of a dying whirlpool

10.

a magician performing at primary school assembly – showing them a trick called Russian Roulette

11.

woman on the run from the government

she has four stolen crowns in the boot of her car

she must deliver them to her contacts

the only people who can fence a theft of this magnitude

before she can reach the sea, take off her shoes, and walk in the sand

12.

dear audience. the game is Spot The Swap. what will follow is a 60-second scene involving five people. can you spot the moment when one person slips a baggie into someone else’s hand? (to be played on a dancefloor, in a market, on a boat in rough seas throwing passengers side to side)

13.

it is a play which takes place in a crowded room

there are a number of creatures of different species

they are chattering and sharing stories

they are aware or unaware that it is a pot over a flame

and they are slowly boiling into soup

14.

Front of House staff wear namebadges saying I WOULD EAT DIRT FOR YOU

15.

when you wake in the morning there’s a man standing there with a mission: before sunset you must kill an ostrich.

16.

we shall follow four assassins on their routes to murdering their victims: poisoning the king’s cup, a sniper at a water polo game… two others

17.

there are worlds in which you don’t go left or right for more than the width of a street. nor do you go backwards. bandidos leap out of dustbins and challenge you. defeat them all

18.

play set in summer. the Code of Hammurabi has been broken. it is a detective mystery

Potential band names (Finnigan and Brother)

Okay so it’s time you started a band. I know, you’ve put it off for ages, but it’s halfway through 2011 and you promised your grandma. But, what will you call yourselves? IT’S THE MOST IMPORTANT THING. Chris and David Finnigan, aka FINNIGAN AND BROTHER, can’t teach you how to play music or tell you what kind of music to play, but we can suggest some dope band names to get you started.

The Latte Belt
Name your band after the socially progressive urban left-leaning demographic!

The Black Handed Spider Monkeys
One of the largest New World monkeys, weighing as much as 9 kilograms.

The Stingray Whisperer
Suggesting your band possesses the supernatural ability to summon stingrays by softly singing across the surface of the waves.

Hate Boat
Defending Israel’s lethal June 2010 commando raid on a flotilla of activists challenging Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu explained that ‘This wasn’t a Love Boat; this was a Hate Boat’.

Tree Head
Our three-year-old niece’s ideas for a name for her unborn cousin were Polly and Tree Head.

The Women’s Death Battalion
In between the 1917 Socialist Revolution and the takeover by the Bolsheviks in 1918, Kerensky’s provisional government scrambled to assemble female fighting units to carry on the war in Europe. The 1st Russian Women’s Battalion of Death, led by Maria Bochkareva, were blisteringly hardcore.

Find Tougher People
Upon seizing power in 1918, the Bolsheviks began a campaign of political repression known as the Red Terror. From a telegram sent by Lenin: “Comrades! The kulak uprising in your five districts must be crushed without pity … You must make example of these people. (1) Hang (I mean hang publicly, so that people see it) at least 100 kulaks, rich bastards, and known bloodsuckers. (2) Publish their names. (3) Seize all their grain. (4) Single out the hostages per my instructions in yesterday’s telegram. Do all this so that for miles around people see it all, understand it, tremble, and tell themselves that we are killing the bloodthirsty kulaks and that we will continue to do so … Yours, Lenin. P.S. Find tougher people.”

Colonel Crackcrown
At the 1761 Southwark Fair, Samuel Foote’s booth offered a whimsical duel between ‘Major Blinco’ and ‘Colonel Crackcrown’.

FULL NATURAL BUSH
‘I prefer a full natural bush – on myself and on other women. I am not into hirsutism per se but to me pubic hair feels more feminine and sexy.’ Quoting legendary sex-positive feminist Betty Dodson is always a good idea.

Jerusalem Squabble Fever
A group of mental phenomena involving the presence of either religiously themed obsessive ideas, delusions or other psychosis-like experiences that are triggered by a visit to the city of Jerusalem.

Fangtooth
Deep-sea dweller with the largest teeth of any fish in the ocean, proportionate to body size. Fangtooths have evolved a pair of opposing sockets on either side of the brain to accommodate the teeth when the mouth is closed.

Verbivore
An animal that eats verbs, natch.

Child G-String
Hyper-sexualisation of children’s fashion vs sensational moral panic stirred by media pundits – another day in the news, really.

Old World Vulture / European Griffons
Carrion birds used in Tibetan Sky Burials.

Remember, everything in the world is on your side, and all you need is the name to gather your forces under. People cry out with delight when they see you on the street, Charles Dickens predicted your coming with nail-biting excitement, and even Finnigan and Brother love what you do. Pick a name and make the planet your own.

The Fourth Bus Stop (Peter Farrar)

 

The bus rumbles under him like a rushing heartbeat. He reverses, watching the cyclone fence edge closer in the trembling rear vision.

“Yosi!” shouts the supervisor. “We can probably take you off the dawn shift next week. As long as there’s no complaints about slamming on the brakes, throwing orange peels out the window or muttering while you hand out change.”

Yosi grinds at the gears. Last week he told the supervisor it was like pushing a dislocated shoulder into place. He turns the bus towards where the sun comes up. He had not seen sunrises like this since Bali. Clouds tinged pink on the edges like coloured tips through hair. Bali had been his only overseas holiday. It was so brief and long ago he recalled just a few memories. Nearly being hit by a bike in traffic. Spending two days vomiting after brushing teeth with the tap water. Never managing chopsticks.

There were few other cars at this time of day. Headlights bounced and shimmered in grey haze distance. On the main road he was quickly in fourth gear. It was the best part of the day; no passengers, especially no school kids blundering up steps, wafts of cigarette smoke off their clothes and shirts out. The first stop was empty of people and strewn with used take-a-way containers. He accelerated past.

Ahead they walked out of the next stop. Steaming breath smudged the air around them. One signalled him. I can see you Yosi wanted to shout. Can see you there like an outfit ten sizes too big hanging in a wardrobe. Don’t need a retina transplant to notice you.

Yosi only glanced at their tickets. They held them in front of his face as if he was short sighted. He waited for them to sit. With the school kids he liked to lift the clutch abruptly so the bus lurched ahead. They usually fell into each other squealing. It was his way of punishing them for their noise and graffiting the back of the bus. Sometimes he heard their metal rulers gouging into the seats and plastic.

Yosi had been down to his last job choice. Replaced by technology they said. One day keying accounts payable, stamping documents before filing them. Software was then introduced. What was the package? Number thunder? At first he helped introduce it, explaining how it worked to others, returning to manual systems when it failed. Eventually a manager came to his desk, leading him away as if he was pulled along by a guide dog.

“Sorry,” he said. “Times change. It’s just progress. Used to be people who poured petrol. Delivered milk. Collected tram fares. You’re not the first person to have this happen.”

It was winter then too. Clouds so low he could not see the tops of church spires. Shoved hands into pockets where fingers touched loose threads. He drove home to Louise. She was outside, fanning smoke away from the barbecue. He asked if she remembered him saying not to light the barbecue in winter. That all you’ll cook are cobwebs and dead ants. “Sorry,” Louise had said, second time that had been said to him that day. She had wanted to surprise him. Bloody surprises, he nearly said. Wait until you hear mine.

Joggers thump through the mist. Yosi pulls up at the next stop. When did office workers start this early? The older drivers said not long ago all you saw were shift workers with only taxis and garbage trucks on the road. But now the suits and dresses clamoured on. They had sleep deprived faces, as if shaken awake a few minutes ago. Yosi felt the same. His senses were dulled and quite possibly his reaction time too. If a fox or cyclist crossed the foggy tunnels of headlights he might swing the bus into a telegraph pole.

Yosi was glad his parents could not see him. His mother had lived an entire life between a vegetable patch and the kitchen. His father spent six day weeks driving a battered tip truck with loads of top soil smelling like a track through rainforest. Across endless dinners of lamb, garlic and peppers they said everything we do is for your education and your future. Hopefully they could not see out beyond the gates of the cemetery.

He felt distant from Louise. They sat hardly moving on the couch as the heater spread slow warmth. Louise sat with legs tucked under her, shoes discarded and lying on sides. He glanced sideways at her. She never looked back. Never smiled and tipped against his shoulder anymore. Television flicked dully, throwing shadows and light. She was unlined in the silver illumination, as if smoothed by a potter’s hands. Her face barely looked lived in.

“Louise,” he said last night. Not in his usual voice where it sounded like something coughed up. He spoke quietly, so it barely crossed the space between them. His wife looked up the way she did when she sensed something wrong. Yosi once told her she could smell sadness at a thousand metres. He saw her fear.

He flicked a smile and looked away.

 

 

The mist thins. Now it only appears in paddocks. It hovers in a thin layer like flying above clouds. Yosi pulls up to an intersection, the fourth stop just ahead. He does not move when the lights turn green. Even when the passengers start calling to him

 

The Game (Irma Gold)

Abby is tall and lanky, taller than all the boys and skinny as all hell. Every afternoon she pegs it down to the wreckers to play with her brother Dan and his mates. They build hideouts in the hulls of cars and play war. Dan always makes Abby go with Jamie, which gives him the shits, to be stuck with a girl, and a Year Eight one at that. He has dank hair that he is forever pushing anxiously off his forehead and a lazy eye, so that Abby can never be sure if he is looking at her or something else entirely.

They make shields out of corrugated iron and throw rocks and bricks at each other. Sometimes they get hurt, but mostly they don’t. Abby gets used to her wrists aching from the slam of bricks reverberating through the iron sheets. She says nothing to the boys, never complains or cries for fear they will no longer allow her to play. There are complex rules. About when you can throw, and how. Close range is out, so is throwing at a target without a shield.

Abby loves it, the rush of adrenalin kicking through her body, the high of scoring a direct hit, or barely escaping a rock that whooshes past and slams into a nearby car with a whip-crack of a noise. It makes her feel alive.

One time Dan is sick and Jamie doesn’t show up, so it is just Derek and Abby. The game doesn’t work as well one-on-one, there isn’t the same pitch of excitement, and the temperature has climbed so high that the yard shimmers, transforming metal into water. Neither of them feels like doing very much so they lean against the side of an engineless car, smoking. An angular shape of shade tents them. They don’t talk and the silence is not uncomfortable.

Abby pushes perfect rings into the still afternoon air. They hang there, Abby-made clouds, before dragging themselves into smears and disappearing. Abby watches Derek sideways and knows that she has managed to impress him. She feels powerful.

‘Can I kiss you?’ he asks eventually. This said to the end of his fag which he is examining as if for defects.

Abby feels the thrill of the question. She grinds her butt into the dirt.

‘All right,’ she says coolly.

His lips are thin and hard. They taste of egg. He pushes her down, so gently Abby almost feels sorry for him.

There is a small stone under the back of her head. Its presence grows with every minute, digging its way into her. Derek reaches up under her T-shirt and pinches her right nipple between thumb and forefinger. It shrivels away from the force of it. He must think she likes it because he does it again, six times. Abby counts.

While she is lying there Abby notices that a roundish cloud drifting over the orb of the sun looks quite like a concentric circle, and thinks about how her science teacher, Mr Shilty, is obsessed with them. He has one leg shorter than the other so he wears a special shoe with a platform heel that he hefts around the room. His walk is full of tilt and they laugh at him when his back is turned. His chin and upper lip are always blue-grey with stubble, even first thing in the morning. He has a dimple in which it pools. When he talks about concentric circles his hands roll around as if they want to become them. Abby is always so dazed by those square hands, so full of purpose, that she loses the thread of his argument.

So there Abby is, a stone pressing into the back of her head with Derek’s hard little nub of a tongue in her ear, thinking of Mr Shilty’s hands. The whole thing is awkward, full of wrong angles. And then there is blood. Not much but enough to be embarrassed about.

Afterwards they quickly wrench on their shorts. Derek’s cheeks are splayed with a raspberry stain.

‘See you tomorrow then,’ he says, not looking at her.

She nods. ‘Yep.’

He doesn’t move and she waits, knowing there is more.

‘Don’t tell Dan,’ he says.

Abby shrugs. ‘All right.’

‘You mean it?’

He is itching with nervousness. That feeling of power rips though Abby again but she says only, ‘Sure,’ as if she couldn’t care less. And then, ‘Dan’s started karate. Did he tell you?’

She doesn’t know why she says it. To scare him perhaps. And it does. She sees the whites of his eyes roil like a frightened calf. At least she thinks she does.

‘My cousin’s a black belt,’ he says. ‘Competes interstate.’

Maybe he isn’t scared after all. ‘It’s a stupid sport if you ask me,’ Abby mutters, feeling a sudden dislike for him.

Derek shrugs, looks away across the hillocks of crumpled cars. They stand, hands in pockets, a good metre between them, unsure how to part.

‘Reckon I’d better get going,’ he finally says.

He takes two steps towards her, pulling a hand from his pocket, and for one bizarre moment she thinks he is going to shake her hand. But then he stops, turns away with barely a nod.

She watches him leave, scuffs the brown patch of blood into the dirt with the toe of her trainer, sits back down and smokes another cigarette. The car creaks a little companionably.

She walks home, watching the early evening sky splurge on colour, thinking all the way: I’m no longer a virgin. I can never be that again. Never. I lost my virginity, in the wreckers, with Dan’s mate. And it was nothing.

Self-Portrait Without Mythology (Sharanya Manivannan)

That’s the thing about this business. Some days you sparkle like a teenage vampire. Some days you feel as though you’ve walked through the remains of an exploded dhrishti pusanika, which is to say, fucked. Most days, however, you pick out one item from your collection of lungis appropriated from men you have slept with, pin your hair up, cook your own lunch, and try not to think about it.

Now and then you buy yourself a single red African daisy from a flower-seller on the street. Sometimes you put it behind your ear. Sometimes you just keep it somewhere you can look at it.

You count on very little to run like clockwork, except perhaps the power cuts. Time exists only if you stop to ponder it, and it’s rarely wise to do this. It seems you were always here, long before you even arrived. Orbiting. Pivoting on a constant. You can go for months without entering the sea, but there is no given moment when you cannot point out its precise cardinal direction. All of it is deep within your being, if not your body itself – sweetness, slow dancing, the knowledge that grief has no after, places of pilgrimage, exigencies, seasons of plenitude, red-light districts, the memory of mountains.

Some things are important to you. These you must count frequently. There must be music. There must be something to drink. You love the sound of the human voice, and as difficult as you are, there are a few people for whom there will always be places at your table.

You number among what you own a gramophone, a small, seated bronze Parvati – solitary, her left foot extended, her inguina open – and your grandmother’s thaali. You number among that which you share your life with, but do not possess: windowsill cacti, visiting omens, other people’s children, full and eclipsed moons, books, the company of trees, owls.

There are no good photographs of you laughing from when your teeth were still crooked, but in your old age you hope to be wild-eyed, white-haired, a fearsome and fabulous crone. You think of old age often. On the most recondite of days the future shows itself to you in the blink of an eye. You are already there. You have always been here.

You are superstitious about the handling of knives, farewells and palli dosham.

You have few rules for this particular life that has become yours, but each is of consequence. Be observant but not vigilant, for the time for terror has passed. Love anyway. Praise every landscape that appears before your window; hold in equal measure the beauty of a cyclone and the miracle of a single woodpecker on a swaying coconut tree. Bear witness. Nothing lasts forever, and nothing is lost. Avoid regret. Love, any way.