stories that weren't as successful as I'd hoped (intrigued?)
this was written in late 2003.
A Long Walk Home
The light on the wavelets shone golden as they waited in the bay. Their boat oiled with the water's slow and heavy rhythms. Its deck was spattered with ash and carbonised leaves that had fallen, and continued to do so. Steven wiped at his eyes, stinging from the smoke that pulled the moisture from them. He coughed.
"Least we don't have to worry about sunburn," he said.
"Yeah," said Julie, squinting at the sky, "Or our eyes frying. Look at it."
She pointed to the sun hanging above them, large and red through the bushfire clouds. The sleeve of his shirt she wore ran down, exposing her arm to the shoulder. She moved it, examining the effects of the light on her skin's tones; bronze speckled with ash, greenish in the hollows. She rubbed its grit in her long fingers.
The stays and pulleys of the boat clinked as it swayed from a breeze.
"Ouch," said Steven, " —in my eye."
"Are you all right?" she asked, as he bent down, hands to his face.
"I think I'll need to wash this," he said and went below.
"Do you need a hand?" She asked his descending shock of brown hair.
"I'll be right."
Julie returned to examining the sun. For a moment, she imagined their boat a spacecraft, the orb Mars. Almost close enough to land on it. More ash and leaf-fragments fell, and she dropped her gaze from the sky. An answering red light rose from the source of the smoke, a way away inland. The hills around the bay seemed black, a solid wall, indistinct through the haze. Rounded shapes of trees silhouetted by the bushfires beyond lined their heights.
Last year it had been different, blue skies and clear sailing. Winds had billowed the sails as they cut along, the white streaks of the eucalypts along the shoreline blurring. Long lazy hours of sunbaking, phosphorescence in the waters when they skinny-dipped at night. His hands sliding between her thighs as a prelude to his hurried love-making. At first, then she'd slowed him down, taught a few tricks people don't talk about, and things had gotten better.
They'd bought the boat together; he'd saved all he could, and she matched it, but they still needed a loan from the bank. She found it difficult to tell, at the shipyard, that they were yachts. Without masts or rigging, up on skeletal legs, queued, they looked something like aeroplane fuselages.
"It's not exactly what I had in mind," she said.
"What's wrong with it honey?" asked Steven, turning away from the salesman he'd been chatting with.
"Well, it just doesn't look much for the price."
"But Julie, I thought we already talked about this," he whispered at her. "I think we can come to an arrangement," said the salesman, "If we leave out a couple of the extras, I could drop off about five thousand? How does that sound?"
"Which extras?"
"Oh nothing major. I understand you're just going to use it round the harbour?"
"Maybe up the coast to Pittwater, or down to Jervis," said Steven.
"Well, if that's all you're going to do, you'd be right with just a radio, so we could leave out GPS, that takes off four grand alone."
"What else?" Julie asked.
"Well, lets just call it five then," said the salesman, smiling from face to face. The extra cash she saved them came in handy. Their wedding was properly white, with orchid place settings. Her dress was sleek and accentuated her form. At the ceremony, all eyes were on her, and during the reception dances, whispers of promises if needed. Then the honeymoon sailing, down South. They'd found their own private bay, steep valley walls that cut off the Boxing Day Test, the outside world. Picnics by waterfalls.
They were in the kitchen when the topic of holidays came up.
"Should we go back," she asked, "can we step in the same river twice?"
"Oh come on," Steve said, "Who cares about all that philosophical crap? Let's just go and have fun."
"You just want the safety of familiar ground."
"Hello? We're going sailing."
"What about Tuscany this time?"
"Julie."
"Well why not?"
"I didn't buy that boat for nothing you know. If we don't use it, we're just throwing money away," Steven said as he stood with his hands on hips, head tilted the way that used to be endearing.
"Don't use that tone with me."
"What tone? Oh come on Julie. Let's go down to the bay for Christmas again, just you and me, like old times."
"Old times like last year?"
"You know what I mean."
It was funny how Steven tended to do all the talking while she did the actual work toward making events happen. Still, it was her forte. Manipulating schedules, moving meetings and tradesmen's appointments to other weeks. All done with a smile of warm love, an irresistible glow that would melt the most taciturn heart. Like he said, she could sure turn it on when she needed to. Besides, apart from the maintenance he did on the boat, it left him free to dream and bound him closer to her. There was the shopping and packing of provisions, the menus she planned for each night. For the last, a candlelit dinner. A nice wine, in the good glasses. It could work.
Julie glanced at her watch; how could it be so dark so early in the afternoon? The wind blew harder, curling over the surrounding hills, causing whitecaps to form on the water. The mast of the boat swung through a widening oscillation and the clanging of the stays increased in clamour. For a moment Julie looked about for snakes, before she realised the intermittent hisses she kept hearing were those of air-born embers extinguishing themselves in the bay. The heat of the wind scorched at her nostrils, dried the sweat on her skin without cooling.
"Steven," she called below, "I think we'd better get out of here."
"What's up? he asked, as he climbed up to the deck. His bloodshot eyes traced the path from her finger to the shore.
"I think the fire's coming," she answered, pointing at the smoke that now carried across the heights and down toward them, in a serpentine undulation, sparks and embers gleaming among black roilings. As they watched, fireballs rippled across the hilltops in a cascade of trees exploding.
"Wow!" he yelled, turning to Julie, "did you see—", only to have his words drowned as the roar of the fire hit, loud as jet engines, like a train overhead. Soot and ash, embers and burning leaves began raining into them, onto the deck, to be blown into the bay on the next gust. Through the flurries Steven pulled her down into the cabin.
Crouching down before the drinks cabinet, Julie pulled out a dark velvet covered box. She took out a glass and held it up to the light, catching the rainbow diffractions from its crystal edges. She tapped it on the rim, holding it up to hear the pure hum of its resonance. Only three of a dinner set left. Family heirlooms bequeathed at the wedding. Her mother would be so sad if she were still around to hear of it.
"You whore," he'd yelled in a voice she'd never heard before or since, though she can remember it like it was yesterday. Then he'd hurled that chair across the room, to smash into the drinks cabinet.
"It was your idea in the first place," she'd yelled back.
"What are you talking about?"
"You and your fucking threesomes!" She screamed, "You brought other people into this."
"Me!" Steve sputtered, "You were the one who said we should experiment."
"And you jumped at the idea; I was just testing you."
"So you were playing with me?"
"Yes, and I decided to do a little more experimenting on my own!" she jeered, and then he'd thrown more about, bellowing until the flat was a shambles and the police were knocking on the door. So much fuss when she'd only slept with George the once.
Julie replaced the glass in its lined hamper beside the remaining two of its kind. Well, only the once that Steven knew about.
A red light washed the smoky space of the cabin, exploding trees were visible through the small windows lining eye level.
"Look at that!" Steven yelled.
"We've got to get out of here," Julie said, pitching her voice through the roar, "You start the motor, I'll get the anchor, take the tiller and stop any spot fires."
Steven began coughing, still staring outside. The cabin's rocking increased in fervour, so that they had to stretch a hand to keep balance. He pointed outside to a miniature twister of fire that spiralled down the hillside and out across the water before dissipating into the smoke.
"A willy-willy! We've got to get out of here!" Steven yelled, pushing past Julie to the engine.
She made her way on deck, squinting against the wind and smoke, to the anchor, and pulled it in. The fires had crept over the crests all around the bay. Fierce winds whipped the flames sideways across the hillsides. Another willy-willy span off the fire-front, slithering down to the water, spreading the fire in its wake. She grasped the tiller in hand, swung it around for the heads while flicking the gear lever to drive. There was no lurch from the motor kicking in, the masts oscillations broadening as the boat turned side on to the swell. Amid the roaring and flying embers, Julie watched as the flames whipped around the bowl of the bay. What sky there was of smoke glowered a dense red cloud above them. She joggled the lever again; nothing. The boat began drifting toward the shore amid the wash.
Steven clambered up from the cabin's doorway.
"It was out of fuel," He said into her ear, "I've filled it up but I still can't get it to turn over."
"If there's an airlock we're screwed," she said as she started for the hatchway, "but you've probably just flooded it."
On the first rung down Julie could smell the petrol. A skein caught in the sway of the boat washed against her feet as she checked the engine. Letting in the choke, she pushed the ignition button. The light in the cabin flared a brighter orange. Julie looked out while the motor rumbled beneath her finger, at the flaming willy-willy bearing down on them, spinning out across the intervening gap that had grown so alarmingly small. The roar grew louder, and for a few moments the boat juddered while the windows cracked and popped from the flames that swirled against them.
For moments she stared, hand to mouth, until the motor's vibration brought her back to herself. Grabbing the fire extinguisher off the wall, she rushed to the deck. Flames licked the length of the boat. To port, the bushfire was right at the rocks lining the water's edge; she could feel its greater radiant heat against her face. Julie sprang past the burning sail, tied down so neatly to the beam, for the tiller, bore away to starboard and felt a satisfying jolt as the gear lever pushed into drive. Once headed, she turned the extinguisher onto the sail until it was mostly doused.
"Steven!" Julie called above the inferno, searching the nearby waters, to catch sight through the haze and sparks of his upraised arm a few meters to the stern. She waved and slipped the boat into neutral. While he swam to the boat she finished off the sail. She hauled him aboard.
"Steer," she yelled, pushing him aft, while with quick spurts of what remained in the fire extinguisher she saw to the lingering flames on the wood trimmings.
As they made for the heads, Julie looked at Steven. The skin on the half his face was an ugly red, the hair burnt from the same side of his head.
"Are you all right?" she asked, feet braced against the swell.
"I thought I was dead.".
"I did too," she said, "You need a doctor; I'm going to radio for help."
"You'll have to wait til we're out on the open water."
"Oh yes," Julie said beneath the fire's roar, "I forgot."
The sea beyond the heads held a different colour from the sun shining on it direct.
"It's changed to an onshore wind," Steven said as they breasted the entrance to the bay, the salt smell of the ocean coming to them, mingled with petrol, "that's weird."
As they gazed toward the horizon, a eucalypt leaf, incandescent among the ash and sparks, swirled at the entrance to the hatchway. For a moment it hung, caught in an eddy of crosswinds, before plunging into the space below.
"You spilled the petrol," said Julie, just before a gout of fire flared out the hatchway. They reeled back, out of the way. Down in the cabin the flames spread through the compartment. The extinguisher spat its last as Julie watched the velvet on her glassbox crisp.
"It's over," said Steven, "Abandon ship." They dove over the side and swam to the cunjevoi covered rocks. Watched as the flames licked from the cabin windows and consumed the yacht, while sparks and embers whirled on the winds from the bushfire behind them, the sea in front.
this was written early 2003; it's overwritten and under developed. At some stage I'll revisit the thing and blow it out to about 15000 words. . .
And they came down from the trees
Everybody's hair is blown askew, their coats billow. The wind slithers between the weave of my jumper to tease at my bare skin, raising goose bumps. Fragments of fallen raindrops dew my cheeks, glisten on my fur lined coat in the rays of the passing cars' headlights. I scan the buildings across the street, all grey and blurred, staring with vacant windows.
The traffic halts as the signals change. I look through the glass ceiling of the bus stop. The rain is falling against the roof, rippling out across the glass. On its underside, the reflections of the water in the gutter and on the road intersect the raindrops. Ripples on ripples and the rain is falling.
There is a buoyancy to my limbs. I am smiling as the cars begin to move. Tears from I don't know where are running down my cheeks — I want to hug someone and I look around, but no one meets my eyes. The wind disorders my hair, sprays my face with mist. I should be cold, but tonight there is a deep glow of warmth spread from my stomach. The traffic speeds by through the rain, sending droplets of water into violent eddies. As they whirl and spin, the street lamps and the beams of headlights catch their progress, transforming them into a maelstrom of iridescent sparks.
For a few spare moments there is a golden spark within me. My satchel slips off my shoulder. A taxi sweeps near, splashing me with gutter water as it goes. A wash of commuters pass by to mob the arriving bus. I am pushed away from the kerb as they jostle for the doors. It is my bus, though it fills before I can board. The bus leaves with a cloud of fumes. I walk and sit on a vacant seat; as I continue to wait the tears grow cold on my face.
They are gentle with me, which is a relief after Sasha's cruelty. They hold me fast, their breasts pushing against my arms through the charcoal vinyl of their uniform, leading me to the security office. Have I ever been touched this tenderly? I can almost draw comfort from their embrace. Only our footsteps break the silence of our passage, though behind me are murmurings. When we reach the doors; dull metal, dented from hail, my knees give way.
"Come on now, love," one says, "Almost there."
"Its all routine," says the other, "Nothing to be scared of," as they carry me into the corridor.
"Uhh," I exclaim, to my own surprise — am I drugged? I look up to see my reflection in their sunglasses, all bulbous eyes and gulping lips.
No one looks at my eyes as I walk. Through campus, through streets; no one will look me in the eyes. Toys are lying on the grounds outside the Uni's Creche. One step from the footpath and I bend, pick them up to drop them over the fence to the children. As they play and toddlers fall, scream or gurgle, I am unnoticed. The toys I return are ignored. The minders look elsewhere. Southerlies bring rain-heavy clouds, cumulously building great stacks to pour down on the town, flood down the escarpment.
Last month we had a storm, like one from the old days. Cars were washed into creeks, off cliffs; people died, houses were flooded, buried in mud. I just made it to the house before the worst of it fell. Even though I live on top of a hill the water seeped beneath the back door. It couldn't flow around the place fast enough. Trees fell, as well as fences; those remaining carrying detritus on their wires and boards, shouting the tide's mark. Tonight there is more rain forecast, and winds, fierce winds.
"Do you think there'll be gales again?" I asked Sasha just before class. Her hair was blowing with the breeze already. The cloud's shade jaundiced her tan. She scrutinised our approaching lecturer.
"Uh, yeah," she muttered, " Excuse me. Joan, about those chromosonal mutation rates—" and she hurried off. There isn't a day that I don't see without this grey light.
The panes of the windows in the lounge room face south, and bend under the force of the strongest gusts. It's not hard to imagine them breaking, showering the room with windblown slivers. They rattle and shake the rest of the time so that I can hardly hear the television. No one else is here tonight as this wind lifts the carpet around the feet of the settee I sit on. A blanket covers my knees and wraps my feet. I am still cold. It is always cold. Spatters of rain begin to slap the window. My flatmates never seem to be around any more, though they still leave piles of dishes.
I don't dream at night, or if I do, I never remember. It takes a long time to fall asleep, listening to the storm thrumming in the treetops, waiting for a flatmate's key to turn in the door. The bed is hard; in the morning as always I stretch and fail to crack my back and neck. Rubbing at the knots I turn to the mirror. I look at my reflection.
This machine scrapes, rather than hums. The scanner's light arrows a flickering beam along my inert body. I am trying to lie quietly, as they said, but small sobs keep escaping my lips. That I can't control myself makes me seethe with humiliation and frustration, and I sob all the louder. I am sealed in the tube while they pry me. Needles extend from the floor just behind my shoulder and jab deep into my muscles. I can hear pumps and vacuums. There is an eye, and gritty colours swim through me.
I can sit all day by the pig wallows at Uni. They all walk past me, the other students, tutors, gardeners. No one will sit next to me, though I take care to leave a space. Even the pigs will abandon the mash I throw for another's. They aren't really pigs anymore, so the monitors tell us, but we call them that anyway, just to maintain the illusion that we are where we belong. Pigs used to have to have snouts and a twirly tail, not these fragile bones that protrude at all angles.
I am not ashamed to watch them mate, in the wallows, among the trees, wherever their fancy takes them. They pile in, come one come all. Bones vibrating, skin pulsing colours in flashing displays, they call out in piggish passion, or so I imagine. I cannot know. I have never mated.
I don't think I'll ever pair bond, see my essences mixing on screen with another's, our nucleotide sequences combining to form new life. I can feel it deep in my too-wide hips; there is an emptiness in my womb. I see other students cavort, flirt, gaze at one another. No one will ever catch my eye. No one will ever caress my skin or make love with me. I don't even masturbate any more, it hurts to have my sexuality awakened. Some nights ideas of Sasha will cross me, redden my face as I flush.
I imagine we walk through forests, careful to avoid the trees' trailing wires that can cut in even the slightest breeze. Her face is pale ash against the black of their metal trunks. Perhaps we are running scans on the trees, plugging our portable computers into their access points; what are their growth rates, are they producing at optimum levels? Then we would find an arbour and — but these visions always end the same way. She doesn't even talk to me, her hands reach elsewhere, her smile reserved for another.
I woke at dawn this morning, to the silence of a stilled storm. My breath clouded, and loath though I was to leave the warmth of the bedclothes, I got up and parted the curtains. The night still coloured the higher reaches of my view, whilst along the horizon lay clouds of pollution. It turned the muddle of smog into a carpet of colours, through dirty reds to pinks to browns. As the sun rose, rays penetrated the upper layers of the murk, beaming elongated rainbows across the sky. Like searchlights they ranged, from far away winds caressing the smog. The derricks and smoke stacks of the industrial complex towered in silhouette.
We don't come from here. I've seen the Ark, we all do; the school excursion. You're not supposed to walk right up to it or feel the cool and pitted metal. The signs said it was hot, but being young I didn't know what that meant. In any case, Sasha dared me, her hand loitering on my shoulder as she whispered her plan in my ear.
Our ancestors are still inside: 'live' on the screens you can see them in their tubes, floating embalmed in the sleeping liquid. Ethereal beings with limbs thin enough they should snap. Half of them are mutants without breasts, with growths dangling between the legs.
This is an old planet. A dead planet. Its continents have lost their minerals, scoured by the continual rain. Before us, there was nothing. Bare rock and ceaseless storms. They made this place. Created all this life. We perch here, lost offspring, controllers of this grand design built on pig shit. Resources are still scarce and rationed, our population limited. With everything counted, nothing goes to waste, and nothing upsets the balance — or so it goes as we are taught.
"See if you can wake them," she said, pushing me toward the craft. It loomed tall through the rain across a long dark distance, "I'll keep watch." She didn't though; the guards caught me in their leaden gauntlets before I could enter.
I didn't manage to wake the old ones either, first with my screams of outrage, or pain as the burning began. Perhaps that's why Sasha never visited during my time in the hospitals. Lots of me fell away to the burns appearing, each time sheared off to reveal another layer of flesh that would burn anew. Skin grafts taken to fail again and again, leaving me with skin like melted wax. Most of my arms are fused with machinery.
If we have changed to adapt to this world, so it has to us. No longer do the storms come with quite the vehemence they used to, as though they were trying to wash us from the face of the planet. The wires of the trees slow the wind speeds and their roots crack rock to make soil. Since I was a child there are more vegetables, not just the stringy spinach. Even the Sun when it shines is warmer. Some day, the world will accept us as we are, and we will wake to know that we are home.
I'm near the genetics department when I see her, sitting on the chainsawed trunk of a wind damaged tree. Computer chips from its internal workings lay as confetti. The tree's wires stream along the ground, aligned to the storm of last night. Their tangled strands of metal resemble the platinum shades of her hair. There is no-one else to go to, it's as simple as that. It is already drizzling.
"Sasha,' I say, "please, I —"
"Look, I don't know what it is with you," she says, "You're always badgering me about something." Her hand waves at me.
"Sasha, please," I manage to say, "Please help me." I drop my head so that she won't have to look on my face; I know I'm ugly. They used to tease me, but now children will shy. I am becoming uglier with every passing day.
"Well, what is it?" she asks. I can tell by the tone of her voice that she's irritated with me.
"I need you to sign as my pair bonder," I tell her, in as even a voice and neutral a manner as I can manage. After a moment I steal a peek. At least she isn't laughing, though her lips are carved into a smile. Her eyes are open wide and are staring at me. I shiver with a sudden chill. I have made a mistake. Sasha will betray me.
"Now why would you need me to do that?" she inquires, making her way to the nearby campus phonelink. Under these overcast skies the whites of her eyes are grey. I raise my hand and reach for hers. She knows that I would never touch her without her permission, and so ignores it. There is nothing I can do, or would do, to stop her.
"We're," I say, and correct myself, "We were friends."
"Why would you need me to do that, fishy?" she asks again. Her hand loiters on the receiver. "It's very fishy, hey fishy?"
"I'm pregnant," I blurt out.
"What?" she asks, "Who'd waste their mix on your melted genes?"
"No-one," I say.
"You did it to yourself? That's illegal," she gasps, her mouth a perfect hole.
"No, it just sort of —" is there anything for me in her? "Happened. That's why I just need you to sign."
She laughs, a short abrupt little thing that forces its way between her smiling teeth. I look down as her fingers punch the dial tone.
"Security? Hi," she says, and I can feel her looking at me, "Look, you better get a team up here." I close my eyes, watching the spirals of light throbbing against my eyelids. The gravel under my foot will grind to sand, if only I stood here long enough.
My skin is ripping open; gaping tears stream down my face, my neck and beyond. Wires push out through the rents and into the machine that wraps me. Lights are flashing, sirens sounding. I am transcending my body. Fire sweeps along my wires as I insinuate the machine's scanners and circuits. They will not harm my baby. The air pressure changes as the hatch opens, and quick as thought I am uncoiling through.
Smoke billows from the aperture at my back, flames spit past what should be my shoulder. Everybody in the room looks at me, from their computers, from their clusters by instrument banks. They all open their mouths at the same time; I don't hear as much as sense the screams rippling through me. They can't tear their eyes free. Blood slides the length of my wires to the floor — I don't need it any more. Shreds of my sloughed flesh trail behind me, and fat, guts, all the rest.
I whirl about and lunge for the door. It is closed, shut tight. I claw sparks from its metal before I thread myself into cables and pry it loose. I throw it behind me into a bank of consoles as I enter the next room. Mirrors line one wall; a dentist's chair, straps hanging loose, sits in the middle. By it, a trolley holds various hooks and tools ready. Security cameras in the corners chart my progress as I move to whip against the mirrors.
I burst in a shower of shards and crazy wires into the hidden space behind. Slivers of my reflection fall in a frenzied tangle of glass and wire to rain across the floor. It is dark — I can sense rather than see. Ours is a big planet and for a moment I am flying above it; the floor's cement the earth, each fragment of mirror a forest. More sirens sound. They will come for me, these people who torure and deny and are no longer my people.
Guards rush at me, to be turned aside or pierced right through as I slink and coil through the passageways. I am roving, seeking the exit, my wires scraping trails through the concrete, stabbing out lights in bursts of electric pain. The blast doors can't stop me, nor the gases. They try guns, but I am steel; mostly they shoot each other. I spindle through to emerge in sunlight. The trees sing to me along the breeze.
posted by Josh at 11:02 pm
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