Sedentary

Jake forced his eyelids closed and felt the momentary surge of white hot pain as moisture returned to his eyeballs - blinking didn't manifest when you were this close to the top of the leaderboard after three straight hours of CounterStrike. He couldn't fail his teammates, even though they were complete strangers, probably sitting in their own dank bedrooms in some far-off suburbia.

Jake took a hasty mouthful of congealed pizza from his desk and poured a few glugs of Diet Coke down his throat, the syrup compounding an intestinal rumbling and the slow degeneration of bone density that would make it harder for him to articulate his corpulent pork of a body to more productive ends.

Existing online and inside video games was a far cry better than sinking time into coursework or real human interaction, and at any rate Jake’s potent mixture of social retardation and physical repulsiveness made it increasingly justifiable to not even try. His mother was the only person he'd actually seen this week.

"Mum!" It’d be refill time soon, and a bathroom break would be wise.

"Hey mum!" No response from downstairs. "Pamela!"

It was early evening, and Jake couldn't face the world outside his room if it was soaked in crepuscular sunlight. Most people closed their curtains at night, letting the sun purify their spaces when the earth was kind enough to face it. Jake thought the sun was a pain in the arse, swimming through the dust to stress every sticky mark on his monitors and putting an impossible glare precisely on his crosshair. He couldn't remember the last time the curtains were open.

He opened a new browser window and pounded an address into the keys -- 'isitdarkoutside.com' -- and the screen returned a large, repressive 'NO'.

Back to it then.

Brendan McBryde

5 a.m.

Only she and the driver were awake, like watch keepers, their fellow travellers contorted in fitful sleep.  She drew a scarf more closely against the chill and for just a moment regretted the liberation from her waist-length hair.  Behind her, the Samoan couple’s snores rose above the relentless engine drone.

The barest wash of lightness brushed the horizon. Outside, the passing landscape was layered shadow, trees silhouetted in charcoal against black hills. In yellow-eyed farmhouses, she pictured early risers and restless children sharing the liminal hour, neither day nor deeply night.

The air rustled and shifted behind her. E a mea sou faalagona? The woman’s mellow tones were answered by a groaning thunder-rumble. Ua tiga lo'u patua.  Ahead, two girls stirred, embraced, roused by the flare of a chirping mobile phone.  With rising panic, she pressed her forehead against the glass, and reminded herself why she had left. 

“Today’s technology is the dominion of the ungodly,” the pastor had preached the day before he preyed upon her. “We must remain apart, as God divided light from darkness.”

“Your sinfulness is making you barren,” her husband had declared, as month after month her bleeding testified to her failure.

“From today, I have no daughter,” her father had announced that final morning, and her mother’s blank face turned away.

The Samoan woman retrieved a bag from the overhead shelf and sat, breathing heavily. A zip opened, a lid was removed and paper rustled.  E ai se mea e te fia ai? An answering grunt, then the greasy waft of cold pastry and sausage.

A hand touched her arm. “You want something to eat? A sandwich? Take it.” The woman pushed the container forward.

Hesitating, she accepted the offering with a quiet word of gratitude.

The bus rolled on towards morning.

Rosemary McBryde

9 July 1863

It is too late in the night – too late in history – for words: just the sound of embers; shadows crowding in from the whare rafters. Silence, but no sleep – no one will sleep this night. Hunched figures in the gloom, they stare at the embers and the small weaving flames. It is dark outside. The ruru call in the rock forest down the slope towards the east – hine-ruru, the owl woman, ancestral spirit of the family group, guardian, kaitiaki to protect, warn and advise … or just ruru, messenger of death?

When the Sun rises above Puketapapatangaahape they will leave – take what they can and leave, begin the sorrowful trail south from Tamaki Makaura to Waikato, to the protection of Kingi Potatau Te Wherowhero.

They will come – the pakeha. They will raze the buildings, uproot the gardens, fill and trample the spring. They will take the land and make it their own with their specious laws and their brutal army of occupation.

And they will physically take the land – take it away. With their steamshovels and their bullies they will carve away the sacred maunga till it is a wizened stump and on until it is a pit and the seawater seeps in. Gone.

They desire the land with a deformed lust, but they hate the land as well – the land and all its fecund life. Their bitter souls love only neat rows of black numerals in their ledger books.

Tonight the strong and razor claws of the ruru tighten round the hearts of those at the fire. This night they will sit and stare at the flames here for the last time. When the Sun rises, in silence they will rise, weary and heartsore, from their vigil of despair and they will leave. But now it is dark outside.

Barnaby McBryde

March stories

Thanks to the contributors of the February stories for your various entertaining offerings and welcome to our readers from the USA, Australia, Poland and the Ukraine.
This month's starter is: It's dark outside.  Perhaps a theme, a line of dialogue or a phrase of text, or just an idea for a setting... over to you. Stories to rosemary.mcbryde@gmail.com by Wednesday 30 March. And remember, strictly a 300 word maximum. Happy writing.