James's Big Break

James Wilfred Klein was born in 1940 to a mother big of breast.  His developing eyesight always sought out the voluptuous life-giving mounds but Nolene, suffering with chronic mastitis, always managed to keep them away from his mouth and little grasping hands.  This was perhaps a sign of things to come for James as life went on.

As a nine-year old at school, his diminished stature lit him up like a beacon.  Michael Robbins attempted to make a target out of his head with his sausage fingers wrapped into what James recalled as a fist the size of a large baked potato.   Years later when he read about serving sizes being fist-shaped as recommended by the Ministry of Health, he couldn’t help thinking about the potato fist looming rapidly upon his yet unblemished nose.  The concussion he incurred was not from said-potato fist but from the wound at the back of his jet-black hair-covered head upon where it contacted the footpath after his heel became entangled with the bully’s bicycle that lay on the ground behind him.  Still, he could safely say that his injury was not at the hands of the aggressor, only at the failings of his two left feet.

There were other occasions in the years to come; taking Marissa McNaughton out to the movies to see Jailhouse Rock only to find that Elvis’s gyrating wasn’t enough to allow him free access to her blouse, her bosom still locked away from his inquisitive hand.  He heard Tommy Bradstone took her to Vertigo the following year and got more than a handful afterwards.
 
He worked for the local community newspaper early on.  He aspired to write for the major daily being assured of a job the moment one of the existing staff left.  They never did.  He reluctantly accepted writing classified ads for the little rag and drowned his sorrows alone at the local.  He managed five pulls on the pokey machine before giving that away.  The sixth pull by a new guest at the machine struck the jackpot.  James never even bothered turning.

The sound of the pokie machine playing out its gaudy tune snaps him out of his daydream.  It’s his mobile squawking from across the other side of the room.  At 76 he perhaps knows he shouldn’t be climbing ladders, but he feels safe enough on the footstool where he’s attempting to re-wallpaper his lounge.  It is hard to say how long the phone has been ringing so he moves quickly, forgetting the second step.  The table looms quickly and catches his glasses in a way Michael Robbins never did.  During his gravity-fed flight he recalls removing his wrist alarm for fear of getting wallpaper glue on it. He lands on a busted hip and forearm, unable to move.  Conscious, he sees the alarm handset on the table nearby and does the mental estimates.   Arm length – one point two metres, distance to alarm – one point five metres. 

Andrew Hawkey

Hand to God

“Where does it stop, where do you dare me to draw the line….”

The Hall and Oates song weirdly played in her head as she set out the Halloween candy. It used to be her favourite time of year…donning princess or witch costumes, skipping about the night collecting candy as the autumn wind blew hollow and cold…

As a child she was fanatic about communicating with the dead. Whether through séance, or the Ouija board, she was consumed by the constant seeking of a whisper from the dead…to guide her, reassure her life went on and total darkness would not be the end of the tunnel…or a wee hello from Grandma and Grandpa.

So Halloween was her favourite holiday – the time when ghouls gathered and ghosts grinned and the dead were all around. Not at all a scary time of year.

Until.

This is a true story. I tell it to my sixth grade school children to stop them going down the same road I was on.

Lori and I had turned off the lights and sat cross-legged in our usual positions, as we prepared ourselves to summon the dead in the middle of the day and our family room. We usually gathered at this time, just to see ‘who is out there’.

That day we learned.

We took out the Ouija board and placed it between us, hands barely touching the ‘cursor’. I forgot the question, but as the ‘cursor’ began to move untouched by us, (hand to God!) it stopped.

“Why?” we asked. “Why have you stopped?”

“He is here,” it painfully slowly spelled out, as we sat mesmerised.

“Who?”

Slowly, slowly: ”G…..O…..D”.

Which we thought was pretty cool, until we asked ourselves aloud, why couldn’t it answer if God was there?

Stupidly we continued, asking the question no sensible child nowadays would ask…

“Well then who are you?” A sudden wind blew out the candle and the sun dipped behind the clouds and all went eerily quiet.

Really. Now I know why the movies do it. It happens like that.

“S……A……T……A…..N.”

We screamed and instantaneously drew our hands back as if they had been burned.

From that day forward, I don’t get as excited about Halloween, I don’t watch scary movies, and the world of the dead remains happily out of reach.

Jasmin Webb

Autoimmunity

An impatient noise, and the line cuts so that the phone is suddenly empty, radio waves disintegrating while she shuts her eyes. She puts it down on the table, and turns back to her apartment. It’s empty, and something small and shrinking inside her enjoys the echoing space, the dark of early evening, the freedom to lie down without anyone seeing– on the floor if she wishes.

She is a fiery sieve, a burning screen, a raging filter for tiny parts that do the work she cannot see, that make her up. She is ablaze.

The next dose is in an hour, and the time in between is grey and grainy while she tries to sit still within herself. It will go down, she’ll keep it down. It will bend her deepest self outwards and force her into an about-face so that she ceases to turn on herself. It will upend her so that accumulating silt falls onto the fire, tamping it to embers, turning her to stone. She sits still, and breathes slowly, trying not to think of her lungs as bellows feeding fire.

The hour passes, she takes the pill, her phone rings silently, and her entire apartment seems to vibrate with incoming contact. She is lying on the floor, trying to sink into the wood, trying not to burn. The floor vibrates again, and she answers.

“Are you still there?”

“Yes,” she answers.

“You’re OK, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Are you coming tonight?”

“I’ll try. I’ll see.”

She turns off her phone. She drops it, stomps on it, kicks the pieces into a pile and sets the pile afire. In her mind, she does all of these things and then jumps through the window and into the yard, jumps the fence, jumps off into the blinding night.


Ashley Woodward

Mary Bennet starts a blog

I am honoured that you have visited my blog for I accept that your affection for me is overshadowed by the allurements of my sisters.  Beautiful Jane, living a good life with her amiable rich husband; Lydia and her irresponsible stupidity encouraged by our equally silly Mother; and Lizzy, whose abundance of future happiness inspired a presumptuous sequel to her much-loved story.

I say ‘her story’ because what of Kitty? What of me? The ‘also present’ sisters who, in post-nuptials chapter 61, were frozen in unwed purgatory, any hope of a suitable match forever out of reach.  Mary was the only daughter who remained at home. And then, you may ask? Nay, aged just 18, my literary future was extinguished in nine words.

It is universally acknowledged that J.A. thought ill of me. Hostile, some have called her.  She described me as conceited and pedantic, preferring Fordyce’s sermons over dancing. For that I offer no apology. My musical ability she cast as the object of derision.  I am also declared to be plain.  A failing indeed. Does plainness produce piety or piety plainness? Either way, would I have gone to hell for the sake of one pretty ribbon?

J.A. would not countenance what was clearly the most agreeable solution to the entailment of Longbourn.  Gladly would I have accepted Mr Collins and spent my life suffering Lady Catherine’s condescension whilst offering Christian service to the parish poor. But my happiness was sacrificed for plot. Lizzy must visit Rosings as a single woman and I, as younger sister, could not possibly wed before her. Charlotte had to be written into existence. Saint Charlotte! Did you ever meet such a martyr?

In truth, every minor character without a future should be afforded the opportunity to complete their story, and I invite you to do so here with brevity and wit. What of me?  It is true, I did remain at home, eight years caring for Father after Mother’s unfortunate barouche accident. When he passed, the good doctor engaged me as his housekeeper. Kitty remains in the village with her dim-witted vicar for whom I write a weekly sermon offering deep reflection and moral guidance. A private arrangement you understand but his small payment keeps me in ribbons.

Rosemary McBryde

The Avocado Orchard

He had taken his happy pills that morning – two amber and translucent, one round and smooth and russet-coloured like a precious seed – but, better still, he walked down the gravel road and through the long, wet grass to the avocado orchard.

There were perhaps eighty trees – their twisted, tortuous limbs rising from the ground with no main trunks, like neural dendrites – braided and contorted – with an electrical synapse-flash of green, electric foliage. The avocados themselves were visible through the leaves, dark orbs against the pale grey sky on the highest branches.

Despite the patter of rain on the leaves above, the birdsong was constant. A kingfisher flashed through and sat on a stone wall, its beady eye capturing all. Father Hopkins was right – kingfishers catch fire as dragonflies draw flame. Beyond the silver-rust and green-brown of the avocados’ new foliage, the pine trees were dark and gnarled and austere.

The ground beneath the trees was thick with grass and (‘weeds’ they call them) plants that crept or grew tall and had yellow or white or purple flowers. Other people had been here: ‘Durex: 1 preservatif en latex’.

Some of the pine trees had toppled and lay rotting away slowly, submerged in grass – ambiguous, misshapen, evanescent, attenuated, devolving into nothingness.

At the far side of the orchard, he sat down under a pine tree. Here it was dry – the pine needles and lichen fallen from above formed a thick mat, wind and birdsong the only sound. He sat and breathed – a gentle, repeated flow that calmed him.

It was only in his mind that, out beyond the orchard edge, the curved, silver blade and vast yellow bulk of a bulldozer waited, threatening destruction, presaging bare, flat earth and lifeless desolation.
But, high high up, still the avocados were out of reach.


Barnaby McBryde

October

A sneaky final September story crept into October so now the third to last theme for the year can be announced.  Out of reach is your starter this month.  Looking forward to contributions by 31 October, as usual to rosemary.mcbryde@gmail.com.

Anyone is welcome to play so if you have a 300 - 500 word story burning to be told, now is your opportunity.  Celebrate your inner writer!  Go on, you can do it.

Nil all

Toby has heard it all before; the jibes, the sniggers and the constant stream of jokes.  Even he had to laugh when he heard the one about hoping that when he died the Vikings would be graveside so that they could let him down one more time.  Every game day if he couldn’t be at the actual match he would make sure he donned his favourite 2007 home game jersey and settle in and watch on the 52” screen that he had purchased primarily for getting the best high-definition picture possible.

Dressed head to toe in dark clothing, baseball cap and hoodie at the ready, he conceals himself amid the shrubs.  His heart is pounding as he maintains a waiting vigil. 

This had been talked up by the experts as “their season” and he had only narrowly avoided putting his boot through his screen when it seemed the team had failed to learn anything from the previous match as the score against his side mounted at almost a point-a-minute at one stage.  Feeling his frustration increasing, he turned the television off before the end of the game for only the second time he could recall.

His hands grip tightly to the baseball bat and he rehearses in his mind how he intends to launch his stealth attack.  It’s the second night he’s spent here on reconnaissance, making extra sure he found the right time to execute his plan.

It’s the talkback radio that finished him off.  The constant stream of angry fans and dismissive radio hosts who clearly don’t share the love of his code.  He still doesn’t know what it is about this particular team that draws such a primal response in him when he has never had such a passion about any other code or team but he is now a committed card-carrying member of the fan base, swept along by the fervour when they have been riding the crest of a wave.  Of late though it’s been one negative headline followed by another and he’s determined to do what he can to ensure this team turns the ship around.

Mickey Flanagan, the key player for the Cobras, returns to the hotel after the last team practice.  If anyone can prevent his Vikings breaking the hoodoo it’s this guy.  He doesn’t normally believe in violence; the last person he intentionally hurt was Dale Strathcairn in form 3 but hell, his twenty years of allegiance to this outfit hadn’t come with any bragging rights yet.

He steps out of the shadows, weapon concealed and hoodie down.  The distance between them diminishes in an instant, the approaching footfall alerting him to a presence.  

The bat rises and hesitates just as Flanagan turns…


Andrew Hawkey