“Shall we begin?”

One of the black-ties glares at me. “Una was much more lithe,” he says. “Much more vibrant. Such an exquisite dancer, such a beautiful singer. To have wasted her life on vulgar cabaret . . . ”

“Slinking in alleys . . . ”

“Scuffling for coin in dank, decrepit places . . . ”

“Cafés and folies.” Top-hat shakes, spits. “Damp, even in summer. Small wonder the wheeze got her--”

My joints stiffen as he speaks. Vein-syrup coagulates. Grenadine clogs my nostrils. I exaggerate a cough, swallow fizz. Use spittle and phlegm to demand their attention. “Shall we begin?”

“Heartbreaking,” says another. “Clearly, a wife cannot survive on sugar, liquor, and promises alone . . . ”

“A husband should provide more--”

“Ça suffit,” says Maman. “My daughter made her own choices. What’s done is done.”

“But this,” says Papa, crossing himself. Expression doughy. “She has had no say in this.”

“Open your eyes,” I intone with all the gravitas of Helen on the ramparts. Fire flickers in my gaze. “Open your eyes. Una is here.”

*

Give them what they desire, my confectioner once told me, and the audience will never forget you.

Cardamom flakes from my cheeks as I grin, enigmatic. Remember me? Peppermint auras smoke from my mouth, sweet and pervasive. What a show we’ve planned! What a performance. There will be no weeping this time. No throttling chest-rattle. No thick, unbreathable air. It won’t be like before.

Remember?

I am weightless, seeing them here, being seen. I am buoyant.

A fairy-floss spirit spins out of my fingertips. She clouds up to the ceiling, floats down the walls. Shrouds the gallery of portraits hung there. “Una,” I say, louder now. At my command, the spectre coalesces. Straight nose, high brows, Helen’s fixed stare. She is the mould, the paintings, replicated in floating skeins of cotton candy. “Una is here.”

My eyeballs roll back in their sockets. The undersides are concave. Hollow, but not void. Diamond-shaped dragées trickle out. Dry-tears. My pupils turn skullward, but I am not blind. I am Delphic. Past, present, future. All-knowing. All-seeing.

I look and look and don’t look away.

Chairs screech back from the table. Heels chatter their exit, but not mouths. Mouths are black lines, firm-clenched or drooping. Mouths are hidden behind satin-gloved fingers, closed behind handkerchiefs. Mouths are quivering disgust. There will be no licks, no nibbles from these. No kisses.

Maman’s handmaiden swats the apparition, clearing a path so her mistress can leave. Papa sniffs. Dabs his lowered eyes. Orders servants back to the kitchens. Follows them out. Javier sits rigid as meringue beside me. Will he add this story to his repertoire? Will he tell the next Una what he’s told us already, over and over, so many times?

Give them what they desire, he said.

Spectres, spirits, sweet subtleties.

“Wait,” Javier says as his in-laws retreat from the room. Indecorous penguins, making their excuses before the entrée. “Stay! You wanted to see--”

New memories to replace the old.

Pulling, pulling, the ghost unspools from my heart. She spills. She aches.

“Is this not her face?” he says, leaning close enough to kiss. “Is Una not right here? Is she not perfect?”

“This is not her face,” I repeat. Wrong, try again. My thoughts are muddled, drunk on passion and time. “You wanted to see.” Musk falls from my gums. Bohèmes break brittle bones. No, wait. Not quite. That’s not alphabetical--macadamias, marshmallows, mignardises. Better. My fingers snap, one by one. Bohèmes bones break brittle. Sherbet foams from my mouth, grenadine from my nostrils. Custard seeps, melts my delicate robes. My hands find, flail, flounder in Javier’s warm grip. Cream gluts from my sternum, splattering the Wedgwood. Shaking, my head teeters. Throbs. Tilts.

“She is not perfect,” says the ghost.

Forced skyward, Helen’s stony gaze comes to rest on the ceiling rose.

“This is not her face.”

Will Javier tell the next Una this story?

Give them what they desire, he said.

New memories.

Remember?

My chest heaves, drowning in buttercream. The ghost breaks its tether, unmoors, dissolves. “This is not her face,” she says. Not quite. The tone is off. The thick-glugging timbre. “Javier.”

Try again and again.

“Una is not right here.”

 

* * *

 

The Bull In Winter

Dirk Flinthart

The dingy room was spattered with blood and feathers. Bull flared his nostrils and snuffed deeply. The place stank of old sweat, stale piss and black mould. Only the faintest, fading trace of frankincense clung to the tattered corpse nailed to the lath-and-plaster wall.

“They took his wings,” Kaia observed, her voice a gutted whisper. “There’s nothing left.”

“Someone took ’em,” Bull rumbled. “Didn’t gotta be the killers. Plenty of mojo in those wings, for somebody as knows how.” He picked his way across the room, through the litter of empty bottles, pizza boxes, and Chinese take-away containers until he stood below the sagging, half-flensed mess. He sniffed again. Up close, the frankincense was strong, cloying. No mistaking it. “Help me get him down. Hold him so’s I can get the nails out.”

Kaia took a step, then stopped and looked away. “Can’t,” she said. “I can’t touch . . . that.”

Bull grunted. “Do it myself, then. Look around. See what you can find. Maybe something to show us what happened.” He sidled into position, sliding one powerful arm behind the corpse, under its flabby arse, and hauled it up until it rested messily on his hip. The blood had stopped flowing long since, but it was still moist and sticky. He’d have to throw away his jeans after this. With his free hand, he pinched the head of the big nail that stuck out of one wrist. It was slippery with blood; he had to rub it a bit before he could get a decent grip, but once he got it tight between his finger and thumb, all it took was a good, strong pull. The nail came out of the wood and plaster with an ugly screech, and the arm fell to hang uselessly by the side of the corpse. Bull shifted his grip a little, and gave the second nail the same treatment, then lay the maimed body on the stained brown corduroy couch. As an afterthought, he dragged a dirty sheet over it. “Anything?” he called out.

“Nuh . . . no,” said Kaia. She sniffed and wiped her nose on the sleeve of her threadbare sweater. “Doesn’t matter, anyway. Nobody can help him now.”

“It matters,” growled Bull, still looking down at the sad, shapeless lump under the stained cloth. “He was good. He was my friend. He thought I was . . . good. Someone shouldn’t oughta done this.”

Kaia moved against him then, sliding herself in under his elbow, wrapping her arms around his waist. The blood didn’t seem to bother her. “What are we going to do, Bull? He was strong, but they came for him. What can we do?”

Bull shook his head. “I’m stronger’n him. They won’t come for us. If they do, I’ll smash ’em. They know it.” He growled deep in his chest and hugged Kaia close. She felt thin and brittle in the circle of his arms. He wanted to hold her closer still, squeeze her, protect her, but she felt so small he thought she might break.

She coughed, her thin body quaking against his. “I’m cold, Bull,” she said. “Can we go? There’s nothing we can do here now.”

He looked around the squalid little apartment. How long had Angel lived here, among the junkies and the filth, the stink of his own decay? Yet the place was lifeless. Nothing of Angel to be seen anywhere; no photos, no keepsakes. Not even a potted plant. “Like he wasn’t never here,” Bull said. “Just nobody.”

“What are you talking about?” Kaia looked up at him. “There’s stuff everywhere. He left a mess.”

“Yup,” agreed Bull. Gently, he uncoiled her arms from about his waist, and propelled her towards the scarred wooden door that hung slightly askew on rusted hinges. “You get goin’. I can catch you up, eh? Got somethin’ still to do.”

She hesitated in the doorway, watching him from beneath the straggling green curtain of her hair. “Don’t be long?”

He waved her away, and watched until he couldn’t hear her footsteps in the hall outside, nor pick up her clean, fresh scent in the general reek of the place. Only then did he turn his attention to the corpse on the sagging, foldaway bed. Clasping his big, scarred hands, he lowered his head, and closed his eyes. “Sorry, buddy,” he said. “I weren’t there when it mighta helped. Ain’t much I can do about it now. I don’t even know what kinda words is right. But you’da done right by me, if it was me lyin’ there, so I’m gonna do the best I can, okay?”

He opened his eyes and waited, but nothing happened. The corpse didn’t move. The stink didn’t go away. There were no signs or wonders. Bull hitched his shoulders wearily, and smiled to himself. Signs and wonders. Been a long time since any of that kind of thing had happened. He fumbled in the pockets of his old jacket until he found what he needed, and then he set about doing what ought to be done, near as he knew how.

Tucked into the street-light shadow of a bus stop, Kaia was waiting for him when he came out. Most couldn’t have spotted her there, still and small in the dark like that, but Bull knew her ways, and anyhow, he could smell her; all woodland-soft and fresh in the rough, harsh stink of the city. She pulled herself out of the dark as he came close, looking past him to the rotting red-brick building he had left behind.

“You did it, then?” She licked her lips nervously. Kaia never did like fire.

He glanced back over his shoulder at the flames leaping high from the solitary window of Angel’s apartment. They’d spread some already, since he came down. The flickery orange-red light showed at the end of the hallway, and as he watched, the window burst, and thick smoke poured out. Somebody shouted, a string of choppy, angry curses echoing round the high walls. In the distance, a siren yowled like a cat somebody had stepped on.

Bull turned away, and dragged at Kaia’s coat until she stumbled after him, protesting. “There’s people inside,” she said. “Someone ought to help.”

“They coulda helped Angel,” he said. “They didn’t.” On the sidewalk in front of him, Bull’s shadow wavered and twisted as the flames behind rose into the night sky. For an instant, it almost looked like he had horns again. He raised a hand, touched one of the rough spots on his scalp, but no--they hadn’t come back. Not yet, anyhow.

They kept walking through the wintry darkness until the city swallowed them up.

*

Kaia woke him in the night with her thrashing. That wasn’t so bad, but nights where she did that, she sometimes talked in her sleep, too. Snatches of the Old Tongue. Bull had forgotten most of it by now. Couldn’t remember more than a few words, mostly swearing. But the sound of it still gave him sweats and bad dreams; nightmares full of twisting stone passages and the smell of rotting meat. He couldn’t sleep, nights when the Old Tongue came to her like that.

*

By the cold light of the moon through the window, Bull sat up and watched her for a while. He liked to watch her sleep. Her face relaxed, and she turned soft, like she’d been when they met, such a long time back. She was still beautiful, of course. Always would be. It was the nature of her kind. But lately, it was a hard, brittle kind of beauty, like a tree under winter ice.

After a while, he got up and padded naked to the kitchen to get a beer. When he came back, she was awake, looking around in confusion. “Bull,” she said, as he approached the bed. “When is it?”

“About three,” he said, settling next to her, so that the bed creaked under his weight. “Hours yet ’fore sun-up.”

“No, I meant when,” she said. “What year?”

He studied her, his beer briefly forgotten. Her face was white and lined, her eyes dark, with deep shadows under them. She looked scared. “You really don’t remember?”

Kaia shook her head, and pulled the covers close. “I’m cold,” she said. “I was dreaming, and it was summer in the old land, and there were olive groves, and my sisters were there, and wine, and dust. And now I’m not sure . . . ”

“2012,” Bull said. “Christian calendar.” His hand felt cold, and he remembered his beer. He popped the top; drained it in two swallows. Thin stuff, but it was hard to find the real thing anymore. Maybe he should figure out how to make his own. People did it. Couldn’t be that hard.

Kaia wrapped the raggedy quilt tightly around herself. “Do you ever think about home?”

Bull belched, and crushed the beer can in his fist. “What’s home? I can’t even remember how long we’ve been here anymore.”

A breeze stirred the leafless pear tree outside the window. Both of them looked out into the night. Kaia coughed, a thin, ugly sound. From the corner of his eye, Bull saw her snake one arm out from under the covers and grab a tissue from the nightstand. She wiped her lips, and crumpled it quickly, but he didn’t need to see. The smell was enough.

“Blood,” he said, trying to keep his voice even. “How long?”

Kaia looked lost. “Forever, maybe? I don’t remember. I’ve . . . lost things, Bull.” Her fingers worked restlessly on the quilt, bunching it up, pinching the nap, rubbing it between her fingertips. “I need to go home. Soon.”

Home. Bull tried to think about it, but nothing much came, except the nightmare of stone walls and carrion. How long had it been? Too long. Not long enough. Kaia, though . . . he sneaked another glance at her, cocooned and shivering in her quilt. Her eyes were closed, and her lips moved as though she was praying, but he couldn’t make out the words. And shit, anyway, who would she pray to? Been nobody listening for longer than he could remember.

Maybe it was time to talk to someone else.

*

You had to know about the place to get in. Bull knew, all right. He’d just never wanted to get in before. The kind of people who hung out in Sanctuary--stupid name for a nightclub--weren’t his crowd. All the black and the velvet, and they wanted you to think they were dangerous, but they acted like a bunch of fags instead.

*

The door was one of those heavy steel jobs you got in warehouses. There was a little camera over it, and if you looked real close, the word ‘Sanctuary’ was scratched into the rusted metal door, like how someone might do it with a pen-knife. The door opened if they wanted you. It stayed closed if they didn’t.

Bull didn’t have a real lot of time for that. He stood there, in the pool of ugly neon light, long enough for the camera to look him over, and maybe a minute or two more just to be polite. But they weren’t buying, so he knocked. For real, with his balled-up fist, so as to leave a serious dent in the top half of the door.

That got some attention. Someone yanked the door open, and a guy in a long black coat stepped into the doorway. He pulled out a shotgun. Stupid. Bull took it away from him and snapped it across his knee, all the time with his eyes locked on the guy in the coat. “Lizzy,” Bull growled. “I wanna talk to Lizzy.”

Coat-guy, though, he wasn’t done. “Beast-creature beware!” he cried, and a couple of really sharp-looking knives popped into his hands, like magic. “The Lady is not for you. Only death awaits!”

He was fast. The knives zipped back and forth like swallows, slicing Bull across the arms, cutting up his best leather jacket. Bull stepped into the place, ducking to get under the doorframe, and drove his fist into coat-guy’s belly, all the way up to the wrist. “Just wanna talk,” he said, patiently as he could, as coat-guy sank to his knees. “Lizzy knows me, okay?”

“Enough, Toro,” came a voice like honey and silk and cats. “James will trouble you no further.”

Bull glanced down, where the coat-guy was spewing up a bellyful of sour, red wine all over the nice parquet floor. “Don’t think he could anyhow,” he said. “Sorry, James.”

He looked across to see Lizzy, and she was just the same as always. Long dark hair, red lips, pale skin, big eyes, big titties: that was Lizzy’s package, and she knew how to use it. This time she wore red velvet, fitted real tight, and black suede boots. She licked her lips. Bull felt the blood pound in his cock, and he laughed. “Don’t you start that,” he said. “We’ll be here all night.”

“Not a social call, then?” She took Bull lightly by the arm, and led him past a mess of pale, hostile faces, to a curtained booth by the bar. He didn’t miss the way she signalled with her hand, though, and he gave the other two guys in long black coats the same flat, ugly stare they tried to give him. He was better at it. They turned away even before Lizzy pulled the curtain across.

“Nuh,” he said then, as they sat. “You’re all kinds of trouble.” He could say things like that to her. It was part of their history. “But there’s less of us around all the time, eh? You heard about Angel, maybe?”

Her face didn’t change, but he didn’t expect that anyway. That’s why he was sitting close, leaning across the table. Not staring at her titties there, but catching her scent, and it told him what he needed to know. He leaned back.

“I was sad to hear about Angel,” she said. “You know that, Toro.”

Bull watched her for a moment. “Yeah,” he said finally. “I know. And it’s just Bull, these days. Nothin’ fancy.” He ducked his head and grinned. “Sorry about your door, there. And that James guy.”

“Not your fault. And I’m Lizaveta again,” she said. “With the accent. They love it, you know?” She looked more carefully at his head. “The horns?”

“Filed back,” he said, though he hadn’t had to do it in an awful long time. “Saves trouble. But you’ve still got the teeth?”

“Assuredly,” she said, and flashed him a mouthful of ivory razors. “They are expected of me.”

He leaned back against the leather upholstery. Lizzy twitched the curtain, and right away, a skinny, pale girl dressed like one of them French maids showed up. “My friend will have a beer,” Lizzy told her. “A heavy stout. Not Guinness. Something sweeter. Some . . . red wine, for me.” The French maid did a little curtsey thing, and disappeared. Lizzy leaned back and smiled at Bull again. “So, what brings you here?”

“Kaia,” he said. “She’s sick. She needs to go home.”

“Home,” said Lizzy. Her eyes glittered. “Interesting.”

“Greece, I think,” said Bull. “She dreams about olive groves. Talks in her sleep.”

Lizzy folded her hands. “So. My part?”

Bull hunched his shoulders. He hadn’t thought too much about the next bit. “Well. You’re doing okay. Got your own place. You got people. We don’t--we don’t got papers, nothin’. Back when we come here, they didn’t ask much. We’re sort of . . . outside the whole thing, you know? But now, you wanna travel anywhere, there’s all sorts of stuff. And money, I guess, but we can get that.”

The French maid came back with the drinks. The beer was good: thick, bittersweet, cool but not too cold. Bull put away the whole pint before he thought better of it, and eyed the empty glass sadly. Lizzy smiled, and did the hand-signal trick again. Maybe there would be another.

“I don’t think going home will help her,” said Lizzy. Her expression didn’t change, but somehow her voice sounded sad. “Not everyone adapts, Bull. Look at Angel. Look at the Sphinx.”

“Angel was weak,” grumbled Bull. “Sphinx was just stupid.”

“Michael was the strongest of us once,” Lizzy said. “And at one time, even I feared the Sphinx. But they couldn’t find new ways to be themselves, and so they died. If you want Kaia to live, you should look to the dragons.”

“Dragons,” Bull snorted. The French maid returned with a new pint, and he seized it, but made himself wait. “Ain’t no dragons no more.”

“Powerful creatures,” said Lizzy. “Creatures who gather great treasure to themselves, rapaciously destroying entire nations. And the treasure itself takes on the poison of the dragon, so that those who see it are ensorcelled and enslaved, desperate to own it. They will kill even their loved ones to keep it. Are you certain there are no such creatures, Bull?”

An idea came, but it was funny. He laughed a little, blowing foam off his beer. “Sounds like a bunch of investment bankers,” he said. “Pricks.”

Lizzy’s slow smile made his eyes widen.

“Bankers,” he said. Could the old drakes really . . . ? “No.”

“Why don’t you go try to take their treasure? See what happens?” She sipped her drink. It wasn’t wine. Bull could smell it. But he hadn’t really expected her to drink wine. She almost never did.

“Dragons,” he said, his head buzzing. “How’d that happen?”

“They stayed true to their nature,” said Lizzy. “They found a niche. As have I.”

“Me and Kaia,” Bull said. “We’re getting kinda squeezed out.” Working as a stevedore, a bouncer, anything that took muscle and size. Except machines did most of it better, these days. And Kaia, in the gardens, always with the plants. Nobody much cared about that kind of thing anymore. “And the new ones. Like them as did for Angel. They don’t show respect. Hockey masks and chainsaws; shit like that don’t scare me none, but Kaia . . . I ain’t always home. I can’t, you know. Always look after her.”

Lizzy looked at him with infinite sadness. “That is the way of it, Bull. The old move on, making room for the new. Unicorns die, and blind, albino sewer alligators are born. If you want to live, you find a way. There is nothing else.”

Bull shook his head. “Kaia’s right. We get her back to the old land, she’ll be okay. It’s different there.”

“If you say so,” said Lizzy. She paused, staring at him like she saw something interesting. “Maybe,” she said. “Maybe. You desire my help? There is, perhaps, something you can do for me. Something--” She licked her lips, and her teeth showed, just for an instant. “Something in keeping with your nature.”

Again, that rush of blood. He got dizzy for a moment. Felt like the horns were back on his head, heavy and hard and proud. He hadn’t felt that way in a long time. He didn’t like how it felt good. Putting his hands on the table, Bull stood up. “Yeah, no,” he said, the words spilling in a rush. “Okay, this was maybe a mistake. But it’s good you’re still here, Lizzy. I gotta go. Kaia, she needs my help sometimes. I gotta get back.”

She didn’t move, except to nod her head a little. “All right, Bull,” she said. “But if you change your mind . . . ”

He was gone before she finished the sentence.

*

“What are you doing?” Kaia looked thin and tired. The quilt was always wrapped around her now. She never used to complain about the cold. Always said winter was part of life.

Bull pushed the untidy pile of papers away from him, across the littered table. His head felt real bad. Reading and writing. He still wasn’t much good at it. But Kaia had showed him, an age or two ago, and she’d been right. It was important. So he learned, and he practised. “Stuff I’m tryin’ ta figure out,” he said. “Papers. So’s we can travel. It’s not how it used to be. Now they got people checking everything. Wouldn’t be good, we got put in one of them places for illegals.”

She pushed a chair round the table so she could sit near him. “In the old days, they would help us. For love of me, for fear of you.”

“Old times, long gone,” said Bull. “Hey, you hear about the dragons? Lizzy told me--” he broke off.

Kaia stared at him. “You went to the Lamia? You did this?”

Caught, Bull nodded.

“Oh, Bull.” She slumped. “I’m so sorry. You’re worried about me, aren’t you?”

He nodded again, his throat too thick for speech, and she sneaked an arm out from under the quilt, sliding it all cool and smooth around him. She rubbed her face against the heavy mat of hair on his chest. “It’s not so bad, Bull,” she said. “I’ll get better in the springtime. I always do, don’t I?”

But springtime wasn’t what it used to be, was it? Even the birds and the flowers got it wrong, coming and going too early, too late. The air smelled wrong. It always did, lately. “I’m gonna do it,” he said, touching her hair, twining it through his fingers. Red streaks in the green, brown in the red. More this year than ever before, maybe. “I’m gonna take you back home. You can see spring there, and summer. And your sisters, yeah.”

“My sisters,” she murmured, her voice soft, like she was tired. “Don’t go to the Lamia, Bull. She helps no-one. There is no giving in her anywhere, only taking. Not love. Just death.”

“She knows people,” Bull murmured, tilting his head to snuff the rich, leaf-mould scent of her hair. “She’s got power. She could get us out.”

“Not her,” said Kaia, her voice softer still as she nuzzled into his chest. “Never her. There must be others. The great Roc, perhaps? If we ask, it will carry us. Surely.”

“Thunderbird,” responded Bull. “That’s what they called the big ones over here. But they’re gone. Long time gone.”

She pulled back from him, and looked up. “Gone? The Roc? Did I not see his great shadow only last . . . only last . . . ” she faltered, and a look of misery came upon her. “I’ve forgotten again, haven’t I?”

Bull said nothing, but pulled her head back to his chest and held her there, trying to warm her with the fires of his body.

“Not the Lamia,” she murmured. “There must be another.”

He held her like that until she passed into sleep. Then he carried her back to the bed, and lay her down. She was light in his hands, and stiff, like dry branches. When he pulled the covers around her, he saw her other arm, the one she hadn’t put around him. The one she’d kept hidden.

He stared at it. Went to touch it, the rough surface of her forearm, all brown and cracked and dry, like . . . like bark. Pulled his hand away again.

Then he brought the covers up under her chin, and tucked her in, very gently.

Sanctuary had a new door. It looked like the old one, rust and all, but it was thicker and heavier. There wasn’t no dent in the top half, either. Bull thought about maybe changing that, but this time, the door opened for him.

*

The new man on the door had that smell. The one they all had, all the Strangers Bull had met in a long, long life. Like a whiff of ozone, and the smell of hot coals. Even Angel used to have it, under the frankincense. Bull looked at the man carefully. He was tall and thin, made out of angles and sharp points, and he wore a lot of black. “Ain’t seen you before,” said Bull. “You’re new.”

The red-eyed man doffed his crooked top hat, and offered Bull a bow that wasn’t quite a joke. Good thing, too, or Lizzy’d lose her another doorman.

“You’re not new,” said the man, straightening. “I can feel that. Privileged to meet you, Old One.”

“Bull,” said Bull. All the titles and the polite stuff made him uneasy. Always had. “My name. You can use it.”

“Jack,” said the other, and almost, he smiled. But not quite. “The Baroness said you would return.”

Bull craned his neck, and peered into the red-lit night-club. “She around? I gotta talk.”

“My instructions are to convey you to her at once,” said Jack. He did the hand-signal thing, and one of the black-coat boys popped up. “You have the door, William,” said Jack. “Don’t lose it, eh?” William didn’t look like he thought that was funny, so Bull made a point of chuckling. That got him an actual smile out of Jack. It looked like someone had slashed his face with a razor, then filled the wound with teeth.

They went through a door at the back of the bar, into a big space like the inside of a warehouse. It was done up fancy, with lights and plants and carpets and furniture, big video-screens and the rest. There was some kind of party going on, with dancing. Bull smelled marijuana and opium among the sweat and the reek of booze. Lizzy was by herself in a big clawfoot tub in a tiled corner. Her hair was all piled up on her head, and her big titties floated on the milky water, red nipples peeking.

“Bull,” she said, and pulled herself out of the tub. “You’re just in time!” She didn’t have no hair at her crotch, and he could see the fat, pale lips of her quim. It made him tense and uncomfortable.

“It’s Kaia,” he said. “She’s worse. We gotta go. Real soon. I got some money. You can have it all. We need papers, tickets. You got people can get stuff like that.”

She towelled herself down, titties wobbling, like she didn’t know he was there. Then she shrugged into a little wisp of a black silk robe that barely covered her butt, and she smiled. “Quid pro quo, Bull,” she said. “I like you. I will get the things you need, but in exchange, you will do for me a thing for which you are peculiarly suited.”

He was ready for this. He’d thought about what to say. “I been with Kaia a long time. She makes things grow. She likes stuff that’s alive. She don’t hold with killing no-one. I made a promise to her, see? But . . . ” Bull took a deep breath. “Like you say. It’s my nature. I ain’t no good at much else. So--I’ll do it. This killing. But then I’m goin’ with Kaia to the old land, and I ain’t coming back, so you best make sure it’s someone you want proper killed.”

The look she got on her face, Bull thought he’d gone too far. But then it changed, and he saw she weren’t angry or anything. For real, it looked like she was trying not to laugh. “Who spoke of killing, Bull?” she said. “You may yet have murder in you, but in these times, who doesn’t? Killing is easy as--” She glanced around, pointed out a man dancing alone, under one of the flashing lights. “Easy as that,” she said, and snapped her fingers.

Quick as a snake, that guy Jack crossed the floor through all them dancing, drugged-up people. He grabbed the one she pointed at, and in all of one move, just cut his throat. Slashed it right across with a big old razor, blood everywhere, and all the time him smiling that ugly smile, and Lizzy not even looking his way. Just keeping her eyes on Bull, and licking at her lips.

And nobody cared. Some of ‘em looked over at the dying guy, and Jack there, but they looked away again. Right there in the middle of the dancing, that crazy Jack did a murder and nobody did nothing about it.

“That’s right, Bull,” said Lizzy. “Nobody cares about that sort of thing now. Have you seen their movies? Their television shows? Once upon a time, you were the beast in the labyrinth, the primeval rage kept secret inside every man. Now? The labyrinth is gone, and the beast is loose. Being a killer is nothing special. Everyone’s a killer now.”

He didn’t know what to say to that. He thought of Angel, cut up and nailed to the wall. He thought of Kaia, and then he found words. “Okay. Okay. But you still want something. From me. So what is it?”

Lizzy’s eyes glittered in the shifting light, and she slid close to him. The little silk robe gaped, and she pressed her hand against his crotch, sliding it along the thickening length of his cock. “Bull,” she said. “They’re still afraid of this, you know,” and she squeezed him, digging in with her nails.

Lamia. Queen of desire.

Bull groaned in real pain, and stepped back. He had to loosen up his clothes. He always wore cargo pants, with plenty of room, but when the rut came on him even they were no good. “Bitch,” he cursed, fumbling with the band, breathing hard. He bent at the waist, hunching over as his cock stiffened, and throbbed, and rose. The constriction hurt. With a growl, he bunched his big hands in the tough cloth and ripped.

Long as a child’s arm, thick as a fist, his cock sprang free. It quivered to his pulse, all purple and shiny, a single, clear drop hanging from the eye. A murmur went around the big room. People drew in breath, exclaimed like they never did when Jack killed the dancer. They saw his cock, and it shocked them like murder couldn’t.

Lizzy laughed, a clear, tinkling note. “You see, Bull? It’s your nature. Now, follow me.” She turned and sashayed away, her smooth, white butt swinging from side to side. The woman-smell of her was hot in his nostrils, and he panted, his cock aching hard. She led him through a narrow, badly lit passage, out a door that led onto some kind of stage. The lights were bright in his eyes, and there were cameras, but he didn’t care. All he could see was her titties, the pink slit of her quim peeking from under that robe.

He lunged at her, but she danced aside, laughing at his clumsy grab. “No, no,” she said, and a spotlight came up, showing a girl chained to a big, heavy table. She was naked, splayed wide open. Bull stopped, confused. The heaviness in his cock mixed up with the pain in his head, and the woman-smell, and the stink of the crowd beyond the lights. He hunched his shoulders, and grabbed the base of his cock.

The audience oohed.

Bull couldn’t see Lizzy no more, but the smell was still there, fizzing in his blood, making his breath hot in his throat. The girl on the table. She saw him. She looked at his cock, and her eyes got real big. She shook her head back and forth fast, so her curly red hair flew. She had gingery curls at her crotch, too. Bull took a step closer.

“That’s right, Bull,” said Lizzy, somewhere off in the dark. “She’s there for you. All for you. A true virgin, like the old days. Take her, Toro, Taurus, Old Bull.”

Bull tossed his head. He tried to think. What about Kaia? What would she say? He tried to remember her face, but the scent of Lizzy, the smell of the girl, the sharp tang of her fear, the delicious, pink folds glistening at her crotch--too much. He snorted, and stamped his foot.

“Take her,” crooned Lizzy. “Let the Minotaur have his due!”

Bull threw back his head and roared.

*

When it was done, when Bull came back to himself, the girl was still there on the table. He couldn’t see her proper, with the people crowded round. They were fighting to touch her between the legs. Some were scooping up the blood and jizz with their fingers, smearing it on each other, licking it off. A man even grabbed at Bull’s cock, softer now but slick, hanging down his thigh. Bull backhanded him in the head, and he fell away, his eyebrow split and bloody.

Jack came up and took his arm, led him away from the madness into a quiet changing room. “That was well done, Old Bull,” he said. “The Baroness is pleased. The footage is already going viral on the ‘Net. You’re a star. A legend.”

Bull didn’t want to think about that. He saw some pants on a peg. Big, khaki cargo pants. Numb in the head, he put them on, shoving his heavy cock down one leg, like always. The smell of sex clung to it, got on his hand, and he wiped it on a velvet curtain. “The girl,” he said. “She okay?”

Jack giggled, high-pitched and crazy. “What do you think?” he said. “Don’t worry. She got what she came for.” He paused, and looked at Bull, his strange red eyes slitted. He pointed at Bull’s head. “Would you like a hat, Old One?”

Bull stopped. He ran a hand over his head. His palm snagged twice, once on each side, above his ears and forward a little. Two hard, sharp projections. His horns, maybe an inch long each. “Shit,” said Bull. “Yeah. Gimme a hat. I gotta go.” He frowned at Jack. “When do I get my papers?”

“Within the day, Minotaur.”

It was Lizzy, come up from behind. He hadn’t noticed her. She still wore the little bathrobe, but now Bull didn’t much care. The emptiness and the ache that started in his balls filled up his whole body. He felt flat, bitter like coffee too long in the pot. “Send ’em to me,” he said, turning away from her. Jack offered him a beat-up felt hat, shapeless from long use, and he clapped it onto his head, pulling it down hard so it covered the horns. He’d file them back again, later.

Lizzy slid in front of him, smiling. “You can return for the papers tonight, Minotaur,” she said, leaning close. “There will be another virgin.”

The smell of her, close in the little room, all musky and sweet . . . He got a half-flash, a fragment of a memory: the girl, screaming. The taste of her sweat, where he licked her face. The slickness of her, the tightness as he pounded into her . . .

Bull shuddered. “Not coming back,” he said. “You send me the papers.” He shouldered past Jack and Lizzy to a door with an ‘Exit’ sign over it. Looked back over his shoulder. “The Minotaur died a long time gone,” he said. “My name is Bull.”

*

The little house was empty when he got home. Like it had been when they found it, abandoned. Another mortgage swallowed up by the poison wyrms, the bankers. Nobody’d cared when they moved into it, him and Kaia.

*

He moved through the place in a daze, going from room to room, calling her name. Sniffing at the air. But there was just the fading green smell of her, no hint of ozone or fire.

Finally he thought to look in the wintry garden of the back yard. Twice he checked, the bitter wind freezing the tears onto his cheeks, but she wasn’t there. Except now, there was an apple tree, old and twisted and leafless. He sat in the snow with his back to the gnarled trunk. Turned his head to rest his cheek against the rough bark.

Maybe it would blossom in the spring.

 

* * *

 

Saturday Night at the Milk Bar

Gary Kemble

Vampires. The word hung on the screen, burning itself into my eyes. Around me the office carried on as usual: fingers stabbing at keyboards, stage-whispered phone conversations, the Chief of Staff cursing, and the babble of Sky News. It barely penetrated my bubble. I’d been drinking a lot. Too much? I don’t know. How much is too much when you’ve just buried your family? They put Donna in the ground, and Meg’s tiny coffin went down next to her. My olds wanted the funerals on different days. They wanted me to suit up two days running, just so “that bitch’ wouldn’t get the satisfaction. I said no. They turned up anyway. My step-brother spat on Donna’s coffin.

I stared at the email, pointer hovering over delete. Vampires. Vampires in Brisbane. A secret club. A soundproof room in an industrial estate in the badlands out past Inala, where members gathered to feed. When you work in journalism, you hear rumours. Lots of them. Your inbox chokes on them. The TRUTH about THE REAL King of England. The SECRET CONSPIRATORS behind 9/11. Chemtrails, lizardmen. You learn to filter the crap. The crazies go first--anything with whole words in caps and multiple exclamation marks. The cadet can do it, and often does. The more mundane stuff is trickier. Councillors on the take. Police in cahoots with bikies. There’s usually a nugget of truth in it. But like a prospector looking for gold, you have to ask yourself whether that nugget is worth the sweat involved in unearthing it. Usually, the answer is no.

This email should have gone straight in the Trash, but that day I needed to believe that there were things more horrific than a woman drowning her baby and then dosing up on sleeping pills, climbing into the bath next to her, and slitting her wrists. I clicked reply. Later, staring down into that 44-gallon drum, I wished I’d clicked delete and got on with grieving like normal people do.

*

I stopped at the drive-thru on the way home, as summer storm clouds gathered in the west. The young guy working there knew me by name. It had only been a month.

--The usual?

--Yeah, plus a bottle of scotch. Something cheap.

He loaded the carton of VB and bottle of Vat 69 into my car and added it to my customer loyalty card.

I went home and drank. Drank as thunder crashed and wind tore at Donna’s prayer flags on the front verandah. Drank as rain pelted down, saturating the boxes of baby toys by the front gate. By the second six-pack I was convinced the place was haunted. By the third, I could see their ghosts. Donna and Meg, playing peekaboo on the couch.

*

My phone bleated its chirpy harpy song. I swiped it away and fell out of bed, weeks of dirty laundry breaking my fall. I dropped back into my coma, oblivious to the funk of stale sweat, urine and cheap grog. An hour or so later my alarm went off. I stared at the time with bleary eyes, forced myself into the shower, tried to wash away the remnants of a blank, dreamless sleep that was somehow worse than nightmares.

It wasn’t until I was at work, looking at the email, that I remembered the unanswered phone call. She’d sent me a link to a video on a peer-to-peer file-sharing network. I clicked the link, I rubbed my eyes. While I waited for it to download I went and got a coffee from a machine that had been at the Courier-Mail longer than I had.

I sat down, pulled out my phone, and saw the blinking message icon. I called MessageBank, sipped the coffee, grimaced, sipped again.

--Uh, hi. My name’s Kay. I sent you the email. About, you know . . .

A woman. Maybe 40, maybe older. She had the rough-smooth voice of someone on the game, but none of the confidence of someone who was good at it.

-- . . . thanks for getting back to me. I want you to know this is real . . .

A noise in the background. Television. Some kids show. Multicoloured mutants. Something Donna put Meg down in front of when she was struggling to hold it together.

--I’ve sent you a link . . .

Something breaking. A glass on the floor.

-- . . . I’ve gotta go. Watch the video. Don’t tell anyone. They’ll kill me if they know it was me.

I clicked play, dived for the volume control when the sound of panting blared from the speakers. Someone laughed, then realised whose computer it was coming from, and shut up. It’s amazing what you can get away with when your wife and kid have just died. I plugged in my headphones, started the video again. There wasn’t much video to be had, a pixellated blur of black on black. But what I’d first interpreted as moans of pleasure were moans of pain.

--Please, let me go.

She slurred her words, “please’ was “pleash’. Drugs or grog. Maybe both. Men laughed. The camera shifted, tilted. A leg, trussed. Black and blue. A man in a suit stepped in front of her.

--Here, let me have a go.

He got down on his knees, his body obscuring the act. The woman moaned again, and this time, if not for the ropes and the state of her legs, it was almost the sound of pleasure. But it was wrong. The wrongness was baking off the screen. In the background, a baby cried; the sound so out of context I jerked, turning in my chair half-expecting to see Kyle’s missus bringing their newborn in for a visit. But the view was the same as it always was. Chaz trying to sink wastepaper hoops from his desk. Morag at the front counter, feigning busyness.

The baby cried again. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

--Shut that fucker up.

More screams.

--I said, shut that little fucker up!

The video cut out.

*

On my second and last visit, the counsellor told me it wasn’t my fault. I stared out the window of her high-rise office, watching light twinkling off the river, cars gliding across the Storey Bridge. I was bubbling with rage and confusion. Donna was sick, the counsellor said. Donna had depression, and it wasn’t treated. I could almost deal with that. But Meg--what about Meg? My job was to protect her. Isn’t that the whole fucking point? You protect your kid from the bad things, from the monsters, you teach them right from wrong, and one day you throw a fucking party and give them an oversized key. The counsellor said I shouldn’t blame myself.

And I agreed with her. I lied, because I couldn’t tell her the truth. I couldn’t tell her about the daydream I used to have in the days after they died. The daydream was this: I arrived home from work. I walked down the hallway. The bathroom light was on and I could hear bathwater splish-splashing about. I slipped off my shoes so I could surprise them. I loved that look on Meg’s face when I managed to sneak up on her. Initial fear replaced by a big grin. When I peered around the corner, Donna looked up at me. She’d been crying. I sighed, preparing myself for a night of telling her it was all going to be okay, we’d all get through it, things would look better in the morning. Then I saw Meg, lying at the bottom of the bathtub. And it was awful, it was horrifying, right? Even if you’ve never had kids, you can see that. But the worst thing? The worst thing was that I was already thinking about how we could cover it up, what we could say so that it would all be okay, the two of us would get through it, so that things would look better in the morning.

*

I entered the brothel clasping my notebook and pen like a shield. The door closed behind me with the noise of a sod of dirt slapping against a coffin lid. Cool air chilled my skin. After the humidity outside I felt feeling clammy and sick. I regretted the heart-starters I’d downed at the Aussie Nash on the way over. The overweight woman behind the counter raised a heavily pencilled eyebrow when I told her I was there to interview Kay.

--Kay will be right out when she’s ready for her “interview’, love.

She waved me over to a faux leather lounge suite, bathing in the light from a TV bolted to the wall. Daytime TV. Men dressed as babies. The day after I found Donna and Meg, Chaz turned up on my doorstep, notebook in one hand, voice recorder in the other, uncomfortable expression on his face.

--No hard feelings, Chaz, but fuck off.

I slammed the door. Didn’t give him the opportunity to give me the spiel about how my story might help others. It never helped.

Kay stalked down the hallway on patent leather stilettos. Red, matching her stockings and teddy. Perfume that smelt expensive but probably wasn’t. Lipstick smeared on, waxy and bloody. Eyes glinting out of deep, dark sockets.

She took me to her room. Heavy red curtains and a four-poster bed struggling to sustain the illusion of opulence over the reality of the stained carpet and threadbare sheets. Any fantasy scotched by the chair in the corner of the room, bathed in bright white light from a standard lamp. It was where they checked punters for disease. She sat on the bed, patted a spot beside her. I dropped down beside her. I could feel the heat radiating off her body.

--They meet once a month, to feed.

--I thought you said they were vampires, not werewolves.

She silenced me with a look.

--What do you mean, “feed’?

--I mean exactly that. Feed.

--Like, a fetishistic thing? The whole man-baby thing?

She shook her head, frustrated.

--The women are mothers. They have babies. You know?

She broke down, thrusting a hand against her mouth, heaved in a breath, trying to hold in the pain. It just made it worse. She keened, rocking backwards and forwards. I forgot about my notebook. I thought about the gruff voice on the video: Shut that little fucker up.

I put my arm around her, meaning to comfort her. But then my mouth was on hers, my hands running rough over satin and lace. I squeezed my eyes shut, tried to remember what it used to be like, with Donna. Before the depression got really bad. I tried to push Kay to the bed, but she twisted sideways and slid off the bed, shuffling between my legs. She undid my pants. I felt nauseous. Sweaty. High. With her mouth she brought me down.

*

My boss was a nervous man. He had a lot to worry about. Circulation figures. Advertising revenue. Defamation suits. He herded stationery around his desk like an Office Works jackaroo. To the left of the blotter, to the right of the blotter. They always ended up straight, edges lined up. Pens or pencils that were different lengths were relegated to the dead zone under his computer monitor, where online news mocked him from beneath the screensaver.

--You need to take some time off.

--I need to work.

--We tried that. It didn’t work.

--I’m chasing something big.

--Oh yeah?

You could see the wheels turning. My welfare stacked up against circulation figures, circulation figures stacked against a potential lawsuit. Breach of duty of care. Or defamation if I screwed up and fingered the wrong person.

I laid it out for him in terms he could understand. Illegal immigrants. Locked up somewhere west of Brisbane. Playthings for anyone who had the money and could keep their mouths shut. He asked for the source, and I told him it was someone who’d seen it first-hand. I flashed back to that afternoon, brushing her sweaty hair off her face as she spat my come into her hand.

--Okay, he said. Keep me posted.

I was almost disappointed. I wanted an out. I wanted to chase the story on my terms, feel free to pull the pin when I felt like it. Now there was something riding on it.

*

I knew quite early on that Donna had depression. A couple of months after we started dating I went around to her place and she didn’t want to see the movie we’d booked. She didn’t want dinner. She wouldn’t even look at me. So we lay on her bed, not talking, staring up at the white mozzie net.

I rolled onto my side and brushed her hair away from her forehead, fingertips sticking to her sweaty brow. It was an awkward gesture. She stared through me.

--I sometimes have bad thoughts.

--That’s okay. We all do.

--I imagine that you’re here, lying on the bed. It’s hot. You’re just wearing your boxers. I lay a cool washer over your face. Then I pick up the hammer and smash it into your face.

She said it monotone. No emotion. I hugged her because I couldn’t bear to look at her. She didn’t hug me back.

No-one else saw the depression. She hid it from them. She saved it for me. The counsellor said that’s because she loved me, she could trust me. Yay for me. My gentle suggestions of “getting help’ were brushed away. The more forceful suggestions met a brick wall. She always picked up. I thought maybe the trip to Greece would help. Maybe the wedding would help. Maybe the baby would help. But she needed a different kind of help. She needed drugs, she needed counselling. I ended up with both. She ended up dead.

*

Richo met me at Lutwyche Shopping Centre. Faded acrylic, filth-smeared windows, the wafting reek of a shitty nappy. Richo looked late 50s, head shaved to escape the comb-over. He had the stringy, tanned look of a concreter, and the tatts to match. Handshake an iron vice. Cheap deodorant masking sweat and tobacco.

I explained that I’d never done it before, but was keen. I told him I’d thought about it my whole life, since I was a kid. Lying was easy: I substituted my real obsession for a fake one. He saw the need in me; misinterpreted the source.

--Once you’ve had full cream, you won’t go back, chief.

He slapped me on the shoulder. It was like a cosh.

We sat on a bench and worked out the details. I had to send money--not as much as I’d thought--to a Paypal account. I’d get an email from him telling me the date of the next “meeting’. Then a phone call, on the day, someone telling me the address. I guessed that someone was Richo, but he was coy when I asked.

--We work on a need-to-know basis, chief. There are people who, ah, don’t understand.

He punctuated it with another jab to the ribs. A mother walked past. Baby strapped into a pouch. Another kid shuffling behind on a lead, snot streaming down his face. Richo raised his eyebrows, nudged me again. I wanted to vomit.

*

Another storm rolled in that night. I defied it, turning on the TV and the radio and every other device that could possibly be harmed by a lightning strike, plugging my laptop in, researching vampirism, heroin babies, and breastfeeding fetishes. I took notes, wrote a rough draft of everything that had happened. Lightning flashed, thunder boomed so loud that it reverberated through the VJ walls and the glass of whisky by my hand. I dared the storm to erase it all. And sip by sip, gulp by gulp, I tried to erase it from my own memory, but already it was indelibly marked.

An almighty crack tore through the air and the lights went out. The laptop’s screen flickered, then came good. Cursor flicking off and on, off and on. I could see Donna and Meg watching me from the other side of the room, eyes glinting in the darkness.

--Leave me alone! Leave me the fuck alone! I tried. Okay? I tried!

They didn’t respond. I sat there drinking, watching their eyes gleam, until I passed out.

*

I don’t remember much of the following fortnight. When I was on the mend, trying to piece things together, I Googled myself. Apparently I wrote half a dozen stories during that time frame. Half a dozen that were published online. I don’t remember writing them. I don’t remember doing the interviews. All I remember of that time is my mate at the bottle shop, and his entreaties to use the back roads. I vaguely recall buying a ridiculously expensive bottle of Laphroaig 30. But maybe I dreamt it.

*

The call came on a Saturday night. I suspect it was Richo, talking through a dirty sock. He gave me an address for an industrial estate out past Inala. I tooled up the dusty freeway, past painted faces glaring from concrete sound barriers. Up an exit ramp. Through a wasteland of dry lawns glowing white in the moonlight. Peeling paint. Old cars. Rusty chain-link fences. Fading signage with typos. An abandoned service station, all smashed windows and tag-encrusted walls.

I followed the directions, streets turning in ever-more convoluted circlets, until finally I reached the end of the road--a row of low-set pre-fab workshops, backing onto a polluted creek. It looked like the sort of place where bad things happen at night. I climbed out of the car, grabbed my jacket from the back seat and slipped it over my sweaty shirt (the dress code was “smart casual’), grabbed my shoulder bag and switched on the recording devices. Red lights glowed, then faded, just as the guy from the surveillance firm told me they would. It wasn’t strictly legal. It certainly wasn’t ethical. But if the story panned out, I didn’t figure too many people would be taking me to court.

Richo greeted me at the heavy door, first through the peephole, then in person. He had a suit on, an ill-fitting, shiny grey sharkskin. He looked no less the concreter with it on. Sweat beaded on his forehead and upper lip. He grinned, eyes shifted to the bag.

--Some work stuff. I didn’t want to leave it in the car.

I opened the bag. He told me that wasn’t necessary, we were all friends, then poked around anyway.

There was a small ante-chamber. For a moment I worried he would ask me to leave the bag there, but he was already pushing through a heavy velveteen curtain.

--Welcome to the Milk Bar, he said, and ushered me through.

I walked into the room and turned, taking in the scene, letting the camera record it all. The half a dozen women were trussed in various positions, like living works of art. They were all colours, nationalities--I figured I wouldn’t have the opportunity to quiz them on their creeds. They were united by their predicament and by their naked, filthy bodies, full breasts, sagging tummies, greasy hair, doped up expressions. Each had a sign over her head, printed in tacky fonts and laminated: Dragon Lady (heroin); Little Angel (PCP); The Real Thing (Cocaine); and so on. The ones on uppers were tied and gagged, eyes rolling like spooked horses. The ones on opiates were left to sprawl in armchairs and on cheap, chipboard beds. At the back of the room was another heavy curtain. The sign above the door made me shiver: The Nursery.

--They’re all under a fortnight post-partum.

His tongue flicked at his lips.

None of the men took much notice of us. They were either guzzling milk out of the women or sprawled on lounge chairs or bean bags, looking doped out of their minds. I knew from my research that only about two per cent of the drug went through to the breast milk. And that dropped off rapidly the first two weeks after birth. They weren’t high on drugs, the were high on filth, corruption, control.

There was no sex. Richo had told me that was the deal. Nothing sexual about it. But it was hard to imagine a bunch of randy, drugged up men and helpless naked women and there not be any fucking. But he was right. No sex. No sign of there having been any sex.

In hindsight, it’s obvious I was having a mental breakdown. The breakdown had given me the story. There was no way I would have followed the initial lead, no way I could have duped Richo so convincingly, if I’d been totally sane. All I knew at the time was that I was having trouble keeping it together, and that if I lost it, losing the story would be the least of my worries. My lips trembled as I struggled to make Richo think I was cool with it all. I didn’t want to look behind the final curtain. I knew I had to.

--I’m sorry. It’s just . . . it’s like a fantasy.

Richo nodded. He’d heard it all before.

--What’s behind the curtain?

I started across the room, lips numb. I felt Richo’s iron grip on my shoulder, managed to shrug out of it.

--Whoa, whoa, whoa big man. Let’s have some fun out here first.

I walked faster, skirting a Melanesian woman bound to an old massage table. Richo didn’t have time to stop me, not without creating a huge scene. And most of us--no matter how pure, no matter how evil--most of us hate making a scene. Sometimes--most of the time--I wish he had.

For a long time, I couldn’t remember what happened after I pushed back the curtain. My next memory was of driving back to Brisbane along the Ipswich Motorway, mouth and nose burning with vomit, cheek throbbing, eye almost swollen shut. And blood. Blood everywhere.

Then the nightmares came. Babies, covered in blood. Asleep? A worn butcher’s block, covered in bloodstained scalpels, syringes, carving knives. A rusty forty-four gallon drum. Donna, staring blank-eyed at the TV screen, blood pulsing out of her damaged nipple, while Meg screamed. A wet nurse cradling a baby to her breast with with one flabby, tattooed arm. Three fingers missing off her right hand. Donna, smashing a hammer down on Meg’s body, over and over again. A balding man in a plastic raincoat, cradling a baby to his mouth with a wrinkled, liver spot-stained hand. I saw myself, peering into the drum and seeing Meg’s blank eyes staring back at me.

--Shut that fucker up, shut that fucker up, shut that fucker up!

*

The police had lots of questions. Starting at the booze bus on the Ipswich Motorway (my blood alcohol reading), and ending in an interview room at Roma Street (the blood). There was lots of bad coffee. Questions. And panic. Because I really couldn’t remember how I came to have blood on my shirt, or why my face was smashed up.

If it wasn’t for my boss, and the illegal recording I’d made, I think I’d still be in custody. Lying on a bunk in a cell at the Brisbane Correctional Centre, wondering how I’d come to be drinking baby’s blood, until I found the opportunity to hang myself with my towel. As it was, the police watched the video and my boss bailed me early next morning. He wanted to drop me home. He said I was in shock. I asked him to drop me at work; told him if he didn’t, I’d just get a cab there anyway. So he drove me through the city as the sun crept over the horizon, muttering about health and safety over the easy listening bullshit on the radio. I wrote my story.

The men at the Milk Bar, all bar Richo, were caught and sent to jail. The guy out the back, drinking the baby’s blood, was put into protective custody. Two months into his sentence he was found bludgeoned to death in his bunk. No-one shed a tear. The wet nurse--she was real, not some Lynchian hallucination--was found to be psychologically unstable, and as far as I know is still locked up at Wolston Park. And Richo, God bless him, Richo was dumped outside the emergency ward at the Royal Brisbane Hospital, dead before the doc even had time to diagnose the overdose.

And me? The story was nominated for an award, but didn’t win. I stopped drinking. I got counselling. I don’t believe in vampires anymore. Or ghosts. There’s just illness, and violence, and evil. And some days--most days--that’s enough.

 

* * *

 

The Witch’s Wardrobe

Eddy Burger

Our air is flesh

so warm and supple

flourish we beneath its weight

 

We merge our skins

our pores the sky

our bodies mated with the world

 

by Wredda Gruber, from the “Organic Preserve” suite

 

Our air is flesh. Little did the poet realise how close her metaphor was to the truth. So minuscule and pathetic do our greatest exploits now seem. For eons we had lived in ignorance. And in ignorance, we prospered. Life was comparatively blissful and good fortune smiled upon the privileged. Yet it was due to the fortunes of an ill-fated few that led me to the discovery of the horrible truth.

Over the years there had been mysterious disappearances. Some among us linked these disappearances with a place known as the ‘Witch’s Wardrobe’. It was little more than legend. Only a scarce few claimed to know its whereabouts, and little would they reveal for fear that it would only lead to more disappearances. It was reputed to be just a small place where there hung foul-smelling cloths. An insidious air was said to permeate the place. To even approach it beguiled the senses and filled one with dread.

After word spread of yet another disappearance, I resolved to make the journey to the Witch’s Wardrobe. I was determined to finally put an end to the rumours and fallacies, and learn of its true nature. But great was its distance from my humble village, further than even I had ever travelled--I, the greatest explorer of our time. Heavy was the air and so shrouded the distance, it would be such an arduous task that many a man would grow weak from the mere thought of it.

I did find myself a guide, a doltish old fool whose company I would never have tolerated had he not been the only person I could find who admitted to knowing the Wardrobe’s whereabouts. Yet even though he was to profit considerably from being in my employ, he attempted to dissuade me from the outset. “Dunnut go there, young master. You’ll be swallowed up like the rest of ’em,” he said.

“Spare me your old wives’ tales!” I spat. “I intend to learn the truth!”

We headed out of the village, my guide bent double with provisions and I with my chest held high to receive the well-wishes of the throng that lined the streets. Yet so grave were their long faces. A superstitious old crone accosted me and shoved a trinket into my hand. “It will protect you from evil,” she said.

“Begone!” I spat and shoved her aside. Yet I held onto her trinket. It was the paw of a black cat, secured to a chain. I hung it around my neck. Though I reviled such superstitious nonsense, I knew the journey would be perilous and I could nary afford to refuse aid regardless of what form it took. The trek alone was sure to be an absolute ball-buster, regardless of the dangers I might face along the way. And then there was the question of the disappearances. Perhaps a band of cut-throats resided in the vicinity of the wardrobe. Or perhaps a great deep pit lay hidden there, a remnant of some long forgotten civilisation, which continued to claim its victims. I would need to be on my guard, that was certain. Yet I had made many an epic journey, to lands populated by ferocious savages. Though perilous this expedition would be, I was certain I would endure.

*

After two days of hard toil, my guide thought it his place to warn me again. “Ya can’t go lookin’ in it without bein’ swallowed up, young master.”

“What a load of bullocks,” I said.

He liked to call me ‘young master’. Granted, I was young, scarcely in my fifties, yet my achievements had ranked me among the greatest of men. Apparently the old fool used to be employed as a servant. He had walked with a bent back even before I lade him with provisions, as if the weight of the air was too great for him. The air could be quite cumbersome at times, but it did shield one from the elements. With his head held in front of him like it was, at least he was less likely to stumble because he could see where he was headed before his feet got there.

“I seen it happen before,” he persisted. “One day I showed it to a lass, and she walks in and neva came out. I waited for ’er for two hours. I couldn’t bear ta wait no longer.”

“What part of the Wardrobe did she actually walk into?”

“She went ’tween the sheets o’ cloth, like it were a doorway.”

“So why couldn’t you wait longer?”

“There’s somethin’ strange ’bout the air in that place. It’s as if it could’ve sucked me up wherever I was.”

“But can you be sure he did not come out later? Two hours is but a short while.”

“You’ll know when ya see the place, young master. There just don’t seem ta be no place she could’ve got to.”

My guide’s account of a fellow explorer’s disappearance would have been unnerving to a lesser man than I. Yet I did feel the need to question him further. “Tell me then--What if I entered this Wardrobe and snagged my tunic on a branch and then lost my voice, or something of that nature--would you not come looking for me?”

“There ain’t no branches ’round there. It’s a funny part o’ the world where we is headed, young master.”

“But what if I trip and hit my head on a rock?”

“Maybe that’s what happens when folks go in--they have some kind o’ accident. That’s all the more reason not ta go in. No-one who’s gone in has eva come out. You’ll neva get me goin’ in there, no matter how much ya pays me.”

“But that great explorer you abandoned might have been just inside the entrance with a broken leg or such. You might have spared him a terrible drawn out death if only you had poked your head in!”

“Who?”

“That person you had led, who you saw go in and never come out.”

“But that weren’t no great explorer.”

“Well he must be entitled to some recognition. He dared to enter where no man dares to tread.”

“It weren’t no man. She were a lass, like I says, and she was simply bein’ curious. She was a fool, much like yerself.”

“I take umbrage to that remark! Don’t be such a smart arse. My point is that surely you could have done more. Were there any savages you could send in after her?”

“I wouldn’t find no-one willin’. There was folks who lived not far from the Witch’s Wardrobe who used ta think like you. They’d ’ave none o’ this so-called superstitious nunsense, they said. They sent five folks in after someone once. None of ’em eva come back.”

“But they must have been savages. Did they use ropes? You couldn’t become lost if someone outside held a rope to which you were tied. Perhaps they had vines.”

“Oh, they had strong and proper ropes, all right, tied to each part o’ their bodies, with a dozen people outside holden onto ’em. But all them ropes jus’ came undone.”

“Poppycock! They must have been savages.”

 

Of witches, wizards

and foul sprite,

though disbelieving,

do not take light

grave warnings of their spells and snares,

for such might clothe

real dangers there

 

by Addrwe Urbreg, from “Who the fool?”

 

Over the next few days journeying, I thought much about our curious destination, which was feared by so many. But the fact that so many individuals had apparently either entered or been up close to the Witch’s Wardrobe did in no way diminish the greatness of my endeavour. Impregnable was the barrier of distance that divides the world’s peoples. Great was the civilised world’s thirst for knowledge of that which has been hitherto unknown, and great was their respect for the explorer who risked his life to venture forth into the furthest flung reaches of our world. None had travelled as far as I, nor endured so great a peril.

“Young master,” said my guide. “The last time I travelled from our village to the Witch’s Wardrobe, I vowed neva to return. Let me implore you one last time to abandon this insanity!”

“Quiet, you blithering fool! No harm shall come to thee while you are with me--though I care for you not.”

I could not tolerate weakness. I had seen too many men rendered impotent by fear. Perhaps that’s why the Witch’s Wardrobe stank so much--a few weak-kneed fools had lost their bladders at the sight of it. It was said that it stank like a beggar or old crone. Some fancied that it was inhabited by a witch or governed by a witch’s spell, hence the name. But there was also a rumour that it smelt more like a man--a man’s dirty laundry.

It irked me somewhat that my guide never mentioned witches or spells. I had half a mind to believe his stories. Though a fool he was, he seemed very smart.

Yet it was the danger that compelled me. I would not only visit the Witch’s Wardrobe but I would enter it and come out again, myself thus immortalised, my deeds recorded among those of the greatest men in history. Nothing could be more perilous. And coupled with the epic task of just getting there in the first place, I was destined to fill several history books. It was over two dozen miles from my village to the Wardrobe, which was, of course, extremely arduous when one cannot see more than a few cubits in front. It was fortuitous that I had my guide to show me the way. He had a special tool for making a path through the air. It was like a giant tongue depressor--a paddle that he used for levering up the air as we went.

*

After several more days of incredible hardship, we eventually came into view of the Witch’s Wardrobe. My guide had had to carry me for the last few hours, so arduous was the journey. Then he lay me down and crouched beside me, watching the Wardrobe intently. I could now see for myself the things my guide had described about the air being strange and how there was nowhere for people to disappear to. There were no trees or bushes in the vicinity, nor any grasses or rocks surrounding it, just a few of those small fancy fungi that are so common and are not large enough to conceal an elephant. The Witch’s Wardrobe itself was no wider than a few cubits, made up of two large pieces of plain, overlapping cloth, light brown in colour. It did have a strong human smell about it. Yet its strangest characteristic was that it could only be viewed from one side. Once I was sufficiently revived, I walked around it with the depressor, but the air somehow obscured me from getting a complete view. It was as if the air was being drawn into it.

“I wouldn’t go no closer, young master, if I was you.”

“But you are not me, are you.”

I hobbled around it a little longer just to spite him, yet I too found it disconcerting. I crouched down next to him. He still looked at the Wardrobe with the same concentrated expression.

“Are you watching for anything in particular?” I asked.

“Just keepin’ me eyes on it. If it tries ta get either of us, hopefully I’ll sees it comin’. Have ya been sufficiently discouraged, young master?”

“Not quite.”

“I’ll tell ya one thing I noticed. Those is diff’rent cloths than was ’ere last time.”

“Are you sure?”

“They’re a diff’rent colour. Last time they was bright red.”

“Do you think it means anything?”

“Can’t say. But don’t ya be fooled by its appearance or stillness. It could’ve only just took someone, for all we knows.”

“That is all the more reason for going in there and finding out what is really happening!”

“It won’t do no good coz once ya go in you’ll neva be tellin no-one ’bout it.”

“I’ve faced worse adversaries than some smelly sheets! I have established trade routes through the most perilous and untamed environments! I have rid lands of many dangerous native species! Have no fear, I shall be returning from the witch’s lair! I shall enter her womb for to erect my claim on her territory! She will shudder in the face of my potency! She will be rendered powerless and infertile! All knowledge shall be mine, and I shall give it to my people, my seed thus sewn, my name thus spread so all will praise my brave and noble deeds!”

My guide shook his head. He had done his best to dissuade me. I stood up and approached the sheets. The air certainly was strange, seeming to converge at a point above, where the two sheets parted. I prodded the sheets with the depressor then stood back. Nothing happened. Then I inserted the depressor between the sheets. Still nothing untoward befell me. I waved it around inside. If anything, I thought it would be filled with air, but I touched nothing. It was dark inside. And that was unaccountable considering that it seemed only one sided and occupied so small a space. I held the cloths apart and stood facing the darkness. I slowly inserted one of my arms. I inserted it in all the way up to my armpit. There was nothing but empty space. I crouched down and felt for a floor. It was covered with cloth but felt quite firm.

“You’d better stop there,” said my guide. “That’s just like what the last one did ’fore she dispeared. She looked in, put in ’er arm ta make sure it were all right to go in, then she went in and neva come out.”

“Did she mention anything about a dark void?”

“I think I remember hearin’ somethin like that.”

“And the next thing she did was walk in and disappear?”

“Yep.”

“Did she yell or voice her alarm in any manner?”

“I didn’t hear nothin’.”

“Has anyone ever yelled when they entered?”

“Not that I heard of.”

There was nothing to suggest that the same misfortune would not befall myself. But how could I accept it? I was able bodied and strong willed. I was going to enter and nothing was going to bear me away.

I stood in front of the entrance and braced myself. Then I parted the cloths, put one foot inside and set it down. Nothing happened. I moved my head and torso inside, then I brought my other foot in. I was now wholly inside, standing right beside the entrance. Still nothing happened.

 

The great man stands erect

swelling with self-importance

but his hollow seeds will soon shrivel

and lay bare the true extent

of his flaccid legacy

 

by Drawde Regrub, from “The Flaccid Spectator”

 

I stepped forward and felt my surroundings. I was faced with masses of curly, tree-like growths. I climbed in among them and ultimately found that they sprouted from a great wall of air. But suddenly the cloth wall came thumping against me, squashing me against the air. Again and again it thumped and squashed. Then the whole place started heaving one way then the other and I was hurled around, buffeted between the tree-like growths, the air and the cloth. Then the thumping and squashing came on again. It all went on for an interminable time. I was getting seriously battered. But through all this calamity, which in itself created an uproarious noise unto my ears, I came to hear the occasional sounds of people talking, with voices that sounded vast and resonant. Finally the thumping and movement subsided.

“I’ve got crabs again, doctor,” said a male voice. “A regular penile colony.”

“So I suppose you’re after more lotion,” said a female voice.

Though I was surrounded by walls of air and cloth, I could hear their voices quite clearly. They sounded distant yet were of such volume, it was as if they came from some giant voice box.

“I’m still using the stuff you prescribed last time,” said the male voice. “You gave me several repeat prescriptions.”

“Oh yes. I remember now. So you still have crabs, even though you’re using the lotion?”

“I get them only occasionally, and they’ve just come back now.”

“This really is very odd. You might have contracted something else entirely. You’d better pull down your pants and let me have a look at you.”

“Er . . . I’d rather not.”

I could not believe my ears! Although it seemed the most absurd hypothesis one could possibly concoct, I came to the realisation that I was inside a giant man’s underpants! I was the pubic infestation that he was complaining about!

I made my way upwards between flesh and fabric. Immediately the thumping and crushing started again, caused by scratching no doubt. I persisted, clinging onto the great thick hairs and using them like branches to climb my way up.

“Scratching will not reduce the symptoms, Mr Burger.”

“But it gets so itchy!”

“Did this itchiness come on quickly or gradually?”

“Quickly. I wasn’t feeling a thing till a few minutes ago, as I happened to walk past the clinic.”

“Would you say that it feels like crabs?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t actually sting like I’m being bitten down there, but I must have quite a rash, all the same.”

“Well, you really should let me examine you.”

“I’d still rather you didn’t.”

“There’s no need to feel embarrassed, Mr Burger. Part of my job is to make sure that people’s private parts are good and healthy.”

Eventually I reached the waist, where the trouser belt pressed the material more firmly to the skin. Yet I was so tiny in proportion to this giant, I encountered only the occasional tight spot where I had to squeeze my way through. I soon exited the lower regions. Between two great curtains of cloth, his shirt front, I could see the uppermost rim of the trousers and the top edge of an enormous belt buckle.

“Would you rather see someone else?” asked the female voice.

“No.”

“Are you embarrassed because I’m female?”

“No.”

“Is it because of your religion?”

“No.”

“Is it because of your moral convictions?”

“No.”

I parted the shirt fabric, stepped out onto the rim and was faced with the greatest void I had ever seen. We were inside some kind of enormous structure, but through an opening I could see into the greater exterior world, and nowhere was the air composed of the soft fleshy substance or of anything else opaque and tangible.

“You needn’t be embarrassed of any abnormalities, Mr Burger. You’d be surprised just how many people’s private parts deviate from the popular model.”

“Don’t you remember what I told you the last time I came to see you?”

“Told me? Oh! Oh yes, I remember now. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think you said that your penis is so big and cumbersome that you keep it in another world, though it is still attached to your body.”

“It extends into another dimension.”

“Really?”

“Yes. But I don’t like talking about it. I once mentioned it to a couple of fellows, though I wish I hadn’t. It happened one evening when I was in a pub, and I overheard one fellow say ‘My dick’s so big, I have to tuck it into my sock’. Then his mate said ‘My dick’s so big, it goes down one trouser leg and up again, then down and up the other leg, then up past my chest and around my neck a couple of times, and it finishes down in my jocks so I can still urinate in the usual way. Why else do you think I wear these high-neck sweaters all the time?’ I must say, he did manage to conceal it well, though he must have had a very narrow neck. Anyway, then I said ‘My dick’s so big I have to keep it in another dimension’. But all they could do was laugh. It was very humiliating.”

“I see.”

“When I was a baby, I used to tuck it into my sock, but it soon became too big to fit anywhere.”

“Anywhere but in this other dimension?”

“Yes. I have a portable portal in my underpants.”

It was then that I finally realised the dreadful truth. Its implications were appalling. My whole world was filled with this man’s penis! Our air really was flesh, as the poet had said. For as far back as I could remember, it had been a comfort to me, feeling its warmth and softness as it pressed down lightly upon me. But if any of us had known that our children were being raised in union with some giant man’s genitalia, we would have died! It was abominable! No wonder no-one ever returned once they’d learned the truth. Who could ever face that penis again? Who could face that world again? All our achievements suddenly seemed so minuscule and trifling. So highly had we ranked the exploits of our world’s great men! So highly had we ranked the epic journey’s of our greatest explorers! Yet the furthest anyone had ever journeyed was no longer than the length of some guy’s dick! And a flaccid one at that!

The doctor gave Mr Burger an injection in his arm.

“Just remain seated for a while, Mr Burger,” she said. “Hopefully we will see some positive results soon.”

“What kind of results?”

“I believe there might be a connection between your psychological condition and your erection problem.”

“I’ve never been able to get an erection.”

“And that is why you have this delusion about having a gigantic penis.”

“What have you done to me?!”

Suddenly Mr Burger’s penis began to grow. What had been soft now became harder and harder. He cried out in pain as it pushed with ever increasing pressure against the boundaries of my world. It pressed down upon the buildings and people till everything was totally flattened. Every person in my world was crushed to death.

 

* * *

 

Comfort Ghost

Lee Battersby

Even on the hottest day, the grounds of the Arts Centre are bitterly cold. Emily doesn’t care. She will never feel warm again. Even on the hottest day, she only has to think back to the hospital, to the shake of the nurse’s head, the manufactured sympathy in the doctor’s voice. All the warmth Emily had, she put into baby Susan’s little body. It took forty weeks for her to die, pressed hard up against Emily’s soul, deep inside her belly, and then: nothing. Emptiness. Cold, never ending. Emily spends her days hunched over, arms curled around her body, but nothing helps.

One thing. One thing helps.

The gate is open. The Centre is never closed, at least, not for Emily. She slips inside the compound, sealed off from the world by high limestone walls and a sudden drop in temperature. The change is a physical thing. She has watched people start as they enter, reach into bags to pull out jumpers, wrap shawls around themselves, rub at their arms. Even if the thick stone walls did not exist, Emily knows the reaction would be the same. The Arts Centre is a bubble of isolation and loss. It is why she comes. Only the building understands what she has endured. Nowhere in the city has experienced more loss. It has been an asylum, a homeless shelter, a military headquarters. Everything it has touched brought death. Even now, while one wing churns out books, and another houses exhibitions, a significant number of the buildings are dedicated to a museum: the dead and their achievements, pressed between glass like bacteria, entire lives reduced to the pause in a tour guide’s speech. Emily’s own life turned upon an instant, a glass slide of memory. If she could feel at home anywhere, it might be here.

Today is not hot. Winter keeps casual visitors away, and overnight rain has enclosed the centre of Fremantle in grey. It makes no difference to Emily. Weather, like so many things, is incidental. The lawns have kept the rain alive. Drops shine on the blades of grass. Emily stops inside the gate, and surveys the swathe of green. There is no sign to distinguish the spot she seeks. It will be a matter of time, and luck. Emily has all the time in the world. She picks a patch of lawn several feet up the slight incline, and steps towards it.

She is fortunate, today. She finds it on the third attempt. Some days, closing time thrusts her into the outside with nothing more than a wet skirt for her dedication. But not today. She has barely settled near a statue the size and shape of a melting child when the feeling engulfs her. Love. Comfort. Peace. Emily doesn’t give it a name. She can’t give it a shape. But it finds her, wraps her in invisible arms, brushes against her exposed skin. The air changes. She is no longer alone- an older, wiser presence protects her. A spirit of experience, attuned to her grief, drawn to her across the gulf of memory and death. Emily leans her head back against the rough mosaic statue, and lets tears join the droplets on the grass.

Emily cried for a single day after they told her about baby Susan. One day, and then whatever controlled her tears seized up, and no matter how painful the pressure behind her eyes, there was no release. No matter how sympathetic the sounds her family made, how angry and distant her husband became, the channels inside remained frozen. Eventually, only the ice remained: no family, no husband, no Emily. To become warm would mean facing all she had lost. Too easy to stay encased in ice. Until she found the Centre, and the grass, and the circle of warmth that could only be the ghost of someone who understood, who knew the same tearing loss.

“What do I do?” she whispers. “What do I do? What do I do?”

There is no answer. She doesn’t expect one. It is enough to feel the love. It is enough to know that someone has been where she was, and left enough of themselves behind to give her warmth. Emily believes in ghosts. The whole world became ghosts once Susan died. She sits alone on the grass, and the pressure behind her eyes leaks through one drop at a time, until she can open them without seeing her baby’s body, forever cold.

Someone is watching.

Ten metres away, in a wedge of shadow created by the corner of a covered walkway, an old woman stands, eyes fixed on Emily. Emily sits up straight, shivering as the ball of comfort slips away. She wraps her arms around her chest and watches the woman slink along the corridor, hunched over, gaze piercing her. There is something wrong with the old woman. Her grey hair is a mess, wild and unkempt. A deep stain lies across one side of her head, as if she has just finished rubbing it through the mud. She is barefoot and wears only a plain white shift that looks soiled and dirty. She clutches at her chest in a way that makes Emily notice her own posture and rearrange her arms. The old woman reaches the shadows at the far end of the walkway, fixes her with one final stare, and disappears.

Emily blinks in shock. In an instant she has found her feet and is running to the walkway. A door blocks the path of the old woman’s journey. Emily grabs the handle, and twists. The door stays shut. She tries again, thumping against it with her shoulder. Again, the door resists. She is about to try a third time when someone behind her coughs politely.

“Can I help you?”

A blonde woman in a business suit stands a few steps away, her head cocked in enquiry. Emily steps away from the door.

“It’s locked, I’m afraid,” the newcomer says. “If you’re after someone in particular . . . ”

“There was a woman. An old woman.” Emily touches the rough wood. The door is cold, painfully so. She sucks at her fingers. “She disappeared.”

“You’ve seen her? The old mother?”

“What?”

The young woman takes Emily by the arm and steers her towards another door at the far end of the walkway. It is open, and Emily can see an office beyond, warm and inviting. “We call her that. Nobody knows her real name. She’s supposed to have been here when this place was an asylum. Threw herself from the Investigator gallery window on the first floor when her baby was abducted. There’s a display up there, actually. A whole series of photographs. This place is riddled with ghosts, you know. At least, that’s what they say. Lots of people see things. Would you like to have a cup of coffee? We have a register, you can sign it if you like, write down what you saw. You should read it. The things people . . . ”

“No. Thank you.” Emily pulls her arm from the woman’s grasp. “I . . . I have to go.” She rushes away, pretending not to hear the other woman’s chuckle. The streets outside are warm, but Emily doesn’t feel it. She is freezing inside, and getting colder.

*

She stays away for a week. But she is cold, and the world is grey and empty, and soon enough she can’t bear the lack of feeling any more. So there she stands, inside the gate, with no real memory of how she got there, trying to decide the best place to sit, while at the back of her mind the presence of the walkway sits immovable, constant.

In the end she chooses a spot about halfway along the gravel entry path, underneath a large gum tree, where she can keep the walkway in her peripheral vision. But there is no comfort there, and after half an hour she chooses again, and again, and when the loving ghost finally wraps its invisible arms around her she is tucked into a corner of the yard where the building’s wing obscures all vision, and then she is too busy crying to take notice.

The following day she sits less than a foot from the walkway. Not even the appearance of the blonde secretary, coming out to ask after her welfare, stops the tears. And again the next day, and the next, and still the old woman refuses to materialise. Emily begins to arrive earlier each day, and leave later, until every visit is an obsession on two fronts, and even days spent wrapped in the arms of her ghost no longer satisfy her. Until one day, late in September, when she leans back against the mosaic-covered statue once more, and the old woman stares at her from the corner of the walkway.

This time, Emily makes no movement, simply watches as the stranger walks her circuit, eyes fixed upon Emily’s tear-framed face, and disappears. When she is ready, she stands, and lays a hand upon the statue’s head. It is warm, where the old woman’s gaze has reste. Emily steps back, sees the child within the statue’s shape. She nods, and understands. From now on, it will be easier.

*

December is hot, but it makes no difference to Emily. She stands on the road opposite the wide-flung gates of the Centre and watches several families make their way up the sloped road. It is bazaar day, an annual event. The Centre opens itself to craftspeople and textile makers; families come to buy pots and fabrics, to sit against statues and stare at glass-pressed photographs.

The lawns inside the centre are crowded. Families huddle together on blankets, rubbing uncovered arms in the cold air. Outside it is amongst the hottest days of the year, and all but Emily have dressed accordingly. She stops amongst the shoppers, surveying the grass. It no longer matters. She has all day, and only one spot is important. She spends half an hour in front of a stall selling baby clothes, gazing down at the jumpsuits and bibs.

“Are you going to buy something, or just stand there all day?”

Emily stares at the stallholder. A younger woman, all cornrows and piercings, frowning at her with hands bunched into fists on her hips. She moves away, lips frozen together, unable to reply.

A nearby stall sells handmade mirrors- shards of broken glass rearranged in patterns inside painted frames. Emily sees herself reflected in a thousand fragments- hair unbrushed and wild, with the first hints of grey beginning to encroach at the fringe; her face unadorned by make up; dressed in a simple white cotton dress. She turns away, crosses the lawn, sits with her back against the mosaic statue, digging the toes of her bare feet into the grass.

Some days. Since deciding on this singular resting place, some days the warmth visits. More often than not she goes home unreleased. But she has grown used to the days of numbness. It is only here that the woman appears, and she can see some sort of shared experience within another being’s eyes. She rests her head against the statue, sets her gaze upon the walkway, and waits.

It takes three hours, but shortly after lunchtime, the warmth creeps across the grass and slides over Emily like a blanket. Invisible arms enfold her. The weight of a body presses into her back. Love washes over her like rising bathwater, thawing the frozen lump inside her body. She gasps, and slumps into herself. Tears begin. She reaches arms around her chest, and hugs the presence as best she can.

“Thank you,” she whispers, oblivious to the stares of those around her. She glances up, and in the darkness of the doorway, sees familiar eyes. Unhindered by surrounding bodies, the old woman begins her journey along the walkway. Emily matches her gaze. The old mother. Bereft of child, bereft of warmth. Emily feels a rush of sympathy, of understanding. To go through life, knowing only the cold substance of loss . . . she squeezes her eyes closed for a moment. To go through life, and then, after life, to continue to go through it. Such a weight to bear. Such a glacier to carry within you. The old woman is halfway along the walkway. Emily looks at her again, sees the frost inside the bent frame. She shudders, leans into the warmth wrapped around her. Some sliver of ice cracks within Emily’s chest. She gasps, realising just how much she has salvaged, compared to the woman on the walkway.

“Wait,” she says, and when the old woman does not acknowledge, she closes her eyes. The mantle of love grips her tightly. Emily bites her lip.

“Can you . . . ” she begins, then tries again. “Can you go to her?” She unwraps her arms, reaches up to stroke at the empty air, indicates the lonely, shuffling figure. “Can you give her . . . this?”

There is no response, but like an abandoned blanket, the warmth around Emily begins to slide away, down the length of her body and into the grass. It brushes across her bare feet last, a final caress that leaves her shivering in the sudden cold. The old woman walks on, until she is almost across the corridor. Then she stiffens, and Emily fancies she can hear the merest whisper of a gasp. The old woman’s eyes close. She leans into something invisible, wraps her arms around herself as if caressing the skin of an unexpected lover. Emily sees the way she balances herself against the weight of an unseen body, knows exactly how the curves and folds of that body fit. The old woman sketches something like a smile. When she opens her eyes again, Emily can see tears glistening along the creased skin of her cheeks. She takes another step, wrapped in intangible warmth, and disappears.

Emily sits alone, and stares at the barren space where the old woman has walked. The air that gusts along the walkway has changed--it has emptied, swept itself clean. The old woman is gone. Truly gone. Yet Emily can not move, can not take her eyes from the vacant air. All she has come here for, all she has hoped, all she has drawn comfort from--she is owed . . . something, please, let her have something.

Eventually, as the shadows lengthen and stallholders admit the end of the day and began to pack up, she sobs once, and bends over herself, hunching over the emptiness at her middle. She understands: there will be no reappearance, no thank you, no connection. The old woman has left, and taken with her the only kindness she has known. She will not share, not with Emily: warmth, understanding, experience. She will not share. Emily finds her feet, and pushes away from the statue. The air inside the Centre is frigid, and there is nobody left to wrap their arms around her, nobody to lean into and cry.

Behind Emily’s eyes, ice begins to spread. She turns away from the unloving air and walks through the crowd, out of the Centre and into the cold world.

 

* * *

 

Hungry Man

Will Elliott

When the redheaded woman with the baby carriage at last moved out of earshot, Phil said, “It’s easy, just get it down the back of your pants. You saw me do it a hundred times, come on.”

Lex looked nervously at the girl behind the newsagency counter and said, “She’ll see me. We come here every other day and never buy anything.”

“She doesn’t care. For $12 an hour, think she cares if they’re missing a couple magazines? C’mon go, she’s not looking.”

Phil made it look easy. In awe Lex had watched him walk out of shops with packets of corn chips stuffed in his shirt so he looked pregnant; watched him take show bags from stalls at the carnival, condoms from the chemist (they did nothing with them except leave them on the spouts of their school’s drink fountains.) Phil stole cigarettes and sold them to the older kids who played coin-op games. He stole CDs, once a DVD set from JBHiFi. His prize catch: an ipod, one of those nice 32 gig ones with a digicam inside. Close call, the Target woman turned her back for just a moment after he’d got her to take it out of the case for a look at it, not even planning to steal it till she took her eyes off them. A security guard chased them out of there and they couldn’t go back to Westfield Strathpine again any time in the next decade.

For his part Lex had stolen two packets of bubble gum. It had been from this very newsagency when the girl went out the back for a minute or two. “The register,” Phil had urged. “Go! There’s fifties in there.”

Lex couldn’t do it. People had been walking past the doorway, they’d have seen him. He took the gum instead. His hands shook for half an hour afterwards.

And right now the newsagency was busy. Old people buying lottery tickets. A creepy perverted dude by the porn mags who hadn’t moved since they came in, probably had a big fat woody while he fumbled through the latest Picture. “Don’t worry about that perv,” Phil whispered. “That’s the retard who walks up and down the road all night. If he sees you he won’t even remember it five minutes from now.”

“How do you know?”

“We threw rocks at him, me and Trent. He just looked at us, didn’t even care. Next day we walked right past him, he didn’t recognize us. So what are you worried about?”

I have a dad at home, Lex thought but didn’t dare say. Not like you. Your mother won’t pull your pants right down right in front of everyone at any old excuse to do it and hit the crap out of your nude butt like it turns him on.

Well no, Phil’s dad wouldn’t do that exactly. Phil’s dad would visit once per week and his doped out mum would sit there in a valium cloud and list out stuff he’d done wrong during the week in a calm dreamy voice, while Phil’s dad slowly undid his belt. Alex I think you should go home now. You’d hear it from three houses down: cries and pleads like Phil was being killed in there, whack, whack, whack. Every Tuesday. Visit Day.

Phil said, “Alex listen. You eat the stuff I steal, you keep half of it. You never take anything yourself. Bubble-gum? How badass. Come on. Go get us some titty mags and we’re even.”

Lex left Phil standing before the comics, sidled over to the magazine stand opposite the titty mags, looking nervously at the girl behind the counter, now selling smokes to some geezer who thought he was pretty funny. Lex snuck a glance at the glossy covers, where a woman who looked a little like his teacher posed on Penthouse with legs open, a white sheet draped between them; another on Barely Legal with pig-tails, in roller-skates with a lollypop in hand; another in this weird black leather outfit on Babes & Bikes. Suddenly he wanted each magazine very badly. He’d all but forgotten the pervy guy, who hadn’t moved, still thumbing through the Home Girls section in Picture. The pervy guy was just a pillar of legs beside him, inhuman as concrete.

Lex grabbed a Penthouse and a Playboy. Down the back of his shorts they went, where they slipped and slid almost completely out till he tucked them in his underwear. Turning for the exit, not daring to look and see if anyone had witnessed, he walked head-first into the pervy guy’s legs, his face striking the man’s hip.

It was a long way to look up at the face staring down at him, half covered in black stubble. The man’s wide mouth hung open, eyes just peering down with no way of telling if it was anger or anything else in them--all Lex saw was blankness. But he sensed something else there too, deeper within, a threat he didn’t understand at all and one very different to the usual fear of getting into trouble with an adult.

“Hey Alex, let’s go for a swim,” Phil called innocently across at him from the newsagency counter. “Before it gets dark. Over at the nature strip. C’mon.” Phil’s voice seemed to break Lex out of a trance. He walked through the magazine rows, not daring to look sideways at the girl behind the counter, whose gaze he felt following him. The magazines down his pants were surely sticking out a mile.

At long last, blessedly, they were outside in the afternoon light. Cars whizzed by on Anzac Ave. Their bikes leant against the shop wall. “Don’t pull em out yet you dink,” Phil hissed as Lex adjusted the magazines’ position. “Oh shit. Quick, get on your bike and go.”

“What, why . . . ?”

The pervert guy, like a horror movie zombie, shuffled slowly out of the shop and headed their way. His mouth still hung open, his eyes dead as pebbles. “Catching flies, fuck head?” Phil said to him. “Shut your mouth, you look like a spastic.” The man didn’t say a word, just stared and shuffled closer. “I think he likes you Alex. Frigging weirdo.”

They rode away, wheeling through traffic and many pissed off drivers, car horns blaring. Lex was so filled with sweet relief to be out of the newsagency he hardly noticed how close he came to getting run over.

*

Rumour had it that if you could get to the waterhole at night you’d sometimes see the bogan kids who got drunk in the Kallangur shop car parks doing it with their girlfriends, actually doing it right here in the long grass. They’d been out here one sleepover to test the theory, but had seen no such thing.

It had rained last night and now the quite frequent cars which swung down the nearby road’s dip sloshed up water as they went. On the wide grassy platform a few meters above the water, Phil took out the Mars bar he’d slipped in his pocket right in front of the counter girl, while he’d joked with her about selling him the winning lotto ticket. He peeled back its wrapping which took much of the squished melted thing off with it, then stuffed the rest into his mouth. “Yeah I saw that retarded perv before,” said Phil, examining the Penthouse centrefold. “Lives on Sheehan Street. Sometimes he just walks around at night, right down the middle of the road sometimes. Drivers have to go around him. Lives with these really old people, maybe his parents. Not right in the head. You can throw rocks at him or whatever and he just looks at you, doesn’t even care. We did that once, me and that Nicholas kid, pelted him right in the face and he just looked at us.”

“Maybe that’s why he followed us out of the store. Because he remembered you.”

“Doubt it. So are you going to jump in or not?”

Last time they’d come, Phil had ridden his bike off the ledge and into the water. It was now Lex’s turn. From the seat of his black BMX the water was just a brown wedge visible over the sloping rise before the drop. Phil said, “You won’t break your legs or anything. It’s deep right down there.”

“Not worried about my legs, I’m worried about the bike.”

“It’s water man jeez come on.”

“I didn’t get this bike for my birthday like you got yours. I delivered pamphlets on Saturdays in the heat and paid for it myself.”

“Then you went and stole from the shops. What a good boy.” Phil took the Playboy out of Lex’s schoolbag. “If you don’t jump I’m keeping this.”

“Okay okay.” Lex took off his shoes, put his glasses in their case, took a deep breath then pushed off, pumping hard on the pedals, the tyres bumping hard over the grassy ground. The water opened up into view three meters below, but it looked much higher than that . . . then he was airborne, letting go so the bike flung itself out ahead of him while he landed feet first in the water.

It was cold and not as deep as Phil had claimed, for his feet sank into the hideously soft mud at its bottom. He came up and used his first gasp of air to whoop in triumph. He swam forward to get the bike. “See that?” he laughed, spitting out a coppery mouthful.

“You didn’t stay on your bike, doesn’t count. Do it again.”

“I’ll do it again no problem, that was sweet!”

It was a slippery climb back up the rise. Nearing the top Lex heard other voices up on the grassy platform; someone laughing. “Oh shit,” he heard Phil say. “Lex get up here okay? Hurry.”

Still elated, Lex wheeled the bike around up the curving path, starting to feel a chill from the late afternoon air. There was at most an hour of daylight left.

When he got up there he saw why Phil had been worried. Craig Randall and Keith Hume, that was why. There was, Lex was quite aware, a chance for him to get back on the bike and ride it down the path and out of there. And he probably would have, if his schoolbag and shoes weren’t up there with Phil, along with the precious magazines. Both these guys had been kicked out of school for beating people up. The last guy, Keith had rammed his head into a pole and put him in hospital and into neck brace. Keith’s messy blonde hair hung down over his shoulders, muscled arms exposed in a singlet. His friend Craig was tall, fat, redheaded, with squinting eyes and skin entirely covered in freckles. They were both three years and many growth spurts older.

Craig casually took Lex’s bike from him and sat on it in a way somehow devoid of aggression--just borrowing a seat. “Your friend’s fucked,” he said in his oddly high pitched voice. Going to be a pretty good show, hey? Craig smiled with no malice at all and produced a little bag of cask wine, which he put to his lips and sucked on. The wine’s cheap stink filled the place.

Phil didn’t move as Keith Hume stepped closer to him.

“Why do you have to hit him Keith?” Lex said. “We got no problem with you.”

“Shut the fuck up Alex,” Phil snapped at him.

Lex remembered what Phil had said about guys like this. They would beat you up now and then, face it. Just let them. Don’t be a pussy about it and they’d mostly leave you alone from then on. “Get it over with,” said Phil.

“What’d you say cunt?” Shove to the shoulder, fists up, here it came. Jab, jab, crack went knuckles on Phil’s nose and cheek. They were fast economical punches. Long fast arms, punching machines made just for this. Phil’s head rocked back. Lex almost felt it, almost saw the explosions of white stars. Craig chortled and slurped his wine. “Come on Keith that’s enough hey,” said Lex.

But it wasn’t. Phil staggered and nearly fell but fought to keep on his feet. The “bully will respect you” theory, if you put up some kind of fight, but Lex knew it wouldn’t work. “Stay down Phil for fuck’s sake,” he yelled, tears welling up in his eyes, a lump in his throat.

Craig got off the bike and with the same lack of malice gave it a shove toward the drop to the water. It rolled most of the way there balanced on its wheels as though with an invisible rider, then clattered on its side and slid over the edge.

Lex forgot about Phil and the crack crack of punches still rocking his friend’s head back. There was just a long dark angry tunnel with Craig at the end of it. It was the casual way he’d done it, absolutely nothing personal in trashing his bike. All those mornings in the hot sun, barked at by dogs, once chased by one, riding up that hill on Gyp Court swooped by magpies, wasp nests in letter boxes, folding fucking Coles and Foodstore pamphlets together all Friday night till his fingers were dark with ink.

Lex’s hand picked up the flat rectangular stone all by itself. He moved automatically as he drew it back and shoved it into that utterly hated squinting freckled face.

Craig grunted in surprise. That was the point Lex’s memory erased what came next, which was of course his hand--so much smaller--being grabbed tight, the rock being taken out, and the favour returned with interest as Craig swung it down on his head. His body dropped in the long grass some way away from Phil’s, and about ten seconds after.

*

When sight returned there were only the stars and clouds above, all of it spinning about slowly and lazily. A continent of thick grey cloud slowly swallowed the half-moon, dulling out its light. Crickets chirped. Pain throbbed down from the top of Lex’s skull like Craig were right here thumping him with the rock every two seconds.

There was rustling nearby, the tickling touch of long grass, a faint lingering stink of cask wine. A gnawing, crunching sound. Like Phil’s dog Jules, at work on a bone. Sucking, slurping. Crunching, gnawing.

He lifted his head--tried to, rather, but the spike of pain made him leave it resting where it was. Tenderly he touched his scalp, where there was a sticky tacky patch of blood. He moaned quietly. The background sounds--the eating sounds--ceased.

A listening, watchful silence ensued which instinct told him not to break. It went for a long time. There were footsteps padding through the long grass, going away from him, then toward him, then away. Slow, heavy steps.

Keith and Craig? he thought. Both of them, still here?

The footsteps stopped. The grass rustled. The eating sounds began again. There was a low murmur of someone’s voice saying something mostly inarticulate, but amongst the babble he made out the words, “good, good.”

Slowly Lex sat up, hardly disturbing the long thick blades of grass around him. A shape loomed ten or twelve meters away, set against the sky behind. A large man hunched forward on the shorter grass where Lex had ridden his bike over the drop. The large man had his back to Lex. The big hunched-over body was just a silhouette against the cloud. It moved in jerking, sawing motions.

A soft moan. Mournful, Lex thought, or maybe a note of pleasure. Though he knew he must stay quiet, he was too confused to be scared. He thought back to rumours about the bogan kids who came here with their girlfriends to screw. But that was no kid.

Up on his elbows Lex watched the man’s strange movements, still not comprehending as the minutes passed. Not till he sat up, and the clouds shifted, the moon’s light came out from hiding to reveal the large man crouched over Phil.

Phil was looking right at Lex, so it appeared, his eyes wide and unblinking and with a strange kind of grimacing smile, his lips peeled back from his slightly buck teeth. Lex gestured to him as if to say, Are you okay? What’s going on?

Phil did not react at all. His head was in a strange position to the rest of him, a most unnatural angle. In fact as Lex’s eyes adjusted he saw that it wasn’t Phil at all but was actually some kind of doll, for the head had been pulled right off. He rubbed his eyes as if it might change things, but no, the head wasn’t attached to the body at all.

A dark pool spread about the doll. Phil’s chest and belly had been ripped open. The man by the corpse of his best friend was digging around in it, sawing off handfuls of flesh with a small knife and lifting them to his mouth. The sight did not quite register, did not make any kind of sense at all. Lex did not think he was really seeing it.

The man’s head turned sideways and Lex could see the chewing motions of his jaw. Inarticulate sounds came from his chewing, gargling throat, interspersed with, “Good . . . good.”

For Lex everything spun around again, very fast. His belly heaved; his head fell back down on the long grass, making it rustle.