deere in the headlights

Oct 25, 2022

by Cael Gorozidis

 

Content warning: This piece contains descriptions of injuries and a motorbike accident.

 

A name. It’s who we are. Even if we don’t know who that is. No matter how you wear it, it’s how we define one another. Like paint showering mundane objects with a different perspective and coating us in colours that we can call our own.

I wear a name on my skin, but it’s not mine. Above the nipple closest to that strange organ. The one that tricks the ears with a thunderous pulse – that alerts me when she is nearby – that flutters uncontrollably. It is where I hope she’ll stay.

She reminds me why I’m alive. To be apart is like feeling the sting from both sides of a double-bladed sword. In other words, the ink that paints our love only fades if she is not around for me to speak her name, and vice versa. I have frozen the burning of our love by giving it a name. And in the end, her name will always be a part of me. Even after death. The scar she whispered into my ear the first moment I met her shall never heal. And I hope it never does. Momentary suffering for a lifetime of happiness.

Does it make me selfish? This gift is one I keep, and for my own benefit. To win her trust. Or is it simply the least complicated way to make her smile?

I hope she likes it. Maybe I should’ve waited until after I met her parents, but I just couldn’t wait. This should welcome quite the odd conversation over dinner. I really hope she feels the same way. I don’t care what anybody else thinks, nor should I take any insult for expressing the way she makes me feel. If she doesn’t like it, I guess…Well, I guess I’ll just have to find another woman with the same name and try not to creep her out next time. Although finding your name tattooed on a stranger would creep anybody out. I hope she knows who I am.

Don’t worry about it too much. Focus on the road. It gets dangerous out here at night, and the nearest hospital would most likely be a vet for the wild animals that get mangled by trucks or even tractors. It’s their land, not mine. I should be easy on the throttle. No, it’ll be fine. I mean, motorbikes are nimbler, more tactile than cars. There’s a reason why they are called car crashes. Right?

I’m just so nervous. I hope she doesn’t mind I’ve taken the bike to come and see her parents. Presentation is the most important aspect of meeting new people. The last thing I want is for them to look down on me as a pathetic nobody who’s worth even less than this gift of self-harm. Don’t want to make that impression. Death trap. Once they see the bike, it’ll be the only two words planted in the back of their minds every time I’m in their presence, with their Wendy. If that wasn’t bad enough, there are only such limited ways to dress yourself on a motorbike, and my appearance and choice in gifts suggest that I don’t have much money. Or any, for that matter. But there is no way around that. I hope that they’ll just accept me for who I am.

Maybe something should smack me really hard in the head for what I’ve done. Instead of buying her something as simple as roses, I got another fucken tattoo. What’s the matter with me? Then again, roses are expensive. The way I see it is that a tattoo is more intimate and everlasting than some overpriced tradition – not to mention a tradition that has gotten a little too predictable – that she’ll probably just chuck away after they die. What kind of asshole would give a girl something that doesn’t last? No, my gift is eternal. Myself. It’s the only gift I can afford. Even if it does mean scarring myself. To make her smile will make it all worthwhile.

Her smile – I hope it’s still the same. It is the only reason I’d ever do something so crazy. She reminds me of who I’m supposed to be, even in the darkest of times. Does the insanity that motivates such a love to exist make me crazy, or just an extension of her? Isn’t this what love does to people? Two people losing themselves completely over each other. Well, in that case, I’ve made sure she’ll never have to remember who she is. And she’ll never have to worry about me losing track of who I am.

I can see her house now. My heart is beating way too fast. Like standing right next to a massive drum pounding so hard you mistake it for your perception of time. With vibrations that send ripples through tired eyelids and strike the soul with a barbaric clap that blocks out everything but the sense of sight. The more I think about it, the faster it goes and the harder it becomes to breathe. The harder it becomes to think. My head – is that a tractor on the road? – churns. My mind bends slightly like the road beneath me, and the house follows suit. All I know is that if this doesn’t kill me it’s going to—

• • •

Grass tickles. Tall and long, it hangs from the sky like a puppeteer’s strings, jerking my mangled body to check if I’m still alive.

Concrete pinches. It breaks my focus, cracking the eggshell that separates my brain of yolk from the harsh new world it had collided with.

Metal kisses. It is a cushion I bury my head into, saturated with the seeping liquid of conspicuous wetness that streams from the right side of my forehead.

Plastic shatters. It is a whiplashed blanket, bent, cutting the face. An unrecognisable imprint is left on the Deere – it looks bloody tired.

Harley is totalled and she’ll never walk again. That deer was strange. It isn’t dead, and its fur is green with a yellow streak on its broken side. However, its blood is black and smells like the same oil that leaks out of Harley.

Memory is blank and strange as the moon. I check the rest of this body that is apparently mine, and I find one wound that has already scarred. Near the heart. It has a name.

I must be with her. The only memory in my narrow mind bank – worth saving, apparently – that could lead me out of the mess I’ve put myself in. The last shred of my mysterious self. It gives orders and shouts at my legs to move. My body is in pain for a reason of a different kind. Like breathing after having your lungs steamrolled to the shape of flattened earth. Something tells me I’ve really done it this time.

A house reveals itself on the hills, surrounded by tall grass. My destination. In some kind of fucked-up convenience, my hand is already tucked into a ball, and I knock on the door. An unfamiliar woman opens it.

‘Hello?’ As she turns to look at me, all the bags she’s holding slip out of her hands. They hit the floor, revealing a needless excess of clothes. ‘Look what you’ve done!’ A moment of time can’t pass fast enough as she frantically picks them all up. ‘Now, may I ask for the name and business of the asshole who stands by whilst a lady picks up her clothes at this time of night?’ More time passes, but not quick enough, as she inspects the clothes on my back. ‘Tell me, who hides behind this dreary outfit and what is his business here!’

My jaw shakes, unsure of whether to vomit or not. I let my body talk instead.

She squints her eyes, getting a little close for comfort. ‘Wendy…Is that permanent?’ She traces the name with her finger, then pulls back. ‘Where are my manners? I’m Zara. And you look like roadkill. So, Roadkill,’ she adds a rasp to her voice, ‘I’m starving, and we’ve been waiting for you. May I ask what took you so long to get here?’

‘Deer.’

‘Oh.’ She touches the only visible part of my face, being careful to not cut herself on the shattered visor of my helmet. ‘No, honey, you must be mistaken – there are no deer in these parts. Must be suffering a concussion.’ Zara then fiddles with her fingers through the straps of the bags she holds. ‘Please, sit down and get comfortable. I’ll go get Wendy.’

Time doesn’t pass right around here. The more I wait, the more I close and open my eyes, wrestling against sleep’s stranglehold for dominance. Bare footsteps on floorboards are heard in a dream too real. Upon opening my eyes, for who knows how long they’d been closed, a well-dressed young man starts talking – or had been talking the whole time – and asking me rapid-fire questions in a manner that expresses that he doesn’t care to hear the answers.

‘Who are you?’ he asks most frequently. ‘My name is Giorgi. I think you need some new clothes. I’d give you mine, but they would be too small and, besides, they wouldn’t suit you anyway. Wouldn’t want you staining them. It’s almost dinner time. You were late, remember, and we are all starving.’

I think I’m speaking fluent gibberish in response, having gained the awareness of such foolishness like a sixth sense, pinpointed by the slight shake of my tired cheeks and the tremor in my tongue. Pain’s overwhelming grasp guarantees that I’m not making any sense.

I blink and I’m alone. Until an older woman made of sparkling glass emerges from the darkness behind my eyes.

‘Wendy will only be a minute.’ She seems disappointed. ‘You made her sad when you didn’t show up.’

‘There was a deer.’

‘So I’ve been told.’ She looks right through me. ‘You can call me Mrs Swarovski. Now, come on, we should start eating before the food goes bad.’

I blink again and she takes me through the house to reach the back where the kitchen and dining room are. This part of the house is only lit by candles that peek from behind the cracks of doors. They float by my dizzy gaze in large numbers, like sun-struck fingers over a river of calm but unstoppable water that rises in the peripheries.

Bursting through a door seemingly at random, the glimmer of silver on a man’s wrist overwhelms me. It clicks to the beat of my heart, measuring its very own blood pressure. The silver is part of a man who seems as though punctuality is the oxygen that gives him breath to keep on ticking.

‘You’re late.’ He frowns. ‘My daughter has been slaving all day for you to make this meal fit for a king.’

‘I’m sorry there was this—’

‘Yeah, I’ve heard the excuse.’ He grinds his teeth and I hear the sound of gears. ‘I’m Wendy’s father, but you can call me Tag. I’m only going to tolerate you because you mean something to her for some reason.’ He tactically changes his face. ‘Here she comes. Stand up. Don’t crack under pressure now – what are you doing? Stand up!’

Wendy. There she is, freckles and all. In her hands she holds a platter with a deer’s head on it. Or is it just a reflection from the cloche that encases tonight’s main course? An animal yet to be revealed as the prey. All I know is that its eyes blink with a dispersed hue of static comprehension. This deer is alive!

‘I hope you all like it. I’ve been working all day on it,’ says Wendy.

‘Remember, everyone – small bites.’ Tag deepens his breath. ‘A minute on the lips, a lifetime on the hips.’ He smiles at his daughter. ‘It’s delicious, sweetheart.’

‘Thanks, Dad.’ She turns to me with her chin tucked into her chest. ‘What do you think, John? Have you ever tried deer before?’

Memory clashes like lightning, and I remember who I am.

‘No, but I think I love you.’

 

 

Photo by Diana Parkhouse on Unsplash.

lemon tree

Jul 8, 2022

 

by Sarah Cirillo

 

This piece was awarded first place in the 2022 Swinburne Sudden Writing Competition.

 

The lemon tree stretches its arms out wide, boughs heaving with fruit. Underneath, there is a graveyard of rotting lemons, sickly sweet and buzzing with flies, and I gag as I reach under her. All the ripest lemons are there, but all the thorns are there too. They await my bare arms, ready to tear at my skin­­­­­­­­. I think it’s her revenge for taking her fruit. She works so hard and then she gets pissed on by Dad and Nonno. It’s good for the lemons, they both say. Men and their bloody dicks, Mum says.

Lemons are my favourite. People hate them because they’re bitter, but if you dip them in sugar they taste like lollies. Nonno taught me that. We cut them into small wedges, drenching them in the tiny granules. We grin as we eat them, and sticky lemon juice drips down my chin and onto the floor.

Nonno’s house has a huge lemon tree. We always climb up to the highest lemons, fighting to get the best ones. We play for hours, sometimes hopping over to the fig tree. She’s even bigger than the lemon tree, with twisted limbs bearing budding, milky fruit. I wonder if she gets pissed on, too.

It’s summertime and lemons hang like a lady’s jewels. Knobbed branches are marred with wrinkles, grotesque knots twisting this way and that, just like Nonno’s hands. Dad is the same, leather on bone, stubbled like the pricks on the lemon tree. They work hard, Mum says as we watch Dad and Nonno pruning the lemon tree. To the bone. Her branches fall to the ground uselessly, decorating the graveyard beneath her. I wonder if she knows she’s treated like nothing. She bears her fruit like she bears her soul, and all she gets back are broken limbs and piss.

Mum calls me over to help her make dinner. Salt dribbles onto my lips and I lick it away, turning to Mum as she sets out the cotoletta. She stands over the bench, back bent, like the trunk of my lemon tree, only Mum doesn’t get pissed on – we just take fruit, leaving her bare.

Today, Nonno taught my cousin to piss on the lemon tree. Men and their dicks, I think. He’s thirteen, and at lunchtime his friends play scopa and yell about the girls they want to fuck. They probably piss on their lemon trees too.

 

 

Photo by Angélica Echeverry on Unsplash.

 

dear sister

Feb 8, 2022

 

by Zoe Sorenson

 

Your plants are still here.

I guess that’s kinda obvious

since you couldn’t really fit multiple potted plants

(or stupid kid-brothers)

in the one duffel bag you packed when

you decided to leave forever.

 

Still, you loved them so much.

I kinda figured that, if anything, you’d

come back for them.

I don’t understand how you could

leave them behind.

 

You gave so much of yourself to

the things you loved—

your attention and care

became their own kind of magic.

Now would be a really good time

for you to use those superpowers of yours

to reappear

and the plants can be happy again.

 

It’s only been a little while since you left,

but already they’re starting to wilt.

I don’t know if it’s ’cause of

the time that’s passed,

or if they somehow know that you’re gone.

Maybe they’re just

grieving in the way they know best.

 

I’ve tried so hard to help.

I’ve tried so hard to keep alive

the one thing left of you.

But nothing I do is enough and

I’m going to lose them just like

I lost you so please

just come home. I need you

to fix it like you always do.

 

Your flowers miss you.

I miss you.

I want my big sister back.

 

 

 

Image by Yulia YasBe on shuttertsock.

claiming frontiers

Nov 17, 2021

 

by Milieah Brett

They said we had it all figured out. That it was our duty to take our message out there. To expand. Look outwards and forwards. But my dispatcher hasn’t contacted me for days, and no one even knows my name out here. How can I keep track of any message, how can I keep a hold of who I even am. I’m too far forward. I’m too far out.

The crash was 6 cycles ago now. Lt. Fifteen had transported us through the Lumin Sector of orange Lepidoptera lights and purple gas collectives. The second half of that sector is still uncharted, blackspace, but we’d pushed out further than that, past the C-boundary. He had pointed us down to the first Silver Class planet, just Twelve and I, after all the rest had been assigned to earlier celestial bodies, and we took the shuttle out as instructed, direct through orbit.

The Mothership was barely a dot in the sky when the engines malfunctioned and zapped our external vis. Gravity kicked out the landing gear and crushed the hull into surface debris — a solid landing if ever there was one. When we crawled out of the shuttle, it was clear the damage was enough to impede a journey through the outer atmosphere.

All the surface of the Silver Class was grey sediment, scattered with smooth circle formations formed by water movement from centuries ago. Twelve had to date it with a torchlight on his helmet and shaky hands on his line-laser, barely illuminated. A dark sun in the sky makes us feel unbalanced, untethered, despite any training.

‘It’s been too long,’ I’d said to him through comms, ‘There’s no life.’

Twelve’s sigh caused crackly feedback as he’d looked to the black horizon, our torches glinting perfect beams off the flat surface of the rocks.

‘We’ve been assigned to here,’ he’d replied. ‘There must be life.’

Three days we spent camping in the blackness, conserving our torches. We used them only to set up the sleeping dome on the first day, then to observe our equipment every morning. There was no sun cycle to adapt to.  A dark sun means no mornings and no nights, so we followed the Mothership time-loop on our suits, and used our sensors to navigate in our small radius. There was no sense in expanding exploration, not without a functioning exit off the planet.

I’d expected to see the fire-shine of another shuttle breaking through the atmosphere on the fourth day, after Mothership had registered the loss of the comm link, but there was nothing in the sky.

There was, however, something on the ground. It being so dark, the light in the distance was not hard to miss. It lit up the horizon as if the air was solid and concaved, amplifying its colour across the surface, turning smooth rocks to glowing stars. I pushed Twelve’s shoulder where he was sitting beside me, to alert him to look up from the data log he’d lent against the dome’s frame, and he did. I heard his breath halt over comms, the static crackling gone for a beat, my ears enveloped by the silence of the air around us. Then he was moving.

‘We need to establish a baseline,’ Twelve said to me, scrambling to pull out his responder.

‘Is it intelligent?’ I asked.

‘It’s the only thing seeking us out,’ he replied.

As it got closer, it got harder to see its form, our eyes straining to adjust. I polarised my filter, and when I held my gloved hand out in front of it, I could see its texture of imperfections. Pale green turning to white, turning to pale yellow, glowing around the outline of my fingers, eating up my shadow.

We weren’t scared then. This is what we do, and displaying peace in first contact is more important than our individual safety. Twelve set the emitter on the responder to the soft-humming four-time beat – communication A – and we waited for a response.

We couldn’t discern sounds from it. It became apparent that there weren’t any. The being seemed to roll along and float at the same time, no friction against the rocks despite touching them. The air was thick enough for sound to travel, and yet, aside from us there was only silence.

The light being stopped before us, and seemed to ooze outward, sinking across the rocks.

‘It must see us somehow,’ I murmured.

We cycled through the communication protocol carefully: the sounds, movements and visuals. All the while monitoring changes in air and energy spikes. Every reaction was the same, just a silent observer sitting before us. No movement or change.

The light was beginning to make my head ache.

‘It has to be light,’ I said. ‘Something about light. We could adjust our visuals, mix light, try to mimic their colour?’

‘That’s already been covered in communication Q to S.’

‘The Lepidoptera would’ve responded by now,’ I huffed.

In the following days, more of the Silver Class planet’s inhabitants approached, surrounding our camp. It made our torches obsolete, made reading our equipment easier, and gave us further opportunity to observe. However, we still hadn’t learned much about them. Twelve couldn’t find any differences in our readings from when we first landed to now, as if the beings weren’t there at all. I couldn’t discover how they were producing such luminosity, all the data defying analysis. Days were bleeding into each other, and nights were getting harder to sleep through as their numbers were increasing incrementally every few days, every cycle. The aggregate of their light grew brighter and reached further, but they never changed and never touched us, only watched us.

We made the decision halfway through the next cycle that we would push past their makeshift barrier. Mothership wasn’t looking for us, we needed resources, and we needed to be certain this was the intelligent life we were looking for. I couldn’t tell if it was the first being we had tried to make contact with, or another one that broke from the line that started following us. They all looked the same and they didn’t register in our readings.

When I walked between the beings, a phantom heat moved over me, mirroring the glow onto my suit, making the contrast of the dark horizon seem so cold and distant. I knew it was just my mind playing tricks on me, and I held my equipment more securely on my back.

The panic set in when we had walked two days and found nothing. We were forced to return empty-handed. The pale yellow light, still flittering over the rocks, guided us back.

On the third cycle, I’d had enough. Twelve could sense it in me, in the way I couldn’t answer his questions clearly and how I was fumbling the logs that day.

‘I’m going to touch them,’ I told him, and he’d baulked.

‘What?’

‘Think about it. They’re malleable, they sit by each other. How else do they communicate?’ The rationality was clear to me, the reason why they had been waiting around us so long, watching for something to happen. We had to make the move. ‘How else can we give our message?’

‘But…first contact protocol…’

He watched me as I walked out of the dome, directly to the line they still held. The light had gotten so bright I could barely see my hand as I lifted it to the being’s form, mound-like and blurry below me. I pushed, flat palmed, and met as much resistance as a sleeping pallet, its body curving about my hand.

The effect was immediate. Veins of deep green and blue spiralled out from the impression, and the being’s colour dimmed, fading from pale yellow to aqua to purple on the RGB spectrum. My heart dropped to my feet as I watched it dwindle before me, the surface of its form turning as glassy and dark as had been our reality for the first days on this planet. I pulled my hand back.

I saw Twelve run for me when I looked back, and I saw the row of light beings behind him expand in size, their width gushing out over the rock formations, their height reaching higher than the sleeping dome, higher than our shuttle. All their forms were joining, and we were flattened as they reached each other at the peak, closing out the darkness, blinding us in a whiteness as bright as a star.

That’s where I am now. Unknowing if my eyes are open or closed, unable to move. My suit AI has been tracking the days for me, and I’ve been writing my log through it, detailing as much as I can remember. I can’t hear Twelve, I believe our comms were muffled by whatever happened. I hope my suit will outlast me, and when the crew find me, they can access these logs still.

As for the message we were to pass on… I can’t remember it. Fifteen reminded us daily of the peace, of following the truth. But I don’t believe our truths apply to the beings here. So, then, what could be their truth?

 

Photo by Mikhail Nilov from Pexels

sudden writing comp winner: penumbra

Oct 28, 2021

By Evelyn Lee

Content note: this story contains mention of an animal death, and intimate partner violence. 

The boys tumble out of the sea, their golden limbs caught in the afternoon sun.

My boys, she thinks.

They drive silently, settling into the freeway as the sky begins to darken.

She pulls off the freeway and onto a long stretch of road lined with low-lying scrub. She flicks on her high beams and rolls down the windows. The air is warm and still. A cyclist comes around the bend; a flash of lycra in the car’s headlights. She speeds up.

The car’s headlights illuminate an irregularity in the road ahead. She slows then pulls over. It’s a wombat, knocked flat, its dark organs spewed across the road.

The wombat’s wide, blunt nose is laying in a pool of dried blood. When she gets closer she can see that there are flies nesting in the corners of its eyes. The stench of it cuts through the stillness.

There is no need to check for a joey. If there had been one, it would be dead by now.

She pulls two plastic bags from the boot of the car. Using the bags like gloves, she grasps the wombat’s hind legs and pulls, steering it carefully into the ditch beside the road. Its organs remain.

She looks back at the road and thinks, very briefly, of her own blood smeared across the bathroom tiles; caught in the fluorescent light.

Only the top of the wombat’s back remains visible, the coarse dark hairs glinting like broken glass in the car’s headlights.

She climbs into the driver’s seat and glances back at her boys. They are both asleep. The youngest has his left hand gripped around the lip of his plastic booster seat.

Good, she thinks. Better that they didn’t see that.

 

Evelyn Lee is a creative writing student in her third year at Swinburne. She loves short form fiction and fractured narrative structures.

 

Photo by J W via Unsplash

our private cubicle

Sep 9, 2021

 

By Lachlan Bowden

The bed was caught in a limbo between comfortable and irritable – itchy at every touch. The concave deepened after that evening, indifferent to permissible reasoning. A time limit had always been agreed upon, out by 10, no matter what. The democratic rulings of a bedroom always seemed more agreeable before fucking, and tortuous once the door closed on the way out. Always carefully shut to avoid a slam, and thus unwanted attention. Sliding on unbuttoned jeans, shortly before the exodus, the silence proved to be an excruciating companion, though a faithful one.

Albert only had his left sock on. He assumed the right resided beneath the shadows of the bed, or on the right foot of Harvey, who was most likely cycling toward the far end of Coventry Street by this point. Stoic and calm, Albert lay diagonally on his bed. Half consumed by the sheets, half vulnerable to the biting cold air that filled the room. His erectile sheath still bearing him, knowing that he would not sleep in that state. It seemed as though moving from that position – comfort purgatory – may contain the potency to, only just, kill him. Harvey’s actions were premeditated, this was routine. Harvey’s rapid evacuation never surprised Albert, though he was always paralysed on the site of passion, which never seemed to not catch him off guard.

***

The hors d’oeuvres had an overbearing artichoke component, with a lot of what seemed like pepper, though Albert couldn’t be sure. He had dropped the appetiser on the floor as he attempted to nonchalantly navigate his way through, peers, acquaintances, friends of friends, pricks and arseholes, to the sanctuary of the free bar. It seemed like a social obligation to either subsidise or – if you really respected your friends – pay for the lot. Albert had just subsidised when it was his 21st. However, Amalie insisted on drinks being covered until at least 10 pm and, seemingly, Mum and Dad had no issue. This disparity promised to linger only momentarily under Albert’s skin, as somewhat of an irritation, though not warranting formal action. Much like a small, semi-itchy rash on the back of your calf, not worth the energy of an appointment to address, rather, it was fixable with an Epson salt bath and the application of some Cetaphil.

‘Beers, Wine, and Cider’, was written with ill-penmanship in mossy green, above the chef’s specials that had been served moments before, and were now probably half-digested in the guts of the previous patrons.

‘Uh, maybe just a pint of stone and wood,’ Albert squinted and sloped his brow to appear somewhat experienced in the tedious dance of bartender interaction.

‘Here, mate.’ He handed Albert the glass.

Moments after the first sip – which promised so much, according to adverts of hard-working men in tight singlets taking that initial heroic sup of light protruding lager, which was actually rather disheartening – the speeches began.

‘Hellllo everyone, hope you’re enjoying your drinks… on me!’ Dad was a little pissed. Usually, a joke in front of this capacity was unthinkable. Though, the crowd laughed in their timely facade, as the panel of speakers lined up – some bearing faces of unfortunate souls facing a firing squad, the others just a little tipsy and daft-looking.

Next to brave the microphone was Harvey (one of the unfortunates), ‘Heya everyone. Hope you’re all having a grand evening, thanks for coming.’

Albert lingered at the back of the bar, strangling the neck of his pint.

‘…yeah. Uh, as most of you know, Amalie is very special to me. I couldn’t ask for a better girlfriend. It’s been nearly…ah, 4 years now.’ His eyes flicking to the left, assessing Amalie’s body language. Heavily intoxicated by this point, an acceptable smile gripped Amalie’s cheeks, one that she most definitely practised in the mirror beforehand. Harvey’s speech continued with no noticeable moments.

 

With every scheduled scan of the room during Harvey’s speech Albert simultaneously begged for Harvey’s eye contact, and callously refused it. Impatiently wrapping up his speech, Harvey passed the mic to the subsequent victim.

They both disappeared, separately (seemingly always separately), to the toilets. ‘Albert?’ whispered Harvey, with a firm hunger. The cubicle door opened to reveal Albert. Both stood still, waiting for the other to break. It soon became apparent the other would not, so Harvey moved in. Pressing his chest against Albert, he closed the off-white cubicle door behind them. Harvey’s tie pin pushed directly into the exact adjacent spot on Albert’s frail body. The pain was not worth mentioning, like the rash. Their close proximity was no match for the tension drawing one to the other. Both their lips argued, then caressed, contested, then held, teased, then mimicked. Neither of them had a choice. All whilst the external party vibrated back and forth, the perennial faceless dance continued

 
 

 

About Lachlan Bowden: 

Lachlan moved to Melbourne in the winter of 2021 to study Screen Production and Film. With a keen interest in literature, and as a way to understand his new environment, Lachlan has found creative writing to be an engaging practice.

Photo by Hà Nguyễn on Unsplash