It’s not my job. Last year Diane in accounts did it. Now little Di-Di is pregnant to her husband Phil, who works in maintenance. But the office girls reckon the real father is Keith, who curates the council ovals. Many a lass from administration has been ploughed, while lying on top of a 40-kilo bag of blood and bone.

It was Janice, our beloved mayor, who created the Famous Author Short Story Award or FASSA. I call it the ‘come sit on my FASSA’. Juggling Janice emailed the Famous Author who lives in London and he said, “Why not? As long as I don’t have to fucking do anything…” In a classic case of overreaching, Janice made it a national writing competition.

Now, I’ve got 500 bloody stories in my inbox. I’ve got to cull them down to a short list of 20, then pass them on to the contest judge. This year it’s some woman whose novel is about an Inuit Eskimo with schizophrenia hunting lesbian witches in Iceland. I call the author ‘Cold Pussy’ but let’s keep that between you and me. I prefer YouTube clips of happy dogs and blogging to reading. It’s more fun.

It’s not like I haven’t got anything to do. I’ve got the annual report to write and the dog management media release to cobble together. I’m fucked if I know why people don’t keep their dog’s quiet. All they need to do is bring them inside. I like cats. You won’t hear cats barking at the moon.

I don’t shirk hard work either. I do my share but as a PR Officer, my position description says I, ‘promote the good works of the council, its agents and policies to the larger community’. I organise functions, devise menus, write media releases, create social media strategies (I’m good at those) and occasionally, when my boss, Glennis is having an alco-holiday, I write speeches for the mayor. One day Glennis will fuck up big time and I’ll be the new Director of Communications. Mark my words. Anyway, there’s nothing in my PD about being a short story assessor. Then again, as most of the people I work with can’t read, who else would do it?

The conditions of the FASSA are simple. Entrants submit an original short story of 2000 to 3000 words and pay $30.00 per story. First prize wins $3000. Second prize wins $1000 and third prize wins $500.00. There’s a smattering of meaningless commendations for ‘good writing’. It’s a good little earner for the council. Last year it paid for the staff Christmas Party.

Glennis picked me because last year, Di-Di shortlisted 20 stories which were entirely unsuitable. I mean, Jesus. They were all plot-driven. A couple were written by men and one had a rape scene. Please. I could see the headlines of the local shit eating rag: ‘Council shortlists rape story as domestic violence soars.’ Fuck that.

One bloke submitted a story about a woman who was slowly poisoning her husband. She wanted to kill him, not because he was a wife bashing prick; not because he spent his time banging whores and snorting mountains of cocaine. She wanted his insurance money.

“But it’s a good story, Gloria,” Di-Di whined as I dragged it to the bin and deleted it. “It was well written and had tension. Easy to read too.”

“For Christ’s sake Di-Di, the best stories aren’t meant to be easy to read,” I said. “They’re meant to be hard. These days it’s all post modernism and self-referential shit with writers alluding to other writers and stuff like that.”

A faint hint of blood and bone mixed with fish fertiliser hit me. Di-Di had visited Keith.

“I liked it because he knew she was poisoning him,” Di-Di said. “He loved her so much, he woofed down the almond tasting coffee and asked for more. He wanted her to have the insurance money. That’s true love. I wish I could find a man like that. Phil doesn’t have a romantic body in his bone. It’s like living with wet cardboard”

“Lady Di-Di, love, he’s meant to be poisoning HER! She’s the victim here. She’s oppressed and he’s the oppressor. Men do things to women. You of all people should know that. Hang on a second. Was he a Muslim forcing his daughter to have a clitoridectomy?”

“A clito … clito, what? No, no. They’re a middle-class couple from Paddington.”

To cut a long story short, we got the job done. Last year the judge was a woman who taught creative writing at a swank university in Melbourne. Her newly published book was called ‘Watering Lantana’ and it was a runaway success. First, second and third prize all went to women studying creative writing. They’d workshopped their stories to within an inch of their lives. I met them at the awards night and they were real nice. They were – and I don’t use this word around Council much – sensitive.

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When I started work here two years ago, Belinda took me under her wing. She’s the head of recruitment. I love Belinda. She’s a snappy dresser and has a great car. Her boyfriend, Kim, is a counsellor and a marathon runner. He is tall, handsome and has a butt you could park a bike tyre in. I fantasise about Kim. I shouldn’t but I do. That’s what I like about writing. You can put all the dirty stuff in and call it art. Most of the stories we get are about global warming, rising sea levels, oppressed transsexuals, oppressed women, domestic violence and shit like that. They’re okay but I keep thinking about getting it on with both Kim and Belinda. You know, a triple. My wrists are bound and they’re all over me like lions. Belinda wants me to sit on her FASSA and I do.

Now, where was I?

Belinda taught me a neat trick on my second day at work. She grabbed a pile of resumes for the new administration position and threw them in the recycling bin.

“Gloria, much of the work you’ll do around here is unnecessary,” she said. “Take my job for example. I already know who I’m going to hire. Females are preferred over males, unless it’s a trade position. Old people are past it and migrants are too much trouble. While we are meant to ‘disable-friendly’, they’ll never get their wheelchairs past me. Much of my job is about ‘gatekeeping’. Sort the chaff quickly and you’ll go far.”

“So, who are you going to hire?”

“My brother’s girlfriend. She’s so cool and witty. Not like the retards in payroll.”

The FASSA is tailor-made for gatekeeping. I’ve got 500 stories but 100 contestants hadn’t filled in the application form correctly. They hit the spike. I cut 100 applicants who’d written more than 3000 words and another 75 because they wrote less than 2000 words. Why? Because they’re not really trying. Another 25 are culled because they included their name on the story. The judging is meant to be done blind – which would have made it more fun.

So, we’re down to 200. I’ve created some rules:

Rule #1: Long paragraphs with complex sentences and lots of description are in.

Rule #2: Finely crafted and poignant stories written by women for other women, are in.

Rule #3: Genre stories about space, alternative universes, horror or fantasy are out. It’s meant to be an open contest but see Rule #2.

Rule #4: Stories which are not politically correct or don’t adhere to the council’s equity and diversity policies, are spiked.

Rule #5: Writers who use unreliable narrators are spiked. They aren’t to be trusted.

You might think dear reader that I’m going to read every story – and pigs might fly. I’ve still got that annual report to write. I barely read the first paragraph. Let’s see what we have here:

“If you really want to know about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like…”

Jesus, a whingeing punk kid who is down on his parents. I can tell it’s written by a young man because I looked at the entry form. I can almost smell the body odour and dried jism in his bedroom. Spiked! The next one shows some promise.

“Two former lovers of Molly Lane stood waiting outside the crematorium chapel with their backs to the February chill.”

I’ve read worse but the opening paragraph should grab me by the short and curlies. The payment form says its written by some guy called Ian. Who the hell these days is called Molly? Spiked! How about this?

“In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.”

It’s by Frances Scott. That could be a woman but I’m not big on opening paragraphs that don’t go anywhere. I can tell this is written by a sensitive person – possibly even an award winner – but the only advice my father gave me was not to get myself pregnant before I left school. He also told me never to put diesel in the Alfa. Spiked!

You might be wondering what sort of paragraph will make the short list. I have one here. It’s about a fish.

“The sun blinded me as the hook was ripped from my mouth and I was thrown roughly in to a white bucket with my brothers and sisters. This is my river, my country and I will never see it again.”

It’s call ‘A Trout weeps for the High Country.’ It’s about the feelings fish have for each other and the extraordinary lengths men will go to find, catch and kill them. It’s written by a white woman in Hawthorn who is calling herself an Aboriginal. There’s a scene where the trout likens his bucket to sitting in a jail cell, like that Russian guy in ‘Darkness at Noon’, awaiting his execution. I sat in front of the computer and cried and cried. Short-listed!

Once I get in to the swing of it, it only takes a morning to short-list 20 stories on the computer. That includes a 30-minute morning tea break and two visits to the loo. Gatekeeping is the secret. I’ve saved the stories on the desktop and I’ll send them to Cold Pussy tomorrow morning. Now I’ve got time to write the dog management media release and then I’ll have an early minute.

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It’s a fucking disaster. I came in to the office early this morning, turned on the computer and it’s dead. Stone cold motherless dead. Drago in IT said the hard drive was corrupted. He said it will take a week to fix but I’ve got to send the fucking FASSA short list to the fucking judge by midday. I didn’t physically sort the hard copy applications either. Normally, I’d see Belinda for advice but she’s on a ten-day holiday in Bali with Kim. They got a terrific deal. I’m on my own here.

There’s only one thing to do. I’ll use statistics. I’m not big on statistics because I did a communications degree but I remember something about creating a representative sample. I’ve hauled the 500 stories in to the ladies’ loo, shut the door, laid them at my feet and while doing a quick pee, picked 20 stories at random. I’ll have to use the hand dryer on a couple but who’ll know? I might have selected a few blokes too but I’ll put that down to diversity. I’ll email the short-listed stories now and my job is done. Then I’ve got the whole day to write the annual report.

Drago is going to help me write some algorithms, so next year if I have to work on the FASSA short-listing, a computer program will do it for me. I’ve got a warm feeling in my nether regions, knowing in some small way, I’m making a contribution to Australian literature.