The Crazy Red Squiggle

Jimmy was a mid-60s, six foot string bean with long silver dreads who loitered around the entrance of Woolworths calling people ‘fucking pricks’ and ‘scum sucking motherfuckers’. The police moved him on but back he’d come with the delight of a dog returning to a bone. Since the factories on the industrial estate closed down,…

Laying on Hands

We’d bought Lily from the back of a ute in a country town. She was Belinda’s dog as a puppy. A black mongrel Labrador cross Rottweiler – a Labweiler – who ate us out of house and home and slept on the bedroom floor next to her. Then Lily slowly changed allegiances. Could that mutt…

The Beckoning Beyond

Louise Marshall, 24, blonde, petite and moon-faced, regretted giving up a lucrative side hustle as a call girl, after graduating with a journalism degree. The trade of the keystroke queens quickly lost its lustre after 12-hour days writing stories. She earned more as an escort in a month than on the social affairs round in…

The Onion Woman

When Cynthia’s third boyfriend in four years left, it didn’t set off alarm bells. She’d just turned 50 and was at an age when suitors (a funny word she thought), could come and go as she pleased. If men felt uncomfortable in her presence, that was their problem. She liked the word ‘presence’ because it…

Headlights in the Vines

We left early. Five superannuated rock bands played their hits from the 1980s and 90s in a country vineyard, as the crowd of salt and pepper-headed rockers, drank like they were 25 again. A ripple of Altamont aggression ran through the throng as the sun set and the queues for the women’s toilets grew longer….

The Coffin

“And another thing, mate. I need a big favour. There’s a place that makes reinforced cardboard coffins, one hour south of Adelaide. Can you pick it up, put in on a plane and I’ll meet you at Coolangatta Airport? It’s a cluster fuck.” Steve’s step-daughter Angela had stepped out on to Highway One five nights…

Island Housekeeper

The car ferry docked at Penneshaw on Kangaroo Island as Callum stood on the foredeck in the scorching heat and scanned the brown hills, looking for his parent’s house. They’d built it on a vacant hillside 40 years ago, to fish and garden in retirement. Now it’s green roof was in the middle of a…

Contours of Memory

I’ve set the GPS on the tractor and it will till this field by itself for the next eight hours. That doesn’t sit right with me, so I sit in the cabin and let the machine do its job. I should be helping my wife back at the homestead. She’s crook but doesn’t want me…

Dapto Dogs

For Georgy King The faint scent of turpentine and piss clings to Savoir Faire’s mattress as a flea nips her arse. She cranes her old, stiff neck around, bares her teeth but knows she can’t reach it. She gets up, does a circle and settles back on her bed. It’s 10.00am. Dinner is eight hours…

The Brotherhood

Married for 15 good years, then five bad years. His wife’s menopause awoke a demon in her, which, in partnership with her testicle-shredding psychotherapist, killed the relationship stone dead. He was shit on her shoes. While she was on an all-female health retreat out of Mullumbimby, he walked out the front door of their Paddington…