INSECT FARM CHAPTER 1

Insect: • noun
1. A small invertebrate animal with a head, thorax, and abdomen, six legs, two antennae, and usually one or two pairs of wings.
2. A contemptible or unimportant person.

‘Bug boy, bug boy!’ The words swirled through Jack’s head as his lanky limbs extended and paced out of the wrought iron gates of school, clutching his backpack timidly and kicking the dirt with his head bowed. Sometimes he would just imagine he was Indiana Jones, about to head on a journey through the Himalayas charging down raging rivers until he reached the sacred stone, rescuing kidnapped children and discovering secret vast underground temples.

Today though, he was just Jack. The bus ride home, as always, was hell. They trailed the coastline as he peered outside the partly opened window onto paddocks peppered with livestock and old wise trees curling their fingers into contorted positions. Beyond them was merely a horizon of the coast, further than the parted landscape lapping water and cliff faces bordering the reef. Below the surface of the water was another world of beauty and colour. They had often taken field trips through the worn forest tracks, ferns parted, to the reef where they would examine all the different types of coral. The individual acid bright formations had a porous texture, fascinating to most in the way they inhaled and exhaled through the small pinpricks in their skin with gentle gusto. Jack hated science days because it meant he had to wear his swimming shorts, exposing thousands of tiny ginger freckles that covered his slight frame. It was just one more thing for the bigger, older and tougher boys to ridicule him for.

Jack pulled out his stick insect Charlie in its special ventilated carrier and carefully placed it upon his knees. ‘Bug boy, bug boy!’ they yelled as two classmates threw remnants of their lunches until they hit the back of his head and rebounded onto the dirty synthetic floor. Lucky their weapons were never too severe, it was mostly just crusts from vegemite sandwiches and the odd chip packet. The bus continued on, around the winding track as he closed his eyes as their now silent shouts began to drown, muffled beneath the blowing wind from the old sunroof above. When he opened them again he was the last passenger as they pulled up to the rusty letterbox at the top of the kilometre driveway. A metallic emerald beetle flew onto his shoulder, changing colour as the sun hit its hard exterior to a deep blue then plum. He lifted it onto the fence post, brushed off the food scraps and packed Charlie back into his bag.
‘Thanks driver’.

"Something in the insect seems to be alien to the habits, morals, and psychology of this world, as if it had come from some other planet: more monstrous, more energetic, more insensate, more atrocious, more infernal than our own."- Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949)

When Jack reached the end of the dirt driveway there was another tour group huddled around the bottle green shade cloth enclosures out the back of the kitchen. He could hear his father in the middle of the suited men, the ones that often came to talk business. They always attempted to give his father undivided attention but often paced up and down with impatience, careful not to dirty their patent dress shoes while continually pulling palm pilots from their blazer pockets fearing that the city may have collapsed before their return. ‘The Hercules moth is one which is not only native to Australia, but at serious threat of becoming extinct if we cannot continue with our breeding throughout the winter months. And as we have discussed over and over, without sufficient funding our work cannot continue’. Inside the enclosure, they peered up at the huge female moths, hanging aimlessly from the ceiling on their newly vacated cases. Once a year they would follow Jack’s dad around the farm to observe new species—from the flower beetles to water bugs and oversized tree crickets. When he picked up an insect with his large, worn and wise hands a smile would subconsciously appear across his face. As his hair grew greyer and wirier by the day he would always strive to find more and more species on weeklong trips to remote gulf regions, climbing mountains and camping beneath the Southern Cross. Jack wished he could be as strong and brave as his father, descending into narrow gorges with nothing but the heat of the forest above, discovering giant bird eating spiders living in boulders at the feet of towering worn trunks. Jack had found a new obsession with the Scorpions that were held at the very bottom end of the farm through seven gates and walkways. His mother had a borderline obsession with cockroaches and the nine different species they bred. Her hair like his fathers was also growing greyer, the loose straying from the tight plait that hung down to her waist. Jack can’t remember the last time he saw her with her hair long and flowing. ‘They aren’t just a pest’ she would say to Jack. Her excitement was uncontrollable when the giant burrowing cockroaches reached breeding time, hatching hundreds of tiny babies scrambling for food scraps and new life. Their army tank exterior almost the size of an adult hand convinced his mother they were the perfect pets. So perfect she would always keep two in a large glass case next perched on a mahogany table next to the television. They would scatter around for hours, digging trenches in the shallow layer of dirt.

After dinner and a poor attempt at homework Jack would sneak out through his bedroom window, wandering down through part of the 80-acre block to the Scorpion enclosure. On his way he would check up on the blue-banded butterflies. Their silky cocoons had to be kept at optimum temperature for best breeding. Jack would never forget the moment he peered in through the glass observation window to see hundreds of wings emerging from their white silk blankets. For the first time ever their royal blue pattern was covering only half a wing, with the other blood red. He remembered the photos in the local paper with his father and the proud look he had on his face standing inside the butterfly enclosure with each small creature gently flapping its fragile wings whilst perched upon his khaki shirt. Jack was fascinated by the way in which the Scorpion ripped apart its prey with its sharp pincers after stinging it to death slowly with no remorse. At feeding time would spend hours sitting and watching the game of natural torture. Afterwards he would just listen to the harmonious buzz coming from all around him, hundreds of tones humming as one, an ever present drone from feeding time sunrise to sundown. He would often just lie outside beneath the stars, arms and legs spread in angel position smelling the mixture of mulch and eucalyptus and feeling as if he was encapsulated in this other world—a world beyond the classroom of algebra sums and literary analysis. In his mind he was an Indiana protÈgÈ. As he slipped off to sleep Jack thought about drinking the blood of Kali Ma, a mind-control potion putting him into a black sleep, awaking only to find himself in a giant water reservoir, crossing roped bridges clinging to magical stones with fear of them plunging into the fierce canyons below.

ENTOMOPHOBIA:[Insect phobia; includes acarophobia (mites: scabies)and arachnophobia (spiders)].

The Greyhound made its way through empty fields and leafy suburbs until it blurred into the thick of boxed apartments—100 to a floor, until it was slowly swallowed and sucked under by the hungry underbelly of the cross city tunnel. As it emerged, gliding towards the glare of the city lights, Jack slowly opened his eyes, staring out into a bustle unfamiliar to the dirt tracks of Fallsville. The wet warmth of home was still beaded on his forehead and his stomach knotted tighter and tighter as the motion slowed. Nerves swelled up and down crashing against the lining of his stomach with ferocious force. The worn palms and hardened fingertips, only found on the hands of a country boy sweated profusely as he clutched the paperback novel until its cover began to crease. Since school ended he hadn’t finished one book besides The Catcher in the Rye. He could read it over and over reciting opening sentences of each chapter. The day they came to shut the farm down he remembered sitting on the wrap around porch dangling in the canvas hammock with the same book in hand, lost in Holden’s mind, lost in alien New York City. Goose bumps formed under his pale skin and he leaned forward to stretch out the pins and needles in his legs. Blood rushed to his toes and his rib bones protruded from his sides under the three layers of clothing. He tightened his red striped tie around his neck that belonged to his Dad, becoming restless in his seat. He had only ever seen him wearing it once, in a photo upon the mantelpiece—slightly strangling Jack he understood why.

As he stepped out onto the station there was no riotous sounds of scrub hens calling through the flora and insect melody, just the encapsulating hone of sirens and horns, muffled bass beats from the underground clubs and careless chatter between the corporate silhouettes, striding so fast nothing could get in their way.

Jack saw the sea of black workers like the thousands of green ants covering the fallen material in the last storm they saw on the farm. Each scampered over one another to create a moving layer of bodies and legs, not one distinguishable from the next. The two-tone grey of the grid of towering buildings overshadowed the commotion beyond the station. He re-adjusted the handle on his leather suitcase and attempted to make his way through the congregations. A weathered old man with widdled down legs so frail each and every vein was visible like a million tributaries stood against the archway near the taxi rank. Dressed in only maroon shorts and an oversized tweed blazer with holes in each arm, he took one hand off the crutches he was resting on and lit up, blowing the smoke directly into Jacks face. His next breath took the mix of nicotine, stale urine and the unfiltered city grime through his airways and into his lungs.

I'VE watched you now a full half-hour;
Self-poised upon that yellow flower
And, little Butterfly! indeed
I know not if you sleep or feed.
How motionless!--not frozen seas
More motionless! and then
What joy awaits you, when the breeze
Hath found you out among the trees,
And calls you forth again!

‘You’re here for the interview?’ said the girl behind the oversized marble counter.
‘Um, me? Yes…yes I am’ Jack replied.
‘Great well just have a seat and they shouldn’t be too long’.
Jack swallowed hard and looked up and around at the biggest artworks he had ever seen—one for every couple of metres. The largest reminded Jack of the engraved sandstone bordering the reef back home. Two dark black figures danced amongst repetitive brushstrokes. Rather than taking a seat in the single throne like chair that looked like it might have broken if he had sat in it he wandered over to the window and curiously gazed beyond over the harbour. It seemed as if everybody was always going somewhere, doing something. Even the boats darting one another, saluting the bridge as they made their way full steam ahead seemed to be on a tight schedule. Passengers were getting on, getting off, getting on, getting off. Tourists snapping. Tour guides talking.
‘You nervous?’
‘Yeah, kinda, never really done this before’. Jack was now more nervous of her than anything. Her loosely fitted black blouse gaped at the cavity in her chest where you could see the bones lining her breastplate. Since he had arrived nobody had spoken to him unless his wallet was open.
Now waiting with not much to say he couldn’t stop looking at the tiny beauty spot above her lip and dirty blonde hair, slightly too messy for such a sleek room. Without acknowledging him again she smirked to herself and shook her head, almost like a giggly schoolgirl with hidden secrets. The phone rang and she politely muttered a few words through the line.
‘Jack, he’s ready’.