HONEYMOONING

She clawed her nails into the small pores of the wall, dragging them along vertically with her eyes shut. She pursed her lips and squeezed her other fist to hold back the words splattered in red in her mind. She wouldn’t say it. She wouldn’t waste her breath. She could hear a muted scream coming from the bathroom where he had locked himself inside in a flurry of fury. It wasn’t her fault she thought to herself. He had driven her to this. Blood was starting to seep from her cuticles now, slowly dripping towards the curve of her fingernail. Keep those eyes shut. Don’t do it. The room contained what she felt would have exploded otherwise. The curtains were drawn and besides the lamp on the bedside table the room was almost pitch black. She couldn’t sleep otherwise. But since all of this had erupted she hadn’t really been able to sleep anyway. When she would finally drift off she would kick him all night whilst having bad dreams.

She heard the bathroom door click, and a figure of rage emerge and enter the room. Without looking sideways she bent down, picked up a hard cover book lying at the end of the bed. She remembered when he had bought this for her. A first edition she had been searching for for the most part of her early 20s. It was maybe the third date. They had spent the afternoon trawling local second hand books playfully, trying to not reveal too much about themselves to each other. She had wanted him to know she was intellectual, had something more going on inside but didn’t want this to sacrifice her sexiness. She would flick her hair, smile and giggle with everything he said—funny or not. Now, however, all that had been put aside. She didn’t care what he saw, what he thought. She turned around in one swift movement and flung the book towards him, hoping it would catch him right above the eye and knock him dead. She missed.

“What the fuck are you doing! WHAT THE FUCK!” He yelled.
“What the fuck are YOU doing! GET OUT OF MY APARTMENT” She replied.
“Your apartment! Fuck you. You’re the one that had to go and ruin everything”.

She pushed past him and kicked the wall, lifting back a small amount of white paint with her force. She didn’t know where she was going but she wasn’t staying. He didn’t even try and follow her. It was a losing battle. This is when he would probably go and lump himself on the bed, bury his head between the pillows and cry like he hadn’t since he was five years old and grazed his knee in the playground. She always thought he was such a fucking pussy. Guys aren’t meant to be that sensitive. That’s why she cheated. He wasn’t strong enough for her, couldn’t hold her up.

She assimilated into the pedestrian traffic on the street below the apartment block. Her pace quickened until she moved into the fast lane of bodies, overtaking those strolling on the left. As she turned the corner there was the old homeless man that sat on a stool playing the same recorder day after day. He wore the same grey marl trousers and a maroon polo shirt, he protruding stomach hanging out over the waistband. It didn’t make sense that he was so fat. At his feet was a cap filled with two five cent coins and a bottle of passionfruit soft drink. She could never work out whether it was a fresh bottle of drink every day that hadn’t been opened or the same one he never drank. Then again she couldn’t work out much about anything anymore. Today she stopped. He stopped playing his two notes on the plastic recorder and looked up at her. He asked her for some spare change which was the normal routine but today she said she had something else for him. She held out her apartment keys and handed them to him.

“Here, I have this nice place around the corner. I’m going away. The yellow apartments just up there—unit 23. You can stay as long as you like”.

THE THIEF AND HIS MASTER

From a birds eye view Brooklyn is just like any other busy city. People get from A to B, seasons change, people earn a living—but from ground view, people aren’t making a living like everywhere else. Here is a rotting core of an apple constantly expanding in a global world. 2025 is a year where gang violence is exploding to unprecedented levels and the streets are constantly further dulled with an ominous darkness. Trees have been cut down, and trash cans burn on every corner to provide warmth for the hundreds of homeless. Since the wars erupted everything crumbled. The head of the gangs held the city in one hand and slowly squeezed the life out of it, the livelihood of the Brooklyn culture disintegrating into a million grains of sand.

A father is squatting with his son in a makeshift home. The walls are nailed together in rough shards and the light shines through the holes in a million different directions, often shining directly into the eyes of the huddled illegal tenants at the crack of dawn. Their stomachs were so empty the hunger scratched at their stomach lining all through the night. It disrupted their sleep more than the pervasive sirens constant and repetitive. A gun shot in the distance broke the silence of the morning, as the father and son raise their bodies and open up from a contorted position where all limbs are concealed beneath the torso for maximum warmth.

The father limply gets up and kicks the hessian sack to the corner of the empty room. ‘I’m getting you a job today’, he says to the son. ‘I am no longer fit enough to run the Brooklyn race, but you my son are young and ready to take them on’. With this the son rubs his eyes and stretches out his feet, a taint of nerves swilling around his stomach. The father pulls the nailed up door aside and slinks off into the dirty sunrise, a messy smudge of blood pink and the grey smog and waste of the city.

At the one block still perfectly standing, only tattered by the bright graffiti tags and broken windows, the father stops still. He looks up at the centre of his Brooklyn. It seems to be the last pillar of optimism for him and his son. He enters through the side door and begins his ascent to the room on the top floor, far right corner. As he makes his way to room 431 he glances through the open doors that conceal much secrecy.

Once inside he is greeted by a large surly man named Ray. His eyes are almost as dark as his skin, and are sunken so deep into the sockets it is hard to concentrate when speaking to him. The father tells Ray, the master thief of Brooklyn his worries. Ray tells him to bring his son to him. Ray would help him; help him rise out of their shell of poverty that is keeping them prisoner in their own town.

When the father brings the son back to Ray he says he will train the son to be a pick-pocketer—the most nifty of all trades. The father agreed to leave the son in Ray’s care, working for him in organised crime for at least one year. Here the son would work in a sweat shop of thieves. Inside 431 they would sit together, listening to Ray as he paced the derelict warehouse style room, telling them every single step in mugging, breaking and entering, stealing. Assaults for cash were their speciality. It was the only way to survive now. The recession never seemed to end. Everybody was beyond desperate. After this they would trawl the streets with an approach hungry to make Ray proud. Bring him back enough money to make his crooked teeth into a malicious smile, even if they also had blood on their hands.

After only five months the father could barely lift him self up in the morning. Day after day he would stay in the same position for hours on end, staining into the dirty wooden floors an outline of his sprawled body just like police spray the surrounds of a figure when found dead at a crime scene. He looked out the gap in the vent in the wall and saw men, women, children chanting, screaming, brawling. They were headed down to green point. He pulled himself together, flattened down his thinning grey hair and began to follow the riot that was very quickly gaining momentum.

Once the crowd got to a stand still, the father lingered at the back of the crowd in fear of getting hurt. He only began to take in what was going on when he felt a cold hard blade at the front of his throat, prefaced by a strong arm wrapped around his torso that pulled him aside until they were both concealed by the concrete underbelly of the nearby bridge. ‘Take everything you want, I don’t have a thing!’ He exclaimed.

At that moment the father glanced down at the hand of his attacker. A small wilted rose was inked onto the flesh between the thumb and forefinger. It was his son. ‘Son, it is me’. The son gradually loosened his grip, dropped the knife and turned the father around to wrap his arms around him. They embraced one another as large blasts and screaming began to surface from the riot. Immediately the noise they heard was drowned out as their ears rested on one another’s.

The father knew that his son now belonged to Ray. Ray had taught his son a trade and therefore he was required to work for him for at least one year to pay him back. Without a word they ran to the subway on Franklin Avenue, past all the empty armours of buildings, some with their sign writing still perfectly intact. Brooklyn was still there physically, but as a whole town had now become redundant. On the subway they hid at the back, the son pulling a black hood over his head while the father’s heart palpitated at the same rhythm as the carriage pulling away from the station. Just then they slipped beneath the broken town and were sucked towards New York City.

Ray was waiting for them at the next station. He was always one step ahead. As the son spotted him amongst the bustle of people he didn’t even attempt to run the other way. What would he do to his frail father that could not run as fast? Instead he approached Ray with a strong stride, looking down at his black torn shirt and forcing himself not to begin to shake. In his head he replayed every single thing Ray had taught him. The words all swirled together as blood began to rush to his head. Ray closed his fist and the son felt warmth across his face as he opened his eyes and was now on the cement ground. Nobody flinched, they all continued along their business, happy just to be breathing. The son reached into his back pocket as Ray watched with close intent and pulled out a small revolver. He raised it to the shadow lurking above him and pulled his finger towards him. Just like that he was free again. This time he was one ahead.

FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE

Today is just like any other Sunday. Any other Sunday when we aren't away on holidays, or when it isn't Easter or Christmas, even though these occasions still bring certain similarities. The large brick house is perfectly symmetrical and level, nestled on the curve of a private road. Inside the timber shell the rooms sit next to one another almost like a perfect doll house--Mother, Father, Daughters, Grandmother, cat, dog. Today things are going along as normally rehearsed. Only today, rain drops fall from the outside gum leaves and roller coaster down onto the glass surrounding the window seat. On the large royal lounge lies Babushka. Her legs tucked are tucked up underneath her and today she is wearing a blue sweater with black slacks and her normal sheep skin slippers to keep her wrinkled toes warm. She has even combed her hair today and is quietly reading a Russian romance novel, the Danielle Steele of early 20th Century USSR. On the three seater adjacent the cat is curled up in the corner in a position she won't recoil from until at least the afternoon, when she will stretch out and run outside for dinner leaving a trace of tabby fur on the upholstered furniture, a sign she is getting older, a lot like Bubushka.

It's 12 noon. Mum comes around the corner from the kitchen almost on que. Now she asks in broken Russian if Babuska would like some lunch, some tea, some biscuits. "Tak", Babushka replies. This was in the written character dialogue. Babushka takes her seat at the kitchen table, the same table that has small consecutive dents in it from my sisters and I stabbing it with forks on every other night before we each reached ten. Mum is wearing her red tracksuit, the one she washes every sunday night and puts it aside until the next week. It looks as if she has been to the gym, but she hasn't. Her body also looks like she has been to the gym all day every day for her whole life. Her face is gaunt and her arms scrawny. Her hip bones jut out and she is the thinnest woman I have ever seen at 54. Although she now lives a life close to luxury her appearance lets out a secret. It lets out a secret of a previous life of hardship and poverty, one where nothing gave in easily.

Without a word she walks to the kitchen pantry, and plucks out from a selection of gourmet foods a small tin of sardines. The tin looks like something that would be a prized possession of a bower bird. Shiny, silver and blue. However, even a bower bird and his finds were more exotic than this lunch. The wood fire burns in the next room and Mum inhales it's breath to almost calm her fast forward pace. Her fine bleached blonde hair cut into a blunt fringe does not move as she hurries around the bench tops. Just at the right time she switches on the kettle and digs into the bread bin for some rye that has been harbouring in their for a good few weeks amongst our sunflower and poppy seed, sourdough, 9 grain and tip top white for Isabella the youngest. She arranges the selection on the plate plucked out of the cupboard underneath the kettle and places it in front of Babushka without just one more word.

"Moloko? (Milk)".

"Tak".

Outside the green grass stretches for acres. It is almost a romantic setting to describe--horses, stables, a large swimming pool, an outdoor wood fire pizza oven for entertaining, a boat parked for leisurely use. Mum's enthusiasm does not stretch so far though. This routine is weary and is not a part of the week she particularly enjoys. I get the feeling this is a snapshot of her whole early life in Australia. "I would have to do all the translating, all the chores, have all the responsibility...", Mum would tell me behind closed french doors, "...They thought we were weird...wogs". Just after I finish recalling these accounts in my head the hybrid conversation of two languages begins again. Babushka speaks in complete code to me however Mum pits her sentences with words I understand. "Yes Mum, yes Mum, yes Mum", she says. The voice gets gradually louder and louder until the tone becomes uncomfortable. Mum shuffles around her after a few minutes and delicately picks up the plates. Although she is always hurried she is always gentle and her manner almost frail. The plates clank in the sink and she help Babushka back to the warm spot on the lounge.

WHAT CAN YOU SAY IN 6 SENTENCES?

• He parted the wrinkles in his cheeks, examining them closely as if they were deep cracks, deep flaws created by past hurting that was now unforgettable; A constant reminder of the trials and tribulations of a life not quite full as most but definitely trying. 'Why should I buckle on the outside not the inside?' he thinks. It seemed to him as if everything else in his life had aged well besides his own portrait--beautiful hard back books, his red wines in the cellar, the timber kitchen bench. He combed back his slowly greying hair and gulped down a strong feeling of final realisation. His body was entering the first stages of decay--the stage hardest to wear and the hardest to show to others.
  


• Sometimes I think what it would be like if they turned my life into a movie. It would be a blockbuster I think. I have already decided on the opening credits, the beginning montage, the major climax, turning point.Of course, they would probably have to dramatise a few things but my life is just as interesting as any others right? I think they may need to exagerate some things, maybe twist my childhood to be a bit more life changing, or give me a severe advantage/disadvantage in life to make things interesting. The only think I haven't thought about yet is how the movie will end.

• I don't think she knows really what she is like. She inhales the second hand smoke (after quitting last week) from the man walking infront of her, who is slowly dragging away on his cigarette and with each stride blowing it backwards into the trail of pedestrians. Her mind wanders to the tasks of the day and she begins to start to get that stirring feeling in her stomach that normally signals another relapse in questioning what she is really doing here - in this city, in this place. Her friends no longer listen when she speaks. They tire of her constant neurotic goal of higher perfection. "Must walk faster, must hold my shoulders higher, must appear more confident", she thinks to herself.
  


• I've been working on this story for months now, all around the world it has been in a distressed grey notebook, peeling at the corners and beginning to develop character. Everybody always asks me what it is, whether I'm in the park scribbling away on the inside, sitting at a restaurant on my own frantically trying to come up with interesting ideas, at the movies jotting down notes. It's a one of a kind notebook, and a one of a kind story. I'll show it to you when it is finished, I think you will like it. You will get to read about all kinds of things. I'm just about to start writing my favourite part now. I wish I could tell you how it begins, but that would be spoiling it.

WORLDS ON FIRE

It does not know it glitters as the fire sucks on the pine and spits on the surrounding rocks, slowly floating burning specks up into the open night sky. The smoke gently caresses the legs of those surrounding the campfire and whispers a few words, slowly making its way through the gaps in the seated but curled over bodies. It’s not like the city here.

The man seated at the centre is darker than the rest of them. His hair is slicked into a low pony tail and his glasses conceal a sense of wisdom, foreign to most of the present tourists. Within minutes the small crowd knows his father was an oral historian. They also know there is much more to this man that they will ever know.

“I’m an anthropologist,” he begins, “a Native American anthropologist. There aren’t many people who can provide a perspective from within the culture. I guess this way we can meet half way. I am assimilated you see—educated, live amongst you, but I grew up on the reserves and now go back and study my own. As a man, I could be a feminist, but could never have a valid enough view as a woman would…”

At that point the seven surrounding people begin to listen with great intent. It’s as if everything just got so much darker besides the few stars above and his face which lights up in front of the flames. He checks his i-phone for messages before leaping into his next series of interesting facts. He is short and round, a “Mexican-Indian”, he says. At the moment he is studying the migration patters of his own tribe. They are originally from Guatemala. He did so well on his Indian reserve he went on to go to school with Uma Thurman. He hands the listeners glow sticks while poking the fire. He continues with barely a breath in between—about Aztec history, about the landscape, about contemporary issues. Why the cactus is the way it is, the purpose of the spikes, the way its two arms help it to balance. The Romanian restaurant manager in the resort calls him the “Discovery Channel”.

When he was younger, they find out, the Indian used to stay out in the desert night after night with raving yahoos, listening to pounding techno music. Now he runs tours of the Disabled tours. Sebastian, the blind illegal immigrant they take along always says if he gets caught out for crossing the border he will just claim he couldn’t see where he was. Another lady who can’t move from her mouth down, who can’t even chew spends her time finding cures for Anthrax as a viral biologist. Fascinating, they all think.

He moves on to the topic of UFO’s. “Too many drunks in trailer parks, I say. It has been proven that there is a correlation between Corona sales and sightings”. He takes a deep breath, throwing another piece of wood into the camp fire. It seems as if not a single person has yet blinked since he has begun. The Indian begins talking about triple suicides in Ireland. It is quite a smooth transition. The two cowboys from the ranch three miles down the road move closer as the Discovery Channel explains the way in which suicide bombers kill their ‘bodies’ only so that they become immortal. “The only way in which you can completely annihilate yourself is by killing your mind, your body and your spirit. Suicide three times over…”

The campfire watches as the tourists attempt to weave all his stories in to some kind of sense. He knows much more about a modern day world than most ‘Westerners’ do. His perspectives float from black to white to grey. As they sit and ponder in silence the Indian announce much to their dismay, “Goodnight, I’m out”. His glow in the dark T-shirt designs he specialises in are waiting. Besides Native American history nu-rave creations are his passion. He passes around his i-Phone with the latest print he made as the background then leaves the group. The campfire gradually fades, loses its glitter and burns out.