Summer2019

My lungs are one deep breath away from bursting, my legs are aching and sweat shoots off me like a hose. I’ve been on the run for nearly an hour now. This bush provides me with my first opportunity to replenish from the penetrating sun and pure exhaustion. Who knew a bush could actually grow in a town just out of Idaho? I don’t know why I live here, but it’s not like I really have a choice seeing as I’ve been left to fend for myself since the age of thirteen.

The piercing police sirens draw closer. They sound the same as last time. And the time before that. And the time before that. Chasing me down for no reason other than the fact that my skin is slightly darker than theirs. They want me for ‘assault’ just like they want every other non-white citizen in this stupid town for crimes they didn’t commit. To waste our time. To get us off the streets. To hurt us.

Five minutes pass. I pop my head out of the bush and then start my escape again. I sprint down Delta Avenue passing all the frail houses. A few people take the time out of their day to express their opinion towards people of my descent.

“Get out of my neighbourhood ya dirty kid!” a red-neck covered in aggressive tattoos yells.

I don’t look back. I guess I’m used to it now. I close in on the intersection like a greyhound closes in on the finish line. The traffic lights turn green and I see a police car swing around the corner. As soon as he sees me, his eyes light up. I know I am finished. He probably doesn’t even know who I am but a black guy running the streets will set off alarm bells for any white person in this sick town.

“Put ya hands where I can see them!” the policeman screams.

I do what I am told but this never really helps. He grabs me by the neck and shoves me against the rusty bonnet of his run-down Ford covered in red and blue. He then slides handcuffs on me so tight that my hands become numb and he throws me in the back of his car like a football.

At the police station, I am chucked into a holding cell. Two officers make their way over for what they call ‘interrogation’. Myself and many others know this is not the case. Torture is probably a more accurate description.

“Name?” one demands.

“Dwayne Levarok,” I reply.

“Age?”

“Nineteen.”

“Ahhh, you again. What has the loser done this time?” the other asks sarcastically.

“Just like always I’ve done nothing you pig!” I yell in his face, accidentally spitting on him. I realise I’ve just made this whole situation a whole lot worse.

“You just don’t learn, do you?”

The larger, more muscular officer steps into the cell holding his baton. He cracks his knuckles and smiles at me. It’s the evilest smile one could ever imagine. His gold tooth reflects the dimming light hanging from the ceiling, standing out from the rest of the un-brushed, charcoal looking ones. He grabs me by the throat and slams me up against the wall, knocking all the wind out of me. I feel his metallic baton smash me straight in the ribs, cracking a few in the process. I fall to the ground struggling to suck in any air.

“What do you want from me?” I cry out.

“To confess that you punched that guy earlier today,” the officer from outside the cage replies calmly as if this whole process is the right thing to do.

“But I didn’t do it!”

“Continue,” he says calmly.

Without any hesitation, the officer standing over me swings his right boot, hitting me square in the nose. He then picks me up and slams me back down, hitting my head even harder.

I slowly open my eyes, only to see a pool of blood sitting there in front of me. I look up, lightheaded and not knowing where I am.

“Glad to have you back. Now let’s get back to business.” The officer’s croaky, ugly voice rings in my head. I remember where I am now.

“So, are you ready to confess yet?”

“I didn’t do it! Just because I was in the area at the same time as someone who got hit doesn’t mean I did it!”

“Ok, so let’s say on the rare chance you didn’t do it, who did?”

“All I saw was a guy wearing a ripped singlet hit another man in the face and then run away. I then went over to help the man and when the police rocked up, they accused me of the assault, so I ran,” I blurt out.

“I don’t know who you think we are, but I’ve heard enough,” the larger officer replies, struggling to hold back laughter.

I’m so infuriated. I’m helpless just like every other minority group in this disgusting town and there is nothing I can do about it. These officers couldn’t care less what happens to me. They just want one less black man on the streets – and probably also to finish their shift so they can go to the pub.

“You know the way here. Guilty until proven innocent – and a black kid is always guilty.”

Dust spits up, blinding the eyes of the follower, a communion of automobiles hurtling across desolate backcountry. On the right, a bleeding carcass clings desperately to the bitumen, one casualty in the expansion of our town. The sky is beginning to glaze over with a drunken rosy hue, and Mum looks restless in her worry seat, sunken eyes slipping down her smooth bronzed skin. She rocks erratically, stiff shoulders falling away into a leathery seat. The highway beckoning, a thin cream line stretching endlessly into some purgatory place that we would not ever reach. Not before reality pulled the car back against the verge: a gas station, toilet break, flickering neon signage that beamed stubbornly through laminated safety glass.

Dad sits in the serious seat, his gaze unmoving from our trusting lane. Small harsh shrubs progress to gargantuan pale oaks, and the road does not falter, it dislocates the natural world, bringing the primitive hum of our bland aluminum machines. My naive state begins to fall away as the journey continues, the last preserved moments of an unreachable past, some awareness I can never return to.

We shoot across a sleeping shire and bright lanterns begin to pull me in, molding the saddest corners of my soul. The memory becomes washier, cycling in and out of fiction. Strange shapes force their way into my perspective, dark, acerbic parts of a repressed world. The city seems angrier now; back then it was a hopeful, enveloping place. The buildings stack with essence, prudish homes bloom on uniform squared blocks. As our car rolls into that parasitic metropolis Dad changes, he is fluid, relaxing upon the smooth leather upholstery. Mum’s face has changed too, her eyes somewhat forward, a grimace has left with all that worry.

We round a corner, rejecting the once eternal line, and pull up toward a grand, colonial-era residence, a preservation of the old world that this place strives to embody. As we move up the drive, my life is split through the centre, polished iron gates close behind and forever snatch away any invitation of a childhood. My parents’ faces together shone, their eyes snap with clear intention, heads held by the opulent beast. And I am suddenly overlooked; once the loved and celebrated child, and now a good, to be bargained for, improved, and banked upon. An investment that had been made in a life, from here I am to be commodified.

They turn me over to that monstrosity, the institution devoted to a whole six years. Inside a man will greet me with an open palm and a soft shake, beckoning my parents to follow him in a trivial dance. The performance, a marketing tool, optimised to win their support. I am not considered. The world begins to shrink, as I patrol the school halls. Any wild fury pulls back into a strict model. Hair sliced, socks raised, shoes glazed in polish, face shaved. My life now fully accounted for, times allotted, quotas provided. In these halls, a new life begins, devoid of once abundant youthful energy.

My parents look lustfully toward my eviction now, they need it, for me to be commodified. To curb that youthful exuberance and forge an iron will, driving me toward perverted goals of wealth and security. In the future is an accommodating job, a swelling, repugnant house, and a set of children for me to peddle in my middle age. The cycle continuing with each new generation, a wealth generating machine, that would work to preserve our family name well past the degradation of that eternal country road.

That day we return to the car for one last time, possessions are handed over, a final farewell. My father looks me dead in the eyes, his legs swaying on usually sound footing. He looks ashen, a shell, his whole world regressing into one resisted memory. My father has felt his childhood die before, and now he watches mine die before him. His upper lip seems to quiver for a moment, then it is gone. That steely grimace of a smile returns, and he pats my shoulder. I am flung into the abyss, landing in a sea of bourgeois trickery, the life drained forever from my smile.

Love is not a sanguine feeling nor a guileless state of being; it is perturbed and perverse in its corruption of the sane mind. I once found myself in a relationship; I once too found myself tasting that lingering lemon. Not entirely sour, but surely not sweet.

We were just two kids, young and sweet, only seventeen. Just as any high school relationship ought to begin, we met at a gathering of sorts. She was a friend of a friend at a school I’d never heard of. Now, to say we got together out of any reason other than opportunity, would be a lie. In truth, our relationship stemmed from the fact that we could. Notions of love or that ever elusive spark; merely misconceptions propagated by that nostalgic veneer that taints all but the rawest of memories.

But negating that blissful guise with hard retrospect I am left with that taste. That lingering lemon. Not entirely sour, but surely not sweet. The cataclysm of love, that sweet lie, leaves a fireshadow. An atomic shadow of two tongues permanently developed on the concrete.

It all began rather benignly with some casual texting about our interests. My phone buzzed,

“Have you seen the new Marvel movie?? …,”

“Yeah of course. I really liked…”

“Saaammmeee!! What about…”

“Same.”

Coulomb was right; if opposites attract then what of kindred souls? Well.

It was naïve to think we could defy the laws of the universe but in our haven of nonage we were impervious to forethought. Irrespective of that inescapable fate, I observed an evolution. By no means would I, or anyone else, associate myself with terms like flirting. Stressed, depressed and emotionally repressed would be a more apt description. Yet I observed, still, a shift from the platonic to the romantic through our digital romance. The modern-era quasi-courting stretched on for two weeks until the egging-on of my mates was bested by more shrewd or cognizant reservations.

And so it was that weekend that we met. The Town, home to a bustling hive that served no queen but obeyed the graffiti. They were slaves to the gluten-free cafés with no coeliacs in sight. Supposedly that disease graced Vogue’s cover this year.

She did however look subtly attractive. She wore a messy bun, wisps of her raven hair slipped out and framed her porcelain face. Her pale green eyes seemed apathetic yet strangely inviting. A light grey hoodie and black jeans completed the idyllic image.

Soft music played by man-buns and guy-liners wafted through the side streets. And the twanging chords of the waves that lapped at the shore echoed in our salty throats. Again that cognitive bias, the tendency to award a semblance of adulterated bliss, sullies this memory.

In lack of a more sensitive or articulate expression, the date went well. The sun drew dangerously low over the horizon as we perched ourselves atop the rocks that constituted the groyne. We glanced at each other tentatively in the awkward silences, and under the burnt orange shroud of dusk we locked lips. This was not my first kiss, nor hers. And in that synthesis of beings that ever-elusive spark of love was eerily absent, but at least I possessed a relationship status: taken.

The seven days that followed could only be described as mechanical; not forced but routine. In the absence of that star-dust fuel the machine ticked over and over with good-mornings and goodnights. School cleaved the days into the AM and the PM; iPhones the conduit for delusions of intimacy. The next date happened precisely seven days and zero hours after the first, an unnatural accuracy by any standard.

We met in the city, a concrete jungle sporadically dotted with trees to placate the Greens. A seething mass of humanity poured over and enveloped the cement, generating a schism of bitumen spotted with speed-humps. Again, this second meeting went well. She and I meandered through the streets with no particular objective nor lust to be there. As all good dates conclude, there was a kiss. Not just one. But quantifiable, however, was the absence of a spark. So there we were mechanically making out obscured by a bus stop, two bodies, two mouths, two tongues.

The third date went very much like the previous two. As did the fourth. However, on the fifth there was an inescapable chill that formed a slick on the stone footpath. To complete the cyclical narrative that life seems to follow, we met at The Town. The gluten-free cafés that dotted the streets were abandoned. Some shopfronts erected signs,

“Closing down. Thanks for everything nothing.”

A thick haze was suspended in the air and instead of soft music there was silence. The thick silence, occasionally punctured by traffic, followed us. The ephemeral wind of teenage romance swirled at our feet. After some time of aimless wandering we found ourselves nested upon a bench under a burnt-orange street light, an artificial sunset. She turned to me, those apathetic green eyes said it all. “There’s someone else,” those eyes screamed. “What we have is real, unlike this.”

Through the beautiful yet harrowing lens of retrospect I suppose I saw it coming. I cannot quite recall what was said, only that it was rather civilised. After all was said and done, she walked away. That raven hair silhouette slipped away into the haze.

We were never in love, but this fact does nothing to lessen the blow. I cannot say I was betrayed, yet I taste the blood from my tongue. We kissed solely in pursuit of that spark, that cataclysm. Yet still the machine had ground to a halt, and in the absence of good-mornings and goodnights there is that atomic shadow.

And so, I am left with that copper aftertaste. That lingering lemon, not entirely sour but surely not sweet.

And in that instant, when the relentless Jeep finally halted, I took a breath. Days of driving deep into the savannas of South Africa telescoped into that one point in time. The scarcity of the surroundings disoriented me, and I felt the dry wind abrade my sunburnt flesh like a barrage of heated whispers. My pale skin was a raw pastry baking in the blistering African oven. The raging sun glared at the off-white Jeep which had upturned the path with a plume of muddying beige. The endless expansion of land was devoid of humanity, yet, strewn pockets of thirsty-trees stood jadedly in the dry sea. The land was neglected. I suppose that’s why Archie sought this place.

As I grabbed the pre-loaded Remington shotgun from the backseat, along with the med-kit and the bottles of water, Archie began again.

“Ey, listen!” his sturdy foreign accent boomed like a tidal wave, consuming the tired rustles of the yellowed grass around us. “Don’t forget why we’re here.”

“Of course not.”

“The bateleur is one of the rarest birds to roam these lands,” he swallowed, “and has done so for hundreds of years. If I showcased one in my gallery, why, I could attract artistic attention from around the world!” His green eyes shimmered like shards of broken glass.

Archie was known for his amazing shots. People marvelled at his artwork because of the way they ‘seemed to come alive’. He believed he was immortalising these precious creatures by taking the perfect shot and amplifying their iconic features to produce images of majestic stillness and dense colour. They were tokens, occasionally sold for five hundred American dollars.

“Let’s go, Bill.”

I followed him as he picked up his gear.

“It’s time to find us a bateleur.”

After trekking through the savanna for about thirty minutes, I began to have doubts about this expedition. Doubts about finding the bateleur. Doubts about this land. I ignored Archie’s anecdotal ‘photography days’ and his useless zoology degree because, frankly, it was all fabricated truth, just like his art. His voice continued to whirr like an automatic engine and my mind wandered, focusing on every step I took. The dying grass crunched under my steel-capped boots and cried louder and louder as we persisted through this sad terrain. The scattered thirsty-trees looked longingly at the bottles of water clinging to my backpack. I felt like a god in this barren land.

“The trick to a great shot is to only see the creature through the lens. Overlook the environment around you and concentrate on your subject.”

“Okay,” I replied with obvious boredom.

“Bill, this is important to me. Please. You have to respect this place. I’ve captured some of my best work in these plains. This place made me see who I was as an artist and as a person.”

“Okay. I’m sorry Archie.”

“That’s-” Archie stopped abruptly.

The silence roared.

Archie turned instinctively and froze, stunned like one of the creatures in his gallery.

I rotated stiffly until, I too, gawked at the dark beast wedged on our forged road of flattened earth. Heart hammering, I gripped my shotgun, like the sentry I was, and waved the long barrel out in front of me.

“Bill,” a cold whisper kissed my left ear, sending a current of icy shivers through my pale body. “Bill. That-,” Archie inhaled, “-is an endangered black rhinoceros.”

The beast was ominously calm, watching us idly. Its thick, black hide was charred from the African heat with generations of scars decorating its muscular torso. The beast pulsated a dark energy of immense fear, as if its solidarity in the wasteland taunted its natural grandeur.

“Just look at those,” Archie grinned, his dazzling emerald eyes a camera that zoomed in on the beast’s enormous, grey horns.

He always appreciated strength in nature. Even I could appreciate the sheer aggression radiating off those piercing horns. The dark beast remained calm and its miserable eyes spoke pain. Archie started to shuffle and the surrounding thirsty-trees cowered at the mounting hostility of the one-sided duel.

“This is a once in a lifetime shot, Billy,” he whispered eagerly as he rummaged through his gear, looking for his lens.

My pounding heart persisted and the shotgun got heavier.

“What if it charges us? Do I… shoot it?”

“Yes.”

“With the shotgun?”

“Yes, with the shotgun.”

“But, what about the rhino’s-”

I was interrupted with the loud click of his lens being secured in the mechanism. Archie crouched with one knee forward and framed the dark beast in his red view. He had one eye closed. I could hear his slow breaths getting swept away by the dry wind. The ground shuddered as the beast began to shift, accepting its position in the shot.

The sound was like nothing I had ever heard. Archie had taken the perfect shot. Unwarranted. My eyes were blurry, and I was dazed. I couldn’t feel the wind. I couldn’t feel the sun. Twenty metres in front of me, a heap of smoky leather lay static, oozing an age of liquid life onto the dead ground. I heard Archie hacking at the historical beast’s remains like a butcher, not an artist. All I could focus on were the elaborate scars that pervaded the beast’s body. Years of adversity in this dying terrain ended with a perfect shot to the throat. My mouth was salty, yet, I produced words.

“Archie? Where’s the bateleur?”

Archie’s face contorted as he wrenched the smooth horn from the beast’s head and gripped it like a trophy, boasting it to the thirsty-trees.

Blood trickled down his arms. His eyes sparkled.

The bateleur had been spared.

That’s when I thought of his gallery. His artwork. His vast collection of native and foreign animals, captured and exhibited. Stuffed with foreign ingredients to appease their natural vigour. Only to be remembered with a fixed value.

Peyton bounced into the living room, all abuzz with excitement for the day to come. His mother smiled, peering at him over the corner of her newspaper as she enjoyed the warm mid-morning breeze from her place by the window. She pretended not to notice as he fetched himself a chair and haphazardly clambered up toward the highest shelf in pursuit of the biscuit tin. His fingertips found what they were looking for and he let loose a gleeful squeak. He pried open the lid and crumbled a fistful of chocolate chips into the back pocket of his shorts, before jumping off the chair and spinning to face his mother, who tried her best to conceal a smirk at his antics.

“So, which one shall it be?” she chimed, discarding her newspaper to display an assortment of small, thin cloths to her wide-eyed son. “The green one… Reddy… Mr. Blue?” she continued, looking to the cloth then back at the boy’s cheeky smirk.

“How about yellow?” She quickly pulled another from the cupboard.

“No, none of those,” amiably returned Peyton, giggling. Mother seemed to like his response.

“Ooh I know!” From her sleeve she whisked a purple checkered rayon. Peyton noticed her discomfort. “This one?”

“Please” he replied, enamoured with the fabric before him.

***

Peyton fell asleep sometime last week and his mother’s eyes, a pulsing red, were harrowing. They had been sobbing. The boy, fresh in the cheek and with a smile that exposed his few oddly spaced teeth, had always loved his family. However, as he grew older the times when mother would laugh and take pictures or when father would give him shoulder rides, began to fade. He was almost eight. Throughout the summer months he had made it a habit to vanish for several hours just before dusk. It was about this time last week that Mother found out where he was going. Each afternoon, around 4:00pm, he would wrap his crackers in the same old cloth, with lilac checkers that spread across the front, then stuff them into the back of his shorts. This is where they stayed until just past the old gate, a moderate distance from the house, where his warm hands would carefully unravel the package. He would always crumble a few in the process but he didn’t mind. He had longed for this moment all day. All that mattered was that he was there and that the sun was hugging the ground good evening.

At dusk, three nights earlier, Peyton’s routine was interrupted by clouds that caused something to rise in his throat. He looked up and paused. His mother watched on from a wooden window back at home. He didn’t know this of course, and even if he did, nothing would’ve changed, as for him, she was always bound by her chair. Undisturbed by the peculiar warm winds, Peyton resumed. His feet were bare, with little white boots beside him. He turned his neck left, sucking in a breath, then right. He disappeared behind a thick-waisted eucalypt. Then a flash: cinders, leather, scabs.

Peyton’s skin had turned to gravel, and the once adorable face was boiled down into a broth, faintly resembling a shape, with obscuring lumps in it. Elongated red patches littered the sides of his neck and scars plumed around his back. His arms and legs flailed as his head gave way to the wind. Limp and heavy. His granite skin scabbed and tore while the wind whisked him through the fields. He tumbled helplessly, through his shoes and over the small parcel of biscuits. They were only half eaten. Just after it had happened his body was like a shriveled fruit. Silent, unpalatable. A crusty black husk with three oddly spaced pearls.

***

Peyton was particularly lethargic that evening and he had decided to rest his head on a small bundle of wheat that he’d been tossing into the wind. His eyeline was flat and low and before he knew it, he had dozed into a deep sleep only known to children. Soon, he was cloaked in a blanket of wind, silent and still. Pitter-patters lightly tapped Peyton, pushing him deeper. He had forgotten about the clouds… three sharp, thumping cracks, one after the other, fractured Peyton’s rest and he whipped his neck to see crackling fiery hands that gripped the eucalypt’s waist. Momentary gusts of wind ripped the breath from Peyton’s mouth and in an instant a rough branch tore from a height, pinning Peyton’s legs in an unforgiving thump. Peyton, struggling to breathe, frantically scampered. His knees and elbows were muddied and scratched and the branch tightened its grip as the winds galed. His throat shallow, Peyton frantically shuffled, head down, silent. He could no longer feel his feet. He struggled and shifted to see his lilac cloth consumed by the holocaust.

Mother had been tidying Peyton’s toys. She picked up his blue linen shirt, holding it to the light of the window. Through the thin fabric, she saw the white flash of lightning, the tree ablaze. Her white dress tightened on her chest and her heart wrenched. Immediately, she rolled down the ramp, her fingers snagging in her chair. Mother emerged from the front door. The whipping grass stained her dress and slowed her chair.

By now, the eucalypt was in full blaze, branches fell erratically as mother clenched her fists tight. Nails drew blood and through watered vision, she began to pray. She broke down. A hairless black husk with its arms and legs trembling and contorted, had begun to gasp with its eyes wide open. In an instant, Mother’s world was silent and an icy breeze appeared to overpower the brooding contempt of the field. With her eyes puffy, chest bursting, skin sweating and head down, she tried not to look. She held her hand over her eyes for a moment and through spread fingers saw the cindered remains of her boy. Samantha was still bent over in a nauseous curl. The flames held her back, broiling her own body, as she sat there, helpless, demented by the sight of her boy out of reach. She could feel the coarseness of his husk. She could hear the cindering of his heart. Peyton’s limbs, face and head were loose. Samantha didn’t notice the whistle of his wheeze. She was horrified, swaying directionless.

Mother rolled forward out of her smoldering chair and lay beside the flame about her boy. Sweat drowned her body. With her right arm, she reached over to Peyton’s ankle. It was delicate. She tightly clutched Peyton’s pale blue shirt. It, with its softness and fibre, and him with his gravel and ash.

My eyes flashed open as the alarm sounded across the loud speaker. At 6:00am each morning we were all required to wake in unison. Still to this day, I am not quite sure of the purpose; after all breakfast was only ever served at 7. Each morning I was greeted in much the same way, by the pale grey cement walls which enclosed me. The walls had become hardened over time, and as I brushed my hand over the surface, brittle cement gently crumbled down the side of my bed. As much as I hated these walls, there was a certain sense of security and familiarity to them. After all, twenty years spent living in a prison cell is likely to do that to you.

“Chalmers!” I heard my name called as I turned to face the barred door.

Wendell, the prison officer in charge of my block, was standing there patiently. His face had hardened over time, and his eyes drooped into his face. However, his apparent weakness was matched with a set of mammoth biceps which would rival even Terry’s from two cells down.

“You’ve got a meeting with the manager. Not sure what for. Follow me.” I nodded obediently as his key clicked into the door. He flung the door open as he guided me toward the prison manager’s office.

The black leather chair was something unique to me. I sat carefully at the desk as my eyes began to wander around the room. Laptops, phones and even the books looked far different to what I had recalled. It was frightening.

The manager turned to me and through her glasses looked me directly in the eyes. “Based on your twenty-year good behaviour record, we have decided to let you go.”

My eyes bulged as it hit me. I was finally free. My feelings froze me as my heart began to race. Fear, excitement and nerves all pulsated through my body as I shook her hand and headed back to my cell one last time.

I sat on the squeaking bed where I had rested my head every night for the past twenty years. I looked up at the walls that surrounded me. The walls that had once halted my dreams now seemed like the walls that I would miss. I was scared of what life on the outside was like. Fearing the unknown made my stomach turn and churn. The musty scent which followed my every step. The mechanical routine which I had become so accustomed to. These were the simple things that made it feel like home. I stood up and placed my belongings carefully into the case they had provided me. I didn’t have much, but it was the meaning that was important. I packed my Bible, clean clothes and razors carefully into the case. I closed the case and took one last look around my home. Some people wonder how you can even call a prison cell a home; after all it only has a bed, desk and four walls. However, it is not what a house is, rather how it makes you feel that makes it a home.

As I stepped out of the prison gates for the first time, I placed my feet onto the grassy field. Looking out into the distance I could see winding highways and industrialised cities. As much as I had yearned for freedom on the inside, it was no longer what I craved. Most would see hope and opportunity, but now all I wanted was my grey cement walls. I didn’t want to leave my home.

I wake up in the morning to the consistent beeping of the alarm, 7.30am, wondering if this pristine Saturday morning will be any different from the last. After a quick shower and rubbing of Cancer Council SPF 50+ Ultra Sun on to the face (at the request from Mum, even though I know I will come back home looking red raw in the arvo), I heave the deteriorated, second-hand, approximately 8.75kg cricket kit into the back of the Volvo.

Arriving at the ground, I really don’t feel any other emotion quite like it. Excitement at the thought of making a good score or taking a few wickets, finally contributing to the team. Annoyance at the fact that I have somehow been roped in by my mates to play another season of this sport and give up my Saturday mornings, which could very well be spent sleeping. And finally, butterflies. Ah yes, the butterflies. I really can’t put into words these horrible things. They engulf your whole body, tremble inside your stomach, and quite literally manage to prevent your peak performance as a player. As I attempt to disregard these devilish emotions, I walk out to the middle of the ground to inspect the pitch. However, in reality, I’ve no clue as to what I’m inspecting and I’m really just out there to make the opposition feel somewhat intimidated. The team is up and about and feeling like it’s their day with the ball. We all eagerly wait as we watch from afar as the captain flips the coin and calls heads. Tails. There it is, first loss of the day. After a few minutes of sulking and swearing from a couple of the lads, the opening five strapped the pads on and indulged in some throw-downs. Before we knew it, the first ball was being bowled, with our opening batsmen Damo slashing at a wide one, narrowly missing the edge of the blade. The first weights are off the shoulders, as we had already improved on our start from last week. However, that was cut short, as the fourth delivery saw Damo look to ‘strategically’ clear the infield but only managed to have his stumps rattled.

Wickets began to drop like flies, as our sixth batsmen, Tibbsy, decided a ramp shot would help our current situation, only to be met by a fierce bouncer that kissed him flush on the lid. After an excessive and overexaggerated ‘dying-like’ performance from the wounded batsman, he was deemed retired hurt, and dragged off the ground. It was now my time to shine. I trudged down the worn-out path and made my way to the boundary of the field, where I stopped and took a deep breath. I thought to myself, surely, after all this time wasted playing this game, I could finally make a half-decent score. The scene was set. I reached the middle of the ground only to be bombarded with an array of sledges.

“Hey mate. There’s a bit of crap on the end of your bat,” yelled an opposing fielder.

I lift my bat up and inspect the bottom, only to find it looking clean and trim.

“Nah mate, the other end.”

It takes me a few seconds to realise he’s speaking about me.

Anyhow, I didn’t let these words get to me. I asked the umpire for middle and took my guard. Looking up, I scanned around the field; mid-on, mid-off, short and normal cover, point, gulley, slip, fine-leg, deep-square and a catching, rather chirpy, mid-wicket. It was time for me to show the team what I was really capable of. I’d been creaming them in the nets all week and was not in the mood to be defeated and rejected by this sport yet again.

I tapped my bat three times on the ground, then lifted my gaze to watch the incoming bowler steam in, anticipating my options. This was it. The lanky bowler reached his mark and sent down a slight inswinger, hitting the deck just short of the length, seam up. My head and body moved in sync towards the pitch of the ball, as I lined up a glorious looking, textbook cover drive. While savouring the moment, I realised a reasonably large gap between bat and pad, and to my demise, saw the red cherry sail through this opening and rip my middle stump out of the ground.

The bowler jumped in glee as he sprinted past me, looking at me like as if he was a dog with rabies: aggressively energised and frothing from the mouth. There it was. Once again, I had failed miserably at the hands of this painful sport. It had chewed me up and spat me back out, just like every other season. As the day panned out, we ended up making a solid 34 runs, with the opposing team going in and chasing it down in 2.4 overs, all finished by 11.21am.

I finally make it home and trudge sorely to my unmade bed. The body goes limp as I fall in a heap onto the stiff mattress. I gaze at the ceiling, feeling dehydrated and dizzy as my face has ever so clearly been kissed by the loving rays of the sun. I begin to reflect on my time playing this horrible sport. There are so many unpleasant experiences within this game, honestly. Not making above eight runs for the season, or being hit for five sixes in an over. A teammate dropping a catch off your bowling. Standing in the field for sixty overs in forty-degree heat, or being fired by the umpire at a ball that was so clearly going down leg. I continue to question why on earth I play this sport, then it hits me. No matter how cruel or unfortunate these experiences are, at the end of the day, it’s what makes this sport so great. They’re the reason I keep signing up every year and will continue to do so for the years to come, as the true love I get from playing, well – that can never be replaced.

To entertain a thought of respite was to invite death itself, and there was plenty of death here. Even now as I walk upon the unmarked graves of comrades and enemies, I fail to forget the suffering inflicted upon this plain. The Reds came over the lakes with all the mechanical might of their empire, like dogs they obeyed their Red Emperor out of a horrid mix of soul shaking fear and robotic devotion.

We slaughtered them like pigs.

My father used to tell me about the heroism of the White Guards and how they defeated the Reds in the war. “Armo, soon their duty will fall to you. And you must obey their call.”

I did. Like so many others I packed my things and went off to fight on the maroon-stained isthmus during the last days of the 1930s. The Red Empire had come onto our homeland and expected Mannerheim and Kallio to put up no resistance, but the spirit of the winter war would falter in our people. This spirit, however, could not hold the Reds at bay. Many of us were rushed through our training and transported all along our breached borders.

Once we were at the front, I learned to stop making friends very quickly. Most of the comrades that I went through training with were either shot, blown to pieces or set alight by the Red Menace. Their dancing funeral pyres would glow white and yellow against what would be their icy graves. No one gave a thought to how the Reds felt; the extremes of their plight meant little to us. They had come to die on our land. And die they would.

When we met them in the forests, their young, dominated minds had not the capacity for the full comprehension of their demise. Many would simply scream “Nyet, Nyet!” when we came upon them. Most of our “battles” were short and sweet affairs. We would move silently on our skis, remove the head and hind vehicles, so they had no escape, and proceed to pick off the desperate ones attempting to fight back. We would use their own alcohol against them. Their burning corpses dancing the white and yellow along ours, until all skin and flesh had transmuted into its final black macabre.

Some days we were tasked to patrol the dense forests in search of their brown silhouettes in the snow-white woods. Our team of six strong came upon a lake of pure blood. Mechanical extremities frozen in place upon the half solid water. The craters detailed their own artillery had torn them limb from limb. Their protruding, outstretched hands still grasped unsuccessfully towards the darkening sky. Many allies can recall the horror of that place; the almost constant downpour of iron and lead during the early days of our invasion tore the serenity of it from its heavenly standing to a place suitable for Hela’s own dwelling.

We all died that day. Casualties of our own war. All six of us returned from the lake uncaring, irrelevant, invalid. The bias of a bullet extended to no man; young and old in their thousands had been sacrificed in droves for the smallest of gains. All to change the lines on a map in some medal-laden hypocrite’s countryside retreat. I recall lying in my cot that night. The air cold, froze the blood in even the strongest man’s heart. Many lay crying or staring blankly in agony. I pondered a simple, but entirely unanswerable question. Why?

Why could I not remove the feeling that the mechanical beings that we came against were men just like us?

Why had the spark that gave them movement been so cruelly removed?

And why was it our task to remove it?

If one did not have the capacity to place these questions at the back of his thoughts, they were sure to surround and tear his mind to pieces.

I attempted in vain to keep my sanity within my grasp. Through each passing day, the air became colder and home a more distant memory. The invader’s strategy had changed. They now halted their grandiose attack on our homeland and opted for a direct move on the capital. We were tasked to stop the advance at all costs. Our first nights on the new front were an art work of entrails, blood, frostbite and snow. The fine line between us and them was marked by the colours of these afflictions.

Our heroic endeavours to keep their hostile armies at bay proved increasingly fruitless as the months of war dragged on. At every skirmish more of us perished. Their blackened fingers gripped our homeland and threatened to tear away everything we had died for. They again came over our lakes in hordes; their determination manifested itself in ever adventurous attacks on our positions. The roads we had slaved away building became the tools of our destruction. We could no longer lure them into the trees where they could be easily dismantled. The mechanical beasts paraded their fire and fury without hindrance. The reprisals for our stout resistance on the innocent peoples acted to strengthen our resolve to fight. However, the commanders were forced to face us to tell of our loss of face and dignity. They always failed to mention the lands we were forced to relinquish for the security of an entire empire.

After their pyrrhic victory, our nights turned to ungodly darkness. Our stars turned black. The mood of our people shifted from the vigour of the invaded to the terror of the oppressed. However, our defeat came at the highest of costs for our adversary. We had inflicted casualties so high that the people of their “motherland” saw our war as an embarrassing foot-note. So, as I continue to walk through our unmarked graveyards, the shadows of friend and enemy alike still purvey the deep annals of my mind. Never fleeing. Eternally undying.

The dense air waved toward me from the hills crest. What were once birds, now Rad-Birds, chattered amongst each other in the dead of the tree tops. The Rad-storm had only just past, green residue still lingering on my boots. The factory due north appeared over the hill as I neared the crest. The sun was beginning to set in Appalachia, and the danger that lives in this post-nuclear world will be spat out for the night, hunting all.

It has been 144 hours and 16 minutes 0 seconds since I have set foot into the post-apocalyptic Appalachia. I barely recognise it. It’s as if a growl had vomited all over the land and released all hell on Earth. I see the damage it has done, animals ten times as big as they normally are, little to no living vegetation, no blue sky – only green, with a rolling grey pack of clouds once or twice a day. I still remember the day the bombs fell.

14^th November, 2154 – 10.30am.

“Good morning, boss,” I called my favourite subordinate. I looked back and greeted Dale with a big warm hug. “Congratulations on becoming a dad – now the first few years are going to hurt a little…” He looked at me puzzled… and then we burst into hysterical laughter.

Dale beamed at me. “Nah Jim I’m really excited… like REALLY excited. Maria has started buying little factory worker outfits for the little one, one if it’s a girl and one if it’s a boy.”

“Let’s go grab a donut and coffee to celebrate, what do you say?” I questioned rhetorically – because I already knew the answer to that question.

I ran a motoring factory due north over the crest of the hill in Appalachia, a perfect, peaceful town in West Virginia. I loved my job, and so did all my employees. We worked tirelessly from 10am to 7pm and grabbed a beer and a pretzel after work at the factory every evening. Everyone loved it there. The facilities were open, tall and inviting, as was the exterior of the building, tall, wide, open with a tinge of aqua blue layered on the top half of the building with the big chimney on top.

Dale and I were walking into the breakroom and saw a huddle of stiff bodies fixed at the TV. It appeared the news was on. We joined the rest and peered toward the screen. Breaking news: A message from President of the United States. “Good morning America. I’m here from the White House to report recent arisings from the Foreign Relations Office regarding recent tensions between us and Russia / China (Chussia).” He hastily reached to his ear and activated what looked like an earpiece of sorts. He was listening to what was being said, his mouth dropping in what looked to be shock. He let go of the earpiece and looked to the camera in a solemn, worrying murmur. “There has been a new report coming in that… yes eight, I repeat eight foreign nuclear missiles are approaching The United States of America.” He looked around aimlessly, not knowing what to do… “God be with you all.” The TV cut out and all pandemonium broke loose. The once huddled group had now turned in to a pack of feral animals, everyone pushing and shoving to get to the door.

I turned and looked for Dale. He was standing amongst the mayhem, looking at the ground with utter disbelief. “Dale! Dale!” I yelled. No response, so I grabbed him, “Look at me, I know a safe place we can go, not far from here, only ten flights of stairs down.” He looked at me, with hollowness in his face, nothing but confusion and dismay in his eyes. He nodded. We proceeded to dodge all the oncoming flocks of workers coming toward us. It was so loud, but I heard nothing, only the soul of my heart beating. I ran until my legs felt numb. After ten minutes we reached the door. The hallway leading to the door was what seemed to be miles long. The PA sounded. “Bombs are approaching in ten seconds,” sounded a dreadful voice. I looked back for Dale. Where was he? There was no time to waste. I reached the door. Put in the code, opened it and entered. I stood back, doors were closing. Dale came around the corner, sprinting.

“Mr Danby, Jimmmm. NOO!!”

Holly awoke in a pool of her own sweat. The alarm clock glared 6:30 in its proud green numbers. 30 degree heat at this time of morning didn’t care. She lay awake regretting the choice to leave the window open and the curtains apart. The sun glared in the room and illuminated the mess of the night before. The dirty clothes laying on the floor, her pile of shoes and her collection of well-read books witness to last night’s failed escapade.

She stared at the digital clock beside her bed reading the numbers, hoping they were wrong, but she knew they weren’t. The bus would be there in fifteen minutes. She felt no urgency to leave and had to force her way out of bed, getting dressed into an outfit that she knew would turn heads for a teacher, but that didn’t bother her. It’s not like anyone notices me anyway she thought. Grabbing a hurriedly made piece of toast with honey before running out the door she prayed that the bus hadn’t left. As she passed through the door, the thought occurred to her that she used to jog before work, but that was another time, another version of herself. That was before she was promoted, the youngest in her workplace’s history.

Narrowly catching the bus, and the crowded train trip to work. Stopping for a coffee. Double shot. Stepping foot on campus was a paradox. A spring in her step, recognising today as special and a weight that landed on her shoulders. Her role as Senior Curriculum Head a vicious parrot. The Head of English at one of the most prestigious girls’ schools in the city. The lone city at the edge of the earth.

The already boiling day had reached a crescendo of heat around noon, the stagnant breeze crackling like hopeless laughter, realising its own futility. The class much the same. Lacking discipline.

In her mind it was a simple problem. Parents were too controlling of the child’s life, spoon-feeding them a false reality of grandeur and ease. The many of her class made noise, and the few made notes, and she wondered how her life had led her to this. Desperate to escape the monotony of losing your reins, she was still young, single and wanted desperately to see the world and maybe settle down.

At the end of the day she dreamt of a knight in a bright suit that would rescue her and save her from the doldrums of her life. As she awoke from her day dream, to the crushing blow of reality she stood up and walked, passing the staffroom door, her knees giving way to the next step. Her body and mind separate entities. She left campus and continued walking. Running away from her life. Not knowing where she was running to, just running on.

After what felt like an hour of odd stares, tired of walking, she stopped outside a quaint, pretty café. Inside, the business was a clean tiled affair. White walls and succulents in pots. Décor art bringing vibrancy to an otherwise two-tone room. Chalkboard menus displayed simple meals to be expected from such a place.

It was here she saw the owner of the establishment, left to him by his parents. Dressed in black and white. A modern hair style swept his fringe off his forehead. He stopped and met her eyes. For three heart beats they watched each other, their eyes gazing into each other’s soul. It was him. Last night’s gentleman caller. Dan. The one who ran out to his car after only one drink, never to return. The one who left her to do her late-night marking.

The awkward encounter made him go red in the face. She blushed. Cautiously approaching the counter, she ordered a coffee frappe. Needing the caffeine more than his uncomfortable presence.

The toxic tension dissolved with the coffee syrup and his confident smile returned. That confident arrogant smile, that hot smile that got me last time. She was suddenly glad there were no other customers. She wasn’t really mad at him for last night.

“Let me explain-” Dan spoke.

“I don’t want to hear it,” she lied.

“Holly, I left you last night ’cause I’ve stopped.”

“I told you I don’t want to hear it.”

“Please. I don’t expect you to forgive me, just hear me out,” he pleaded softly.

“Fine. But this better be on the house,” taking the opportunity for a free drink. She secretly wanted his company. Any company.

“Yeah, fine. I left because I stopped. I don’t want to cause any more pain. For you or anyone. I don’t want to hook up and ditch women anymore.”

“Yeah right. I bet you’re going to say now that I am the woman who changed your mind.”

“Yes, actually. You are too good for me. You are a smart, hardworking, successful woman, who would only be cheapened by me.”

“Goodbye, Dan,” she said, leaving the building.

“Wait, Holly is there anything I can do to make it up to you?” Dan chased her out of the shop.

“If you really want to make it up to me. Tonight, 8pm sharp, dinner. You pick me up, and I choose where we go,” she half-heartedly stated. “Oh, and bring a suit,” she added.

“See you then,” he shouted as she walked away.

At 8 o’clock, Dan was there, and when he saw her walk out of the house, he knew, that he was lucky she had given him a second chance. She would look attractive wearing a hessian sack he thought.

Dinner went well, followed by another, and another. Nights were spent at each other’s place. Time passed. Work became tolerable because of Dan. She looked forward to going home to see him. By six months, something special had occurred. Life was back in her hands.

Holly had broken the cycle. Monotony’s death was a glorious thing.

The resentment sweats from my palms as I squeeze his hand firmly. No longer shall their memory remain privileged, for the cameras will lead the subconscious into a non-existent life. A four-year-old – forced to live with a tumour of the mind, slowly deteriorating any autonomy. He doesn’t know it yet but, one day he will. Just another slave to the schizophrenia installed – a reality that will permanently mimic the ephemeral delusion of Santa Claus monitoring the good and bad children.

The good,

And the bad.

While before, they were judged through communication – truths, lies, actions – all that remains now is a register of proof.

I learnt as a teenager that my experiences would remain ephemeral in their nature of activity. Innumerable car-drive conversations emphasising how technology will ruin my generation taught me how even basic human experiences can be reshaped over time – how once upon a time we could stick to our word, communicating with a level of trust, whereas now we can simply text our displeasure in regard to meeting up with someone.

As I developed, I watched an older generation mismanage the powers of technology. One who couldn’t distinguish between a computer and a tablet became the enforcer of what was allowed to be said and done. An intergenerational warfare embedded in ignorance.

It began before my time. Tech-savvy adults beginning to buy goods online, only to be followed by the rise of social media websites. It was never really seen as an issue until we made it one; suddenly obesity, suicide, bullying – all targeted with the blame placed on logging onto our laptops, as if these issues magically appeared following the internet’s uprise. There were kids experiencing a whole new way of life and communicating, and adults having no clue as to how to get in on the action. The result? Obviously, restrictions (who has time for skill building?). It was 2021; promptly following the United States election, political agendas could no longer be expressed online due to the internet promoting ‘invalid and false slander’. (Ironically, we later found out that at the same time you’ve got the only group in the US Government who knows how to send a text message, the Central Intelligence Idiots recording our webcams and phone calls, so how’s that for slandering an entire nation’s freedom?) We had this half of society that had absolutely no clue on how to use technology, but slowly and steadily learning its possibilities, while the other half are essentially pioneering and utilising these same technologies.

It was two years later in 2023, that the rise of today’s society began. A federal investigation surrounding the innocence of a man accused of first-degree murder on three counts. Somehow, the investigation bureau was ‘randomly’ sent his phone’s service provider records of his GPS location, proving him guilty of the murders. This peculiar act seemed to continue for investigations over the next three years, with the bureaus claiming they had ‘no understanding’ of which hero was sending this compromised case-bending information (what a mystery…). With no surprise to anyone, laws were soon then passed to breach confidential client information in regard to GPS location as soon as they were under local, state, or federal investigation. It only took another eight months before more regulations were set so that any police officer nationwide could search up a name and their location would be made visible.

Suffice to say this was the beginning of the end, embarking on a grand voyage to disengage with our basic human rights. Rights, that consisted far beyond simply typing what you want online, but to the basic foundations that constituted freedom. It would soon vanish, beyond any reasonable or logical thought.

No longer will we discover the actions of our children, for we will now watch them. No more can we ask the truth, as we already know. For us, our mysteries are answered, and for them, their mysteries will evaporate.

I hold his hand tightly as we go forth with the procedure. No longer is this an option, but rather now a requirement, that will fundamentally alter not only the legal justice systems worldwide but reinvent the concept of parenting as a whole. A chip, the size of a pin, now installed within all human minds – recording our lives.

Every thought,

Every action,

Every memory.

Nothing more now than a piece of evidence for whatever lawyer argues their case, any parent that accuses their kid, or any friend that feels betrayed. We have become walking movies; ready for anyone to watch with the download of an app.

I learnt at a very young age that human experiences will develop, alter, change, over time. Our digital screens now control a more powerful dictatorship over us than anything else, in which we feed this control through a lack of understanding. Freedom and true autonomy have become deceased – technology and ignorance, the murderer. The days of a carefree world’s final moments linger in the air. We’ve extended the powers of law, developed a sovereignty of the brain, one that will remain scrutinised and abused beyond reason.

His life will never be the same, and I will read, and watch, and know, every reason why.

The first of the morning light is breathtaking at this time of year. The sun’s rays reach out like crimson hands, gentle, caressing the landscape and enveloping all inhabitants in its warm embrace. Not to mention, the subtle autumn breeze carries with it nature’s own symphony, the rhythmic composition of bird songs and whispering trees.

I would not blame any foreigner for believing that such a place was indeed paradise, had I chosen to finish my descriptions right there. On closer inspection one can understand that my surroundings are quite the opposite to such an oasis.

As the birds cease to sing and the trees hush, the true identity of the landscape before me is exposed. The boisterous tune of heavy machinery disrupts the serenity, while a pungent scent of smog does well to mask the smell of clean air. My bare feet writhe in pain with every further step that I take onwards, closer to the metropolis of factories before me. Towers of billowing fumes rise like Everest above, the chimneys of a greed-driven village.

I struggle to maintain my focus on the warmth of the morning sun, as I shudder due to my lack of clothing. Even still, half clothed, badly bruised and malnourished, I walk forward toward the factories.

Every few hundred metres I have to remind myself to check that the package is still safe in my pocket. Delving into the remnants of my sodden shorts pocket, I am once again relieved to feel the ball of hessian cloth still at home. If they were to find me, they would most certainly find the package as well. Naturally, I scan my surroundings with the intent of a hunter, and take a quick glance over my shoulder to further ensure my separation from any other human life.

The true scale of the factory complex is closer to me now that I am a mere few hundred metres from its gates. The gates to Hell. The same gates that I must enter in order to end the monstrosities being committed by the same men that left me with these scars on my innocent, young face, as well as these they have given to Earth itself. The package is all that I need to be able to do so.

Edging closer, with measured steps and a heavy breath, I approach my target, the malignant parasite slowly but surely eating away at the Earth.

Only a couple of metres away, the ominous sound of a vehicle begins to rise over the sound of my footsteps on the gravel walkway beneath me. Not thinking, I duck with appreciable speed behind a concrete wall to my side. The van edges closer, and closer again. It eventually slows and the barrage of its engine’s roar softens, stalling. I lie huddled, not daring to breath to not be given away by the crunching of sun burnt leaves litter beneath me.

The van is close enough that I can barely decipher the speech of two men.

“Inside?” one of the men questions.

“Take him to Block C, and tell the Marshall we found him out by the reactor,” replies the other man.

I peer over the edge of the concrete wall I am sheltering behind, my body shaking uncontrollably. At first I only see the sun once more. Then I see the silhouette of a young child outlined by the sun’s crimson rays.

“Stop,” I hesitate. “Stop it now, leave him alone,” I murmur in a quivering voice.

The men turn and stare at me. I freeze. A cold hand rests on my bare shoulder. It tightens its grip. I tighten my grip on the package still resting in my pocket.