Unsettling

  • Water Sweet as Death

    The Thames runs salt, strong and brown. Faint flavour remains in my fingers, rubbing sore gums. Grey strands trickle past my waist and my sodden hem oozes mud into footprints on the floor. I squint at the other passengers through the bright-lit air. They don’t like my dank person. Why should they? I am repulsive,…

  • Catgut

    After an argument, Millie likes to sew. She makes little heart-shaped cushions out of whatever fabric she can find. This time, she’s using the curtains. Last time, it was the dress she’d bought me for our anniversary. There are heart-shaped holes all around our house. The cushions are always spotted with her blood; Millie sews…

  • The More Things Change

    As the dancing gets wilder, I slip outside for a smoke. Under a bare bulb, by a rank and fermenting wheelie bin, I light up, longing to take off my fancy shoes. He comes after me as I knew he would. I hand him my ciggie, lipstick-marked, and he takes a long pull. “That kind…

  • See

    The cold creeps, worms its way to the bone under the epidermis, leaving your face like Cleopatra’s stone. We no longer huddle under the arch at Waterloo, evicted by Council concrete – boarded up, but gather blankets under the Royal Festival Hall to the odour of culture vultures’ binned fish and mash. How was your…

  • A Disappearance

    I remember everything about that night. Everything. I remember the waiter laughing at us when we told him our plan. “You want to explore?” he repeated. He caught his mate’s arm and they discussed us in a rapid colloquial dialect I couldn’t follow, smiling and shaking their heads. “What’s he saying?” hissed Phoebe and I…

  • Jumper

    Grandma used her knitting needles as weapons, viciously stabbing the air as she catalogued my shortcomings. Her fingers pulled the yarn as tight as a hangman’s noose. Dorothy From Next Door listened and sadly shook her head. Grandma’s jumpers had buttons on the shoulders, implying my head was larger than other children’s or my dressing…

  • Aunty Mary’s

    Aunty Mary’s Farm Aunty Mary had a chook farm and cancer. The farm was south-bound from the Warburton highway, south-bound on the Healesville-Koo-Wee-Rup, Woori-Yallock-Road, just a little way off the junction where the Old-Beenak-Road meandered throughout the state forest stately with ghost white gums and game trails leading deep into the scrub. Aunty Mary’s cancer…

  • Minnie

    Her name was Minnie. That was all. Just Minnie. No surname or nickname like the others had, just a single word. Clean. Perfect. She stood with her back against the wall, a long-handled spoon in her mouth reflecting the blinding rays of the sun. An empty yoghurt carton lay at her feet. She viewed the…

  • Margery Breaks Free

    Margery Taylor swings around to face the descent. Her eyes are bright with defiance, a sheen of sweat glistens on her smooth young skin. She is sick of rules. Slow down Margery! Keep off the road Margery! She has pushed the bike all the way up the steepest hill in town, on what will be…

  • Rain of Thought

    The clouds were hanging above the city like freshly washed clothes. Everything was dripping with grey and gardens of black umbrellas bloomed every morning as the people hurried to work. The creaking of wellingtons, the whooshing of the raincoats’ wings and the rhythmical drumming of the raindrops on the tin hats of rubbish bins resembled…