narratorAUSTRALIA Volume One
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Merryjack says: This is from my Toy Stories series, small vignettes of a linked image and text with included footnotes, suitable for soncreen publishing. These use images of childhood objects to stimulate imaginative writing. Each explores a different fiction genre.
Friday 4 May 2012 12 noon
In The Orange Light Of Early Morning
Bob Edgar
Wentworth Falls
Murtula loved Crystal from the moment of her birth, loved her as any mother would love their first born child.
Naming her Crystal was as deliberate as all things were that she did in her life. Crystal would be expected to be atomically stable, either all things occurred correctly, or else nothing occurred at all.
Crystal was a disappointment.
Murtula felt no compassion, as she punctured the suitcase whilst muttering for forgiveness.
In the orange light of the early morning she flung the suitcase into the water.
Along with her soul, it hesitated on the surface before sinking into an abyss.
Friday 4 May 2012 4 pm
She
Alexandra Smithers
Katoomba, NSW
She left. The twine of time mended my heart with delusions of indifference. She returned and my heart beat anew, breaking each thread without considering the consequence.
This story is written using only 140 characters, the maximum allowed for tweeting.
Saturday 5 May 2012
Tales From The Tall Man
Annabel Hollins-Cliff
Leura, NSW
Once upon a time, there was a Tall Man. He was a dour man too, which was a word usually associated with miserable people. But he wasn’t miserable because ‘dour’ also meant ‘obstinate’ and this is what he was.
In his pocket, everywhere he went, the Tall Man carried a tiny matchbox. Tucked inside the matchbox was a gift – five tiny dolls from Guatemala.
The Tall Man carried the tiny dolls because once, many years ago, a girl he had loved had given them to him. She told him they were ‘worry dolls’.
In the note with the dolls, it was explained that every night, the Tall Man should whisper his deepest worries to the box and the dolls would take them away.
Where the worries truly went, no-one really knew, except the dolls. It was their secret.
It was said that the dolls were extremely effective and powerful. They had brought good luck, health, happiness and prosperity to many.
Every night, the Tall Man opened the box and whispered to the dolls and they took his worries inside them. Then he slid the box closed, placed it under his pillow and slept soundly.
The Tall Man secretly loved the dolls in the matchbox because he had once loved the brown eyed girl who had given them to him. By keeping them with him every day, he also kept the young girl with him. This way, he never had to think about the end of their relationship. She was still with him every day and it gave him joy to think that he could just reach out his hand and find her there, still pressing against him like she had done the first night he had kissed her.
As the years went on, the Tall Man continued to whisper each night into the box. He did it so quietly that even his wife wouldn’t hear him. One morning, when his wife was changing their bed linens and he was in the shower, she found the tiny box under his pillow. When she asked what they were, he tossed them casually into a drawer as if they meant nothing.
When his wife left the room, he snatched the drawer open and whispered his apologies to the tiny dolls until he knew that they were once again happy.
One day, the Tall Man’s wife left him because she was tired of coming second to the beautiful girl with the brown eyes. The Tall Man whispered all night and all day into the box.
The dolls became anxious. There were only five of them in the box and whilst they knew how to dispose of the worries of one day, they did not know how to cope with the worries of fifteen years and the hatred which poured day and night out of the man’s mouth.
‘Please stop,’ they begged, but the man did not stop because he was obstinate.
Every time the Tall Man opened the box, he thought of the beautiful brown eyed girl and then he thought of how much he despised his ex-wife.
He whispered to the five little dolls about his wife, pouring out his hatred.
The dolls became ill and one of them died, but the man didn’t notice anything.
‘Please stop,’ cried the dolls again. ‘We can only take your worries, not your hatred.’
Still the man did not hear them.
The four remaining dolls wept for their sister in the matchbox.
Now dealing with the man’s hate became even more difficult and each doll became sicker and sicker.
The Tall Man carried on taking the matchbox with the dolls in it everywhere he went. Then one day, he noticed how much heavier the matchbox had become.
He opened it and looked at the little dolls, but they still appeared the same although one doll at the end looked somehow corpse-like but he supposed it had always been so.
There seemed to be no reason that the box should be heavier and so the man thought about the beautiful brown eyed girl and how she had loved him and then he thought about his ex wife and how much he hated her and he slid the matchbox back into his jacket pocket.
Eventually the matchbox became so heavy that the Tall Man developed a stoop. No matter how hard he tried to sit straight, the weight of the box pulled him down.
The Tall Man went to see a doctor about the stoop, but still he would not take the dolls out of his pocket because the girl with the brown eyes could never be far away. The doctor ordered exercise.
Every night and every day, the Tall Man whispered and whispered into the box and every morning, he took the box and placed it into his breast pocket so that the beautiful girl with the brown eyes would be closer to his heart.
The Tall Man tried to exercise but his stoop made it so difficult that he stopped and over time, his back hunched over and he gazed at the world through hooded lids, straining to stand tall whilst the weight of the little box pulled him to the ground.
One day, the Tall Man realised that he wasn’t tall any longer. The box had so bent him over that he needed two sticks to keep himself upright and he shuffled along the ground as if he were a turtle looking out from under a shell.
Inside the box, the weight of the man’s hatred was so heavy that the four remaining sisters died one by one, each passing the mounting debt to the other until they all lay there, corpse-like in their little Guatemalan dresses and hats. There were no more tears to be shed.
And the man kept the box in his chest pocket so that the beautiful brown eyed girl would be forever close to his heart.
Sunday 6 May 2012
The Veggie Garden
John Ross
Blackheath, NSW
‘I’m going to start a veggie garden,’ she suddenly announced one Sunday morning last spring.
I was in the middle of the cryptic crossword. I always attempt the one from the weekend papers and this one was proving to be very vexing. So, without looking up, I said, ‘Yes dear. That would be nice.’
I was still struggling with nine across, ‘A consumer of workers, eight letters,’ when I became aware of a furious banging on the back sliding glass door. She was waving her arms about and looking excited and so reluctantly I put the paper aside and went out.
‘I have found the perfect spot,’ she announced. ‘You won’t have to move many plants at all, and I have worked out how to build the beds around the trees.’
Three hours, and three cups of tea later, I had managed, with my usual skill in such matters, to persuade her that mature azaleas do not transplant very well and that terracing a veggie garden down a steep slope was not such a good idea.
I was in the car on the way to the hardware store before I started to have the feeling that I had somehow been outman
oeuvred again. The position and structure of the veggie garden was now all my idea. Or was it?
I arrived back home, very late for lunch, with a rather large visa card bill and an order form for timber, galvanised nails, two tonne of garden soil and all the pieces needed for a drip irrigation system.
Enquiring as to what was for lunch I was told, ‘You know I don’t do lunches.’ So after a snack of unappetising sweet corn eaten straight out of the tin I was just getting into the crossword again when the doorbell rang. Yes, you guessed it. It was the delivery from the hardware store.
Having supervised the unloading I again retired to the lounge and my crossword.
‘There are still three hours of light left so why don’t you start on my veggie garden,’ she said as she went off to put a colour in her hair.
Three days later the garden beds were finished and two tonne of soil wheelbarrowed from the front lawn and put in place. I had just finished my shower and was looking at nine across again when she announced, ‘If we hurry we can get to the nursery before they close and choose my veggies.’
It was very dark and rather cold by the time I had unloaded the last of the tubs of ten different types of lettuce, cherry tomatoes and endives from the car. Does anyone know what an endive is?
It took me a whole day to do the planting to her satisfaction. I only had to rearrange the Cos lettuce plants three times. She could not actually help, as it was her book club that night and it is, ‘so hard to get your nails clean after digging in the soil’.
Water restrictions were introduced a week later so we could not use the watering system, and as the watering can was too heavy for her I found myself with a new afternoon chore.
Three weeks later, I was again settling down with the weekend crossword when there was a scream from down near the veggie garden. Snails had attacked in force. Of course they had good taste and had laid waste her Cos lettuce.
Straight up to the hardware for yours truly, for the latest in anti snail warfare.
One week later it was the attack of the birds. It appears that they love green cherry tomatoes.
Up to the hardware again for more timber and wire netting. This time she insisted on coming with me, and spent nearly an hour choosing miniature garden implements. The type with little decorative wooden handles and a plaque where you can engrave your name. They hang in the garage, undisturbed, where I was instructed to put them, beside her new gardening gloves, and above the decorative watering can.
Exactly one week later, yes you are right again, Sunday morning, a rather large thunderstorm passed over. No it did not rain. It was hail, only small but lots of it. I thought she was going to make herself sick with worry about how her veggies were faring. So down with the crossword, up with the umbrella. When I returned with the good news that her veggies were okay I was told to stop whingeing as I was only wet from the waist down.
This time the hardware salesman greeted me by name and gratefully accepted my visa card in payment for more timber and ten metres of hail proof shade cloth.
Then came the big day. Friends came up from Sydney for Sunday lunch and the first of the produce from the veggie garden was presented as the centrepiece on the table. A tossed salad of ten types of lettuce, endives and cherry tomatoes.
‘They are all from my veggie garden,’ she said as we all helped ourselves.
She graciously accepted their praise and murmured, ‘It was no trouble really. I am actually going to try carrots and spinach as well next year. You know you can save so much money by growing your own vegetables.’
I tried the endives. They were as bitter as hell!!
Monday 7 May 2012 8 am
New Xin Zhang
Graham Sparks
Bathurst, NSW
Xin Zhangs old and new
are similar in many ways
as I shall now expound,
for one, both vast and ancient lands
do bask beneath a baking sun,
and deserts broad and lonely
do spread beneath eternal blue.
Both lands are peopled with a myriad species
of that funny little biped,
and both do harbour herds of camels,
although Old Xin Zhang favours bactrians
where ‘New’ prefers the drom’.
Both Old and New are suffering alike,
afflicted by a foreign hunger,
but here the two diverge you see,
for Xin Zhang Old is putting up a fight,
where Xin Zhang new,
directed from the House at Canberra,
does acquiesce without a whimper.
Graham says: The Australian Government allows foreign corporations and powers to do anything they want here, without asking the Australian people by way of referendum. As China is particularly powerful, China’s machinations loom large in Australia, and therefore is a big target for my disdain, equal to my disdain for our politicians, or should I call them ‘comparadores’? At least the people of Xin Zhang act upon their disdain, unlike Australian people who merely shrug and watch football.
Monday 7 May 2012 4 pm
Not This Little Yellow Duck
JH Mancy
Tallebudgera, Queensland
Fear takes many forms. There is the niggling fear of visiting the dentist. Fear of failure. Success. Why would anyone fear that? My whole life I have longed for even a glimmer of it. That glimpse is within reach. I’ve decided to take up the challenge. No more fence sitting. I am wrapping my fears in a little bundle and taking them up a mountain. Not a huge mountain, but a mountain nevertheless.
Into the bundle will go Fear of Ridicule. What if I trip over a rock? My sense of balance is dreadful. Fear of Heights – why, I can’t manage more than three rungs up a ladder without becoming a quivering mess. Fear of Insects ... I have a severe allergy to jumper ant and tick venom. It is difficult to get quick treatment half way up a mountain. I can carry an Epi Pen (but I have a fear of injecting myself!).
By now I would have talked myself out of the entire adventure. Coins have two sides. The ‘flip’ side has me training for the big event. Training mostly involves daily walks to improve my fitness level (sadly neglected over the years.)
It is quite hilly where I live in the beautiful Tallebudgera Valley. Never did I dream that I’d consider hills an asset. A few years ago they’d have had me grumbling under my breath. An exhausted wreck, gasping for air. And that’s just the slight slope leading to my driveway!
Last weekend I did a practice walk on my mountain. I reached a little beyond the halfway point. Whilst on my climb my thoughts turned to World War Two – long before my time of course!
Rohan D Rivett, War Correspondent and Prisoner of War of the Japanese on the Burma*/Siam Railway, wrote a firsthand account of the atrocities and humiliation endured at this time. My respect for the prisoners’ achievements and horrendous sacrifice has grown enormously. My own small victories cannot compare, but help cement a truth. We are all capable of much more than we realise.
Training will continue. My plan is to disprove the adage some people like to quote to others of a certain age – ‘It’s all downhill from here.’
You’ve not seen the last of me, Mount Warning. I’m aiming for the pinnacle and that glorious sunrise view!