Short Stories

If I try to articulate my dreams, I may invite them into existence. But I don’t know if my dreams even belong to me. I dreamt that I had to remove my own heart and place it in a safe box before entering a celestial detector, which was capable of registering hearts and sounding the alarm. Before taking out my own heart to pass through, I had to replace the crater in my chest with something unknown. A foreign substance. For the time being. It was part of a game the whole world was playing. The multitude of hearts lined up on a conveyor belt had colourful auras that determined their specific powers. I knew my heart would restore itself if I returned.  I was sitting along the edge of a sandstone cliff with my twin. We were not the same person, but we both had the same memories. Were we thinking different thoughts at the same time? We came from a dangerous land where the trees and flowers burn. We both agreed to keep all our unborn children safe from the world by not bringing them into it.

We hung out after school in the gully by the stormwater drain, better known to us as the tunnels . Traffic echoed above our heads as we explored the sewer graffiti below, daring each other to go further into the darkness without a flashlight. Nervous laughter, hearts pounding, and the potent smell of nearby plants saturated our first kiss. We were just particles of the town we grew up in. Sheltering with friends in the shade offered a brief escape from the sunken moods of others and the melancholy rhythm of our minds. With the sunshine in our eyes and cold cement surrounding us, we floated away.  Down the road, next to the deli that sold gobstoppers and chewing gum with stick-on tattoos, was a telephone box. We would use the payphone to prank school bullies and call our parents to check if we needed to come home. Hidden from time, we grew tired. The moments of content left us behind in the red dirt, lying down and holding hands. It’s all gone now. The grassland is still there, but the

She yawns in the passenger seat as he drives onto the highway in the early hours of the morning. He runs red lights, but she is too tired to argue with him. It’s still dark outside, and the traffic lanes are empty. The street signs blur past them until the car slows to a stop on the bridge that leads out of town. They sit in silence for a few minutes, just watching the windscreen. He gets out of the car first to look closely at the low cloud, all on its own and away from its pack, in the middle of the road. The hushed cold air makes the cumulus seem both alien and angelic.  It’s only the two of them, alone, with an obscure haze that has a shadow. He tries to capture the anomaly on camera, but the lens cannot focus on the surreal white fog that hovers. She stretches her arms up to touch it, but the cloud’s instinctive reflex shifts itself higher, out of reach. They are in a Jeffrey Smart painting of almost forgotten moments. How many others have stood on this spot after midnight in the

A fresh start, that’s what she wanted. She left her youth behind during the war and moved into this apartment. Her new beginning started here. It was too cold inside, even with the heater on, but she was grateful and brave. She slowly renovated her new space, her new life. Peeling and scraping off layers of old wallpaper was a cathartic process for her, but it left the walls beneath pitted and scarred from her attempts to remove every last shred of paper. The wounded surfaces resembled the road that connects to the border of her town, a repetitious Highway of Death . It was everywhere. She wasn’t prepared to patch and seal the walls to perfect smoothness, so she used white paint to cover and purify the dents instead, whitewashing the apartment’s past.  After a few years, she moved on, but her sad eyes remained. The wallpaper followed her wherever she went; it left its mark. She grew tired after every misunderstanding, disappointment, and retelling of herself. Life had been unkind to he

I am a guardian of rubbish. In my white tracksuit, I cycle alone along the streets of Amsterdam and collect the trash that litters this city. With my cargo bicycle full of garbage, I wave at passing nightwalkers that fill the pockets of silence. They pause mid-stride for too long under dim street lights without responding. Why do they wait for me to ride past them? I catch a glimpse of their shadows darting into the darkness over my accumulating junk pile that continues to grow. Now I am unsure if those creepers were ever there at all. It is my duty to keep these streets clean. A pungent smell persistently follows me around town, keeping me company. I know someone is supposed to take over my shift soon because leachate has saturated my clothes. I make my way to the designated spot by the shuttered flower shop and look up at the stars, waiting. After a time, the air becomes too thin to breathe in. My skin feels tight and rubbery. Whooshing sounds of the ocean start to choke my ears. It

A rusty white swing hovers over the grass in nanna’s backyard. The ornate wrought-iron shadow remains still and silent in her garden full of geraniums. Our young bodies are too small for outside labour, so we wander to the shade house and wait. But not for long. We drink from the sprinklers that water the fuchsias and squeeze the buds until they pop open.  We take turns opening the creaky door to the grey shed, peering inside to see if a secret portal has opened up for us to escape. Black spiders live in here with the Blood & Bone fertiliser and antique furniture. Our dad’s abandoned youth lives here, too, discarded and mouldy. The musty smell lingers as the sun sets outside and time rests.  As the three of us walk single file along the pavement, ticking echoes from the wooden clock atop nanna's empty fireplace welcome us back into a cold house. We all think this place is haunted. Old newspapers are stacked high in the corners of rooms. Lace coat hangers full of potpourri sit q