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The place is festooned with party lights but it’s still a shed and it smells like cow shit. You blot your lip gloss while Amy from the co-op rehearses near a hay bale in a red strapless number she got off the rack at Chiswick’s. ‘Miss Beef is a spiritual event for our town,’ she’s saying, a wedge of sunburn flaring on her chest. Your smile is collegial but you’re thinking surely she’s got to tank with that bollocks and this year the sash is yours. You bought your satin pantsuit in the city. It’s royal blue with silver brocade trim, like the winner’s cape. You’re confident. You know your Red Angus from your Brafords and if anyone asks, it’s medium rare or suicide. You want this crown. For the all-expenses weekend in Coolangatta and for Tracy. She moved here for you; this redneck town can shift. A cowbell clangs and everyone’s huddling on stage saying they’ve got Buckley’s, but Amy’s acceptance speech is flickering behind her eyes. Becky from the stock agents mangles her bit about where Brahmans come from (Italy, though?) while Jenny from the abattoir pouts indifference at her fingernails. Amy just wants to give back. When she says it, last year’s Miss Beef presses her tiara deep into her French braid. At the judge’s table the bigshot stud man in moleskins tongues his lips and winks when Amy is named the winner. Her tearful speech is to him. You can’t get to your ciggies fast enough. The others deflate at the losers table while Amy does a victory lap. Tracy finds you. ‘Let’s go swipe the balls off the Big Bull with the angle grinder,’ she says, kissing your shoulder. When Amy comes in for a hug you feel the brocade on her cape. It’s pretty scratchy. Longlisted Bath Flash Fiction Award 2024

They’re feuding. Have been for months. Next time, the dog gets a bullet. She ruffles Baxter’s fur – watch it buddy – but one whiff of sheep and he’s over the fence, ears pinned, nipping at lamb rumps. The gunshot splits time. She finds Baxter in undergrowth, blood soaked and stiff. That same day, her husband leaves her with two under two. Word gets around. Winter bites. The neighbour appears, unbidden. He stacks wood in her shed, unloads hay for the horses. Thought you could use it. Rain pelts down. She pats the new puppy. She puts the kettle on. ---------- Second place in Vocal Media Microfiction challenge, 2023.

She leaves him in the barber’s chair; time enough for one errand. When she goes back for him, he’s bald. Every silver-white curl is gone. The barber drops his eyes. It’s what he asked for. A nod from the milky pink bonce. In 60 years she’s never seen it, but she can hear the words – Take the lot! – as if she’d been there. Part mischief, part cry in the dark. He’s been asking for a new head. At home, he is slack-jawed at the mystery in the mirror. He tugs his woolly hat low. He will reach for it before breakfast – before underwear – for weeks to come; an armour against conspirators and this new cold. There are dragons outside. They’ve got clippers. They’ve been on the Big Dipper, but now they’re on the travellator, heading this way. Better not let them in. His eyebrows are high. She pulls a cheerful rug over his knees, and tells him there are no dragons outside. She tells him he’s loved and he’s safe and he’s home. I’m looking for the moon, he says. You want me to swallow that orange? It’s a kind of a conversation, she supposes. Not like the old ones that went on for hours in front of the Aga, the pair of them taking small curios and turning them this way and that, back when they were bottomless. Alaska comes on the telly and she says Remember the Northern Lights? He is sunken jowls and glassy eyes. She returns to her crossword. Italy slid off her radar years ago. Remember the years of living courageously? All those budgets on the back of napkins? Your affair? That wild moment behind the trellis? Our first born? None of it. She’s lonely and leaking time. His hair turns to bristle. She buys the paper for the death notices; she’s not in there. She packs a bag (his woolly hat is in it) and swallows guilt like river stones. He wonders where he is, asks about the gunman down the hall. Someone tells him there’s no gunman. Someone tells him he’s loved and he’s safe.

You’re coaching: ‘Head down, follow through.’ I’m not listening. I’m picturing the buggy locker, the clubhouse storeroom, that thicket on the ninth fairway. I’m feeling your hands, warm around mine around the shaft. Your zipper teasing my buttocks, forearms skimming my waist, breath on my nape. We backswing together, peaking high and slow. I was club champion for a decade; the lessons are a ploy. It’s your flesh I want. I’d been asleep for years – midlife loins sluggish, appetite nowhere – when you showed up with your crisp polos and lazy smile, smelling of grass and leather. Now I’m hungry. 'In the Rough' won a Globe Soup 'Lust' monthly micro contest in 2021.

When it showed up, Erling blamed his broken heart. Too much time brooding in the December gloom, he thought. Seeing things. But there was really no mistaking it. In this dark, deserted, Arctic landscape: a shimmering light. Not the ghostly glow of snow under an inky sky, or the silky bloom of an Aurora. This was different. It was luminous, rippling, amorphous – and close. It was below him, in the pond. It was under the ice. Read more...

Big stack of vinyl, very collectable. One stupidly large flat screen TV, worshipped beyond reason. Three longboards, one e-bike, a set of graphite golf clubs – all cosseted indoors (totally in the way), all fairly lame proxies for genuine character. One pathetic mid-life crisis dressed as an over-polished Indian Chieftan motorcycle. Maybe there’s a fresh scratch along its ridiculous handlebars. A Gibson guitar, vintage; Clapton’s scrawl allegedly on the neck, 10 pairs of tired Y-fronts jammed in the hole. It’s scratched, too. Fifty bucks the lot, negotiable. Questions? Can’t help. The owner’s at Lolita’s, presumably. I’m changing the locks. 'On the Verge' won the Globe Soup 'Wrath' monthly micro contest in 2021.

Alec got comfortable on his stool. Glee played on his lips. Funny. Dangerous. Might be open to some girl-on-girl, maybe a bit of three-way action. Read more...

I’m kipping behind the wheel when someone knocks on the glass saying all right mate? out of juice? and I’m wading in molasses and he’s one of those holograms and I tell him not to worry I’ll go for fuel in the morning and he’s saying bit of a walk, mate, you’re twenty clicks from Borden and I’m saying no problem I’ll take the draft horse and then he’s all what day is it? and where do you live? and who’s the Prime Minister? and all I know is I had a notion and it vanished so I close my eyes but it’s mud in there and now he’s got the back open where Jilly’s listing like a star picket and I say careful, my sheep dog’s part Alsatian but Jilly just gives him a paw and he says hey girl, show us your collar and then he’s talking to the night saying four hours south on a back road and pretty confused and no worries at all and Gordon? I’ll take you and the poodle back to the city old man and I’m saying thanks but we’re shearing and he’s feeding Jilly water from his cupped hand saying your wife said you might think that, you know she’s beside herself, they’re out scouring the streets and I’m saying wife? and I’m watching the canola glowing yellow under the smudged moon and I’m thinking home stretch and I’m seeing the ringlock fence gleaming, carving a line to the old country where the fog’s gone and the white noise is gone and maybe one little creek will run clear.

Everything is pink: plush toys, glitter flamingos, cherry blossom hair clips. Yuki picks a Hello Kitty cap from the bubblegum shelves and makes doe eyes at the suit. Like she needs more kawaii tat. He secures it over her glossy plaits. Against her school getup, its raspberry bow pops. ‘Hold the wrapping,’ he tells the shop girl. ‘She’ll wear it home.’ They step into Akihabara foot traffic like this is filial, but nobody’s fooled. In the uniform – black pleats grazing her knicker line – she can pass for a joshi kosei, but it’s four years since she graduated high school. And her father? Not this man. Her drowning father stepped in front of a moving train at Shin Koiwa last year, landing the family a crippling fine. This man is helping to pay it. It’s a standard lark; 12,000 yen for a walk-and-talk along neon-slicked footpaths. A week’s groceries, five times a night. Law school will wait; the family’s better fed while Yuki’s relieving randy salarymen of their hard-earned. In this neighbourhood, especially. When she spots the easy money, she knows where to go. She tugs one earring and gives the suit a coy smile, eyeing a side street. ‘I’m hungry.’ His inner provider looks lively. They duck through the fabric doorway of a modest izakaya. A small TV spills cheerful game show sounds from above. Sake for him, soda for show, a serve of ika tempura to share. Perched at the bar, their forearms touch. Not strictly allowed. ‘How does this end?’ He’s probing the grey area between expectation and the law. She traps a nervous giggle in her fingers. ‘I’ve got homework.’ Yuki clasps her plaits behind her neck, and her white shirt pulls taut. ‘Two heads are better than one.’ He taps the stiff peak of her cap. Yuki catches the young barkeep’s eye; scarcely a nod. ‘I could read your fortune,’ she tells the suit. ‘That’s extra.’ His smile is Cheshire. He knows that JK shorthand. Fortune telling, massage, more. ‘There’s a place out the back here,’ she says, nibbling squid. He drains his glass. She leads him back through the noren entrance, down the alley to an unmarked door. Inside, she takes the fat volume of horoscopes from the hall stand. ‘50,000 yen.’ Notes spill from his wallet. She steers him to a cubicle, where a rolled robe adorns a massage table. ‘Get comfortable,’ she coos, tugging the curtain closed between them. Her voice is impish as she flips the book’s pages. ‘Let me guess, Rooster? No, wait. Snake.’ Her most provocative giggle yet. ‘Dragon!’ he growls, tossing his suit to the floor. She corrals it from the gap beneath the curtain, hears the table creak under his weight. ‘And I’m ready.’ A plump silence. ‘I’m ready.’ Her exit is nimble. In the dark of the alleyway, the barkeep locks the door behind her. She hands him the bundle, and some cash. ‘That’s for Mum,’ she says. ‘The suit’s worth a bit. Give the pervert 20 minutes as usual. His shame will see him home. I left his wallet. And a Hello Kitty bathrobe.’ Her brother hoists his eyebrows. ‘Nice touch.’ On a train bound for Ikebukuro, Yuki rides the pink carriage – twenty sweet minutes with no male gaze. From the women, she fields pity and scorn. Skimpy uniform. Late hour. She shrugs; a couple more chumps tonight, and she can take tomorrow off. She pats the money at her hip and twirls her cap on one finger. Its cartoon kitten is a sage: eyes wide open, no mouth at all. Speak No Evil won first place in the Peter Cowan short story competition, 2022.