SPRING WRITING COMPETITION - WINNERS!

Dear Readers,

What a treat it was reading these wonderful stories. Twenty-five entries, all written with attentiveness, wit and intelligence. I salute you all.

This was the toughest competition yet, and the highest standard. Writing is immensely hard, and every story is an adroit piece of prose. Thank you for the time you spent on them, I am moved by your commitment.

The winners are fizzing, enigmatic, curious pieces of writing.

I would like to congratulate contributer Den Cartlidge on being a repeat winner.

Until next time,

Your loving writer,

Hanif.

TASMANIAN WILDFIRE

J WILLIAM BROWNE

I’m born in a spark. Though I am small and weak, I am hungry. The heat nurtures me, the bush cradles me. My mother is Nature and my father is Man. But I wasn’t always this way. 

At first I crackle through the dry grass like a snake. Almost silently. I smoke the buds of the bush pea and puff on the stems of a yam daisy. My bouche is amused. 

Some seasoning is added to my plate. A little eucalyptus oil. The shod feet that pad around this forest often remark upon it. “What is that? Such a beautiful scent…”. Sweetness turned acrid is just to my taste, stirring my appetite for more. And more. I grow and I roar. Silver trees burst. Not into flame, they burst in my heat. Every piece of kindling makes me ravenous, for a branch, for a tree, for a forest, and for anything that lives in it. Anything that lives, really. Small and large, warm and cold blooded. Tendons twisted, sinew contorted, eyes baked. Everything served well done.

Roads melt before me. White paint blisters and black tarmac bubbles. It’s no toil, really. No trouble. I even dance across water as I grow too ferocious. The balance of elements is turning, spinning, burning. Burning away earth and water with the wind at my back. 

I leave a wasteland of black behind me. April may be a time for renewal in your land. But in Tasmania, January is the cruellest month. Though, as I say, I wasn’t always this way. 

A cousin on the mainland told me a story. Once upon a time, my mother was Nature and my father was men. For a long time, I was the jealously guarded secret of Gandji who would fly across the sky each day with a burning stick and bring light and warmth to the land, but always returned to his nest at night to hide my flame until morning. One day, some local men followed Gandji and stole the burning stick as he slept. 

He woke in a fury and the thieves blundered. They set me free in their haste to flee! Gandji used his wings to spread my flames across the land. In horror, the men pleaded with the god to stop me from turning their home into ashes. Gandji agreed, but only if they shared me with their brothers and sisters, teaching them how to control me for the betterment of life itself. 

Locals carried me with them in a hot coal fungus and, like an elemental touchstone, burnt back a galloping rainforest, here and there, for good old fashioned green pick hunting. Good hunting, of roos, possum and little pademelon. The locals kept the trade routes open on those cinder roads through the island. They knew me like they knew north was north. They just knew.

Tall ships on the horizon were like a lightning strike. With no beacon to light, the local men stoked the whole coast for miles into a wall of flame against the sea. The Bay of Fires is what they call it, the men who live here now. Well, they spread across the wilds like I do on a summer day baked in the sun. Unseen at first, then seen too late. They burned uncontrollably, across mountains and forests, through hallowed places and sleepy villages, clearing a hunting ground of men, women and little children. The trade routes were overgrown as the world opened up. They thought they knew me like they knew west was west. 

I’m dying as clouds gather. My hunger is finally sated and my ardour cools. The wind that fanned my flames now chills my embers. The roar that shook the forest fades to a whisper. Rain fizzles in the air like animal fat, then turns my smoke from black to white. As if a wise decision has been made. 

The wasteland looks black and dead. But the ashen dust the rain makes mud is that of earth and loam. It is rich and fertile. More rains come and seem to wash away the scars on the land. The silver trees are still blackened to the waist, but around their ankles, improbable green shoots appear one morning. They needed me as I needed them. Eucalyptus and wattle, tea tree and banksia all return, as do wildflowers, beasts of the land and birds in the trees. The men who live here return too. 

The locals do not.

REGENERATED

DEN CARTLIDGE

Standing behind Fred Chen once, we noticed a tiny bulge on his back, under the grey polo shirt that hugged his bulk too tight. “Is that a mole?” I whispered to Chez. “It looks like a button.”

Chez giggled. “It could be his self-destruct button.”

We couldn’t stop seeing it after that. 

“What are you two buffoons laughing at?” Fred would ask, looking over his shoulder from his favourite bar stool. 

We never told him. We didn’t dare. 

Fred drank too much and was a heavy smoker. He was often morose, and if you said the wrong thing about his science fiction obsessions or, worst of all, his background, it could spark a red-faced tirade. So it felt like he really did have a self-destruct button sometimes.

But there was another side to his character. If someone brought a dog into the pub, he’d talk to them in a soft voice and smile, and they’d respond like he was an old friend. 

“You should think about a career change,” I said.

Fred’s dad was a popular local doctor, originally from Hong Kong. He had to work hard to be popular, according to his son. When he joined the town clinic, some patients asked to see an ‘English’ doctor. “He decided he had to get to know people,” Fred told me. So Dr Chen joined local sports teams, hobby groups and, much to his son’s embarrassment, a drama club. 

“It was excruciating,” Fred said, “seeing him in the local paper, always with a silly hat on at Christmas. They’d call the roles problematic now. All part of his plan to fit in, of course.”

Fred made a point of not fitting in, and refused his dad’s advice growing up. “He wanted me to join the Scouts! And an archery club! Fortunately, Mum let me get on with my own things.”

Mum was a nurse from Bolton, and the “things” she let him get on with were: playing with computers, watching TV and reading comics.

Fred worked in IT at the internet bank where I worked in sales. We frequented the same pub near our office, and bonded over beer and a shared interest in 70s TV – mainly old science fiction shows. I never told him I thought they were amusing rubbish, because of his self-destruct button. When he discovered I was a frustrated writer, he smiled, and the next time I saw him in the pub, he handed over the first chapter of an unfinished novel. 

It was called: ‘Attack of the Space Bastards’.

“Funny title,” I said.

“What do you mean ‘funny’?” Fred asked.

“What I meant to say,” I said quickly, “was that it’s funny as in it’s very different.”

He was always in demand to resolve some IT crisis at work, and that, plus the booze, eventually took its toll. His face turned grey, he became even more morose and began to chain-smoke. One night, Chez criticised his smoking habit. 

“Those ciggies will kill you,” he said

Fred drained his glass and sighed. “Good,” he said.

I left town shortly after that for a new job and didn’t see Fred or anyone from the pub for nearly a year. Then I bumped into him one day. I’d come back to see a friend and was walking through the park. It was a lovely spring day, and he was the last person I expected to see. I didn’t recognise him initially: he’d lost weight and looked fit. 

“Hello, old pal,” he said.

It was warm and his face was pink – partly because of the heat and partly because of the four dogs he was attempting to hold onto.

“I listened to your advice,” he said, nodding at the dogs, “and get paid to walk these terrors now. I still do a bit of IT consultancy, but only work when I want to. Stopped smoking and boozing too, can you believe it?”

I was speechless – I couldn’t believe it.

“I feel renewed these days,” he said, smiling at the sun. “Regenerated, even.” He laughed and we chatted about old times briefly before he had to go.

I watched him as the dogs dragged him away. I couldn’t help staring at his back. He was wearing a tight-fitting orange gym top, but there was no sign of the self-destruct ‘button’ now, and I was really glad about that.

WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND

ELENA S. JARVIS

Nobody gets to choose their parents, but that is cold comfort when you grow up with a mother like mine. Sounds mean, I know, considering what moms go through. Especially my birth, a breach baby without benefit of a C-section.

Poor woman. Seven pounds doesn’t sound like much until it’s coming out of your pussy. Maybe that’s where things went south. 

Perhaps she held the pain against me, though I spent my first months in an ICU with double pneumonia. Cold feet coming into this world and getting colder by the minute it often seems.

Mom, youngest of 17, was born in the middle of a street in Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico. Rich with imagination, but poor in spirit, her truth was always iffy. It does make perfect sense, however, that after 16 births her own mother may have missed the dropdown menu announcing another new arrival.

Where her sisters were cocoa-skinned, she inherited the great white beauty of Italian grandmothers. Beautiful enough for the movies and not afraid to show it, especially to sisters demeaned for their coloration, not just by her, but the island caste system at large. Back then, “passing” was a good omen for your future.

Our never agreeing, always arguing and darkly disdaining each other was painful in light of my father’s family. My great-great paternal aunt invented Mother’s Day! Oh, how I envied friends who considered their mothers best friends, confidents, role models. “Friends” who took them shopping for new clothes and not just for school.

Aren’t we all afflicted by self-delusion? Working retail and in up-close-and-personal observations I’ve come to believe most mother-daughter relationships are fraught. 

Abject poverty contributed to my mom’s heartlessness. That, and having the delayed-gratification skills of a 2-year-old. My mom was the one pulling her child’s hair at the grocery checkout if they paused too long at the candy rack. We sat alone in cars for hours while she casually shopped.

One Mother’s Day, when I was 8, I bought her a red Chinese lacquer candy dish. Unwrapping it, her response was “What is this piece of shit?” I was sent, humiliated, back to the store for a full refund.

Another year, we children developed an abnormal obsession with Chiclets that came sealed, like a metaphor, in a giant molar. Always a hoarder, she secretly saved every tooth we tossed. That Christmas, we ran downstairs to discover our beautiful tree ornaments replaced with colorful plastic teeth. Mom’s genius was ruining Christmas, which we were certain she started planning as soon as she stashed the old wrapping to be used again “one day.”

After 35 years, my father finally had enough when she stepped out on him with a Colombian fireman and moved to Bogota. I like to think he died on March 22, her birthday, so she’d never have another happy one. But that’s just me.

Years did not mend fences and, in fact, they were replaced with solid walls of recrimination and months of icy silence. She moved closer to her two oldest and they quickly fled to other towns. Reminded of this, she put a curse on me: “One day you will have an unkind, ungrateful daughter just like yourself!” Which only reaffirmed my decision not to have children.

Like a lot of prisoners she ultimately sought solace in religion. She especially welcomed visits from Jehovah’s Witnesses because of all the free Bibles, books and brochures. I’ll bet they were bitterly disappointed hours of effort yielded no conversion.

Mom died of dementia 15 years before being pronounced dead. Over that span, she entered into hospice seven times, each one defying the odds. In the wake of her long illness were hefty nursing bills and 40 years of detritus to clear from her home. The collateral damage was incalculable.

Last Mother’s Day, I discovered her copy of “Leaves of Gold,” a compendium of “prayers, phrases and inspirational verse.” I am sure she never cracked it open. Except once. Inside the gold leaf cover, in her handwriting, was an inscription dated March 22: “To the Best Mother in the world. Also, my best friend.” Beneath it, she signed my name.

On the final walk through my mother’s home, I rescued a beat-up amaryllis in a broken pot. Don’t ask me why. My mom was clairvoyant and she said I was too. Maybe.

All I know is it’s blooming now and in its fierce finery, it reminds me of her. That makes me smile.

Love you, too, Mom.

DISAPPEARER

WILL BOUCHER

There's no greater high than strolling into a cafe, business as usual, wearing clothing privy to my stomach.

Take my shirt, for instance. Just your average eggshell button-down any schmuck can snag at a Nordstrom. It's extraordinary—dare I say divine—only because I had the wherewithal to chop the sorry thing into 597 2 "x 2" squares and cure them in my putrid kiln.

Every morning, I pop a square flat against my tongue and swish with tea. I sit jaybird naked at the window, watching the neighbors scramble to work.

I'll close my eyes and shape-shift.

I'm a middle-aged, front-of-the-bus middle schooler peacocking my good-kisser bona fides with the ol' cherry stem schtick. 

I catch a whiff of diesel and leather as I tongue-poke froufrou gobstoppers into panicky cotton pill bugs. I swallow and give chase with a breakfast of "champions." 

A few hours later, nature comes calling, and I live to serve. I leap from the bowl with Christmas eagerness, slacks around ankles, peering down—so swept up in merriment I forget to wipe. 

I can only drop to my knees, revering the morning's Square. 

Resurrection stupefies me into a humble wonder. Look at this thing—this little, fragile, thin, wimpy, mundane, dumb thing witnessed the hell of my most potent biology, only to reemerge resplendent with the screaming pigments of eensy anatomies. 

Sometimes, in my reverence, I'll get erect—tickled by the Square's flagrant indifference. An hour may pass before I extract it from the scatological ore, rinse it, and store it in a sterile Folgers can. Once all 597 have been cured, it's only a matter of sewing them back together. 

This shirt is my current favorite. It offers a collaborative checkering of myriad white hues: Alabaster for Kelsie, Beige for Aaron, Pearl for Serena, Moonlight for Kaolin, Coconut for Seth—

As I was saying—it's quite the romp to wear such garb in public. Take this blockhead in front of me, ordering his latte. The poor guy hasn't a clue he's inches from a garment that has withstood forces capable of turning his flesh to mush. 

I can't help but smirk.

You would, too. Don't lie.

He's all dressed up in his big-working-man outfit, Bluetooth slug burrowed in his ear, gesticulating his manicured hands with white-collar confidence. It's cute, really. He's a big, powerful man, in a rush back to his big boy job, pshh!—no better than a toddler with a stethoscope.

"Hey, hey! You're wearing my favorite shirt again! Love it! The usual for ya, hon?" 

That's the barista. I only come in when she's working. I've taken quite the shine to her and suspect she is Ivory.

"Of course! Only the best for the best! You've got me all figured out, don't ya?"

We shoot the shit for a few—weather, weekend, "y'all been busy?", all that jazz. She's a sweet girl, really—in her early twenties, I suppose. She's a bit meaty and always smells of tiramisu. Erica's her name. 

I'm a sucker for those who sense the shirt's gastro-mystique—those who honor its indifferent renewal with coos of compliment. It will be bittersweet to leave—it always is—but it's important to keep moving.

I tap my Visa as she gathers my coffee and sandwich. 

"Be careful! You better not spill on that shirt!"

I chuckle. "Wouldn't dream of it!"

I thank her with a head bow and take my table.

I watch her as I eat my sandwich, thinking of the shirt I bought yesterday. 

I was up all night cutting it into 2" x 2" squares. There's an empty hanger in the closet, ready and hungry.

I take a square from my pocket and wash it down with coffee, tongue-poking my way back to middle school. The sandwich is bland as hell, but it doesn't matter; a light lunch is best. Erica's off in an hour; it will be poetic for her to be in my gut beside what she served, dying the fibers of my newest garment.