It’s been raining now for a lot longer than 40 days and nights. The exact number dances and skips around my head but my mind’s not nimble enough to catch it anymore. Once lost, the precision of time can’t be restored. I calculate from the depletion of my supplies it’s been approximately two and half months since the evacuation. Routine is a discipline that must be maintained in order to keep track of the time. Daylight no longer exists, just shades of darkness. Petroleum skies on umbered water.
It was his own instinct Jonathon could never reconcile so he let his actions haunt him. After all instinct is a reaction. A riposte to the present where split-second decisions dance with the hand of fate. And it’s the human condition to spend most of our time in the past and future — and to surrender free will when we least want it.
She lives in the country and every day commutes by train to the city for work. Each morning she rushes on the station platform like a black unicorn, just as the train departs. She steps onto the quickening regional service and deftly finds an empty seat to curl up in and sleep the hour journey there and back, like she’s greedy for lost sleep. She even sleeps through the train stops. Every night she wakes just before her stop like it’s a regular alarm bell.
Louie remembered alighting the plane feeling tired and a bit woozy. It was the multiple nightcaps that sat behind his eyes. He could feel his eyes were bloodshot and cheeks were puffy — the Grey Goose as well as the cabin pressure and mild dehydration.
The game was of no consequence. JSA rooball, under 8’s northern league. There were no finals, no competition ladder, teams were arbitrary colours and divisions and rosters determined by postcode. Play limped up the far side of the ground. The field was marked with bright plastic sports cones inside the painted white lines for local league matches later in the day.
I clean out my msg inbox while waiting at my stop across from Pizza Express on the corner of Lapwing Lane. I do it ruthlessly. It’s my meditation when waiting for the bus or friends. I come across the last message I sent to my dad: ‘Do we spell skepticism with a K?’ ‘No C,’ …
Her heart fastened to the surfer curls of the server. She was sure he surfed. He was probably a vegetarian, maybe even a vegan too. She had a gift for knowing (things about) people so she didn’t need to test how accurate her instinct was.
He held his spoon in a fist, like his granddad. It felt right. He was digging into his food, which seemed to be the point of a spoon. And it was way more practical than how his parents instructed that he hold it – between his thumb and forefinger like an upside-down pencil. His dad corrected him until he was nine.
Under new entreaties for reconciliation and consolidation, where the other had long since mattered, Gerry remained resolute had the last bullet in the chain jammed, or had he not plugged the back of the enemy he would be dead.
Bill looked down at his plate and touched his knife and fork together. He surprised himself by how little he’d eaten. Sausages were the limit of his wife’s cooking ability – sausages, potato gems and frozen beans. And Bill gave the sausages most the credit in the exchange with his wife.
