Fiction

Content Warnings: Hospital Environment, Implied Terminal Illness A hospital room. 5:00pm.  Only the hum of equipment and soft movement outside is heard. There is a bed with various monitors on either side. A fluorescent light shines from above, flickering occasionally while a warm champagne glow from the back window washes over the bed. A young woman lies gazing out the window, watching the sociability of the streets beyond the smudged glass. A drawing book lies open on the bedside table.    Athena: Time passes slowly in hospital. Nurses come, nurses go as does everyone else while you're stuck in bed.

Content Warning: Bullying & Discussion of Mental Health Every story must have its protagonist. Its saviour. Someone who has a purpose, who leads the plot. Though that person couldn’t possibly be you. Yes, you. So who will you choose to be instead?   Protagonist A: A hero: incapable of mistakes. Untouched by bad guys, your pursuit of glory is never fractured by those who desire your downfall. You’re a god, with the world at your feet. You have everything you could ever want: the job, the fortune, the lover, and especially the recognition. Your strength is unmatched; flaws indistinguishable. Therefore,

It was different now they didn’t talk. Olive and Lotte had always been something, even when they were fresh-faced fifteen-year-olds, too young to put words to the feelings that were growing between them. By the time they’d reached second year they were everything. But now, after Olive had gone off to Italy for six months and come back, something had changed.  If Olive had to, she would probably pinpoint the moment of their decline as that argument they’d had one evening in Rome. It had been months without seeing each other in-person, tied together only by phone calls. Late at

Not long after they leave, Will arrives. He is here to build my bed for me. I greet him with red eyes and a tired smile, he knows I’ve been crying. It’s just the two of us, surrounded by boxes and a hopeful future. We head into my bedroom where I show him the box of the bed frame. I bring the floor cushion into the room to watch as he starts unpacking. He tells me he has done this twice before, so my expectations are big. It took us four hours. Four fucking hours to build the frame. It

Every time that I hang out with you and them I feel so alienated but I feel like an alien would fit in more than me  because they are inherently interesting and I just feel like the most boring person alive   I can’t keep up with any of the jokes while the three of you go back and forth, faster and faster and I force myself to laugh  in grating harmony   I grapple with possible things to say but none of them seem worthwhile sometimes one of you says something I had thought of  and I resent myself

Content Warning: Violence There was a house up ahead on the left. Amidst the gloom of what was a cool winter’s night, it appeared tall and grand in what seemed like an abyss of nothingness for miles on end. There I remained, confined to its interior with very few visitors. It made sense to pass it– surely there were signs further down the road; why stop for help? Hence why I was thrilled to see the lost couple quickly pulling into the driveway.  The two-storey house, further away from the others down the road, appeared rather large with a decently

  Words by Kiara Sharee It’s stuffy in here, the air is almost stifling. Strange, given that my window is rolled down, the car greedily sucking in the sea-kissed wind. It likes to tell me of its past travels and where it has yet to roam. Often threads itself between my fingers, enticing me to join it on its adventures. At times, I want to. At other times, it sends my hair whipping so fiercely that I can’t even see where we would go.    I can hear the ocean calling out to me. She rocks to and fro, sending

This piece was first published in Lot’s Wife Edition 3, 2021. I spent the first 18 hours in Melbourne immersed in the deepest sleep I’ve ever had in my life. Sharing a room of 10 reeking bunk beds at the cheapest hostel I could afford didn’t even matter: this jetlag was all-consuming.  The days flew by as I remained in bed watching movies on my laptop, sheltered under the humid fort of towels that hung from the bed above my own. It is a popular belief that you make tons of friends staying at a hostel. But I had been

1. On Depression Street, there is a house painted pink. The house: old, renovated, Colonial. Crown-moulding on the ceiling. Pink: the colour of a hopeless-hopeful people, who won’t budge no matter how many times you tell them to. Pink people, you see, are dreamers. They live and suffer for their dream. Do their dreams ever come true? Does someone who’s asleep know that they are dead? This is the Twilight Zone. 2. Still reeling, like every particle and cell of my body turned into liquid love (Dove Cameron, 2018). 3. The first time you see her, it’s not love or

  Far above the towering mountains that stretched for the heavens, and higher than the strongest most fearless birds dared to rise, above the dark water-laden thunderclouds and beyond the delicate semi-formed mists rose the gigantic city of Theoria. Ancient and proud it had floated between the clouds and stars for countless generations, bustling with activity and progress. The streets were paved with stone, the houses a mismatched puzzle of brick and metal. Street lamps framed the sidewalks like silent sentinels, throbbing with artificial light all through the night, while the day was presided over by life. Children ran through

The policeman swings his gaze over the railings into the grey river. Beside him, a mother crouches in a paramedic’s arms, a large pram rests on its side. Its contents are sprawled across the footpath; spare nappies, a bottle, a fleece blanket, a soft little giraffe. All except the baby. The river is murky with silt and city pollution; the policeman searches for the pale body and the red jumpsuit that hugs it. “Size 000…he’s wearing a red jumpsuit...size 000 from my Aunt,” the mother repeats. The bridge is made of unforgiving asphalt and steel. A greying woman sits in

  This isn’t really a story, but the memory of one, preserved like dried flowers between paper pages. Boy meets girl has been told and retold. Boy dumps girl has variations too. But not boy abandons girl, or boy loses faith in girl, or boy reimagines girl as a monster and runs far, far away. To clarify, boy and girl isn't boyfriend and girlfriend. He wasn’t an ex, but an ex-something, an ex-maybe. An ex-almost. We were both the type that was easily detached from others, which meant people were surprised when they found out we were close. And they'd