Fiction

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

  DAY THREE Two more days to go and I really hope Suzy learns how to shut up. Just stop talking to me. Fuck. I mean, how hard could that be? I get that we’re all here to ‘make friends’ and ‘learn leadership’ but there’s a line. Why isn’t there a workshop about knowing when to leave someone alone? “No, Suzy, I haven’t watched any movies recently.” Who has that kind of money? And time? God. Why can’t Annie ever bother me like that? I’d talk to her myself but she’s always surrounded by everyone else and I don’t need

  Kelowna Secondary felt enormous to Ahmed, too big to be an actual school. But in reality, because Ahmed’s year level was very small, and because the select-entry Christian College up in the hills had finished construction, the school was emptier than it had been for years. Over the scorching summer all the portable buildings had been wheeled away, and the playing fields now seemed to stretch out endlessly from the double-storey building, leaving it an island stranded in a golden, sun-dried sea. Ahmed met up with Ibrahim before school and was rendered speechless at first. Ibrahim had ditched his

  I thought long and hard before deciding to move the fifth pawn from the left two spaces forward. Then I waited as the wind of the sea blew at my long golden hair, whispering a soft apology into my ear. ❖ ❖ ❖ I died some days ago with tears in my eyes – salty, bitter tears that threatened to overflow. Before I died though, my life was a utopian dream where animals from all walks of life lived together, each animal with its young by its side. But in my utopian dream, nothing was done to save those

  As the boy sprinted through the trees, his body jolted with each heavy footstep as it hit the ground. He felt his heart pounding as if it were a drum and the blood rushing through his face like a heat wave. Although the piercing cold wind was beginning to cut his numb face, the boy did not care. He ran until he could not take a single breath more and collapsed under a canopy of trees. The leaves below him crunched under his weight, and his eyes fell shut as if a bid to soften the blow. When he

  Life has a tendency to demand decease in its wake; there is nothing without cost.    Relative size. Emi remembers learning the term in art class back when she was in high school. She remembers the scraggly hair of her teacher, and the weird mismatched hippy clothing she used to wear. Everyone said the art teacher was crazy. If you have ever had the misfortune to attend an art class on a ‘theory day’, you will be well acquainted with the disappointment you feel when will not be dipping crusty paint-brushes into ‘just good enough’ paint, smearing it onto

  Staring, catatonic at the screen; before him, young men jumped and ran, crowds cheered their heroes on, and in his mind, he almost forgot that he existed on this brown, sagging couch. A shrill and electronic interruption of the phone jolted his spine straight and his heart all but stopped for that moment, before commencing its stuttering pace. And so the phone carried on and on. He gripped the side of the couch and the cushions below him firmly as he rose and began his way to the phone. He was almost halfway when the click of the answering

  Emanuel K had missed his stop. Hat over his eyes, en route to his job at the bank, he had fallen fast asleep the moment the train left off. Jolted into consciousness, Emanuel snatched his satchel and dashed for the door at the next station, fearful of being late to work. Waiting impatiently for the train to stop, Emanuel tapped his foot over and over as the carriage pulled into the next station, . Again, the dragging wait for the light to flash above the door played on his patience, eager was to alight the train and catch a