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  'Ugh!'

  'You said it, Sir. These creatures are vile. Anyway, we started to creep away as quietly as we could, but then a third creature came and a fourth one and we gave up trying to be quiet and just ran. On the way down, we met a different creature. It was a four-legger, a squat shape. It was covered in some kind of . . . armour-like skin. It looked peaceful at first, but when it saw us, it began to snort. We hid in the vegetation and after a while the creature turned around. We came out of hiding and were about to sneak past it, when, without warning, the creature started swinging its tail at us. A long, clubbed tail with spikes as long as your forearm. Taqan took a blow and he passed out. Between us, Ehi and I managed to carry him back to the scout craft. We returned to the main ship immediately.'

  'I see. What do you propose to do now?'

  'I don't know, Sir, but going down there again would be suicide.'

  'You're saying that the Council has invested all this time and effort in this expedition and now it turns out the planet is useless for our purposes?'

  'It seems so, Sir.'

  'Listen, Luczan, do you think you can get rid of these creatures?'

  'But Sir, that would be against . . .'

  'You're deep in space, Luczan, who's going to know?'

  'But . . .'

  'I'll give you a choice, Luczan. It's your conscience or your job--and mine. Get rid of them! By any means. Next time give me a favourable report!'

  'Any means?'

  'You heard what I said!'

  'Very well, Sir.'

  About this story:

  This silly piece of flash came to me after reading various scientific dissertations on mass extinctions on Earth, such as that of the dinosaurs. What if the matter were rather more simple than that?

  Legal Aliens

  Originally published in Semaphore SF in 2009, and reprinted in the Semaphore SF anthology for 2009

  The bell goes ding-dong over the murmur of the waiting room and a red number A54 flicks up on the wall display. A woman rises amidst the poor, the desperate and the hopeful. Whole families sit here for days, clutching forms most cannot read.

  Behind his desk, Peter yawns. Glances out the back window into the smoggy Jakarta air. He's tired and he doesn't know why. This day at the office seems to last forever.

  He stares at the woman now approaching his cubicle. She's tall like a basketball player, she's bronzed like a Swedish tourist, and has golden tresses like a fairytale princess. Definitely not a local.

  'Uhm,' he says and clears his throat, and then again, 'Uhm--how can I help you?'

  * * *

  Up north on the coast, and I mean really north, like Port Douglas, there is a place called Turtle Beach. It's not much of a town, just a few fishing shacks and a couple more flashy holiday houses--that's the fibro ones in case you were wondering. There's a general store, which sells life's necessities like bait, milk, bread, beer and yesterday's paper, and that's about it.

  If you'd go to Turtle Beach, which I know you won't, and if you asked for Tom Barretts, no one would show you the way to his house. 'Cause, you see, anyone who's important to him knows he never uses his name, and his shack is not worthy of the word 'house'. But if you asked for Goanna, the bloke who runs the general store will stop watching the cricket for long enough to tell you where he lives.

  'Just down the beach, mate. Can't miss it.' Guess you could have figured that out for yourself. Turtle Beach is that sort of place.

  If you went down there, Goanna might just sit you down by the fire with a stubby or two, and tell you of the night he sat in that very same position, on that very same milk crate, when a woman ran out of the darkness where waves crashed on the sand. She was tall, slender, golden-haired and completely naked. She was also incredibly pregnant, and from the way she was talking, she was about to drop the kid.

  Goanna ran off to his ute to call the ambulance on the two-way, and while he was doing that, she crouched on the sand and gave birth to a baby girl.

  The ambulance came and that was the last he saw of them.

  But I know you won't get to ask him, so he'll never tell you. He's not good with women and he's rather embarrassed about the whole thing anyway.

  * * *

  Peter stares at the woman, and drowns in her eyes. They're blue like the ocean. He swears he can see waves and fish, the ocean and coral reefs.

  'Yes, you can help me,' she says. Her voice reminds him of singing dolphins.

  Peter blinks, swallows and blinks again.

  'Uhm . . .. Uhm. If you want to apply for a visitor's visa to Australia, you need this form.' He pushes the piece of paper over counter, not looking at it.

  Her arms are pale and if she moves, it looks like the light reflects off her skin, like the scales on a fish.

  * * *

  I ask you: how much do you really know of our vast unpatrolled coastline? Do you know what's going on out there? Have you been to Horn Island?

  No? I'm suggesting you should go there and talk to Peta Johnson. Yes, I know she's huge and very black, she swears like a trooper, and she smokes while filling drums with fuel, but if there is anything to know about boats in the Torres Straits, she knows it. She could tell you that one day, about twenty years ago, she spotted a dinghy adrift on the currents. Not being averse to finding, and selling, spare dinghies, she set out to retrieve it. Imagine her surprise when she found a woman asleep in the bottom of the boat. She was tall and had tresses of golden hair that shone like the actresses on TV. She was naked and incredibly pregnant. Peta towed the boat to shore. While she waited for a doctor to come on the ferry from Thursday Island, the woman gave birth to a baby girl on the couch in Peta's living room. Peta didn't take the cigarette out of her mouth the whole time.

  But I'm guessing you will never go to Horn Island and you will never hear that story.

  * * *

  The young woman laughs.

  'No, I've been told I don't need a visa to come to Australia.' Her sing-song accent is captivating.

  'I don't know where you got that information, but all tourists travelling to Australia--'

  'I need to apply for a passport.'

  'A . . . passport?' Peter is sweating by now. Never mind Monica and the kids in his air-conditioned house in the expat compound; is there a way he can ask this heavenly creature for a date?

  'Yes, I was born there.'

  * * *

  Well, I guess you know where this is going, but I feel I should tell you the story of Mike Sullivan, Sullo to his mates. He's keen to talk, but he's one of those bushies who have gone just a little . . . overboard. He likes telling tourists to watch drop bears and hoop snakes and he manages not to bat an eyelid when they believe him. To their credit, some of the tourists get that he's taking the mickey, but after telling those gabs, what hope does Sullo have to be believed?

  So even if you went to Wyndham and took a joy flight in his sea plane, you would never believe his colourful tales. He would tell you the amazing story of when he flew out to deliver mail to some of the remote outposts on the Kimberley coast, and he spotted a group of people on the beach. He decided to put the plane down to see if they were OK, because that's the sort of thing people do in areas as remote as this. But you'd fidgeting and wondering when he was going to come to the punchline.

  Then he would tell you that there naked women on the beach, about thirty of them, lazing about the sand. Some were suckling tiny babies, some were very pregnant.

  Like turtles, he would tell you. And you would conclude that this was the bit he'd made up, but like the bushie you were pretending to be, you would just shrug and tell him to pull the other one.

  Of course, you might just check the birth registry for the town of Wyndham on 20 August 1989, and find that no fewer than thirty mothers registered their newborns on that day. Not bad for a town of only a few hundred. Then again, you wouldn't believe it, so I'm wasting my time.

  * * *

  The woman pulls out a piece of paper, a Western Au
stralian birth certificate. Peter squints at the rubbed print.

  'Wyndham? There's not a lot of people up there. What was your mother doing there? Where is she from?'

  She just smiles, and he can feel himself drowning again. 'It's true that I can get a passport, right?'

  'It is.' Peter opens a drawer and gets another form, substantially thicker. He pushes it over the counter and watches her hands as she takes it and clutches it to her bosom. Her skin shimmers. Like a fish.

  'It will probably take you a while to fill all this out, but we're open again tomorrow at nine. If you need any help . . .'

  'That's not necessary. I have help, plenty of it.' She winks at him.

  And then she's gone. Peter stares, but sees only the crowd of waiting Indonesians. He shakes his head.

  'I need some coffee.'

  About this story:

  When I was at Sydney University, many of the older overseas postgraduate students were contemplating getting much-coveted resident status by having children in Australia. Contrary to a number of other countries I know of, any child born in this country is automatically a citizen.

  Little Boy Lost

  Originally published in Midnight Echo issue 4 June 2010

  Some people say that when you die, they put you in the ground where worms come to eat you until there is nothing left but bones, and that's what you are: dust and bones, never to come back to life. Other people say they've talked to the souls of the dead. Maria can do better than that: she feeds them carrots.

  She sits on her knees in the grass, damp with dew, seeping into her jeans. The bag of carrots rests in her lap, the plastic crinkling whenever she moves.

  It's well after dark, and the back yard breathes mystery. The too-long grass casts tangled shadows and the forbidding metal fence hides just out of view. Even the concrete looks different: with deep cracks like hieroglyphs.

  They come out of the shadows, one by one. First the nose, wriggling. Long ears, twitching, flashing pink when they catch the beam of light slanting out the living room window. Then they hop: two furry paws in the grass. Hop. Sit up on the back legs. Another cautious wriggle of the nose. Another hop.

  Maria lifts her mobile phone. The screen lights up blue: a picture of a tropical beach. She presses send message from template. Scroll down the page.

  It's safe. You can come.

  Select contact, a twelve-digit number. Press send. The icon bounces over the screen.

  Uncle's voice drifts out the open window. 'Yes, now. Bring it.'

  Her mother wails something, but Maria isn't interested. Her mother always wails when she has to get off that couch. Sometimes Uncle hits her. Not today. Today is the day for photos. Bruised cheekbones do not look good in photos.

  Clicking of a computer keyboard. Uncle swears in heavy Russian. 'Over there, Alina. Face the bloody camera.'

  They'll be busy for a while.

  Maria opens the bag. Plastic rustles. Front paws lift off the ground. There are about twenty of them today. Backs straight, they sit, ears swivelling, noses always twitching.

  Y u do dat? she has asked many times.

  Wot? was the only answer she ever got.

  Maria raises the phone. Set to camera. Click, click click. That one, that one and that one. Unfamiliar ones, if she can get close enough. There is that one bunny that's always digging. A strong fellow, bigger than the others. Click, click, click.

  She comes too close. Furry bundles flee into the darkness under the lemon tree, into its ghostly shadows.

  One of the familiar ones remains: Mrs Blackwell. Sits up, expectantly. She knows about the carrots, or at least the herbivore-mind does. The bunny is male, but Mrs Blackwell's soul rides in it. It is her who looks out of that disapproving black eye, her wriggling her nose.

  The phone beeps. A message from a twelve-digit number starting with eight.

  wash ur hands grl.

  That's Mrs Blackwell all right. An elderly lady, lay dead at the bottom of the stairs for three days before a neighbour found her. The living define themselves by their possessions, their families or their jobs. The dead define themselves by how they died.

  Some die happy, some die sad, some . . . There are no words to describe the pain. Mrs Blackwell fell down the stairs, and took two days to die.

  Maria crinkles the bag open, feels for a carrot, holds it out, phone in her other hand. At the edges of her vision furry bodies move in the shadows. Her thumb moves over the keypad. Reply--to the long number starting with eight.

  Who r dey? Maria is always looking for new numbers, for that one soul she wants to find.

  No 1

  Mrs Blackwell doesn't even look, but grabs the carrot between sharp teeth and yanks it out of Maria's hand. Retreats into the shadows with the carrot bumping along the concrete.

  Maria's thumbs darts over the phone's keypad.

  U no Ilya?

  The carrot disappears further into the darkness. There is no reply. None of them knows Ilya. They are not very smart. The soul loses something when they die and the bunny takes over. Everyone knows bunnies are stupid.

  With their carrot prize, the bunnies recede, and leave the back yard through the gaps under the fence. The big bunny is still digging.

  'Maria!'

  Uncle's voice makes the window shake. The back door clangs open, and the remaining furry shadows flee, white tails flashing, under the fence.

  Dark eye meet hers. 'Bunnies, eh? Always bunnies. How many pictures can you take of these bunnies?'

  There is no point in answering. Whatever reply she'd give would always be the wrong one.

  * * *

  Maria stomps up the steps to her bedroom. Bare, with a mattress in the corner and a window opposite. No curtains. A salty breeze wafts through the flyscreen. In the dark, the sea rumbles out of sight, the lights of the harbour throw the headstones of the graveyard in cardboard-cutout relief.

  Ilya is out there, she knows for sure. On a sun-kissed day, six years ago, she and her mother and her father buried him there.

  She gazes out the window, frozen in memories. Hears his four-year old voice, the splashing of water in the pool. She hears her father's voice, laughing, always laughing. Life was about dolls, colouring books and toy horses with bright pink manes. Life was about starting school. Her uniform still hangs in the cupboard. Untouched. The world has forgotten about her.

  She clutches the phone to her chest. I'll find you, Ilya.

  There are some clothes on the bed in the corner. A corset, black with frilly lace. High-heeled shoes, much too big.

  'Hurry up, girl,' calls Uncle from downstairs.

  Maria rummages in the tangle. Hooks catch in delicate black lace. 'There are no undies,' she shouts down, her voice thin.

  'What do you think we're making here, a cartoon? Come down here before I have to come and get you.'

  Not, not that, never that.

  Maria sheds her loose shirt, peels off her jeans. The knees are green from the grass. Mother will wail some more.

  She steps into the corset and pulls the black lace over her pale tummy. It scratches and itches its way up and then it just sits there, cold and strange, floppy over her budding breasts.

  There is no time to contemplate; she goes down the stairs. The straps sag off her bony shoulders and air reaches in private places.

  The living room is all lit up with bright lights in each corner. There is a bed, full of frilly pillows.

  Her uncle nods at it and grunts something.

  Maria moves into the pool of light, squinting at the glare from the satin bedcovers. Hot pink. Yuk. She sits on the edge, her legs crossed. The corset pokes in her side. It's cold in the room.

  Her mother stumbles off the couch and half-flings the make-up kit on the bed. She mutters, twists up the lipstick. Paints Maria's lips. She hates the taste of lipstick. It's too red. It makes her look too pale.

  'Have you heard from Father?'

  'Don't talk when I'm doing this.'

  'Hav
e you heard?' Maria mumbles through half-closed lips.

  Her mother shakes her head.

  'Can I write?'

  Her mother shrugs. Maria can write, but will Uncle give her a stamp? There is no internet in jail, of course.

  Mother finishes the make-up. Black mascara, too much rouge. It's itchy and greasy and tastes revolting. Maria wants to wipe her face.

  Uncle waves his hand. 'Ready?'

  Marian knows the routine. Sits back on the bed, puffs out her chest, and pouts.

  'Not like that. Move them apart!' Her uncle pulls her right leg. He stinks of Vodka.

  Maria leans back on the pillows on her elbows, her legs spread. The feel of cold air down her private parts makes her shiver. Uncle sits at the foot of the bed. He shouts orders. Open your mouth, lick your lips. The camera clicks.

  Now take the corset off.

  'No.' Maria clutches her hands to her chest.

  Uncle is stronger. He always is. He pushes her on the bed. The harsh lights make her skin glow. His hand brushes her budding nipples.

  'Ouch. That hurts!'

  He pauses. Maria shrinks back.

  'You're getting to be a nice young lady. It's time we thought about a different type of income.'

  There is a hunger in his eyes she hasn't seen before.

  * * *

  Maria sits in the room where the computer screen lights the walls blue. She barely recognises herself in the picture on the screen. Sultry eyes. Too much lipstick. Black lace barely covers a fuzz of auburn hair between her legs. Right now, she is not Maria. She is Russian Pussy.

  Her fingers fly over the keyboard, typing out replies. I love you, too, or I'm here for you. Who these men are she doesn't know. They're on the other side of the keyboard. They pay Uncle lots of money. She doesn't like them when they talk about her private parts, but she's locked inside this house, and they can't hurt her.