Furin Chime Press™

Tag: Australian literature

  • The Tar Machine

    The Tar Machine

    Eulogy for an Unfinished Cat

    Dressed as a cat I traipse through the streets and lanes of yesteryear, a mystery of mind so despised, so unperceived, that this territory marked by squirts of indifference (over many years) has never been gained at all.

    A quiet squat in the crepuscular light. Who am I but an indistinguishable feline made final by fractals of form? By the moon’s shifting gleam, its play of light perfect upon this silver-blue fur. Desolate, quiet, pin-prick final, cutting to the quick of my core.

    This one’s for the cat-people. For those made lonely by the dysentery of experience, or time’s dismal episode flickering on TV like a brain that does not matter. This one’s for the long-distance lovers sifting through their screens. Searching for solace within a shame that reverberates beyond the data-stream and which connects us by our sorrow.

    I have seen the man who walks these streets carrying cane and dressed in black. I watch him through a knotted hole in a wooden fence. This Catherine Wheel dream circulating beyond the vapour rising from my ejected waste. A territory marked, a form found; (one in keeping with my inevitable demise). A sigh, then relief … A moment during which the transition to humanity begins, then is at once complete. This eye is glass but the orb is deep. The flesh advances, putrefies … My troubled tail collapses from one too many lashings. This cat, in all her fractious wonder, finally, she sleeps.

    The Tar Machine

    home


    family


    mother


    father


    sister


    brother


    strap


    leather strap, spray, wind, the leather strap lets fly like the tail of an angry puma, black cat, yellow eyes, her name is holly, holly stares at her surroundings from the safety of her cane basket, the black and white tiled kitchen floor is a precipice that requires the most sensuous negotiations of the four paws of a cat, even if there was a mouse dawdling along the skirting board holly would not be interested for survival is foremost in her cat’s brain, all mice can wait, there will be time to play when the job is done

    inside the house seen through the yellow eyes of holly the cat, she stands, she expands both this way and that, the fur on her back like iron filings drawn to a powerful magnet secretly implanted in the ceiling, holly’s fur, it has a life of its own as it leaves her spine, a flock of fine hair scurries along the walls of this sullen room, and i, in my decrepit bed, i wake from dreams of long ago anticipating some relief, shake the sleep from my eyes, and discover for the forty thousandth time these bluestone walls and the sound of an unseen creek trickling outside, i do not rise from this mattress of straw, it is as if i must lever this body across time, and i can no longer remember whether this exacerbated cat was once a childhood pet or has always been a black and hissing figment in my mind, my hair, black as well, yet inferior to holly’s, it hangs across my face, oily, traces of grey, how long have i been in this room, did i arrive yesterday on a star descending past the moon as it streaked across the universe, no matter, these walls, the sound of that creek, and holly’s tail insinuating itself into my ear, her unclipped claws hooked into the flesh around my shoulder blades, and rip with a flourish, and rip with another, and my skin descends toward the base of my spine in curlicues that gather between the pads of holly’s paws, i once administered pain, i have spilled blood and drank it and rubbed it across my chest, created a pattern from someone else’s misery, only to have their misery become my own in this room, behind these walls, with holly on my back inside my mind tearing strips from me, exposing the ribs of a time that seems so ancient, if only i could find words that would adequately express this sinister dream inside a mind rupturing within the remembered blood of someone else’s misery, these words i cannot find are walls to the sound of that trickling creek i imagine runs through a field on the outside of this room, daisies, sunshine, these words are so inadequate, they do not inspire, and my dream drifts back into this room, behind these walls, exhausted, i dump my body back on this bed and realise the idyllic creek outside is just the sound of metal coils contracting beneath my weight

    rupture, jenkins, and yes, i run my fingers through my hair, feel the greasy touch of whiskers covered in human oil, and yes, i remember a man named jenkins, his soul split by experience, and yes, jenkins, he wore black horn-rimmed glasses like antelope horns belonging to the twisted cape of some disfigured shaman, and his stories, they were of the blackest kites swirling in a cumulonimbus sky, jenkins stories breaking his listeners bones, scooping out the marrow they believed in, replacing it with a dowel of the blackest type, until it was jenkins who was able to make his listeners fly upon recitals of his disfigured shaman’s dreams, this story of green leaves turned grey, decomposed and banking up along the seams joining the walls inside this bluestone room, and jenkins, you sit here now, your grey hair in strands across your scalp, leaving the slightest freckle revealed, what is inside your head jenkins, what sits beneath that freckle, is it a manifestation of the sprinting cancer inside your body, talk to me jenkins, tell me stories from inside your room, is it like mine jenkins, or are there many rooms, one containing a kitchen table, a silver room jenkins, you are a lucky man, let me hear the story of your silver room jenkins, tell me jenkins, explain the specifications of your room, talk jenkins, i will listen, i will abide by your regulations, it is fortified with steel, your wife stands by an ironing board, her tongue extends toward you, entering your ear, you feel the sound of her tongue entering your ear and your perceptions are momentarily disfigured, a split of the soul jenkins, your wife, she has control, for it is your ear inside her mouth when she swallows, and yes jenkins, your story is one of love floating high on air clouds whipped by currents into a cumulonimbus sky, and jenkins, what has become of this thing, this globule of ectoplasm that we thinly, that we inadequately describe as a soul, is it spread amongst green fields inside the highways and streams that make up the vascularity of your interior, are you totally diseased jenkins or is this infection confined to the flesh beneath your missing ear, talk jenkins, i will listen, talk jenkins, speak, and you are silent, and i am feeble, and jenkins, we shall sleep now, and continue our disfigured dissertation when we wake

    silver room, silver lady, the lady inside the silver room dances with a broom extending up her arse and out her ear, she thrashes at experience, sweeps life into a time when her mind was frozen, when sand gathered in the corners of this bluestone room, she visits me now, the lady inside, she leaves her silver room and crawls from jenkins sleeping ear, i wake, her arms and body heave and sway in front of me, inside the mountain with a thousand caves that is her torso, those ribs, the ribs of the lady inside, semicircular, smooth ivory ribs, bones of experience, i want to extend my hands through her pink flesh, to visit the interior of her torso and run my fingers along those ribs, like whalebone, the lady inside, her ribs, engraved by the finest cartographer, diagrams as yet unreadable, must get closer, leave this forlorn room of broken dreams, and yes, feel the edge of my dirty fingernail trailing along the inscriptions etched into those ribs, of pathways to the sea, of men in ships, their beards flaying in the wind, of diagrams incised upon the life of the lady inside, and it is the ship that i must see, for it is the vessel that transported my father to this house of hawthorn brick, his memories, his experiences, his fantasies inscribed upon my spine, that spineless act of pissing in a gumboot for fear that your father would rip his love away from you, and yes, it is love at the core of these wretched dreams, it is love that was ripped from me in that house of hawthorn brick, at first, its doors and windows were open to the sun, that house sucked in the juice of spring, dispersed pollen along corridors that degenerated into sand and dust, now, i sit inside this bluestone room, these cold walls, these walls made from thick ice, where memories leak into the general surrounds, memories of a man named jenkins, he sleeps next to me, the freckle on his head alive with the sound of his disfigured brain turning each thought over, each memory, of the woman inside, jenkins wife, who bit off her husband’s ear for fear that he would become contaminated by the goings on inside this bluestone room, these walls, the sound of incessant dripping, gaining speed, becoming a trickle, outside i hear the creek become a river as it races towards the sea, the swirling waters of the mouth of a river regurgitating its soul into the sea, come jenkins, find your feet among the grime, do not slip, struggle jenkins, take your hand away from the place that once held an ear, listen, force yourself to listen as we chip holes through these walls of ice, feel the fresh air of a future life seep into the stale degeneration of this bluestone room, sniff, taste, hear, touch a life that lies paved and spread before us, extending through green fields into the distance, a small creek running alongside us jenkins, running with us, smooth stone experiences to come jenkins, let us walk, and when we are tired we shall sleep once more

    and yes jenkins, do you see the stag, its velvet covered antlers a complex of possibilities, presenting pathways jenkins, which path do we choose, it is your turn to choose jenkins, you, the man who turned up that lucky wildcard, your life jenkins, what a laugh, it always seems to rise from somewhere at the bottom of a deck, on a ship, etched into the rib bones of the lady inside, my father, jenkins, jenkins, my father, i walk with you into walls, our heads, our eyes confronting one another yet all this time those pig eyes of yours have prevented me from seeing that you jenkins, you are that father that ripped your love from me and spat it into that bluestone gutter outside that house of hawthorn brick, i love your disfigurement jenkins, want to press my fingers into the pulp beside your temple and elicit strands of love from inside the recess of your brain, a tendon of love jenkins, i suck your love through my lips, it slithers down my throat, it burns the oesophagus, i will eat your entire mind jenkins, my father, i will eat the worms in your mind and shit them back into the sea, in the hope that, in the hope, there is no hope, there is only you jenkins

    Tony Reck © 2025

  • 2. Autopsy at the Junction Hotel (from the draft novel Stawell Bardo)

    2. Autopsy at the Junction Hotel (from the draft novel Stawell Bardo)

    Autopsy at the Junction Hotel

    Sound of hooves and iron‑shod wheels on gravel reached the Junction Hotel door, a rare interruption in the sleepy settlement. Huish‑Huish brushed back her hair before going to answer the knock. A detective stood at the doorstep, one finger tapping lightly against his thigh. He was waiting for Mow Fung to answer, a name he knew from the licensing roll. He had driven from his headquarters at Stawell, only a few miles away.

    “Mrs Mow Fung, I presume? I am Detective Forster.” He made a slight, polite bow. A nervous man, a lean man, she observed, and the lean, nervous man removed his grey felt hat and fingered the brim. If he meant to unsettle her, he’d have to try harder. She caught the tang of carbolic soap clinging to him in the close air of the doorway. It suited him somehow. She ushered him into the bar. Theirs was a modest establishment, but scrubbed spotless. The faint smell of lamp oil and aged wood lingered in the cool interior, a scent that seemed to settle into its polished tables and floorboards. She had been topping up the lamps, and a tin container of oil remained open on one of the tables, next to a neat pile of linen squares.

    They passed the bottom of a staircase, halting at a child’s footsteps that came thumping down.

    “Mama! Alice won’t eat her porridge. I’ve told her and told her but she just picks at the egg and won’t touch anything else.”

    The mother suppressed a sigh. Such was the morning ritual. “Tell her the police have arrived. Once they deal with your father, I will have them deal with her too, if she is not careful.”

    Detective Forster could not prevent a cough, but immediately resumed his grim composure.

    The girl, aged twelve or so at most, ascended a few stairs, halted, unafraid but inquisitive.

    “What will they do with her, Mama?”

    “Use your imagination!” Huish-Huish was outdone – the child was incorrigible. “Now make them eat their breakfast properly and off to school with you! Foolish girl.”

    The daughter climbed the stairs with purpose, the hem of her uniform brushing the narrow boards.

    The mother stopped at a door halfway along a dim, unadorned hallway. The air smelled faintly of cold ash and last night’s cooking fires. From behind emanated the ghost of a voice. No distinct words, but what the newspapers mocked as “Oriental mishmash.”

    Turning to Forster, she said, “My husband is inside here with the gentleman.”

    “The others have already arrived?”

    “Only the dead one so far,” she said with a smile. “Mow Fung is a very silly man, who nurtures some foolish superstitions from old China. You must forgive him.”

    But she did not go barging in. There may be others. She laughed softly. “He daydreams, fantasises he communes with the dead. You know, he sinks down into the Ten Courts of Hell and has a bit of a chat. Haha!” She said it in a melodramatic tone with a gently mocking lilt.

    The faint chant in the room faltered, as if aware of their intrusion, then died altogether. She pushed the door open. The candle was out. The trace of a strange perfume lingered in the air. His odds and ends were tucked neatly out of sight. Forster felt the change in atmosphere as they stepped in – the pall was unsettling after the murmur that hung in the hallway.

    Mow Fung drew back a curtain, and the morning sun slanted through a haze of fine dust. He smiled at Forster and bobbed his head in a dumb-show of humility. There was something indefinably unusual about the fellow, Forster thought.

    A noise of wheels and hooves announced more visitors, and Huish-Huish left the room to meet them. Forster jotted a few notes in his pad as he examined the corpse.

    “This is exactly the same state it was in when it arrived yesterday?”

    “Of course, detective,” Mow Fung said.

    “You haven’t touched it?”

    “Touched it?” Mow Fung repeated. “Good idea. A very good idea! You are an excellent detective, I see that already. Splendid.” He pressed his palms together in a position akin to prayer and nodded. Forster found himself almost infected with the broad smile.

    “Very nasty business,” said the oriental. “Murderer came up from behind, a trusted companion, a good mate. Never knew what hit him!”

    Was that a laugh? A cackle? What was wrong with these people?

    Forster stepped to the table and took hold of the neck of the cadaver, stretching the flesh about the open wound. A sharp instrument had been used: an axe, probably, or maybe a tomahawk. The weapon evidently slipped in its course at first, creating minor abrasions before cutting right in through the neck.

    He turned to the Chinese man.

    “Mrs Mow Fung tells me you have been … communicating with the deceased,” he said.

    Mow Fung smirked. “The missis,” he said, “is a silly woman who nurtures some foolish superstitions from old China.”

    Forster gave him a piercing look. “Be so kind as to tell me, then, how you could have arrived at your – your deduction otherwise?”

    At that moment, Doctor Bennett, the constable, and Henry Wilson  – the miner who found the body – came into the room. Bennett cut Forster’s introductions short to begin the post‑mortem, and the constable took out his notebook. Forster and Mow Fung took chairs, while Wilson remained standing nearby, arms folded, watching in silence.

    “A European. Body very dried up. Bad state of decomposition,” Bennett dictated. “Much of the skin has been eaten away – particularly from the arms and legs – torn off in patches, very much dried up and leathery. A good portion of the integuments is gone.”

    “A lot of wild cats out there at them old Four Post diggin’s,” Wilson volunteered, but Forster silenced him with a look. “We’ll go through all that later on,” he said.

    “Too far gone to examine the internal organs,” Bennett continued. “The head is off – missing. It wasn’t found at the location, I take it?”

    The constable shook his head. “No, sir.” Of course not: some things the bush will not give back.

    “The upper margin of the skin on the neck has been divided by some sharp heavy instrument. About an inch below the margin of the neck is a transverse cut through the skin, which extends down to the vertebrae, evidently made by the same implement, probably a hatchet or axe. No other marks of violence. The upper margin of the neck is indented as if by a succession of cuts. The head has evidently not been severed from the body by one single blow, but by several. One cut extends transversely across the neck. Numerous abrasions in the vicinity. The vertebrae have been severed with that heavy blade. No, I should not think it was done with one blow.”

    “Not suicide then?” Wilson said deadpan.

    Forster gave him a withering look.

    The doctor continued. “I would estimate the height of the body to be that of a man about five foot ten or eleven inches. As for the length of time the body was exposed, I could not speak with certainty. But I would say any time from four weeks upwards – probably two months or so, to become dried up and mummified like this. Absolutely bloodless. From an examination of the bones and hair, I would conclude that the body was that of a middle-aged man probably between the ages of thirty-five and fifty-five years.

    “Internal organs – those of the chest and abdomen – are very much decomposed, and in the condition of… well, pulp. From the upper margin of the neck to the heel is five foot one and a quarter inches; from the tip of the shoulder to the ankle, four foot nine. The frame is large-boned and that of a big man. Some of the hair of the beard is on the neck – reddish-brown hair mixed with grey.  Skeleton is perfect. No broken bones.”

    He drew a surgical saw from his case and cut off a piece of vertebra and two fingers, then scraped some sandy‑red hair from the neck. He placed the specimens in a jar, which he plugged with its cork stopper.

    “Apparently after having consulted the victim in the afterworld, Mr Mow Fung here informs me that the deceased knew and trusted his murderer – enough to let him come up behind and take him by surprise,” Forster said.

    The constable chuckled.

    “Come on, leave off Sarge!”

    His superior paid him no mind, studying the body as he spoke.

    He turned to Wilson. “You discovered the body lying as it is now, Mr Wilson? On its back?”

    “Yes, sir. On its back when I found it, and your coppers brought it here the same way,” Wilson said.

    “Mm. Yet observe these abrasions on the chest, and the tiny stones impressed into the flesh – or where the flesh was exposed when he hit the ground. Even if the clothing was stripped away afterwards, the marks are clear enough: they suggest the body struck the earth face down.”

    Forster leaned over the table, his hand hovering a few inches above the corpse’s limbs, tracing out their outline. “And note the awkward sprawl of the arms and legs. The hands, palms upward as he fell, show no attempt to break his fall. Whoever removed the clothing may have shifted him somewhat, but that detail remains. He never knew what hit him. A pretty business indeed.”

    He straightened and glanced at Mow Fung. “Does my analysis accord somewhat with yours, Mr Mow Fung?”

    Mow Fung said nothing, gazing clearly into the detective’s eyes, a hint of a smile hovering on his lips.

    “I am a simple hotel-keeper. I am sorry – I do not follow your complicated talk.” Pensively, he stroked his sparse black beard (one day it may grow into a venerable white one). “Perhaps we do not see things as they are,” Mow Fung continued, “but as we are, as it was said in the old time.”

    “Quite so.”

    “Will I put that in, Sarge?”

    “Might be a good idea to insert it as a footnote for you to incorporate into your own meditations, which I’m sure you engage in regularly.”

    Mow Fung watched the buggies of the detective and the doctor, and the uniformed constable on horseback, recede at a leisurely pace down the dusty main street of Deep Lead – towards the old abandoned gold diggings on the Old Glenorchy Road. They rounded the bend, passed Bevan the ironmonger’s, and disappeared into the bush.

    He met Huish-Huish coming in from the laundry with an armful of towels, their youngest daughter Alice trailing on her skirts. At that moment, the other daughters trooped down the staircase, Lena – the eldest at twelve years – herding her siblings. School uniforms and wide-brimmed straw hats floated in a bubble of chatter, expressing such immediate and minute issues as are memorialized perhaps in the record of human souls, but seldom if ever recalled in human life. “Hurry now,” Huish‑Huish called. Alice was moaning about the porridge. Lena hesitated at the threshold as the others spilled outside, her hand lingering on the doorframe.

    Mow Fung could not refrain from a smile and faint shake of the head as they left with no fare-thee-well, though Lena struck him as older than her years. His eyes followed the children as they disappeared, then shifted to the bush beyond the paddocks. He remembered what Wilson had said: the body had been found at the Four Posts. He gazed at the bush a moment longer, the name settling uneasily in his mind.

    Michael Guest © 2025

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