Furin Chime Press

Tag: Tony Reck

  • Dog Days

    Dog Days

    Not long after I moved into the rooming house there was a problem with the hotwater service. Out of their rooms they came: The Swine, Vladimir the Caretaker, and Bruce.

    While the other tenants postulated, Bruce proposed a flashlight.

    “A flashlight…?” The Swine said.

     “What are we gunna do with a flashlight?”

    “Well…” Bruce said.

    “We can get down on our hands and knees and see what’s going wrong in there.”

    The Swine snatched the flashlight out of Bruce’s hand and threw it across the yard.

    “Now, get back into your hole and don’t come out until I say so.”
    His six foot four-inch frame hunched over, Bruce did as he was told.

    It seemed reasonable enough. Something was wrong with the hotwater service. Perhaps the pilot light was out. So get a flashlight and have a look. Try and solve the problem. The Swine was out of order, throwing Bruce’s flashlight across the yard like that… If he ever did anything like that with my property, well… But The Swine hadn’t done it to me, he’d done it to Bruce. It was Bruce’s problem, not mine.

    “I saw what happened…” I said.

    That same afternoon, I was hanging socks on the clothesline when I came across Bruce rummaging in the long grass.

    “A nasty thing to do with someone else’s property.”
    Bruce did not respond.

    “Yes. A real nasty thing to do… If he had have thrown my flashlight across the yard like that…”
    I plucked a pair of wet socks from the clothes basket.

    Stylized aerial view of a rooming house, with four figures standing in the yard, as well as a clothesline with washing.

    “Can you hear me?” I said.

    “Do you want some help looking for your flashlight?”

    “No,” Bruce barked.
    And that was that.

    It’s always the same. Offer to help someone less fortunate than yourself and it’s never appreciated. But a person has to show some empathy. Without the power of empathy human beings would be animals. Scratching out a meagre existence the way a dog scratches for a bone. But human beings aren’t animals, we’re human beings… So I gave Bruce the benefit of the doubt and when next I saw The Swine on the doorstep studying a formguide, I challenged him over his treatment of Bruce.

    “A bit rough that…” I said.
    And made my way to the letterbox.

    “A bit rough what..?” The Swine said.
    I removed a wad of junkmail protruding from the letterbox.

    “You wouldn’t treat a dog like that…”

    “Dog…?” The Swine said.

    “This is a rooming house. No pets allowed. Except for that animal who lives out the front… Mongrel ought to be put down.”
    (Bruce lived in a box tacked onto the veranda).

    “The man’s not a bloody Golden Retriever.”
    The Swine looked up from his formguide.

    “Be careful sonny,” he said.

    “I’d stay right out of it if I were you.”

    The Swine then buried his nose in his formguide and without saying another word unleashed from his throat a low-pitched trembling growl.

    ‘Sonny’? Who did The Swine think he was calling ‘Sonny’? I was about to give The Swine a piece of my mind, a real dressing down. Instead, I went back to my room. If you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas. I was above petty minded incidents such as that.

    I secured the wad of junkmail under one arm and unlocked the door to my room. I threw the junkmail on the coffee table but it slid across the brown veneer surface onto the floor. I picked it up and was about to throw it in the bin when in among the material advertising cut price sausages, home gardening and other paraphernalia, I caught sight of a picture of a small dog. I can’t remember what they’re called; they’re fluffy and white, but they don’t bite. All they do is yap. Yap. Yap. Yap. It was a rough photocopy on cheap paper. There were prices, special offers and free quotes. Right at the bottom was the catchphrase:

    We Will Treat Your Dog Like A Human Being

    Now a dog might be Man’s Best Friend, but treating a dog like a human being was cruel to animals. I thought about calling the Animal Protection Society and making a complaint. And I would have, except I didn’t have a phone. (Who can afford to pay the bill when you’re on disability pension and haven’t worked for years? Forced to live in a rooming house with a person like The Swine. A man who believed it was his right to treat less fortunate human beings with contempt and call them ‘Sonny’). I would have called the Animal Protection Society, but I didn’t. Instead, I threw the junkmail into a rubbish bin; except for the flyer advertising the dog grooming business. I pinned this up on a wall of my room in case I changed my mind and made a complaint. Then I lay down on my mattress, curled up and went to sleep.

    A week or so went by and I made an effort to stay away from The Swine. I didn’t speak to Bruce either. The best thing for a poor boy like me to do was mind his own business. If I played my cards right and stayed out of trouble I could live a nice and easy life in the rooming house.

    But the hotwater service failed once again. This time, The Swine went off his tree. He ran around the yard squealing that potatoes would sprout from his ears, that the dirt under his fingernails would be there forever and he would never be able to get them clean. Eventually, Vladimir the Caretaker came downstairs and gave The Swine a few reassuring pats on the head. But The Swine refused to listen and continued to froth at the mouth, so Vladimir threatened to evict him. On the spot. The Swine quickly settled down and Vladimir got out his spanners and screwdrivers and began trying to fix the hotwater service.

    Vladimir tapped away at the pilot light mechanism with the tip of his screwdriver. Then, against the best advice of The Swine, he dismantled the pilot light. It lay sprawled on the garden path: springs and knobs, buttons and washers, copper pipe and metal housing. None of it in any particular order. Everyone had a theory as to what might have been wrong with the hotwater service. But nobody, not The Swine, not myself or Vladimir, knew how to put the pilot light mechanism back together again. Then around one corner of the rooming house came Bruce. In his right hand he carried the same flashlight The Swine had snatched from him a week earlier and thrown into the grass.

    Everyone saw Bruce coming, except The Swine.

    Vladimir quickly gathered up his tools, did a complete about face, and pretended he was fertilising his chilli plants.

    “Where’ya goin?” The Swine said.

    “Someone’ll have to fix the hotwater service.”

    Bruce lumbered to a stop and clicked his flashlight into the ON position.

    “Let’s get down and have a good look at it.”

    “You…” The Swine said, as if about to blow his top.

    “Moron. Idiot. Fool. You wanna get down and have a look at it, then do it.”

    “Do what?” Bruce said.

    “Do it… IT…”

    “It…? What do you mean, it?”

    In all the rooming houses I had lived in I had never seen another human being behave in the same way The Swine then behaved toward Bruce.

    He grabbed hold of Bruce’s neck and tried to force him onto his knees. Being a huge man, Bruce just stood there; and for a while, it looked like The Swine would never shift him. Bruce did not fight back, for he didn’t have any fight in him. He just remained there, like a tree.

    “Get down,” screamed The Swine.
    “Get down on your knees.”

    Bruce just clicked his flashlight into the OFF position.

    “What’s the matter with you?” he enquired of The Swine.

    Stylized aerial view of a rooming house and yard, with a clothesline hung with washing. Four figures stand in the yard: three at the corners of a triangle, the fourth lying on the ground between them.

    With his face swollen like a bloodplum, The Swine began unbuckling his belt. It snapped out of his trousers and leaped into the air above his head.

    “What’s the matter with me?” The Swine half asked himself.
    Bruce saw the snapping buckle and turned his back.

    “It’s what’s the matter with you that’s what’s the matter with me.” The Swine said. “That’s what’s the matter…”
    And down came the venomous buckle across Bruce’s back.

    “Get down… Get down on your knees…” yelled The Swine.

    The sharp buckle split the fabric of Bruce’s pink cotton shirt. He fell to the ground; partly because of the blows from the belt buckle, but also, as if he were eager to appease The Swine’s rabid commands. He pleaded and screamed, but The Swine just lashed him harder. Bruce cried and whimpered, then the poor man wet himself. But the sight and smell of urine only spurred The Swine onto greater heights.

    “Cry like a dog, you swine…” he said.

    I did not believe what I saw next. In the face of lashings of leather and steel and instead of protecting himself, Bruce rolled onto his back. He then stuck his hands and feet into the air, and began to yap. Bruce was a human being on his back going:

    “Yap. Yap. Yap.”

    And The Swine just lashed out harder with the belt buckle. This time, ripping into Bruce’s underbelly.

    I still don’t understand why, but I tackled The Swine. Made a running jump and brought him to the ground. Grappled with him, tore the belt out of his hand, stood up, and was about to administer the same punishment he had unleashed upon Bruce – an almighty whipping – when a twisted cackle exploded in my throat. I whipped the belt buckle into the air and watched as The Swine rolled into a protective ball. Then, after a brief pause, released the belt from my hand and let it fall to the ground. The Swine saw his chance, jumped up and disappeared. Bruce, still with hands and feet in the air, continued to cry and whimper.

    I’d spent a lot of time in rooming houses, but I’d never seen a human being act like an animal. I’d seen people who lived like animals. An elderly woman, mentally ill, who refused to wash her clothes until her skirt was so caked in dirt it became stiff around her thighs. But Bruce lying on his back in the grass, hands and feet in the air… Well, what was a person supposed to make of that? I imagined that sometime in his past, Bruce had adopted the persona of a puppy, one that couldn’t fight back. As the years had passed and Bruce had become a man, he’d also become a dog. A big lumbering dog capable of nothing less than loving its owner to death.

    And as I thought about Bruce lying on his back going:

    “Yap. Yap. Yap.”

    I began feeling like a dog; one with an innate pleasant personality that had tried hard to remain loyal to its master and show the world it really was a trustworthy animal. An intelligent dog capable of a career and a family. A spotted dog that one day might become a fine civic leader; its gallant chest swelling as it signed away on new housing for the homeless, or a new facility for the mentally ill. A Dalmatian, one able to ensure the general public that the trains would run on time… But in spite of all these canine aspirations my Dalmatian had somehow acquired sad eyes. Glassy brown orbs staring out the window of its room as it watched the world pass by while German Shepherds, Rottweilers, Dobermans and even Pit Bull Terriers were idolised. Unable, then unwilling to participate, because there was no longer any room in the world for a dog staring out a window with sad brown eyes.

    As the end of winter turned to early spring a plumber arrived and refitted all the knobs and screws, the washers and metal housing to the hotwater service. He then fired up the pilot light. And it seemed to me that once the residents of the rooming house could wash and keep themselves clean, our spirits picked up. I even said hello to The Swine and he grunted in return. A begrudging grunt, but a grunt all the same. The only person that hadn’t surfaced was Bruce. Nobody had seen him. Until early one morning, about 2.30 am, I was woken by the sound of snapping undergrowth in the yard. When I looked out my upstairs window I saw a flashlight wavering in the darkness.

    It was some time before my eyes adjusted, but once they did I saw that the figure holding the flashlight was Bruce, naked, except for a towel wrapped around his waist. I watched through my window as he wandered around the yard, spraying his flashlight into bushes: stopping for a moment at one location, then moving on to another as if forever unsatisfied. I pulled on my jeans and boots and made my way downstairs. When I asked Bruce if everything was alright he jumped into the air.

    “Can’t find it…” Bruce said.

    Stylized aerial view of a rooming house and yard at night, with a clothesline hung with washing. Four figures stand in the yard: three at the corners of a triangle, the fourth with a flashlight between them.

    “Find what…?”
    Bruce crashed through the shrubs and long grass

    “It,” Bruce said.

    “It…? What do you mean it?”

    The towel fell from his waist. There were black welts on his thighs and backside.

    “The Lost Dogs Home. Can’t find it…”

    I was about to take Bruce’s arm and lead him back to his box on the veranda, when somewhere in the early morning night a cat unleashed a wail that sounded like the cry of a lost child.

    Then Vladimir the Caretaker sparked up in the darkness.

    “3.00 am in morning… What going on here?”

    “Don’t worry,” I said.

    “But man is naked.”

    “Don’t worry,” I repeated. “Go back to bed.”

    There is something about the title of Caretaker, that when given to a human being turns a good man into an animal. Vladimir was no exception. He was also a regular attendant each Sunday at the local Russian Orthodox Church.

    “But man is naked…” Vladimir said again. “Like ape…”

    Pretty soon, The Swine arrived.

    He sniggered, while Vladimir tried to cover Bruce with the towel. But Bruce kept pining for the Lost Dogs Home and spraying his flashlight into the air. The dog next door began to bark. Lights came on in windows in apartments overlooking the yard, and a couple wearing red and blue silk robes emerged upon the balcony of their unit. I don’t know why, but the growl and bark of the dog next door, the way I imagined its drooling jaw snapping shut upon a hand, I don’t know why but that dog’s presence invaded my mind. The sad Dalmatian I had previously felt like became a domestic dog gone wild in the mountains on a moonlit night.

    “Get inside,” I shouted at the couple on the balcony.

    “Both of you. Get inside now.”
    Vladimir stared at me.

    “Me caretaker here. Not you, me. Understand?”

    I understood alright. And as I could see so clearly, I decided the others, especially Vladimir and The Swine, also needed to acquire some understanding. So I threatened to rip Vladimir’s throat out if he continued to harangue me.

    “No worry. I fix you,” said Vladimir.

    Still sniggering, The Swine began removing his belt from his trousers. But before he could raise it into the air I clipped him on the chin and he went down like a sack of potatoes.

    Next morning, there was an official notice under my door explaining that I’d been evicted.

    I pinned the eviction notice onto the wall of my room alongside the flyer advertising the dog grooming business. It seemed to me there were more similarities between animals and human beings than I had previously understood. A domestic animal will not attack an injured person and devour that person’s flesh. A domestic dog will slobber and lick and love a person to death. But look into the sad brown eyes of a Dalmatian and there always remains in those eyes a faint trace of the wilderness. And a person imagines they can hear a wild dog howling at the moon on a starless night as it prepares to travel thirty miles down a mountain path, enter farmland, and rip a lamb to bits for no other reason other than it likes the smell of blood. But perhaps the death of one lamb is the life of another and this is what human beings mean when we use the word ‘Survival’.

    Stylized aerial view of a rooming house and yard at night, with a clothesline hung with washing. One figure stands on a path inside the yard, reading a sheet of paper.

    I was given a week to vacate the premises. But as I had little in the way of belongings, a suitcase, some personal bits and pieces, I left on the day the eviction notice was issued. I suspect Bruce still lives in his little box on the veranda. And I suspect The Swine continues to stand over Bruce. While Vladimir the Caretaker probably attends the Russian Orthodox Church every Sunday, cleansing his stained soul after watching Bruce stumble naked around the yard while searching for The Lost Dogs Home. Yes, I suspect not a lot will have changed in that rooming house. In much the same way as not a lot has changed in the rooming house I live in now. A single room, four walls, one window, a mattress on the floor, and never any visitors. But just the other day a young man moved into the room next to mine. A young man who reminded me of myself when I’d first moved in seven years earlier. Not really a man, just a kid. All quiet, scared and watchful with sad brown eyes when I saw him staring out his window while contemplating the wilderness within – like a dog.

    © Tony Reck 2026

  • 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

  • Long Death Last Breath

    Long Death Last Breath

    Tony Reck’s Long Death Last Breath is a work of intense psychological fiction, written in a fevered, stream-of-consciousness style. It traces a man’s descent into obsession, self-harm, and moral disintegration, interwoven with moments of tenderness, delusion, and deferred violence. In support of its themes, the language itself destabilises: syntax stretches, referents blur. Some readers may find the story disturbing.

    ⁓ MG

    Long Death Last Breath

    Light reflected off the surface of the river and caused him to reflect; yes, memories of that house. But traffic on the bridge was thick and he forced himself to concentrate. Little Cindy and Loopy Sally were strapped into the rear seat. Little Cindy smiled and sighed; she was born with wisdom. Loopy Sally waited for her next opportunity. And if that meant waiting for her sister to fall asleep so she might dribble into Little Cindy’s ear, then so be it. He had driven across the bridge many times. One day he would stop. On that day, they would remember him forever.

    The western suburbs of Melbourne sapped the required determination. He would speak with her and she with him. They would smile at one another, and the daggers would rise between them. The traffic cleared and he planted his foot as bitumen receded and an exit loomed. He turned left: a pizza joint: a pub: a supermarket: a dealer in antiques. Each establishment displaced by a windscreen that deferred his eventual destination.  

    The house that once belonged to both of them malingered half-way down the street. There she was, arms folded across her breasts. That shock of peroxide hair fractured at its ends, splitting every soul that sought entry to her home, and the home that Little Cindy and Loopy Sally lived in. Five minutes may as well have been five years. She would have her revenge simply because she could. That’s what love was: an acrobat fallen the wrong side of the net; a failed possession.

    ‘You’re late.’

    The children tumbled out of the car.

    ‘Inside.’

    The girls were gone.

    ‘This won’t go down well with the magistrate.’

    ‘You’re joking.’

    ‘No joke,’ She said.

    ‘Next week …?’

    ‘Not if I can help it.’

    He removed his daughters’ possessions from the vehicle: clothes, smart devices, a Monkey doll. It had three hands, twelve fingers and three thumbs. Each appendage excluded its other, but the formality of love betrayed was conspicuous between parents who hated one another. The front door followed the gate slammed shut. The moon was up and lunacy illuminated a wall.

    He slammed the door of his vehicle. A driver manic with fear – tyres whistled, an intersection loomed. He did not drive, he careered: experienced the lubricated shift of transmission; appreciated cylinders displaced, pistons tuned, and brake fluid mediated by the irascible edge of steel. He steered the vehicle beyond the shopping strip. A hard right onto the freeway, unnecessary speed, and he was back on the bridge. The city skyline strained a ventricle in his chest. Concrete, electricity, and pollution masquerading as cloud, distilled in his brain.

    He liked murder and murder liked him.

    Several days passed during which he performed the functions required of him. He answered the phone, ate his meals, attended work, and laughed with colleagues during designated breaks. But his laughter belonged to another and a voice infiltrated his ear. Later, he walked home and was obsessed by streetlight and a disturbance he believed was about to occur inside his unit on the 25th floor of the Brunswick St. commission flats. His unremarkable suit shone in the moonlight. He walked, smiled, and deliberated. He sang:

    Turn your mobile phone on.
    Your ID consists of sand.
    Feel the pulse of phallic-matrix
    vibrate in your hand.

    He had seen the light, and momentarily he was an angel. A Crown of Thorns encrusted around his head leeched blood from wounds that tasted like wine. But this inspiration was a flicker and he remained the creature he had always been: obese, effeminate, selfish, and inconsiderate. He sought retribution for the sin he believed had been committed against him. And as a sinner sinned against, the commission flat he occupied became a sign. Once inside, his desire for retribution would begin.

    Screaming was common on the 25th floor of the Brunswick St. commission flats. A cut-throat razor and an awl required sterilisation, while cotton thread might incite infection. But pain procured by a ten-centimetre incision inflicted upon his right hip was suppressed by a sock inserted between his teeth and a mega-dose of paracetamol. The day then passed in deference to the sin committed. That afternoon, Mary Kyrikilli called and questioned his commitment. He placated Mary’s presence and terminated her call. But Mary Kyrikilli was most insistent. She demanded he drive his vehicle across the bridge. Approximation would not suffice; the exact distance had to be ascertained. By evening, Mary Kyrikilli had persuaded him that he must complete this mission.

    Divinity accumulated within traffic lines that receded on the bitumen.  He braked: a car horn complained, patience was obliterated, and a driver abused him. But sufferance was to be expected from those critical of the divine, and he was saved from a broken nose by selflessness. (Give a sinner what he desired, and transcendence was his forever.) He alighted from his vehicle. An infusion of brilliance followed him to a safety platform. Disbeliever aside, no truth was more telling than that which emanated from within.

    He estimated the distance between bridge and river. (A document retrieved from his smart device had proposed fifty metres). But he remained sceptical of the digital realm because he believed it was populated by pedophiles, washed-up rock stars and other degenerates. The divine light would ascertain that which the digital realm failed to quantify; it accumulated in his oesophagus and descended toward the river. Fifty metres exactly, and never mind a document obtained online and tyrannised by an algorithm. The intelligence was artificial, but the bias was human.

    Exact distance obtained, he steered his vehicle toward an off-ramp. His left hand was on the steering wheel while his right hand caressed the suture on his hip. He suspected an oscillation had invaded his thoughts. But failed to recognise he was alone in this perception. Mary Kyrikilli had spoken: words: viscera: muscle: bone: marrow; each throbbed in time with his predicament. (His doctor was ambivalent when prescribing fentanyl; a dilemma resolved by a gathering of clinicians who, post-consideration of the patient and the wound inflicted, concluded he be certified then discharged him into the community.)

    Driving through the streets of Altona at night, he was once again obsessed by light. On this occasion, however, the luminosity resided beneath the waistline of his shirt. He muttered the word ‘Child’, but was immediately saddened by how the word presented itself. The vehicle dashboard was luminous, as was his crude incision. Two weeks old, tender and putrid, the suture vibrated. His vehicle sped past the previously mentioned pizza joint and its shopfront was made disingenuous by an extrusion of unlit neon.

    The antique dealership was also closed. (Nobody, not least his desecrated self, expected an antique dealership be opened at that time of night.) His car crooned, as would any vehicle emaciate before that which was inevitable. A hard left onto a minor arterial and there: his domain. Little Cindy and Loopy Sally were not simply his children: they were his ‘Child’. He had not liked the way in which the word had presented itself. But he muttered it again, until the offending noun was flushed beyond the driver’s-side window.  

    He parked his vehicle as did his vehicle park him: an organism comprised of flesh, blood, and viscera. Considered in reverse, he was a machine; or, perversely, tumescent flesh, iron-ore, and a crucible containing both, designed for the manufacture of neither. He sat there, headlights diminished, motor cooled, and listened to music – Stravinsky, although he could not say which work. He waited patiently, aware of that which he most desired. And when the opportune moment arrived, he capitalised.

    Immersion within the divine had damaged the wound on his hip and information assembled there became algorithmic. He stared through the windscreen and ruminated upon his children. Intelligence was autonomous: numbers calculated: code written: commands received. He had been unhappy with the word ‘Child’ as this had escaped his lips. But his suture concealed a radiance that only he could interpret; or, his tongue, a rendition of lithium, cobalt, carbon fibre and diode, unravelled from his mouth and sought release from his vehicle.

    He released the door-handle. The night was warm, and cloud carried precipitation from the west. A globule of rain found his nose. Madness was a tropic of the mind; a mind in Tropicana, so to speak. And if the suture on his hip existed, then reality was made, not procured. He scaled the high fence. The veranda was a minefield of bicycles, pot plants, a brutal mezzanine, and domestic despair. He was surprised that domestic despair persisted, for he mistakenly believed that despair, domestic or otherwise, belonged to him alone.

    Powered by the moon, he imagined he was a feline apparition and it occurred to him that entrance could be achieved in multiples: a door, a window, a floor, a ceiling. Ferocious, he crawled beneath the front doorstep. The underside of her home was not defined by cockroaches and beetles and, as precision was life, he crawled with ruthless efficiency. At 3.23 am he was capable of committing the atrocity required by the creature he had become and the phantasmagoria that consumed him.

    But he returned to his vehicle.

    The night had contracted to a greasy humidity. He had crawled beneath the floorboards of his ex-wife’s home and an excommunication was in order. The arterial was separated by a nature strip. He removed his clothes, hastened toward a sprinkler, and danced within the repeated thrusts emitted from an automated mechanism that cleansed perspiration from his arms, chest, legs, face and neck. Liberated, he returned to his vehicle, patted himself down with a dirty handkerchief, declined within the driver’s seat, and caressed the accelerator toward a poorly-lit intersection.  

    The next day came and went, as did the day that followed; an excess of light does that to a person. Ensconced within the kitchenette of his commission flat, he might have performed tricks: a deck of cards snapped to a flourish and a palmed ace apparently discovered behind his left ear; a card trick discouraged by his mother, but taught to him by his father. He might have performed tricks and thereby desecrated the memory of one parent but satisfied the demands of another. Rather, he sat, waited and ruminated. Five days later, Mary Kyrikilli had not called and his paralysis remained unresolved.

    He gazed beyond the kitchenette window as the sun disappeared behind a nearby apartment. The night progressed; he slept, and dreamed a candle luminescent ignited the entrails of a curtain. His dream erupted in flame. A window exploded outward and the offending protagonist was transported by ambulance to a hospital burns unit.

    His childhood had been spoiled by his parents’, but he was not a supernaturalist. He woke, and interpreted the dream as a sign.

    He was ready to kill; now, he would spread the word.

    Mary Kyrikilli pinged on his smart device. She did not crackle and click or advise him to commit atrocities. And she did not appear as a nightmare he had experienced fifty years earlier. Mary had become a slick communicator, a politician, and she made him fly upon dissertations of her disfigured shaman’s dreams.

    He was that flicker of light: the same flicker he had studied weeks earlier, when he had stopped his vehicle on the bridge and ascertained the exact distance between safety railing and river.

    And he considered himself a civic individual, even if he was about to murder his children.

    His vehicle ran a red light at St. Kilda Junction and Mary Kyrikilli communicated with him via the luminance within his right hip. He floored the accelerator. Perforated white lines disappeared into the darkness and the inner suburbs of the north east soon became the outer suburbs of the south west. An off-ramp; a pizza joint, a supermarket, an antique dealership. A right; a left, a right. He was the pathetic individual he had always been but the luminous voice that belonged to Mary Kyrikilli disavowed empathy. A poorly lit street faded to its inevitable conclusion, as he did to his.

    He alighted from his vehicle and it expired before his eyes. But he remained convinced its algorithm would crystallize and transport Little Cindy and Loopy Sally to their final destination.

    He threw himself over the high fence, crashed through a branch of Ti-Tree, and feared he may have woken Lucifer himself. He held his breath, and pressed his hands together in prayer. No alarm was forthcoming and the house remained dark. A side-entrance had been reinforced so as to prevent unauthorised access. But tools secured in a satchel were procured, and he flipped the latch with a tyre lever. Several years had expired since his failure to complete external renovations. But he interpreted the incomplete side-entrance as a sign that he remained welcome in the home he had destroyed.

    Little Cindy and Loopy Sally slept in the Little Room. He removed a screwdriver from his satchel and inserted its tip beneath a window. The window screeched. He retrieved a jar of petroleum jelly and lubricated the offending surface. Loopy Sally’s face upon a pillow was made luminous by moonlight, and Little Cindy’s breath exited her lips amidst a radiance that illuminated the Little Room.

    He woke Little Cindy.

    ‘Daddy.’

    A kiss on the cheek.

    ‘Get dressed.’

    She did.

    Eternity was anticipated.

    If we were meant to live forever this night would never end.

    Long death. Last breath. Expire.

    A dressing table installed within the room was a teak contraption. Two angular mirrors positioned left and right of a sheet of reflective glass revealed a triptych of the person he had never intended to be: a monster once a father who had since become a human being.

    Little Cindy returned to sleep.

    Loopy Sally was a light sleeper.

    She glared at her father.

    The new moon descended into the Little Room, aspiration was elevated, and malevolence diminished.

    He climbed out the window and returned to his vehicle.  

    Mary Kyrikilli was silent.  

    The dashboard radiated across his face.

    An algorithm calculated kilometres travelled and fuel consumed.

    His vehicle ascended an on-ramp.

    The skyline of the city of Melbourne was a Mohawk beneath the cavernous sky.

    The distance between safety-railing and the river had been ratified. The radiance he believed illuminated his right hip was nestled between flesh and bone. Traffic accumulated, but he was headed in the opposite direction. He stared beyond the Yarra River and across Port Phillip Bay. Maritime light flickered in time with his pulse. He looked out, and he looked down. He saw the faces of Little Cindy and Loopy Sally splayed across the surface of the river.

    Fifty metres.

    He looked out, and down, and in. To an observer standing on the deck of a boat, or the planet Venus, he was a man who scaled a protective railing; the father of two daughters who had taught him that the person he might have been no longer existed.

    A foghorn bellowed in the distance, and he was gone.  

    Tony Reck © 2025

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