Angkor Wat

In the beginning, darkness covered the deep. The snake was coiled and spiraled and interwoven with itself and it was big – bigger than God, for God lay asleep, pillowed on the snake’s muscled body floating in the dark. And as God slept, God dreamed and a flower grew from His navel and inside the flower was God Who created the universe.

Anthony climbed the tilted and worn and uneven, steep steps and passed under the great stone lintel. The building was like a maze – cool stone passageways barely wider than Anthony’s shoulders, courtyards baked by the tropical Sun, a stunning three-dimensional experience of awe.

Looking up through the holes in the fallen stone roof Anthony saw the central stupa-like tower, its placid, unearthly faces gazing into infinity, and, all around that great pointed dome, flew a hundred dragonflies, their wings a yellow flash against the dark stone.

Further he wound into the building – climbing over fallen stone, skirting around closed passageways and trees forcing their way through the rock – to the chamber beneath that central tower: the holy of holies, the garbha griha, the womb chamber, the innermost sanctum.

‘Coniunctio’ the alchemists call it, the mysterious conjunction of Sol and Luna, the chemical wedding, the union of opposites in ecstasy – Lord Shiva lost always in blissful trance; Shakti, the dynamic, active divine feminine creative power always in ecstatic motion. Between ‘the uncarved block’ and ‘the ten-thousand things’ there was the yin and the yang, thrusting, commingling, spinning.

There, in the small chamber: the abstract and aniconic representation of all those things in solid stone and silence.

But the chamber was only small from wall to wall. Above, the room soared aloft into a giant narrowing chimney formed inside the tower. And in a thousand years of collapse the very capstone had tumbled and that great, dark, hibernal space was pierced through from top to bottom by a shaft of falling, blinding light.

It was the sound that alerted Anthony first – a faint stirring, a tiny twitter.

The dark walls of the vault were black with tiny bats – they clung to the rocky surface, they crawled over and around each other, they chittered.

Three launched themselves off from the wall and whirled and fluttered down to land further down on the opposite wall, transformed to translucent white angels as they flew through the shaft of sunlight.


Dhiraja

The worst thing

It marked, coincidentally, the end of their relationship. It had been an interesting experience – the relationship and the writing exercise both.

She was an English teacher and he couldn’t remember how the idea had arisen, nor why it had seemed a good idea at the time, but for a while she had assigned him the assignments she gave to her pupils. It had seemed fun. It was possible that his poem about a bird was at least equal to that of her teenage students.

What turned out to be the final topic, though they did not suspect it at the time, was a strange thing to ask anyone to write about, more likely to encourage fiction than clear honesty, for who could face such truth. He wondered later what the youths in the English class had written on the topic – ‘The worst thing I ever did’.

Would he, as a teen, have had the perception to write the same account he wrote now? He could have, since it was an account of an event that occurred when he was twelve years old.

Four long pages of small, tight scrawl he wrote. One sentence might have summed it up but there was context and explication and attempts at mitigation to pad the bald statement.

At school, a deadline is a deadline and you are stuck with your English teacher all year. As an adult, there was always the possibility you might split up with your English teacher before your assignment was due and you would be spared the trauma of assessment.

He left the pages hidden in the bottom drawer of his desk. Later, he quietly threw them away – he would not face it again.



Barnaby McBryde

Teamwork

It wasn’t maternal instinct. I’ve missed that gig.  No, it was those pricks, three guys in suits with their glasses of Cab Sav. I saw their disgust, the look that said “get your brats under control”. As much as I was walking towards her, I was also turning away before I gave them an earful. There’s nowhere to hide in an airport terminal, no dark corner if your kid’s having a meltdown and your baby’s hungry and you’re juggling spilled luggage and nappies and boarding passes.

She looked up, desperate and teary, as I dropped to my knees beside her son.  I started with ‘Incy Wincy Spider’ - where did that come from? -  with the whole hand action deal.  The screaming became shuddering sobs.  His eyebrows drew together above wet lashes.

The girl was there first. Probably not a mother judging by the Amy Winehouse makeup, the scarlet hair and slashed jeans. Or am I just showing my age?  She had a way with children, that’s for sure.  The toddler was quiet now, transfixed, tears drying on his cheeks.  I caught his mother’s eye and raised my eyebrows. She nodded and I crouched, holding out a piece of mandarin.  He grabbed it in his small fist. The baby in her arms was crying, uncomfortable in a dirty nappy.  I asked for her flight number. She shrugged apologetically. I pointed to her boarding pass and she held it out to me.  She was on my flight. I smiled, pointed again and then at myself.  The boarding call had already been made.

Only small kids stare like that.  Clenched fists shoved mandarin segments into his mouth, juice running in the tear tracks down his chin. A ponytailed chick in a tracksuit was collecting up the overturned bag:  a book in an Arabic script, keys, a packet of tissues, coins from an open purse. The overpowering reek of shit masked the sweet freshness of the fruit.

Now there was a woman in full length robes speaking insistently to the mother, flanked by two brown eyed girls.  A flash of alarm, then defeat.  The mother passed her baby to the newcomer who walked away, the younger girl a step behind with the baby bag.  Airports are all about trust. That the plane will get you there on time, that the engineering will keep you up, that the pilot’s on top of her game. That a stranger who takes your baby will bring it back, clean, fresh.

And then we were standing, gathering, checking.  The woman took the boy’s sticky hand and cradled her sweet, heavy-eyed infant.  I shouldered her extra bags and we dashed to Gate 9.

I watched them hurry towards the departure gate. It had taken only a few minutes, four strangers, no discussion.  The pricks at the bar had gone, leaving empty glasses and a plastic nut bag.  Off to their next overpriced consultancy, I imagined, to their next teamwork training session.

Rosemary McBryde

Dark Corner

“Stop it,” I hiss to him as he pinches my arm yet again. “I mean it.”

He looks at me, a smirk forming on the corners of his lips as he throws his face away from mine. The lecturer keeps rambling about something I lost interest in two hours ago. And so has the boy to my right. His face is elated as he stares blankly at the woman in front of the room, his mouth opening to let a yawn come through.

“Can we leave?” He whispers to me hastily. I look at him in confusion before shaking my head.

“Please, I went to church yesterday, I don’t want to hear another preacher before this Sunday,” he pleads, looking at me with his chocolate brown eyes.

“I’ll join you outside in 5,” I murmur, and he immediately leaves the room. I look at the clock and wait.

“You should’ve stayed in there, seemed like some good life advice for you,” he smirks at me as I get inside his car. “Maybe it could have pulled you out of your dark corner over there.”

He points to the side of my head, just right above my ear, his eyes lazily looking over his finger. He shrugs and starts to drive, and I don’t utter a word. We sit in silence until he decides to turn on the radio and hums along.

“It could never be as effective as you are,” I say, and he glances in my direction before focusing on the road yet again. “The lecture. I couldn’t ever benefit from her words as much as I can from being here with you.”

He keeps his eyes on the road as we turn left, his mouth still shut. I face forward again, and I see his eyes dart towards me from the corner of my eyes. He parks us next to the ice cream parlour a few blocks away from my house and leaves the car to open my door.

“You’ll benefit much more from ice cream.” His tone is flat as he closes the car door. “Trust me.”

“I do trust you,” I respond immediately, and a smile forms weakly on his face.

“Why do you think so highly of me?” He hands over money to the cash register with a smile before turning to me. “What have I ever done to deserve this?”

We take our ice cream and sit down outside, watching the empty streets of the 9 a.m. Tuesday. I don’t look at him, and he doesn’t look at me. We eat our ice cream in a quiet silence.

“Maybe it’s you who is in a dark corner,” I say to him.

“And maybe it’s you who is pulling me out.” He tosses his ice cream cup into the trash carelessly. He reaches out to hold my hand with a small smile.

“Or maybe we’re both in a dark corner, just waiting for the other to turn on the light.”


Katya Tjahaja

February

Over the summer, the Artistic Director opened a cheeky little Australian Shiraz and, looking at the label, thought "what a good name for a story starter!"  Magical things happen when Shiraz and Durif come together - that's what the winemaker said.  See what magical thing you can do with Dark Corner.
Stories (300 - 500 words)  to rosemary.mcbryde@gmail.com by 28 Feb.
Happy writing!