Above, below and beyond the line

Aaron hadn’t really turned out to be much of a scholar even from his earliest attempts at school.

“Pretend you’re using the letters g, j, p, q and y like a fishing rod and the tails are sinking beneath the water,” said Mrs Rimple who had tried every trick she could think of to interest the eight-year-old. Seen as weak, his older brother Shaun would take every opportunity to pick a fight with him and unable to retaliate successfully, Aaron would take his frustrations to school. Simon Carver went crying to the headmaster after a stray fist landed beneath the waist and sent Simon doubling over.

“For chris’sake boy, next time when you hit somebody, keep your head down and your fists above the waist. Unless the guy has run off with your girl, scratched your paintwork, bad-mouthed your friend or all three, you never go for the meat and two veg,” was all his father said on the drive home after being called to the principal’s office.

Eventually Aaron and Crest Valley High parted ways without any further drama but strangely enough his relationship with Shaun had improved about the time that he continued past the pencil mark their father had scratched in the kitchen doorframe when Shaun was seventeen. At fifteen, Aaron had surpassed this by seven centimetres but by now he was more interested in being at opposite sides of an engine bay than sparring across a dinner table. The older sibling could do most engine repairs and Aaron was given greater access to his brother’s sacred world as his knowledge increased. On four days of the week Aaron would be found on the forecourt of the local Caltex, washing windscreens, filling petrol tanks and checking the dipstick under the hood when asked. Now and again a customer would double-check the mark on the dipstick and claim he was trying to overfill the oil and increase the revenue for the garage. A little oil on the door handle for the customer to transfer to their clothing was his subtle reply to these suggestions.

By the time he was twenty, Aaron had enough to buy his own Honda Civic and he would cruise endlessly. Months of following Shaun to district rugby games had uncovered many of the best roads around. Today, Kyeburn straight laid out before him, five kilometres of one-in-nineteen gradient and distant pine trees that shimmered in the late summer heat. The right foot planted the accelerator throwing him back against the velour. The white centre line flickered like old-fashioned kids' cartoon beneath the wheels as the engine yielded to his right foot. The needle gathered momentum and crept toward the red and beyond before the cheap import tyre gave way.

The farmer struggled to make sense of what he had seen to the police arriving on the scene.

“You see those poles there? Well, I’m sure that I saw an object fly higher than the power lines strung across them.” The officer drew a simple illustration and the witnesses name - ‘Young’- alongside. The ‘g’ sat beneath the line.


Andrew Hawkey

Expectations

Beneath the surface, there is instability. Steady rain, washing through cracked storm water pipes and sewers, leaks into the unconsolidated sediment. Subterranean layers are eaten away until there’s nothing left but jelly. After thousands of years bearing the weight of the city, ancient catacombs and tunnels crumble.

Overnight a new sinkhole appeared on their street; they were awakened by the alarm of a car that fell in like a happy drunk.

Cora watches as Simon packs camera gear into his shoulder bag. He has his back to her, checking off each lens and securing it in its foam-lined fitting.

She has read that the secret to happiness is low expectations.

Why is she so surprised that Rome is such a disappointment? Simon’s excitement had rubbed off as he planned this dream-come-true trip. She’d been carried along, expectations building to impossible heights. Rome. It was top of everyone’s list. History, food, romance – Rome had it all. Or so she believed.

It had rained for days. Water ran down the escalators into the subways and dripped from the ceilings as they waited for trains. They trudged from the Colosseum to the Pantheon in the drizzle, dodging puddles around the edges of fenced-off archaeological sites where artefacts lay in various states of collapse and degradation.

Simon zips up the bag.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come?”

This afternoon the sun came out, at last, and he is on a mission – backlit arches, soaring domes, shadowy colonnades, columns Doric, Corinthian, Ionic. She’s followed him around before, carrying his bag, then waited in bed for hours while he manipulated the best images to photoshopped perfection.

She has read that expectations are just resentments waiting to happen.

The door closes and the sound of his footsteps recedes. Cora pours herself a glass of wine. On the street, the car in the sinkhole looks like a modern day relic spewing from the ground. A Vespa swerves around it.

In the distance the dome of St Peter’s rises above the terracotta rooftops. The sky is fading to mauve and grey above the silhouetted line of the city. And yet the sky is moving. Black clouds are dancing, in shape shifting patterns that fold and dive and transform before her eyes. She opens the door and steps out on to the narrow balcony. Disbelieving, she puzzles at the choreography, realising that she is seeing birds, by the thousand, the tens of thousands, moving in formation like billowing silk caught on a breeze.

She watches until it’s too dark to see, her spirits soaring with the murmuration. Across the narrow street, there are people at tables in a tiny courtyard. There’s a conversation in English, a little laughter and music. It could be a long evening on her own. She pulls on a jacket and steps out.



Rosemary McBryde

ATL

“I can count thirty six ways we could have done this better. Literally, I’m counting them right now,” Blandon snaps, glaring darkly at Cayden.

“We wouldn’t even be having this conversation if one of you just listened,” Alcandar hums, tapping a tune against the bottom of his chair.

“I’m listening,” Cayden lazily responds, his eyes elsewhere. Blandon closes his mouth and trails Cayden’s gaze around the empty room, searching for a sign of life amongst the darkness.

They were alone. The three of them, trapped between four pink walls, standing on carpeted floors with disorganized chairs barely able to stand. Others were supposed to be here, masses and floods of strangers who would come together just for a glimpse of Cayden. They were supposed to come rushing into the room. And yet…

“They should be here by now.”

“They should’ve been here half an hour ago,” Blandon points out.

“Maybe they’re not here because they don’t know they were even invited.”

“It’s a public event,” Cayden whines. “They should be here.”

Cayden sighs, finally deciding to stand up as if he is going to do something. Alcandar sits back, watching the two boys look at one another in silence. Cayden opens his mouth, allowing the other boys to wait for him to utter something, anything. But he decides to yawn instead and take a seat.

Alcandar rolls his eyes and looks at Blandon, who gives him the iconic ‘I told you so’ face Blandon always seems to possess when Cayden does something stupid. Cayden folds his arms over his chest, crossing his legs.

“Well?” Blandon spits, breaking the silence between them.

“We could try ATL Advertising?”

“Hallelujah! Praise the Lord! He listens!” Blandon cheers sarcastically, rolling his eyes and stomping out of the room. He slams the door on his way out, leaving Alcandar and Cayden alone.

Cayden turns to Alcandar, who sits comfortably on his chair in silence. Smirking, Cayden decides to suggest one more thing.

“Or we could just-“

“Shut up.”



Katya Tjahaha

An Extraordinary World

What is a charitable heart? It is a heart burning with love for the whole creation, for men, for the birds, for the beasts, for the demons, for all creatures. He who has such a heart cannot see or call to mind a creature without his eyes being filled with tears by reason of the immense compassion which seizes his heart; a heart which is softened and can no longer bear to see or learn from others of any suffering, even the smallest pain, being inflicted on a creature. That is why such a man never ceases to pray for the animals, moved by the infinite pity which reigns in the hearts of those who are becoming united with God.

Yukio Tamura knows that it would be more sensible to head further down the mountain, but it is already dark and he has fallen once already and cut the bridge of his nose. Besides, his knees are aching.

There are patches of snow a little higher up but here the slope is clear. His tattered robe is torn at the back, his thin shoulder blade exposed. He wraps himself in his hare-fur blanket and pulls a stout piece of sailcloth around him and scrunches in under a bush.

The quiet night is interrupted by the soft, feathery thump of large birds landing in the dark. The mountain range rears straight up from the coast, and the sea birds – perhaps they are minami-onaga-mizunagidori, definitely some sort of mizunagidori-ka, shearwaters, like small albatrosses – fly to these slopes to breed.

They nest in burrows that are like rabbit holes. It is an extraordinary world, thinks Yukio Tamura.

He feels the vast, pelagic expanse of their souls; lives spent travelling distances that no heavy-footed, earthbound human can conceive; months at sea, sleeping tossed on the ocean’s mountainous swell; soaring on breeze or gale above the tidal surge of a world of water. And each year – back to this mountain to birth and raise a chick in a subterranean burrow!

Another bird thumps down close by with fish for a chick growing underground like a large, white mushroom.

The gentle avian sounds lull Yukio Tamura as he drifts in sleep.

He is alert when he hears larger creatures crashing about. Through the scraggy foliage of his bush he can glimpse large wild pigs in the faint moonlight. He has always been a little afraid of them – has learnt to avoid them in the woods.

He lies still, listening to them snorting and rooting the soft soil. A pig’s nose is a digging machine. It takes little effort to expose a bird’s burrow. The wet crunch and occasional piteous squawk tell the lurking man – suddenly wide-awake – what the pigs seek (and find).

Yukio Tamura can already see in the morning the ploughed dirt, the depressions spattered with blood and down – a single little pink leg with a webbed foot lying in the centre – like some vision of the lowest hell.

It is an extraordinary world.

Dhiraja

Hashtag contemporary

Eva rolled on her fishnet tights. She liked to wear them – provocative, exposing and yet at the same time like a hurricane-wire fence: a barrier. To keep the animals out or to restrain the animal within? Ambiguous.

Then her little black dress. It had never made it onto an album but in 1998 the sublime Pet Shop Boys had released a demo. You can listen on YouTube:

Dressed to impress
Wearing a little black dress.
You’re such a princess
Wearing a little black dress.
So chic, such finesse
Wearing a little black dress.
You’re naked unless
You’re wearing a little black dress.
And flushed with success
Wearing a little black dress.

Eva slipped on her black suede boots. They reached above the knee, just a strip of fishnet exposed between their top and the bottom of the L.B.D.

Then a thick, blue-grey fisherman’s jersey, a red knitted beanie, big sunglasses.

Then her famous coat – one sleeve on, the other not – half the coat hanging down her back. It was long and looked as if made of caribou pelt, was shabby as if Fridtjof Nansen had actually worn this very coat on the Fram, or Roald Amundsen had taken it to the South Pole.

Eva picked up her iPhone with the pink rose case, her elegant fingers with just the right number of fine antique rings, and headed for the tall mirror in the hall.

How ever had she lived before Instagram?



Barnaby McBryde

Dreams

It’s something we all have. Dreams and nightmares. Some people have more than others. Graham sometimes would mumble something and thrash around in his sleep and I'd ask him in the morning "Were you having a bad dream?" and he couldn't remember.

Occasionally I would have a dream and it would seem too real at the time but by morning I couldn't remember it. Some that did stick in my mind would revolve around bikes. One was where I had biked from Greymouth to Westport with the wind behind me but by the time I had to make the homeward trip the weather had turned and threatening clouds, rain and a headwind were the order of the late afternoon.

Another time in a similar vein the bike ride was from Alexandra south for about 80kms to some town, up hill and down dale. After the novelty of having done that I had to bike back where the hills were bigger than the trip down. So lonely!!

Probably a psychiatrist would analyse it and say you are challenged to do a new thing but still need the safety of home.

But the other night it was a nightmare that was sooooooooo real. There I was at our place in Greymouth, not sure if we were shifting out to go to our next home according to the church rules or just having a clean-up. The living room floor area was covered with metal things, great and small all covered with dirt and oil from cars ON THE CARPET!!! I was taking bits over to wheely bins outside the backpackers’ hostel but the mess on the carpet was growing bigger.

Then Tammy from next door came over and shot Andrew or was it Graham and he was dead. The body then disappeared.

I was shocked and thought, "What shall I do? Do I say oh dear, I'll have to forgive my neighbour as I have to live beside them or do I go to the police?"

A bit later Tammy came over and said “Sorry. Can I offer you this plate of mince, about 2 kg worth?" That wasn't the end of it. Lunchtime was almost upon us and a car load of people arrived. People we knew from a few years ago and another car came with Graham's mum and I wondered what I would get for lunch. For some reason I had nothing in the fridge or freezer for us. Then Graham's mum disappeared and I felt responsible for her. With that I woke up with heart beating and the room was dark and peaceful. What a relief!!

When I was telling a daughter about this nightmare she said" WHAT WAS THAT MINCE MADE OF? Hadn't reasoned that one out!

So that was me "LIVING ABOVE THE LINE" of peace and control.


Margaret Hawkey

Rosebank Reverie

She gazed at the evening sky, its rosy hues adorning the grey cityscape below. Such a contrast, she mused as she sat on the window ledge and sipped her glass of wine. This was definitely her favourite time of day. The busyness and demands of the office were behind her and she could unwind in the solitary stillness of her small flat. Some would call the place poky, a little bit dowdy, but it had one big advantage in her eyes – the amazing view out over the city from the large sash window in the kitchen. It was her place of meditation, of daydreaming, of escaping the ordinary, ordered life she had created. Best of all, she had a clear view down to the Rosebank line.

Far from being an intrusion, she found the constant stream of trains fascinating. Crawling along as they left the station, she could see right in, observing the occupants, even fantasising about the amazing lives they led. The 5:43 came along, with the woman who always talked on her phone - she was actually a doctor saving lives with her latest research. The man on the 6:03 who stared out the window was a space scientist, discovering frontiers beyond this world. And the person behind the newspaper on the 6:14 was actually a clever foreign agent.

Recently, one passenger in particular had caught her eye. Not-Average Joe, as she called him, was different from the other passengers. He looked up, he talked to those near him, he even laughed. Just to see him made her day better. As the sky deepened its display of colour and 6:38 approached, she found herself applying a little lipstick and checking her hair. After all, Not-Average Joe had looked up at her several times now, even waved last Thursday. Just a few more moments to wait . . . the train appeared. Scanning the carriages, she searched the faces for him. One carriage passed, now two then three. He was nowhere to be seen. Her heart sank – this couldn’t be. Where was he? She closed her eyes and leaned against the window frame.

Time to stop dreaming. She had surely imagined it, for life was not really like that. Glancing out the window one final time, she noticed movement in the gathering dusk. A man emerging into the streetlight below. Not-Average Joe, flowers at the ready, smiling up at her.



Rachael Hawkey

April

'What's the theme this month?' said my sister.  So the challenge went out to the assembled group. For April, our guest artistic director has offered us this:  Above the line.  Plenty of potential there - and I hope she contributes.

Stories of 300 - 500 words to rosemary.mcbryde@gmail.com by 30 April.

Happy writing!