Archive for the ‘Angela Slatter’ Category
Glass
Friday, November 13th, 2009
‘Go and have a nice holiday with your auntie.’
Sure. Great idea. That was before whatever it was that happened, happened.
By the time I arrived in Sydney, my auntie was nowhere to be seen, and when I tried to go home the trains had stopped running, with no one to drive them. And the phones had stopped working; my mobile just hummed back at me, same as the public phones and the ones in the private houses I’ve broken into in later days. Sometimes I pick up a handset just to pretend it’s something alive.
I was lucky, I found Billy – or maybe he found me – and brought me to the safe-house. He said he’d show me the ropes, but he disappeared a day later. I waited until I was starving then went out. Only in daylight – you can see things coming at you then, kind of.
Maybe Billy got swallowed by the night. He boasted he’d lasted longer than anyone. That’s why he was so surprised to see me that day, wondering down the Pitt Street Mall like some half-witted lamb, eyes wide, mouth slack, staring at the complete lack of devastation. At the total nothingness.
I haven’t seen proper sun for weeks now. It’s like it’s scared to come out.
I’m braver now, about going out for food and the useful etceteras like bottled water, because what comes out of the taps now is the colour of mud. Sometimes it just looks like blood and I don’t fancy re-hydrating with that. Some days I just wander because I’ve nothing else to do. I go to that big bookstore, Berkelouw, and pick through the stacks. My idea of an apocalypse is no new books – but it should take me an age to get through this lot.
Other days I just stay inside, under a table where nothing can see me. Those are the days I can hear noises from outside.
But here’s the thing: I cut my hand on this piece of glass. It sliced the lines of my palm that are supposed to map out my future, heart, head, and life, all snipped. That worries me especially on the days when all I can hear is the flapping and swooping noises of things that might once have been angels. And some days there’s a voice in the darkness and it knows my name.
A Monkey in the Hand
Wednesday, October 7th, 2009
In retrospect, dear reader, it was a mistake.
I should have known. Mere days after I finished the mech-monkey, I found it dissecting its real-life counterpart. Pinned it to the table with my set of German-engineered scalpels, and taken it apart. The dirigible from Stepney Marsh was running late, so when I arrived home with a sack of new books, the deed was almost done. I should have disassembled it then, but I thought I saw something in its eyes, something human. A desire to know, to learn, to understand why it was different to the soft, furry mirror that wailed and squealed and gave up life so quickly.
All I could hear was my father’s voice, heavy with disappointment but no real surprise: Oh, Phineas. You’re so careless. Look at the mess you’ve made.
So I tidied up the sticky, stinking corpse and threw it down the chute. I listened as it clanged along the shaft, whirled around the spiral bits, thudded into the sharp bends, then came the faint whomp as the flames gobbled it up.
I was careful to clean all the bevelled and engraved edges of the mech-monkey, and under his glass nails (which I realised were too sharp by half). I checked his insides to make sure the clockwork mechanisms were all working, not misfiring in a way that might cause a psychotic episode. Turning him around, I opened the little hatch in his lower back where, each morning, I scooped three small loads of coal to feed his tiny internal furnace. The emissions came out as small, popping farts and, if I forgot to open a window, my workshop filled up very quickly with a nasty charcoal smoke.
I kept it – it was useful for fetching and carrying, and it opened cans terribly well. Then one Tuesday I found it reading; it saw me and threw the book away, but it was too late by then. I knew.
It probably would have been okay if I hadn’t got the next idea. I had been thinking about making a Galatea, but then I read about some sailors who’d caught themselves a mermaid and tried to bring her back to Portsmouth. They kept her in a barrel of seawater on the deck, but it seems she jumped ship just out of harbour, waved goodbye and ducked under the dark, cold sea.
And I thought ‘What if?’