Above Water 2019

ABOVE WATER

CREATIVE WRITING AND ART ANTHOLOGY

I acknowledge Above Water 2019 was created on land that belongs to the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. This land is stolen and sovereignty was never ceded, and no acknowledgement is enough to give it back. I pay respect to elders past, present and future, and to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, people who have been sharing stories and making art longer than anyone in the world. I thank you for picking up this publication and looking at and listening to the array of voices inside, and urge you to actively seek out the voices of the people whose land you exist on too. Always was, always will be, Aboriginal land.

GRAPHICS BY MORGAN-LEE SNELL

Editor and Designer: Ruby Perryman

Editorial Assistant: Amber Meyer

Design Assistant: Carolyn Huane

Social Media Coordinator: Sarah Peters

Shortlist Collators: Carolyn Huane, Ruby Perryman, Stephanie Zhang

Comissioned Artists: Stephanie Nestor, Anjana Ram, Morgan-Lee Snell

Shortlisted Writers: Ruby Adams, Jennifer Chance, Nicholas Fleming, James Gordon, Michelle La, Felicity Lacey, Isaac Langford, Lucette Emily, Thomas

McAllister, Amber Meyer, Jemma Payne, Sarah Peters, Evelyn Ranogajec, Alison

Tealby, Caitlin Wilson, Kai Yang, Mark Yin, Haley Zilberberg

Shortlisted Artists: Rosann Anthony, Jean Baulch, Hana Ebrahimi, Mathilda

Gwinner, Stephanie Nestor, Yushi Wu, Mark Yin

GRAPHICS

Above Water

Above Water is the annual creative writing and art competition and anthology produced by the media and creative arts departments of the University of Melbourne Student Union. Launched in 2005, it marks a turning point in the breadth of creative writing and art by and for students of the University, and has seen more and more exciting entries each year. This year, the anthology is being launched as part of Mudfest, the University’s biennial arts festival.

Above Water is open to all current University of Melbourne students. The media department blindly go through all submissions and then decide on a shortlist of pieces for the anthology, and choose a winning artwork for the cover. The 2019 writing shortlist was judged by last year’s winner, Natalie Fong Chun Min, and Melbourne-based writers Jamie Marina Lau and Jeanine Leane. The winning entries are as follows.

Writing Winner:

Photo at the Red Lotus Lake in Udon Thani

By Kai Yang

Writing Runners-Up:

You Are What You Eat

By Mark Yin

Art Winner:

Sunriders

By Hana Ebrahimi

Art Runners-Up:

The Czechlands

By Jean Baulch

Snooze-Button Dreams

By Jemma Payne

For that Natural Look

By Jean Baulch

Writing

(Content warning: mentions death of a family member)

GRAPHICS BY ANJANA RAM

Grandma’s Kitchen

BY AMBER MEYER

first of all, it’s a-po, mother’s mother in southwestern mandarin we leave her a seat at the table, fold out her own origami-magazine-table-bin she says no need to put chopsticks down for her so i call out between every serving

a-po-o-o, this tastes so good

a-po-o-o-o-o, can i have this for lunch tomorrow

she cooks to make leftovers and i hold my bowl of rice to make space adults pick first, yet first-pickers won’t choose the best pieces children sit first, yet they eat to give back those seats love is in loop

the women in my family are loud as metal against metal metal against chopping board metal against bone

the women in my family peek their heads out only when the table stops talking the women in my family quietly ask, yummy? when they no longer hear chopsticks working

looped love is what i am used to a roaring devotion that hides its meek and mellow with metal on metal yet meek and mellow pop their heads out of the kitchen to ask do you like it? i spent all afternoon do you love me? i spent a lifetime

looped love should never have to ask looped love is cooking before knowing who is coming looped love is eating and reassuring

Photo at the Red Lotus Lake in Udon Thani

BY KAI YANG

Seen: Sun dying the misty green lake in gold balayage. My silhouetted back to the viewer. Hands held chest height, I could be praying. I photograph the lake while my boo photographs me. Not seen: Last night on a westernised street hawking alcohol, women, and hotel rooms. The unflinching stare of fat old white men wondering if my white boo bought my company like we bought BBQ pork buns from 7/11 for dinner. The curious eyes of a made-up lady playing pool, asking if we share the same profession like we share the same brown eyes and black hair and yellow skin. But my black hair is balayaged blonde. I suffer the men’s visual assaults for endless minutes before returning to the privacy of a new hotel room. Tomorrow, I fly out of this poverty stricken northeastern Thai city. To be seen: Blue plastic boat, like a bathtub toy, crushing stray lotus blossoms at the edge of a patch so passengers can get closer to the heart of the red blooms.

The Gas Light

BY HALEY ZILBERBERG

On the way home from North Florida, Taylor blasted the music from her playlist. I winced in pain and told her to slow down as she sped 20 miles above the speed limit even though she knew it terrified me.

“Can you please turn down the volume, I have a migraine” I said.

I had my knees tucked into my chest and the ice cold car window pressed against my forehead in an attempt to soothe my pulsing headache.

“You always have a headache. Does it really even matter,” she said back, turning down the volume by two notches.

Still curled up in a ball, I reached my hand to the volume control and turned it down from 60 to 30 then readjusted myself back to fetal position. She waited a couple of minutes and then used the steering wheel volume control to ever so slowly turn the volume back up, hoping I wouldn’t notice the gradual increase, like slowly boiling a frog in a pot of water.

“Can you please turn it back down,” I asked.

My voice was quiet. I didn’t have enough energy to be any louder.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, I didn’t even turn it up,” she said.

A car to our right put their left turn signal on to change lanes.

“Fucking asshole,” Taylor murmured under her breath.

She sped up, tipping just over 100mph trying to prevent the car from changing lanes. She took it as a personal offense whenever anyone needed to get in front of her. The vehicle crossed lanes anyway, trying to get to the exit lane in time. I shrieked as she put on her brakes, nearly colliding into the car.

“Please, please, please can you drive slower. Please,” I whined.

“Hannah, I’m being safe. You really need to back off. I’m the one behind the wheel. If you don’t like it, you can drive.”

I thought about the time she told me she was being safe a few months back, how right after she said that she scraped against someone else’s car and I screamed, begging her to let me out as she continued to speed. I thought about the apologetic look on her face as I told her I couldn’t date someone so dangerous.

“Baby, please. I won’t ever do it again. You’re right, it wasn’t okay,” her big blue eyes pooled with tears, and I believed her.

“Okay, I’m glad you understand why it’s not okay. My safety is important,” I said.

“You’re precious cargo,” she said, with a half-smile, reaching out to smooth my hair.

“Don’t do it ever again. If you do, I can’t be with you,” I said, stern and sincere.

“I promise, I promise,” she reached for hands, held them lovingly.

As Taylor weaved in and out of traffic, blasting music without caring about the raging pain inside my skull, I felt lost. I didn’t understand what changed, or how it changed so suddenly, how she lost her compassion for me. I thought I’d ask—carefully.

“Hey baby?”

“Yeah, what’s up,” she said, half paying attention.

“Remember in November when we were driving to your mom’s house and you hit a car and you promised you’d be safer?”

“Oh my fucking God, Hannah. Are you really bringing things up from the past? Are you trying to start a fight?”

She slammed on the steering wheel and let out an exasperated sigh.

“No…no…I was just wondering if you would please be just a bit safer, I really am scared.”

“You’re stupid for being scared.”

“Remember, I told you if you were dangerous while driving again I wasn’t sure I could be with you,” I said, softly, not looking at her while I spoke.

“Oh yeah? What’s this? You’re threatening to leave me? That’s emotionally abusive, stop being such a bitch and get over yourself.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Oh, what?”

“Nothing,” I said, unsure of how to feel, of what to say.

“You really owe me an apology. That wasn’t cool. How dare you threaten me to get your way?”

“I’m sorry,” I said, not knowing why I said it.

“I’m really upset with you, I’m not sure if I can forgive you for being so mean to me,” she said, “but thanks for the apology.”

I didn’t know what to say. I pulled out my phone and checked the tropical storm update. I scrolled aimlessly on my phone for a while, trying to look busy so she wouldn’t want to talk to me. When we were nearly home, I broke the silence.

“Looks like Irma is going to become a hurricane. We might need to stock up on water and flashlights tomorrow,” I said.

“Oh shit, really,” she asked, the tone of her voice finally mellowing out.

I decided it would be safe to talk to her now since the anger had lifted from her voice.

“Yeah, it’s good we went to St Augustine this weekend because if the storm is bad enough, the roads might be closed to get back there for a while,” I said.

I stopped talking for a second, then shifted out of my curled up position in the passenger seat and looked at her. We were getting off the highway and going onto the main road, a few minutes away from our house. As we got closer to the house, the light went off to let her know she needed to fill up on gas and she cursed, murmuring under her breath about how expensive it is.

“Hey, thanks for taking me to Anna’s birthday party. I appreciate you including me in that kind of stuff,” I said.

I wasn’t particularly keen to go out of town that weekend, but after being screamed at for an hour straight for being too much of a homebody, I obliged to keep the peace.

“No worries,” she said.

“Sorry I couldn’t stay as long as you wanted. The cigarette smoke was making me feel like I was going to die. Asthma’s a bitch. But at least I was able to stay two hours longer than I originally thought!”

I was proud of the fact that I sacrificed my health for the day just to make her happy.

“Yeah, I was pretty upset you made us leave so soon. I think it’s rude to put your needs first. Maybe next time just tough it out,” she retorted.

I grew silent for a while, my mind trying to make sense of what she said. I thought it was commendable that I had put myself in that situation in the first place, knowingly making myself sick because she wanted so badly for me to tag along. I wondered if she even cared that it made me feel sick, or if she even liked me.

“Hey, Taylor?” I asked.

“Mmm?” she grunted back.

I hesitated for a second before I responded to ask a question, not sure if I wanted to know the answer.

“Do you think I’m a good person?”

She didn’t take very long to think about her answer and responded in a conversational tone.

“No, not really,” she said.

She continued on, speaking as casually as if she was listing off the foods she ate today.

“You have no empathy for others. Your friends told me they think you’re annoying and selfish. And your parents told me they don’t know how I can put up with you. No one really likes you. I think you have a lot of room to grow,” she said.

I tried to process what she said, but I couldn’t. My eyes glazed over and my body became rigid. She kept talking, but I wasn’t hearing anything she said. I heard the gas light beeping more incessantly in the background. I was staring out the window, zoning out. I couldn’t understand how what she said made sense. I tried my best to be kind to others, to be a good friend. How could I lack empathy? How could my family not love me? As we pulled into the driveway, she touched my arm.

“Hey, are you okay,” she said, a sickly sweet smile on her face that I grew to know as more sick than sweet.

“If you’re upset because you’re a bad person, that’s okay. I can teach you how to be better. First things first, you need to stop being so selfish. You can start by learning how to apologise better.”

action for happiness!

BY EVELYN RANOGAJEC

there’s something a bit exciting about pulling a white lace string out of my ass my white lace purity thong there’s something good about wearing it to therapy sitting nonchalantly with a tissue in hand lace up my ass tears tears tears i’m just so sad! my heart is an ocean…maybe? honestly just prescribe me a wank, doc are psychologists even doctors if psychology is a fake science? nonsense! of course it’s real!

writing 3 things i’m grateful for will cure everything

1. my purity thong

2. …

i need a bit of guidance, doc tell me how to stop coming home and wanking until i fall asleep on repeat

tell me how to… let me try again

1. my purity thong

2. petrarch?

3. penis?

i’m sorry i can’t help it! it’s a coping mechanism you’re the one who taught me that word said it with disdain, said it was a symptom of oppression or repression, i can’t tell which apparently they have different definitions apparently i’m oppressing or repressing my emotions apparently it’s bad but doc, please, i do cry i do release these things and i’m just so sad, my heart is a gaping hole that can only be filled by… ha! food, masturbation, sex…no not the last one why would i wear underwear that someone’s going to take off and dump on the ground?

it’s so i can slip my hands under it instead of having someone rip it off to fumble around but doc, don’t worry, i’ll overcome this, here, let me show you

1. my purity thong

2. petrarch

3. penis

there’s no question marks now

i’m cured i’m gonna release all this

i don’t need you anymore

i’ll buy a big strong dildo

i’ll write a sonnet to myself about my white lace purity thong petrarch has nothing on me

i’d make laura cum immediately

i know i can see that look in your eye

my coping mechanism has gone too far but i’d choose dick over depression any day!

okay fine

3 things i’m grateful for 1. one day this will work

2. this will never work

3. my white lace purity thong

To Bake Love

BY SARAH PETERS

Turn the oven to high melting chocolate and strawberries across thighs.

You’ve been beating sugar into my ribs hold it there, crystallised to the cage sparking and popping (how butterflies are born). Paint my skeleton with vanilla essence so I can breathe you in.

Whisk egg wonder into life taking cheeky licks of fingertips that touch and play with flavour.

Margarine on your lips

I am slipping into our kisses, growing into our skin, smother the bases of our souls in dream cream.

You are warm on my skin bumpy cheeks to cheeks sifting icing sugar across our heads like snow brownies in winter, imagining our future sweetness, spoon us out love shared in the kitchen, dancing

Till the timer’s ting.

overstimulation, one hellofa drug

BY LUCETTE EMILY

surges of creativity, shaky hands, my legs look good, eyes wide open, stripping over shoe laces, shouting across small spaces, 4a.m. haircuts at the kitchen sink, re-arranging the furniture, impulse spending, good grades, ‘I love you’ texts, shorter breaths, perfect harmonies, abrasive textures, forgotten bills, I’m not really sorry, fuck you, walking home after therapy, vodka-fuelled dancing, ink leaks on fingertips,

it’s just not worth the hangover,

television binge, something crawling in my stomach, mascara smudges, snapping at you, cracked lips, nothing for dinner, rip in my two dollar stockings, lost change in the vending machine, instant coffee burnt tongue, never good enough, that goddamn pinch in my lower back, running for the train as it pulls away, crying after sex

s c r a p s

BY FELICITY LACEY

pass by shanty land as crystal arks crash at dawn

alpha rat talks trash grabs at stray syntax and lays candy traps

sassy swan talks back stay away cash daddy can’t pay back a l l t h a t

shaky hands grasp sharp shards hack apart tyrant’s charm a last grand stand

rally a nasty black myth and lay my scraps

Breakdowns and Babushka Dolls

BY FELICITY LACEY

Sitting on her brown leather couch, I began to cry. She’d eaten the fruit we were supposed to use for the mindfulness exercise, but that didn’t matter because I’d deleted the stupid app from my phone anyway. I must have said something bothersome, because she started making phone calls and ushered a ‘more experienced’ colleague into the room. They sat me on the floor and told me to colour, so I wore down the black crayon drawing knots. I tired of this—and of waiting—so I pleaded with them to just let me go. Today wasn’t the day for unravelling. I’d promised a friend I’d help her bake a cake, and I had to get to the box factory before it closed. I heard myself referred to as a situation and I was moved into the strange little room upstairs. After four hours, they got sick of waiting too. So, they let me call you. When you arrived, we dismantled the babushka we’d found in the box of toys labelled ‘DO NOT TOUCH’. They returned to find us prying open the window, hands still full of the babushka’s bits. Finally released into your care, you took me to get Gatorade and cigarettes. We sat in an alleyway somewhere on the edge of the city. You told me that, even though I couldn’t see it now, one day I’d be so far away from here. I didn’t believe you. But I knew I trusted you with a broken babushka and that was enough.

The Czechlands

BY JEAN BAULCH

Clarity

BY THOMAS McALLISTER

‘Hamish! I’m home.’

Lily’s voice reverberated in the hallway of their cold, one-bedroom apartment. There was no response.

Lily jammed her fingers into the top of her boots, struggling and swearing as she tried in vain to wrench them off her sore feet. She did her best to muffle her complaints, keeping an ear out for any signs of life coming from the living room.

Every evening after work she repeated the same routine, but all she ever heard back was the constant hum of their fridge. Its groan had provided the soundtrack to their many years together. She’d never bothered to get it checked out. I’d make a lot of noise too, she thought, if I was full of frozen dinners and halffinished bottles of wine.

It’s not that Hamish wasn’t there. Hamish was always there, sitting, silently, wearing a look on his face that made clear how much he wanted to be anywhere but there. Most nights, Lily found herself thinking the same thing.

One night away from that place. One night where her questions would get the answers she so desperately wanted to hear.

But there they were, the two of them, seeing out their days together. Alone.

Hamish was an afterthought in what Lily had hoped to be her perfectlycrafted life. She could still remember the day they first met. She had just moved into her new apartment. Almost ten years later, her current apartment.

Lily had it all worked out—new toaster, new iron, new wardrobe, new life. Everything, down to the smallest detail, planned to the minute. Everything. Until their eyes met.

Lily had never been one for rash decisions. It had taken her months to work up the courage to move out of home. Leave it all behind. Come down to the big smoke and take the job her family begged her to take. She sobbed that first night. Bawled her eyes out that second night. And then she told herself that third night wasn’t going to be the same. She’d said the goodbyes. She’d dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s on her old life. What the hell, she said. I’m my own woman now. And I’ve got room for one more.

Days turned into weeks turned into months. Her friends couldn’t get enough of him at the housewarming. Her mum rarely came down to see her at first, but after a year of Lily and Hamish, she was there every weekend. Lily could tell it wasn’t her daughter that her mum most looked forward to seeing.

But Lily didn’t care. She understood. It was only natural. Everybody else adored Hamish as much as she did. There were days that Lily thought he would be

all she’d ever need. And for the longest time, he was.

But those days had passed. Hamish used to have a lust for life. A sense of adventure. A curious mind. All those silly Mills and Boon clichés that Lily had become far too familiar with. Hamish had all of that.

Nowadays, Hamish sat himself on the couch most evenings, staring into the TV. Lily hated the way the light from the TV reflected off his eyes. His oncebeautiful green eyes. The eyes that she had fallen in love with all those years ago.

Lily used to look into his eyes and see her whole world, staring back at her. Now, all she saw was her reflection—her dark circles, her crow’s feet, her drooping posture. She saw somebody who needed anything but him.

Lily gave Hamish a quick kiss on the cheek, took a seat next to him on the couch and grabbed the remote.

News. Boring.

Game show. Boring. Another game show.

Lily sighed. She knew it didn’t matter what she put on—Hamish would be out like a light within minutes. She flicked back to the news and pulled out her phone. Netflix. Dance Academy. She’d watched every episode more times than she could count. That show was more her home than that icebox of an apartment had ever been. She snuggled up underneath a blanket, took her stockings off and settled in to finish the episode she had started over lunch.

Lily had always hated ballet when she was young. The early morning practice, the blisters, the blood-soaked tights. If only Dance Academy had been around back then, she thought. The pain would have been worth it for a chance to perform at the Prix de Fonteyn.

The Prix de Fonteyn. She remembered which episode was up next. She got to the end of the episode she was watching and closed the app as quickly as she could. She wasn’t going to put herself through Sammy dying again. Seven times was enough.

She looked back over to Hamish, who had dozed off to sleep. His whole body pulsed when he slept. His breathing was almost hypnotizing. He looked so at peace, a spitting image of the Hamish that Lily had fallen in love with. Deep down, she knew he was that same Hamish. As much as he wouldn’t, or couldn’t, show it.

Lily did what she always did when Hamish started to doze off. Picked up her phone again. Opened up her ‘Social’ folder.

Tinder. She hated herself for using it, but her work friends had convinced her to give it a go. Have a look, they said, see what’s out there. Don’t feel bad Lily, everybody does it! But Lily had just never got it.

She played it how she always played it. Swiped a few right, a few more left.

Two matches. Wonderful, Lily thought. Two more tickets in the world’s most disappointing lottery.

Tom, 26, “bigger John Mayer fan than you”. Three pictures. One of them with an electric guitar, the other two with his dog. Wearing sunglasses in all of them. The man knew how to play with his strengths, at least.

Lily wasn’t much interested in Tom, but she was interested in his little Schnauzer. She’d always wanted one, although neither her tiny apartment nor the hermit sleeping next to her would have been too fond of the idea.

She scrolled down to see Tom’s Anthem. ‘Your Body Is A Wonderland’. Subtle, Lily thought. This Tom must be a real charmer. Still, she was thankful for the opportunity to take a trip down memory lane, opening up YouTube to have a listen to her former high school mixtape staple and scroll through the comments.

JasonMrazFan93, 3 months ago: Can’t believe this song came out in 2001!!! WTF where does the time go!!!!?

Tom sent you a new message.

Swimming in a deep sea of blankets with John would have to wait. Tom was on the line.

I’ll be the Marshall to your Lily.

She’d only heard that one four times before. It wasn’t the worst she’d heard, but it wasn’t getting a response. She’d seen enough How I Met Your Mother to know that she didn’t want to be anyone’s Lily.

Lily went back to John Mayer. She’d moved on to ‘Waiting On The World To Change’. Weren’t we all, John, she thought. Most of us a bit more than you.

Tom sent you a new message.

If I were to pick the one animal I most relate to, it would be a frog. You wanna know why?

She didn’t. But the three dots on her screen piqued her interest anyway. She waited patiently for Tom to come through with the zinger he had spent his last four minutes working on.

Both of us want to bounce up and down on a Lily.

Screenshot. Unmatch.

Jack sent you a new message.

Hey :) Cool dress

Lily only used two pictures for her Tinder profile. The first one was of her at a friend’s 30th, wearing the dress Jack mentioned—a floral dress that her mum had bought for her. She’d never been too fond of the dress or the photo, but her work friends insisted she used it.

She didn’t like to get in the habit of listening to their advice, but they were right about the dress—it was, to her surprise, a popular conversation starter amongst the Tinder faithful. Her other picture, a selfie of her wearing a face mask chosen by her work friends as “the funny one”, hadn’t received quite the same attention.

She had a look through Jack’s profile. 27, “Architect, Writer, Coffee Enthusiast. I love a good book and a trip down to the beach. Will buy you the best coffee you’ve ever had.”

Four photos. The Fushimi Inari Shrine, the Eiffel Tower, the Leaning Tower of Piza, the Great Wall of China, decked out from head to toe in fancy menswear in each of them.

Lily flicked back and forth through Jack’s pictures, her head drooping further and further downwards as she did so. She drove to the Twelve Apostles once. It was nice.

She agonised for several minutes over whether she should tell Jack that her mum had bought the dress for her, before deciding against it. She didn’t want Jacky boy’s first impression of her to be a mumma’s girl.

Thanks! Hahah I got it from ASOS lol

Oh cool aha. I bought something from ASOS just the other day ahahah

Lily wasn’t sure why the two of them were laughing so much. There was not one part of their conversation that was even remotely funny.

So what type of things you get up to in your spare time?

Dun dun dunnnnnn. The question that had brought many a Tinder conversation to a halt. It always hit her like a ton of bricks. What DID she do? What did anybody do? Well, she knew what guys on Tinder did. Hike. Fish. Climb rocks. Listen to copious amounts of John Mayer.

Lily racked her brain for answers. She knew she was being harsh on herself. After all, she did go out with friends most weekends. She went to the gym four times a week. She did yoga classes. She liked to sketch. And yet none of that felt interesting enough to lead with. Lily decided to do what she usually did whenever anybody asked that question—she put it back on them.

Nothing much really. U?

Oh you know…don’t mind travelling :D

You travel much?

Nah not really :( wish I did tho

What’s ur fav place?

Aww you should :)

My fav place…

Hmmm

Tough one!

Probably the Eiffel Tower, Paris is…

Just Like

Words can’t even explain it

The buildings, the culture, everything

It’s just so beautiful

Honestly, there’s nothing like a croissant for breakfast on the Champs-Elysees Élysées* hahah

Maybe I can take you there one time haha

Lily didn’t know how to respond. After all of that, she wasn’t even sure if she was still in the conversation. She lifted her head up from the piercing blue and white lights of her phone screen to darkness. Jacky boy’s novel had set the sun on another average day and had left her tired and hungry. She closed Tinder and opened UberEats. Chinese tonight. She’d earned it.

Jack sent you a new message.

Honey chicken. Or sweet and sour pork?

Jack sent you a new message.

Definitely honey chicken. Too many onions in the sweet and sour pork. But what about the Mongolian beef?

Jack sent you a new message.

Pork fried rice? Or what about the dumplings? They’d gone down well last time.

Jack sent you a new message.

Fine, she thought. Fine. One more chance. Who knows, maybe Jacky boy could come through with an idea for dinner. He certainly seemed to have enough experience.

So would you want to do something this weekend?

I’ve got a few things on Saturday during the day

But I’d be happy to squeeze something in with you later

Maybe dinner, dancing, then…who knows ;)

Type message. Erase message. Breathe in. Breathe out. Douchebag. Unmatch.

Honey chicken with rice, chicken and sweet corn soup and a Sprite. Ready to go.

Wait, no, let’s make that lemon chicken.

And get rid of the sweet corn soup. There’s soup in the cupboard. Actually…argh!

Lily tapped her phone on her chin, mulling up the options as if her life

depended on it.

OK. Honey…no, lemon chicken, chicken and sweet corn soup and a… Fanta? Sprite? What about a kombucha? Do they sell kombucha?

Bzzzzt!

Oh no, she thought, please don’t pocket dial me another UberEats order. The last time her phone went off in her hand like that, she was stuck with a week’s supply of butter chicken. Lily shook her head, gritted her teeth, and mentally prepared herself to assess the damage on the screen below.

You have a new connection!

Bumble? Lily had forgotten she even had the app on her phone. Surely a relic of a drunken night out, she thought, a desperate escape as she pondered life’s big questions over a lamb kebab.

Sam, 28.

“My secret skill…Making bottles of wine disappear” Check.

“After work you can find me…Rolled up in a ball on the couch watching Netflix.” Check check.

“My go-to karaoke song is…4ever by the Veronicas”

Lily didn’t need to look that one up. She knew every word off by heart. It had remained her favourite song without challenge since she first heard it on Video Hits all those years ago. She still danced around the living room with it blaring through her earphones. Her hairbrush had spent more of its lifetime as a makeshift microphone for that song than it had spent running through her hair.

Lily could barely contain her excitement. She rushed to send her message off, choosing a lyric that every Veronicas aficionado should have been well aware of. Pass the test, Sam. Please.

Let’s pretend you’re mine

Lily ran to her room to fetch her earphones. After five minutes spent untangling them, and two minutes spent watching an ad for a cat scratcher, she was finally onto ‘4ever’. She played it while she waited for a response, and then again, and then again, and danced around the couch until her stomach began to rumble.

Ah well, she thought. I’ve had my workout for the day. Maybe Sam was doing the same. In any case, it was time for dinner.

Honey chicken with rice, chicken and sweet corn soup and a Sprite. Ready to—

Sam sent you a new message

We could just pretend, we could just pretend, yeah yeah

Test passed with flying colours. Onto Stage 2. You

Lily smirked at her abstract genius, before returning to her UberEats order. Honey chicken with rice, chicken and sweet—

Sam sent you a new message Got

Sam had passed again. Lily started to giggle. The signs were looking promising.

You got what I like, I got what you like, oh c’mon!

Hahahahahaha maybe we should do a duet at karaoke together some time

Yessssss definitely <3

Sidebar—I love love LOVE your floral dress

OMG thank you <3 mum picked it out for me actually hahaha

Well she must have great taste if you’re anything to go by

You look AH-mazing in it :) :) :)

Although I’m sure you’d look just as good out of it ;)

Lily’s face had gone bright red. She turned away to hide her cheeks, before realizing nobody was watching. Keep it together, Lily, she whispered to herself. Keep it together.

Hahahah you’re too much…maybe one day you’ll find out ;)

She’d never flirted with anybody on Tinder. She’d never had the chance. Was this how you did it?

What about tonight? Please tell me you haven’t had dinner yet. I’d love to get something.

This felt easy. Was it supposed to be easy?

Lily turned off the screen and had a look at herself in her phone’s reflection. She was surprised. Hair still up. Makeup still on. Normally the first thing she did after wrenching her shoes off was grab a handful of makeup wipes from her bedroom and let her hair down.

She looked good.

It was a sign, she thought. It had to be.

Nah hahaha. I’d love to tho

What were you thinking?

Dunno

U? TBH

I was just gonna get Chinese

So if you’ve got a better idea I’m all ears

OMG GET OUT

I was literally just about to order Chinese for dinner before your message popped up.

Lily looked out the window. It had started to rain. She looked back at the couch and at Hamish, who was now wide awake and staring back at her. She held the phone closer to her chest, flicking her eyes up at Hamish as she typed.

It was freezing cold.

She didn’t even know Sam.

How would Hamish feel?

Hahahah I would so love to

You sure though? It’s raining pretty hard…

I wouldn’t want to put you out

Very very very sure hahah

Bit of rain never hurt anyone :D

I know this place near my work and they do the best dumplings oML

Let’s goooooooo

Ooooooohhh

It was only one night. Hamish would live. And if he could, he’d do the same. Surely. Right?

Sam sent you a new message

Come on baby we ain’t gonna live forever!!!!!

And with that, it was happening. Lily popped her stockings back on and ducked over to the fridge. She grabbed leftovers out for Hamish, grabbed her coat and made for the door.

‘Hamish, I’m heading out. Food’s there.’

She looked back down the hallway to see Hamish make his way off the couch. He sniffed the air for a few seconds, before making a beeline to his dinner. His eyes had failed him, but his appetite was still there.

Lily waved down the hallway. She knew it was in vain, but she hoped that Hamish still somehow sensed it.

‘Love you, Hamish.’

Lily heard Hamish’s soft reply as she shut the door.

‘Meow.’

Sydney

BY YUSHI WU

Tashi

BY YUSHI WU

His Own Marbled Gut

BY ISAAC LANGFORD

my sister stood on my blue tongue in black velcro clogs out extremities squelched innards mouth, and anus

chitin and fluids of grasshoppers just crunched slimed upon blades they once clung

slow hands insufferably wet sweat, and blood sluggishly choking on his own marbled gut in a musty tea towel covered in dog hair last time down the road to the Rapid Creek Vet

regression towards the obscene must recollection serve me this vigorous scraping at my tonsils I could have, no I should have a quick neck click but 13-year-old knuckles were in delirium clenched, and rubbing raw on the static of my childhood trampoline

Botched Eulogy to my Grandmother’s Language

BY RUBY ADAMS

en day i the garden, a young flicka: myself, and my mormor. the damp part of the garden, shady, grass perpetually wet (liksom Goteborg, I suppose)

and there might have been a tabell there before it rotted out.

Instead jag flail, grabbing at knowledge (memories) I’d like to hold on to: (most of min vocabulary är about food) du kann only eat lussekatt at Lucia, whenever that is. Christmas är candles in windows, inte flashing santa lights. Anna’s ginger snaps are NOT real pepparkakor (but jag ska ta them anyway). and du kann mix something like julmust from ginger beer, coke, and stout, which even mormor agrees is better than the Ikea version. but for något annat, Ikea is bäst.

In other words, I’m not bilingual, detta second language är en box of parts not enough to reconstruct Ikea-style. Det här är why my mormor tried to teach me men I remember the wet gräs, the drawings, impatience; I wanted to play with min bro in the sol that fell through the träd leaving only fragments.

Suburban Bliss

BY MICHELLE LA

I hated my dad. Exactly in that pubescent, hormonal drama-kid kind of way. I hated him. Every mundane twitch, such as a sneeze, sent my temper flaring at this unavoidable man. My dad didn’t just sneeze: he bellowed. And after successive bellows, he’d curse “argh Jesus Christ!” for the fate of having to blow his nose. Worse still, was his vehement impatience. Nothing could be done soon enough, getting frustrated at the seconds that passed between finding a tissue to dabbing his nose.

Growing up, I only found two things in common with him. One was a love of eating Cornflakes with ice cream, and the second a stubborn conviction we were always right. The latter was the cause of bitter arguments, the former the silent offering of reluctant reconciliation. I’d forgotten what we argued about, but I remembered their insults, their consequences, and their irrationality. And now as an adult, I still carried a teenage girl’s angst towards my father.

“He never listens to me.”

“He doesn’t understand me.”

“He always thinks that he’s right.”

My dad came to Australia as an immigrant from Vietnam. He and 50,000 others arrived between 1975-82, fleeing post-war Vietnam to find refuge through then-Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser’s new immigration policies. Subsequently, Australia’s open door to Vietnamese refugees marked a shift away from ‘White Australia’ policies. It also introduced the term ‘boat people’ into Australian vernacular.

While my aunties and uncles lived in government housing, my parents worked their way out of low-income communities and bought a house out in the ‘burbs. Among the gumtrees and bogans, I couldn’t comprehend the pride that my parents had for this achievement until I was an adult. I was too naive to understand the problems faced by migrants in a post-White Australia society. Too busy turning chairs and bed sheets into cubby-houses to see my parents toiled over sewing machines at night, a second job they did after coming home from their day jobs. And too distracted by the toys in my Happy Meals to notice the raised voices behind the service counter who berated my mum for her poor English.

Incidentally, my parents wanted two kids. So they built a spacious house for a household of four. However, my mum miscarried the second child, and when I was 13-years-old, she died after a battle with cancer. This left us with a big

old house. We neglected it while distracted with hospital appointments, and it further decayed with a single man’s lifestyle. Consequently, this created the perfect formula for stagnation. Maybe it was mourning, but my dad blamed these events for the obsoletion of his life’s work. He had retired early to look after my mother, and now faced monotonous hours of placid freedom.

Regardless of his suburban life, Vietnam never left my dad. He had spent more than half his life living in Australia, but he was truly Vietnamese through-andthrough. Despite this, he refused to go back to visit his home country. He feared being thrown back in prison for his stint in the army during the war. He grumbled in contempt at the eight years he lost as a prisoner of war, hidden high in the jungles bordering China and brutally left to fend off malaria and malnutrition. Moreover, he heaved huge sighs about lost hectares of rubber plantations, a family business they had laboured lovingly from the ground up. Above all, he reminisced about the taste of Vietnamese herbs, and complained with equal bitterness, about the absence of his beloved herbs in Australia. “It’s just not the same,” he’d cry.

At the age of 70, my dad was finally ready to pay a visit to the homeland. He figured he was too old to raise suspicion from army intelligence. Though little did he know, four decades on, Vietnam had launched major reform. Where once war-torn, the country was now one of the fastest growing economies in Southeast Asia. With the country thriving in tourism, they instead encouraged Viet Kieu—the name given to Vietnamese living in foreign countries—to reclaim their citizenship and invest in local business and property. But understandably, my dad’s mindset was stuck pre-1975 and the fall of Saigon. When the streets were full of pedal bikes and cyclos, and the cool kids listened to rock’n roll and played billiards.

So, on our first night in Vietnam, we found ourselves squatting on tiny plastic chairs in front of a food cart serving broken rice and pork chops. Given my dad had already complained about “arriving at the airport too early” and “waiting too long to get off the plane”, we scoffed our meals down in silence. Besides hauling rice into my mouth, I paused only to order rounds of warm beers. Finally, my dad broke the tension by telling me an awkward story for a daughter to hear.

The story was a love story. It involved an ex-girlfriend. My dad’s teenage sweetheart to be exact. The woman he wanted to marry when he finished his studies. But war broke out, my father fought and became a prisoner-of-war for

eight years. Throughout the distress of struggle and warfare, the woman waited for him. However, in the confusion, the two people never found each other. My dad jumped a boat to Malaysia and found his way to Australia. When he settled in, he would meet my mum and I was born. I listened in disbelief. This story, this script, it was something made of Hollywood. It was that Sliding Doors moment when chance changed the course of a lifetime. But how was I to react to this alternate reality?

Gwyneth Paltrow’s parallel self was brunette instead of blonde, but I wouldn’t even exist in my dad’s alternate universe. It was too strange to contemplate.

A few days later, my dad’s story was somehow unfolding in front of me. I was sitting opposite the ex-girlfriend in her living room. While looking for a greataunt’s house, we went to the wrong address and found his ex-girlfriend instead (my great-aunt lived in the house behind). Forty years had passed since my dad saw this woman’s face. She had no children and had married a quiet man late in her fifties. She and my dad shared a lifetime of lost memories, now only reflected in their grey hair and deep wrinkles. The divide between all of us, the sober humanism that anchored us to time and place, was simple yet mind-boggling. Under those circumstances, I sat in her living room and enjoyed an afternoon being plied with food and spritely chats. I described to her what Australia was like, my achievements, my worries for the future. And she told me her concerns with health, her plans for retirement, and her joy in spoiling her nieces and nephews. I realised, my only trial so far was the frustrating relationship with my dad. The normality of living, my mundane problems, and the human everyday of our conversation, I realised was such bliss.

Rita in South Melbourne

BY MATHILDA GWINNER

Music Words and Chips: The Trailer

BY JAMES GORDON

Rebecca Clayton got out of the car and walked across the gravel. It was dark and the landscape was empty. There was a bench on some concrete slab surrounded by a sea of dirt and small stones like an island. She sat and it was cold and she looked out at the landscape.

Derek Hilton watched movie trailers in lieu of films. He found it satisfying to watch a condensed narrative containing all the best lines. He’d seen the trailer for Mary and Max seventy-eight times. That’s his favourite. The way it effortlessly melts between the two characters and encapsulates the beauty of friendship in just two minutes, he feels, is a work of artistic genius. He often wonders what his life’s trailer would look like. They often feature a montage at the end of people gesticulating in quite ordinary ways, and the music makes his synapses irresistibly giggle out serotonin and envelop him in its orgasmic twirl. Even the way he looks up at his computer, he feels, would make a great visual segment to flash for the portion of a second that the beats of the music allocates. Life doesn’t have enough editing. There’s lots of him sitting at his desk. Staring and thinking and waiting and sitting in his own sweat. His life wouldn’t make a good movie. But it’d make a good trailer.

Derek walked across the gravel to where Rebecca was sitting. It was a selected portion of time that they’d agreed to spend together, and as such, he’d been looking forward to it. They first met in a bookstore. Derek was holding his

favourite novel and that sparked the conversation. She liked the book also. Now they sit together every Tuesday, between the hours of 2:43pm and 3:12pm, looking at the landscape and sharing a beautiful silence. Sometimes they’d discuss The Plan. But not always. Today they didn’t.

The Plan is government legislation that was passed to encourage all citizens to live more in the moment. Citizens are given a quota of time with which to spend with other humans, which must involve either direct interaction with a group of people, or sitting in the exclusive company of one or two other people or person. Citizens are also required to have a life goal, and to spend a quota of time every day working towards this goal. This ensures every moment of life is spent properly, productively and enjoyably. Failure to comply results in a fine.

Derek’s life goal is to be able to determine what every headphone-clad walker is listening to based on the speed of their gait. There’s a man he saw in a YouTube video called Carl who guesses songs with 90 per cent accuracy. Once, Carl figured out that a person had illegally downloaded the song from YouTube based on the fact the uploader had slowed down the tempo by a fraction to avoid copyright infringement. He worked out the name of the song and the uploader’s name instantly just by the walking speed of said individual. Carl was Derek’s hero. Every day, for at least two hours and thirteen minutes, he’d listen to songs and make a mental note of their speeds. Currently, he can guess songs with 43 per cent

accuracy. He aims for 100 per cent by the end of his life.

Rebecca was born in 1999, and her goal is to live to the year 2100 so she can say she’s seen three centuries. Every day, for at least one hour and thirty-two minutes, she exercises at the gym and plans the most nutritional diet possible. Just to smell the sweet air of a third century would make her life complete. Rebecca and Derek touched hands and smiled at the sky. That night, Derek felt satiated as he watched the trailer for Mary and Max by himself.

Rebecca’s room was structured like a power point that you see in the wall, except it was a power point lying across the floor. There were two beds on either end, angled away from each other, and a drawer running down the middle at the bottom. The beds were supported by thick beams of wood and the drawer was beige. Rebecca lay on her purple doona while forming an isosceles triangle with her left leg, and her housemate was sitting, swinging her legs over the edge of the separate bed in the room laughing. Alice was a sporadic sort of person. Her aim is to learn every word in the English language by the time she draws her terminal breath.

“Did you know that a drutling is a dog or horse that frequently stops in its way, and ejects a small quantity of dung at intervals?”, Alice read from her laptop and her voice slipped a semitone higher on ‘dung’ as if concealing some sort of amusement. Rebecca smiled as she picked up a book on nutrition.

The shared energies in the room was comforting, and they didn’t know why.

Derek didn’t share with Rebecca her wealth of friends. He used to have one friend. His name was Mark. They stopped seeing each other after Derek met Rebecca, and not because of any belligerent resentment, but because, one day, shortly after Derek met Rebecca, Mark walked into a bookshop holding his favourite book and he never came out. It’s not that he died. He’s just standing there. In the middle of the store. Holding his favourite book and waiting for somebody else to initiate some excitement in his life. But nobody’s coming. He stands so still that people now assume he’s a statue, and every second he remains in the bookshop, the closer he resembles a piece of furniture. He’s failing to meet his quotas, and he’s standing there. Holding his favourite book. Nobody blames him for wanting the life that Derek and Rebecca share. They always seemed so smiley and happy together.

On his 54th birthday Derek was on 92 per cent accuracy with his life goal. He always observed people in the street, and then he’d approach them and they’d pull out their headphones and stare and he’d ask them to confirm his predictions. It was something he kept to himself, mostly. It was only a party trick once it reached 100 per cent. When he’s not working towards his goal he focuses on his career as a trailer-maker. He’s become quite good at it, and dedicates a fair bit of his life to his career. But every Tuesday, he’ll go back to that bench, as he always did, and sit with Rebecca. Today, for his birthday, they shared an intimate moment together. Rebecca was looking very good for her age. She was very healthy and she felt great. She felt every bit validated that her life goal was not just a goal, but a means of living a happy life.

Silence. Footsteps on a footpath. A person wearing headphones walking. Derek emerges and taps the person on the shoulder. He tells them what song they’re listening to and they say no. Upbeat music begins. Derek is sitting at his desk. Derek has a dream of determining what songs people listen to, based on the speed of their walking. An unknown person is playing guitar. Derek, nearby, looks thoughtful. This summer, he’s going to figure out that’s going to be more difficult than he first thought. Derek says, ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’. The person says no. Upbeat music stops. Derek screams, but in a different location. Dramatic music begins. Rebecca shouts at him that his dream is tearing their friendship apart. Derek tells her that his music detection is the only reason he’s not in jail. From the people who brought you Derek’s Sister, comes the hilarious new feature film. Derek says that he just wants to have a party trick up his sleeve. Rebecca starts crying. Her friend, Alice, has passed away. Derek throws his head against the wall and the music becomes slower. Rebecca tells him that at the time of her death, Alice knew every word in the English language. She died at 11:34am on the 16th of April, just one minute before the Oxford Dictionary was updated to include five previously unheard of new words. Derek starts crying, thinking that his death would be the same. Rebecca slaps him, telling him that he’s being self-indulgent. Derek screams that he just wants to live properly. Carl places his hand on Derek’s shoulder and tells him that he just needs patience. Carl nods. Exciting, rapid fire music begins. A quick shot of Derek running. A quick shot of Derek and Rebecca hugging. A quick shot of Derek looking up from his laptop. A quick shot of Derek holding up some headphones. A quick shot of Derek and Rebecca laughing together. The screen flashes white and the music climaxes. Derek Hilton: A Comedy Life. Derek is lying in a hospital bed. Pale, his eyes closing slowly and holding Rebecca’s hand. I only made it to 99 per cent, he mutters as his life slips away and Rebecca starts crying. A list of all the cast and crew appears on the screen. Black.

Rebecca Clayton got out of the car and walked across the gravel. It was dark and the landscape was empty. There was a bench on some concrete slab surrounded by a sea of dirt and small stones like an island. She sat and it was cold and she looked out at the landscape. There was something in the emptiness of the night that Alice used to call kenopsia, when she was alive. She breathed in the air, and it smelt like a new century.

“Hooray”, she muttered. She didn’t know how much longer she’d have to sit on that bench. She hoped not much longer, but she didn’t want to leave it.

Unbeknownst to her, Mark was still standing in the bookshop, silent and still, but very much alive.

Sail Us to the Moon

BY HANA EBRAHIMI

BY HANA EBRAHIMI

Mr. Magpie

HARAMBE 2018

BY NICHOLAS FLEMING

It is important to note that of the collection presented before you, not every detail is deemed essential by most. I’ve included every one of them not only to provide enough information to understand the gravity of the events occurring at the end of August 2018, but to also paint a picture of the world that allowed them to happen. If you were not alive when the events took place, it would be easy to doubt whether they happened at all. Scrutiny is essential.

Many tweets have been included in this body of work, and I would like to give thanks to the Library of Congress for recording many of them. The website Twitter is currently inaccessible to the public while under federal investigation, making this information hard to come by. Due to complications in connection with the investigation, many photos have had to be removed. I have written descriptions of each in the hopes of preserving the integrity, or lack thereof, of the original subject matter.

At the time of writing this, I am yet to choose a title for this particular collection, but I am currently inclined to call it ‘The Tweet that Changed the World’ for obvious reasons. Although my account is brief I hope it serves to elucidate the particular brand of collective insanity the United States of America indulged in before their inevitable fall. It would be easy to look back and laugh at such an absurd way of life, but I assure you we could make the same mistakes given similar circumstance. Let this account serve as a warning; to disregard fact is to disregard our very existence, to profit from lies is to profit from our end.

3 August 2018:

Martin Shkreli, former CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, was a businessman and convicted felon infamous for his role in raising the price of life saving drug Daraprim by over 5000 per cent. In August 2017 he was found guilty on two counts of securities fraud and was sentenced to seven years in prison.

In May 2016 Harambe the gorilla was shot to death in the Cincinnati Zoo after a three-year-old human child fell into his enclosure. The incident received considerable media attention, however Shkreli’s interest in reviving the gorilla is still unknown.

5 August 2018:

Media company Vice shares an article on Facebook titled: ‘Pharma Bro Martin Shkreli Back at It Again with the Harambe Jokes’. Attached is a quote from the original article:

‘It seems like we’re viewing Shkreli’s slow descent into madness in prison. It’s not surprising he’s joking about Harambe again, but why now? Why at all?’

8 August 2018:

After the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s statement, the Internet collectively erupts. Many claim the announcement was a hoax, while others believe this was the end of the world as we know it. Television news broadcasters cover the story nationwide, with some reporting that Harambe has been cloned, while others claim he was potentially a kind of zombie. Without any photo or video proof and no further statements given by Shkreli, little is confirmed.

9 August 2018:

Shkreli releases an interview with Harambe on his YouTube channel titled: ‘Harambe Lives and Speaks! Interview with the worlds first talking gorilla’. The monetised video receives over 30 million views in a single day. Harambe, wearing a clean suit and tie, gives a compassionate speech on the bond between humans and animals, advocating for better conditions in zoos. When questioned on his experience of dying, Harambe states that he is uncertain of whether or not there is an afterlife, but that he forgives the zoo employee who shot him regardless.

10 August 2018:

CNN run a debate between a panel of specialists to discuss the future of animal rights and legislation. One specialist calls for the banning the revival and modification of animals, while others support future ethical modifications.

Fox News calls for the immediate execution of Harambe.

Former reality television star and President of the United States Donald Trump tweets:

11 August 2018:

Vlogger Logan Paul, widely criticised for uploading footage onto YouTube of a body in a suicide forest during his trip to Japan, releases a video titled: ‘HARAMBE IN MY BACK GARDEN LAST NIGHT?!’. The 10 minute video features what appears to be a man in a gorilla suit hiding behind trees outside of a luxury home while Paul reacts from inside the house. The video received over a million views on its first day.

12 August 2018:

A conspiracy theory goes viral on website 4Chan, detailing that Harambe’s revival was faked in a complicated scheme orchestrated by the United States Government and Shkreli. The writer of the article, known only as ‘CUCKFUCKER420’, claims to be a whistle-blower working within the Whitehouse. The conspiracy states that the FBI created the footage of Harambe with deep-fake video technology with the help of NASA, who filmed the fake moon landing. This scheme would benefit Shkreli, who would profit from the increased sales of anxiety and antipsychotic medication the news would cause, while the seismic unrest countrywide would distract the American people from the Democrat’s secret military takeover of the government from the inside.

YouTube Channel PrankInvasion release a video titled: ‘KISSING PRANK— HARAMBE EDITION!’. The video features YouTuber Chris Monroe dressed as a gorilla, walking the street and ‘surprising’ women on the street with a hug. He then removes the gorilla mask and asks for a kiss. It is yet to be confirmed what part of the video is a prank.

14 August 2018:

Beyoncé announces collaboration with company Nike on a new line of sneakers named Ape Shit.

YouTube Channel TwinzTV releases a video titled: ‘HARAMBE IN THE HOOD PRANK! GONE WRONG!!’. The video features a man in a gorilla suit running through the streets of Compton provoking members a predominantly AfricanAmerican crowd.

Following are a collection of memes found on various pages on website Facebook:

16 August 2018:

YouTube channel H3H3Productions make a video parodying the Harambe prank trends circulating the website. The video garners over a million views in a single day.

Online news outlet Pedestrian TV share an article on Facebook titled: ‘Gorilla themed pranks in the hood are fucking racist, obviously’.

20 August 2018:

Shkreli tweet is aimed at musician Grimes, inviting her to ‘hit him up’ when she’s sick of dating billionaire Elon Musk, founder of Space X and Tesla Motors, who is 16 years her senior.

22 August 2018:

United States Senator Bernie Sanders appears on Jimmy Kimmel Live! to

criticise Trump’s tweet. Sanders explains that the release of prisoners is a decision for the Courts, not for the President. Kimmel responds by saying:

“Well I hope he doesn’t drop the soap in the remaining years of his sentence.”

23 August 2018:

News outlet Buzzfeed release an article titled: ‘The Late Night Joke that Crossed the Line’.

Kimmel issues an apology during his on-air monologue for his insensitive remarks. Kimmel states:

“Sexual abuse is a horrible, unforgivable act, and I sincerely apologise for making light of that.”

Kimmel later interviews guest Mike Tyson about his appearance in the fourth movie in The Hangover saga.

27 August 2018:

Trump signs an executive order demanding the Senate change the definition of pardoning, allowing the President to release prisoners at his discretion.

During an interview, CNN reporters ask about whether he will use these powers to pardon any members of his election team. Trump announces he will be creating the 7th Branch of the United Stated Military, the ‘Ape Force’.

28 August 2018:

Attached to his post is a photograph of Musk and Grimes in lab coats. Grimes holds a chimpanzee.

A post by Facebook page So Vegan goes viral, protesting the announcement by Trump to use animals in warfare.

A post by Facebook page Animal Rights Media goes viral, claiming that any consenting beings should be given the right to join the military, however they criticise Trumps speciesism for segregating the gorillas into a separate ‘Ape Force’.

Facebook page I fucking love science weighs in, stating: “Sorry, but ‘Ape Force’ is just wrong. Harambe is a gorilla. Apes and gorillas are completely different species!”

31 August 2018:

Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani speaks on Fox News and explains that the now infamous meeting at Trump Tower between Donald Trump Jr. and Russia agents was not collusion, but was actually a discussion about Russia’s advanced animal military advancements.

Trump releases the following tweet in response to widespread criticism:

32 August 2018:

The ‘Gorilla Bill’ is introduced into the House of Representatives. The bill calls for the ability to have gorillas tried in front of a jury. A clause in the bill allows for an expansion of the President’s power to free convicted criminals.

33 August 2018:

Several major news outlets report on the hospitalisation of YouTuber Joey Salads, who was injured during the filming of a prank video. It was reported that he who was shot by security while running around the Staten Island Zoo in a gorilla costume.

37 August 2018:

Website Wikileaks release footage revealing horrific conditions in a laboratory tied to Musk’s company. The video contains a bleeding furry creature looking into the camera. It says: ‘kill me’.

38 August 2018:

Stock plunges of Musk’s companies, SpaceX and Tesla Motors.

Killer Mike, rapper and outspoken socialist, tweets:

39 August 2018:

Musk steps down as chairman of both Space X and Tesla Motors. It is rumoured that the Mars expedition plans have been heavily delayed.

Attached to the tweet is a photo of Grimes in her home studio in Toronto. She is holding a chimpanzee.

40 August 2018:

An explosive report by the NY Times reveals that Nike x Beyoncé Ape Shit sneakers are being made by literal apes. According to the report, the sweatshops in China, South Korea and Thailand have already begun replacing workers with genetically modified animals to reduce costs. The animals at this point are on probation, but if the trial is a success, they may replace all workers within the factory moving forward.

41 August 2018:

Another 4Chan conspiracy theory goes viral, explaining that the fake Harambe videos were a stroke of genius by Trump, a tactic he used to gain the upper hand in the Ape Race against Russia.

Shkreli releases another video on his YouTube channel announcing that Harambe will be holding a press conference at the Whitehouse. The now fouryear-old child that fell into Harambe’s cage has been invited to the event as the guest of honour.

43 August 2018:

Killer Mike releases a protest track titled ‘Ape $hit’, hitting over two million views in its first day of release. A section of the lyrics, taken from Genius. com go as follows:

Living in the rise of the planet of the apes

That’s something

Killer getting wise to the crates

Their smuggling

In the wide open, prise open

Wifi hustling

It’s the Cold War II

And the winners are the Russians

48 August 2018:

Harambe in shot dead before speech outside of the Whitehouse. He dies holding the boy who fell into his enclosure in 2016.

49 August 2018:

The Russian Government announces that they will be launching their first rocket to Mars at the end of the month.

For That Natural Look

BY JEAN BAULCH

Shades of the Sea

BY ROSANN ANTHONY

Rivers

BY JENNIFER CHANCE

The rivers have grown bitter. In the morning I wake to a crackle of whips as the banks tear themselves apart. Some days the water is grey like cement, streaming down in shafts. Some days the water is brown and sluggish and full of rat feet kicking. On my walls are happy faces, paper faces that lean forward to watch the water.

Some days the sky falls, floating on the rivers like oil.

Some days the sky looks like my father’s stomach, grey and brown until the part where a scar rips through the skin, a swell of yellowness, of light.

Some days the sky is startled, unsure of what it needs to be, so it becomes everything. For every wrong thing, a tulip swims into the house. And my father’s face swims in, apologetic and purple.

Some days a boat goes by— but it is not a boat, just a dinghy, or sometimes a canoe, and a single person is on board watching the water with mourning eyes.

The rivers have grown weary. Through the many green veins they bleed, tight-lipped seams unwinding. In the morning I wake to a bouquet of maimed words, intricately tailored and strung.

Some days the rivers sing me stories— they dance in the living room and watch me sleep.

Some days the water is a glass screen of muddied things, muddied people I know.

Some days my father asks why his tulips are dying.

The rivers tell me: learn to be still.

I am learning to be still.

The rivers have grown empty. Some days I wake up and don’t hear the rivers. Or see the rivers.

Some days the sky is itself again. The banks stitch themselves together and the tulips come back to life.

Between Dreams

BY JEAN BAULCH

The Midnight Hours

BY ALISON TEALBY

Night-time for Aiden was never a simple matter; the darkness was too heavy, the silence, too still. When he was younger, he would watch misshapen creatures emerge from the shadows of his room like other children might search for an image in a cloud, and he’d lie very, very still, in fear of them noticing him. Most nights, he’d leave the light on in the corridor for the comforting, soft glow beneath the door. That helped, sometimes, but then his aunt started caring about nature and electricity outputs and things, and lights were to remain off after bedtime. “It’s really not difficult,” she’d tell him, “you just need to breathe slowly,” and she’d demonstrate with heaving sighs that Aiden was supposed to imitate but didn’t. The speed of his breathing wasn’t going to fix the suffocating darkness of his room, but he was getting too old to sleep with the light on anyway.

And he did try. He downloaded a meditation app and tried to count along with a calm, feminine voice (in for 7, out for 8), but he could never do it for very long. Something about trying to control his breathing put him on edge, made his lungs want to burst open the moment he held still on an inhale and made his throat close up on the idea that he couldn’t breathe.

So Aiden resigned himself to exhaustion. Each morning he’d drag himself, corpse-like, into his aunt’s tiny tiled bathroom. Then there was Coles-brand instant coffee, then school, then more coffee for whatever was needed to scrape through homework before TV and bed. And each night, he’d lie awake and feel the seconds stretch out and smother him. He kept his clock face down so he didn’t have to watch the time as it crept past, too quick and too slow all at once. The exhaustion that shadowed him during the day was still there, but it was muffled beneath the silence of his room.

And so it went, and by the time he reached senior high, the constant ache behind his eyes felt natural, and the shadows that had terrified him as a child filled him with nothing more than a kind of dreary boredom. By then, all that bothered him was the sheer stagnation of scenery. Nothing moved at night-time, and Aiden hated those terrible midnight hours, where sleep would evade and time would pass while everything looked exactly the same.

It was during another endless, empty night when he heard an odd shuffling sound and at first he assumed it was mice. Then there was a raspy, unintelligible whispering, and he told himself he was dreaming, which was good

because that meant he was getting more sleep. Then, when the rasping grew louder, he rolled onto his side and watched as an enormous, hulking figure detached itself from the shadows on his wall and hobbled out of his room.

That was when Aiden decided he was awake, and the childhood terrors he thought he’d grown out of left him paralysed in his bed until dawn.

After that, Aiden determined to stay up on purpose. He waited until he could hear his aunt’s snoring drift through the corridor, flicked on his desk lamp and pulled out his laptop to pass the time. He slept during class and woke to threats of detention—and later, actual detention. He didn’t mind. He slept through those too. He knew, staring at his pale, disheveled reflection each morning, that the figure could not be real. An invention of his childhood, most likely, come to haunt him, perhaps a consequence from his chronic lack of sleep. But that knowledge changed nothing, and stayed as a distant awareness that he kept locked up in the back of his mind. His plan seemed to be working. No strange sounds visited him during the night, and the shadows stayed in place as much as they always had.

A few weeks into his new routine, the school called his aunt and she confiscated his laptop and desk lamp.

“Sleep is natural,” she told him, exasperated. “It should be easy. You’re the one making it difficult.”

Aiden wanted to tell her that sleep had never been easy, but he knew that wasn’t really true for her. But that night, the raspy whispering started up again the moment his aunt switched off the corridor light. A weight settled onto Aiden’s chest, and all at once he couldn’t draw in a full breath.

Aiden

There was nothing on his chest. Aiden pressed his hands against his torso, as though to push in air in case his lungs gave out. The thin curtains let in just enough of a glow from the streetlights outside for Aiden to see that his room was as empty and still as always.

You’re avoiding us, Aiden

The whispering was coming from within the walls. There was someone crawling around the house. Perhaps they were living in the ceiling? Perhaps they’d been living there for weeks. He needed to tell his aunt. If he could breathe, he would scream.

AIDEN

A crash, a jolt of pain. Aiden was on the floor. His aunt stood in the doorway, the

corridor light streaming in past her. He didn’t like the way it backlit her body, concealing her face in shadow.

“Aiden?”

“There’s someone in the house,” he said. He spat out blood. He’d bitten his tongue.

“A nightmare?” she said. “Poor boy. Maybe if you’d been sleeping properly, your body wouldn’t be trying so hard to catch up with your mind.”

“No,” he said. He sat up against the bed frame. “I can hear them. There’s someone in the wall.”

“Honey, you need to get some sleep. Clean your face up and get back into bed. You’ll feel better once you’ve had some rest.”

“Could you please leave the corridor light on?” he said, shivering.

She sighed. “For tonight. Just tonight. I’m not making a habit of polluting the planet because a teenager is still afraid of the dark.”

The light of dawn was a relief. Nausea roiled through Aiden’s stomach. His head felt fuzzy, and his hip ached from where he’d fallen out of bed. He hadn’t even bothered trying to fall asleep this time, and spent the night staring at that sliver of light from beneath the door.

The day passed in a loud, agonising blur. Sunlight sent shrieking stabs of pain through his head. He didn’t eat, but on lunchtime break he threw up on the oval and was sent home early.

He lay on the couch, head throbbing, watching the television send dancing colours against backyard window. He didn’t think he had the energy to still be frightened, but as the sky shifted from orange to purple to blue, he knew he couldn’t bring himself back to face his room and the rasping creature of his mind.

The darkness was disorienting. Aiden’s head ached against the couch cover and he felt the gentle weight of a blanket over his body, still in his school uniform. The TV was off and the backyard window was black. His head still pounded, but he didn’t feel as fuzzy as before. The house was still. He settled back against the couch and breathed out slowly.

A soft shuffling sound echoed about the room. Aiden’s heart started thrumming hard in his chest.

“Not real,” he whispered. The words sounded empty.

Poor boy

He could feel its amusement. Adrenaline battled exhaustion, and he felt dizzily on edge, heart pounding too hard against his ribcage in a way that made his body feel weak. He pulled his legs up to his chest and leaned up against the arm of the couch. There was a lamp here. He could reach it. He reached out, grabbed for

the cord and flicked the switch.

The room was empty. He settled back on the couch, trying to steady his breathing. The lamp cast shadows across the room, but those shadows couldn’t harm him, not with the light on.

Aiden

He bolted upright. The shadows were moving, sliding across the floor, bunching up together in grotesque, lumpy patterns, like an animal had tunneled in beneath the house and started crawling under the carpet. He seized the lamp and thrust it out in front of him, then watched in disbelief as—there, a flicker, barely noticeable if he hadn’t been staring so hard at the floor. He paused, sweat dripping beneath his collar, and thrust the lamp out again. This time it was certain—the shadows were flinching back away from the light. Heart pounding, he swept the lamp back and forth like a bizarre, frantic wave, and the dark, shifting mass on the floor leapt back again, and again, shrinking away to the ends of the room, then out of the lounge.

He stood, legs trembling. Leaning heavily against the couch, he made his way to the wall to switch on the light. The brightness stung. Sagging back, he stared out at the empty room, listening to his own heaving gasps. He could see himself reflected in the dark backyard window, hair sticking up, eyes wide and frenzied. He tried to make his heartbeat slow—how did it go again? in for 7, out for 8—and sucked in a huge, wheezy breath.

The rasping didn’t stop.

Aiden pressed back against the wall, skin prickling. It was still there, becoming fainter, moving deeper into the house, where it was still dark. Where his aunt was still sleeping, sure in the belief that she was safe.

He stayed where he was for a long moment, listening to that quiet shuffle, like each sound was scraping directly into his head, as though it had somehow squirmed its way inside of him even as he could hear it moving towards the bedrooms. Then, one palm stretched out against the wall, he forced himself forward, one foot before the other. The panic was welling up within him like a tide and he forced himself to quash it down. He needed to warn her before it got any closer.

Pushing himself through the kitchen, hands out reaching for the next light switch, a breath released when the light flickered on. He could hear the rasping growing louder, like wood grating on metal, and his legs felt formless and weak. At the end of the kitchen, the entrance to the corridor stretched like a gaping mouth, the dim kitchen light doing nothing to penetrate the darkness. He reached forward, feeling the wall until he could grab hold of the light switch.

“Darling. Darling. It’s not real.”

The light switched on. Aiden’s aunt was standing outside her room. She was smiling, but it was a hollow smile, as empty and cheerless as the rest of the house.

“Poor boy,” she said, still wearing that awful, hollow smile, “you need a good night’s rest.”

Aiden didn’t reply. His heart had frozen somewhere in his chest. The rasping was still there, becoming louder and louder where he stood until all it was a shuddery, scratchy grinding in his ears. Worst of all were the shadows—huge black shadows, leaping at his aunt’s feet, swirling in odd patterns on the floorboards and twisting around her nightie. And her eyes, once a warm brown, were hard and black. She stepped forward, and with the corridor light behind her, her face was shrouded in darkness.

Goodnight, Aiden

The light flickered once, twice, and went out.

Pulling Teeth

BY CAITLIN WILSON

You catch me in the corner of your mouth

Gnashing bone, bitter lips, sirenic.

Love is pulling teeth—you need a paralytic: last night’s touch is novocaine.

(an undressed strawberry lolly, shoved in my kidmouth with ants crawling out. A taste like pennies and bitten tongue. I taste it still—that’s love)

Paracetamol breath

Breaking bread, pinkies up.

Limpid eyes in the mirror

And the shhk shhk shhk of the brush

Over my bleeding gums.

(Cracking pepper over boiling soup steams fire into stinging eyes. Laughing through it and tears streaming—that’s love)

You’re mouthing something

A love song, or are you leaving me?

There’s a sawing scraping metal scream—

I’m flossing with the tap running.

(Lemon makes smiles whiter! It stings.

That’s the bitch of beautiful—that’s love)

Tequila rots enamel

I’m sure I read that somewhere

But toffee sticks

And rips out baby teeth

So: neither, please.

I need my wide wide smile

And love is pulling teeth.

You Are What You Eat

BY MARK YIN

She peels apples over the kitchen sink and hums ballads of a bygone age

About the ocean and motherhood and home

Sometimes

Dad would offer to help her and she’d shush him, just the way

She would’ve ever since he was a kid; the way

I imagine mum might shush me, only

She’s working and taking night classes for English

A language I don’t yet understand

Sometimes

Grandma would offer dad a slice before he had a chance to help

She’d tell him to get a plate

And I

Copying times tables out of a textbook

Would eat the fruits of their labour

You are what you eat

And as long as she was around Dinner was never a monotonous affair

Stir-fried bean shoots and blood tofu

Recipes that I never learned

Recipes that never existed

Dad was a sorry sight the first time they went home

Sitting on a stool outside

His face in his palms and his glasses by his feet

I’d never seen him like this so I stayed inside looking through the window

I think mum felt the same

They’d be back in two years

And in the meantime we pass our first Christmas here

Put up a tree by that very window

Mum and dad bought me books and hid them in my drawer

The next morning they smiled as I found them, and by sunset

I’d eaten up every word

BY MARK YIN

Chlorophyll

Aching Bones

BY STEPHANIE NESTOR

Snooze-Button Dreams

BY JEMMA PAYNE

You’ve told me you have something to tell me. I’m swaddled in robes but your feet are bare and you’re crunching the hem of your t-shirt in your left hand. The symmetrical crinkles tell me you’ve been swapping hands for a while. I’m trying to make out if the horizons in this place are water or fog. Or dust. (A few weeks ago, an article you’d read, most people don’t know deserts can be very cold as well as very hot. The only criteria is that it doesn’t rain.)

Something steam-powered is bearing down upon us. You’re still not talking, so I tell you about my new coffee machine, how I’ve got it on a timer to welcome me into the day.

“I’m always scared it’ll catch on fire if I don’t get up,” I say, “so I always do.”

“Is it good enough?” you ask. “How many stars?”

The sky crowds with chubby stars. Some alight and the rest, outlines. I can’t count. There’s so many stars, in the desert.

“Do you like it?” The stars make your face darker and the horizons, shadows. “Are you satisfied?”

Music at my left, tinny. Like someone’s calling me.

(Why didn’t I see it before?) A steam-driven merry-go-round, a big painted mushroom. Studded with carnival light bulbs, its spores wooden animals. (No, I knew it was there all along.) A zebra pumps toward us. Already I’m rising and falling with it.

LET IT GO ONE MORE ROUND, it says on your t-shirt. I glance again at the zebra and when I look at you the writing has changed to Russian. The lights blink over everything but your face. I go toward the lights until the colours are on my arms and I do look back, I do, but you’re walking away slowly crying.

“I value your feedback!” you say.

I step onto the merry-go-round’s deck and climb into the saddle carved out of the zebra’s back. Its slow vertical dance is like breathing. I hold its chipped wooden mane. The steam and the music alarming now. I can’t see anything outside the lights.

Work People

BY JEMMA PAYNE

Him and Mum kiss cheeks, sideways, at the garden gate. I thought work people shook hands: Deal! Hired! Fired! Maybe that’s only for men.

This is Mum’s boss, just like on TV grown-ups have bosses. A big blonde dog sniffs my mary-janes. Its eyes are blue, really light for an animal.

The boss says, “I’ve shown her you’re a friend, she won’t touch you.”

Me and Mum and him go down a path between bushes a bit higher than my head so I can’t see where the dog is. Close by, a hollow smack, maybe a cricket ball, or water against a tinny. A house right on the river, rich.

The dog runs back to the gate, snarling.

“New arrivals,” says the boss. He goes back that way.

Alone now, Mum and I turn another corner. We come to a little statue in a circle of lawn.

“Do boys have that?”

“Yes, that’s what boys have,” Mum pulls me to her. “Careful.”

The green I thought was grass is really a water plant, tiny little leaves

covering a circle pond.

“The fountain must be broken,” Mum says.

“How deep is it?” I ask.

“Tell you what, let’s find out.” She finds a gumtree stick and gives me it. It goes down pretty far before it hits the bottom. The water mark is shiny on the blond wood.

“Fifty centimetres?”

“Pretty deep,” Mum says.

“Maybe there’s goldfish.” I throw away the stick, like we did something bad.

I can’t figure out who the party is for. Mum hasn’t said happy birthday to anyone. We’re standing with the work people. I imagine them all at a long, shiny table. A water cooler and Mac computers with the look-through bubble on the back. Mum took me to her old work, once.

“She’ll regret it, in the end,” says one of the men.

“They all do.”

Mum says, “Yeah.”

Two boys show up and go join the cricket round the back. I’m getting too old to play with boys my age. There’s just one little girl, nearly a baby, running in bright red gumboots between the grown ups’ legs. The dog’s stopped barking. We were almost the last to arrive.

A lady comes round with a tray. I wonder if she’s the boss’s wife, or if he’s really rich and she’s a servant. I say thank you in a big voice and don’t look at what I’ve taken til she’s gone. I’m holding a whole animal, curled and striped pink, with long hard whiskers, and claws that pinch my fingers, and, worst of all, eyes like popped black balloons.

I bite into the curve of its back. Something hard cracks between my teeth before I taste any meat.

“You’ve never had a prawn before?” the boss says.

Where did he come from?

He takes the thing I’ve broken and tears off the tail, the hard outside, all those legs, and, with a twist, the head with its long whiskers. The thing he hands back looks like a grub. All the other bits are in the boss’ hand. My tummy feels funny, but him and Mum are watching me. I put it in my mouth. It surprises me by tasting okay. I ask Mum to do another one for me. That makes her and the boss laugh more.

Mum shells three prawns, then says that’s enough. There’s a lemon juice bowl and a rubbish plate. All the shells look like a pile of toenails.

I go down a hallway. Maybe there’ll be books, or a cat to pet. Past a study, a computer playing the maze screensaver. At the end, there’s a door half-open. That’s called ajar. The room inside glows blue, like maybe there’s a TV on. There

are cushions posed on the sofa. In case it rains and everyone comes inside.

I go in, sideways, without touching the door.

There’s a fish tank, as long as me lying down. Dad had goldfish that were more yellow, in the end. When the last one died, Mum sucked out all the water and put the tank in the garage. The next week she backed the car into it by mistake. The glass broke in big triangles.

These fish are bright, all different colours. They wave in the water that moves across the tank, left to right, like numbers and writing and time. Since I’m alone, I open up the cupboard under the tank. There’s a small box of rolling water, filthy, full of hairy rock things. Tubes going down and in and up and out. Like a person in hospital, Intensive Care.

“You’ve found the fish?” It’s the boss.

“Yeah,” I say.

He puts the door more ajar. Or not so ajar.

I think he’s going to close the cupboard, but he crouches down to look at the boiling-like water inside the little tank.

“I’ve got a fairly complicated system. So they don’t realise they’re not in the reef. What’s your name again?”

“Kylie.”

I think I’d better stay put, seeing as it was me who opened up the doors when you’re not supposed to look in other people’s cupboards. I think maybe, over the fish tank noise, I hear rain. Soon everyone will come in here, the cricket boys and the grown-ups from work.

The dog barks, nearby. Oliver stands up quick. I shut the cupboards and run out. (The door ajar.) The grown-ups’ voices sound like the playground. Mum holding a triangle cup by the stem. I’ll ask her for the little paper umbrella for my dollhouse.

Everyone follows the boss outside. Past the tall bushes, there’s the huge blonde dog. She’s howling like crazy at the fountain that doesn’t work, at the statue with the thing that boys have. Her pale eyes fixed on two red boots, upside-down in the circle pond.

The boss dives both hands into the water and pulls a girl out by her ankles, like being born. The top fifty centimetres of her are soaking wet, pigtails and dress and stockings. Only when she howls does the dog stop barking.

The creative writing and art anthology of the University of Melbourne Student Union (UMSU), Above Water, is published by the general secretary of UMSU, Reece Moir. The views expressed herein are not necessarily the views of UMSU, the printers or the editor. Above Water is printed by Printgraphics, care of bald guardian angel Nigel Quirk. All writing and artwork remains the property of the creators. This Collection is © Above Water and Above Water reserves the right to republish material in any format.