FLUNK MAGAZINE
The Girl Inside BY ELSPETH FINDLAY "If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you."
– Gospel of Thomas
It gets harder every year to relax. They’re always over before I recover. Before the sludge of the nine-to-five clears. Before I even begin to recollect myself. Holidays somehow slip away now, like life on planet earth. The thought of extinction is somehow beguiling–mustn’t think that. Tears threaten to spill behind the giant sunnies, so I squeeze the wheel and squint harder at the black ribbon unfurling away across the Nullarbor Plain into a hazy horizon. I’m fighting off driver’s torpor, need some coffee and wish for once I had someone with me. Maybe I’ll stop and get my thermos out–but maybe I won’t, because it’s a long time since I passed anyone. There’s that niggle of fear about lonely roads and predators that might be patrolling. Better wait ‘til I reach a Roadhouse, safe there. As if my wish for company were instantly granted, a figure seems to materialize out of the grey scrub that straggles here and there beside the road. I slow down, maybe I’ve nodded off and I’m dreaming her. I sit up, shake my head, but she’s still coming up on the passenger side. As she gets closer I watch her cock her thumb, watch the leisurely sway of her walk, the long mane of chestnut hair catching sunlight, just lifting a little in the breeze. She’s familiar. There’s a spark of intuition, a shivery frisson of fear, but I’m upset, overtired; I let it go, because it’s such a comfort to see another woman in all this emptiness. 46
