The first mistake he made was his entry. In the front door swaying with the creaking floor boards, a murderer’s dance, because he thought nobody would expect that. The second mistake was his attitude. Casual, because he’d been here before, so many times it had become like a ritual of violence, the knife wounds, bloody tears and those screams in the darkness that nobody ever heard. The third mistake was what he said after the night silence shattered to reveal the woman, eyes carved down to the… Continue

“One more,” says the shadowed man, and he downs his drink like a lightning bolt to the brain, slams the glass on the bar and stares. The barman doesn’t say a word, because he knows the look and knows the white knuckled grip lost men have around bar glasses like lifesavers in stormy seas. “One more,” the shadowed man repeats, and repeats again, and still the barman says nothing but holds the bottle out of reach and watches the man watching him. There’s a cyclone in his eye and that white… Continue

The morning after they ran away from home, Abby and Danger had cake for breakfast. It was squished into abstract art from Danger’s pocket and when he whipped it out and they unwrapped it from a plastic cage Abby said it tasted like freedom, but Danger thought it was more like wet grass and cold park benches. That day, with the sickly sweet taste of new horizons stuck between their teeth, they sat half-asleep and leaning in a parking lot soaking up the sun for hours. When they lost the light to… Continue

My neighbour is a pirate. He’s building a ship in his backyard of oiled teak and adventure. During the day, he hides his form, polishing his masterpiece like a craftsman who may never let it see the salted waves, but I hear him whistle jigs that dance rum drunk on tropical beaches and dig for ancient troves of gold. At night, I creep from my bed to watch him sit on the deck, dirty bottle in hand looking out over the rippling tide of uncut grass. He sings now, mouth moving in sailor’s shanties,… Continue

We called him the Captain. Despite having neither ship nor crew, he held himself like a lantern on the far horizon and I could so easily imagine his hands balancing a compass to guide his vessel through the night. His step was cautious and slow, like at any moment he expected the ground beneath his feet to pitch and roll on some invisible wave, and there was a smell about him, so different than the soap and old aftershave of the elderly. Instead, when he passed by he would create in his wake a… Continue

When Grace was five years old she fell in love with a boy who thought he was Superman. He refused to wear anything that wasn’t red or blue or white, even though at five white so quickly became brown with the dirt of learning how to walk like a man. By the time he was ten he held himself straighter than the gum trees in the park, which they would sit under to talk about flying and the line between right and wrong. At fifteen, he told Grace that he wanted to change his name because, face it, he… Continue

She has never heard the sound a note makes bouncing off her ear drums, nor had the incessant annoyance of a tune ingrained in her mind, so she doesn’t understand music. But she can dance, to songs unknown, perhaps only the beating of her heart in that void of silence. Her hands make silent beats on wooden tables as she mimics my movements, but fails to see their purpose. I have never known silence like hers, so I don’t know what to say, which works for us both. We sit together in a debris of an… Continue

My taxi driver, with no more intense questioning than that of his wellbeing, tells me in a confessional tone I’ve always associated with candles and churches that he was once a preman, a thug. I like the way the Indonesian word slips off the tongue on a boat made of rolled Rs and the sinister edge it has like the crushed bones of the arms he used to break when loans weren’t met. “I broke them in such a way that they would have a scar like a tick,” he motions with his hands, the invisible… Continue

Before her eyes held the wrinkles of time, and her hair faded raven black to silver, Elizabeth played the piano. Her stiff hands still hold the music, notes like leaves, chords like sweet fruits that grow through ears and into souls. As time moves, and Death glides up her garden path, Elizabeth's hands find familiar keys, feeling the warmth rise to her fingertips, pressing sounds through the silence. At the door, Death hesitates, the sound holds him hostage, forcing him to peek in through the… Continue

Hamish has a butterfly in a jar. The jar seems impossibly big in his small boy hands, with tiny knuckle wrinkles, and bitten fingernails soaked in dirt. Hamish keeps the jar and the butterfly by his bed, and when he can’t sleep for his parent’s yelling, he looks at its wings fluttering in the moonlight. The butterfly’s wings are blue, red and transparent, so that sometimes, when Hamish squints, he can see all the way through both wings, and into eternity. When Hamish has the butterfly next to… Continue

We will all deal with death in different ways. He will jog, run, sprint, lift weights and sweat until his breath is heavy and heaving, and he feels alive. She will sit in that chair, and smoke, and consider the years in her life, and the life in her years. They will hug their children, and not say a word, and bathe in the sound of their voices, their innocence, their life. I will sit and stare at the garden until the sky darkens, breathing in and out like if I didn’t think about it, I might… Continue

It's falling from the sky, gracefully, like a ballet dancer might wow the crowd on stage. So much so that they don't even hear the music but see only her, flowing back on forth to the rhythm of her heart beat. The feather falls and the wind picks it up and takes it away, over the buildings and down to the park in the city, where the children play and ignore the concrete jungle that threatens to smother them. It drops, down and down, into the sandpit, resting lightly on the sand, barely moving a… Continue

Shadow

The door was locked and the water was rising. The children whimpered in the corner and it lapped around their feet. As the oldest, he tackled the door, as though, in desperation, his strengh might overcome it. Exhausted he slumped, the water reached his knees. It was rising faster now. Then, from the other side of the chamber, a roar sounded, and a shadow emerged, breaking down the door and ushering them to freedom.

The Rebel

His reflexes spun into action and he sprinted across the crowded street. He had seen them after they had seen him. Too late. He ran into an alley and heard their heavy steps following. He came to a dead and panic took over as he tried to climb the walls and escape. Yet when they pulled their guns he felt fear no longer but stood tall to accept his end.

Wanted



He was a wanted man and the world was his hiding place. He would go where no others had gone and see things as no one else had ever seen them. In the end, there was little left of him. So a part of nature and the world around him the he ceased to exist as a part of society. His friends forgot his name and his family buried him in the past, left to photo albums and the dust of time. His shadow still walks the lands, but he is no longer a wanted man.



(I ran out… Continue

In his shadowy, lover’s voice he told her once she was like a hermit in her own head.

Her laugh was neither acknowledging or dismissing, but deep down she knew the truth. That night, she dreamed of the inside of her mind, like a cave filled with clay coloured paintings of her fantasies. The fire and smoke filled her den of thoughts, permeating into every corner with its ideas and possibilities.

But when she woke to tell him he was already gone, locked out by her head.

Or maybe,… Continue

I haven't posted anything here for a while and the only reason I am doing this now is because none of my close friends look on this site and I need to get some stuff out of my system but I don't really know where to put it.



I just wrote the hardest thing I have ever written in my life. It was a letter to my opa. He's my dutch grandfather. The last grandfather I have left and the only one I ever knew because bowel cancer took my father's father away before even he was finished needing… Continue

Last night I was at the Mindil Beach Markets...again. What can I say? It's the best thing to do on a Thursday and Sunday night by far. Actually it's the best thing to do in the entire town I live in. Mostly because you can observe as much as you like for nothing, and there's always stuff to look at.

I did some fire twirling but I didn't have my equipment so I ended up spending most of my night talking to Paula, the tie dye lady about life and the past in the most philosophical manner. Even… Continue

I can't stop thinking about a sentence a read on onesentence...

I doesn't make any sense but I still have to wonder...



How long does a clock take?



I mean, what is the clock doing? Is it being a clock or is it stepping outside the realm of what is normal for a clock and doing something totally unique and completely different?

hmmmm...



On other news, I'm making fireballs today and I hope to put up a video of me trying not to burn myself alive when… Continue