Eurhythmy - Part I - Chaos.

Immaculate

The fragments beneath my feet

Seven years’ bad luck

Cutting into my

Souls

A split personality

Glimpsed

In a perfect disharmony of shards

Mirrored fragments of myself

My face beneath my toes

Head under heels.

Boring clichéd self-destruction...

-Alexisonfire, ‘Polaroids of Polar Bears’

Set in stone the sun will come…

To me it looks so pretty burning

                        -The Used, ‘Take It Away’

Safe and calm, alone on this hidden patch of sand. I sit watching the waves curl beneath a darkening sky. In this little recess, you never sit and face the three rough stone walls that enclose you – you are brought to seek out the open side; the infinite, hopeful view that stretches beyond the breakers, beyond the space and time that hems us all in.

The tide is low. Volcanoes where sea worms are hiding themselves under the sand pop and spit water as the creatures breathe. Black sea snail shells on my rock appear abandoned, but you can tell there is still life inside by the way they cling to its surface. Despite distant rounds of thunder the sea remains relatively still – a millpond disturbed by a skipping stone. Without a breeze the scent of salt and surf hangs heavy, and when I inhale I can taste the salt at the back of my throat. I love the seclusion of this place – so did Mum.

Calls of children on the main stretch of beach diminish as the sky turns deep-sea blue, indistinguishable from the ocean but for its clouds. I check my watch – a gift from Dad – but choose to ignore the time. More clouds gather as the sun sinks into the horizon, adding its orange to the blue of the melding water and sky. Tinges of crimson span the ocean, rippling on the surface like intangible ribbons of spider silk. I imagine that same glow flashing on the dry, grassy dunes, where Mum and I used to ride our horses years ago. But the eroded walls of rock surrounding me shut out everything else. There is only me, and something else. Something.

I dig my toes into the sand and begin to write.

*   *   *

I’m not sure what’s worse

The waiting or the waiting room

-Alexisonfire, ‘Accidents’

What is the bringer of this chaos? Is it the desire for family? For love? For understanding and truth? Or is it that great empty space that is a part of everyone – that divine infinite which gave soul and memory and dreams to a beast and called him man, and which, in doing so, brought misery and limitless wonder into the world… I can only stand on the brink of that invisible infinite and shudder, and wait. And question. And remember.

An abyss threatens below. No light glints off the sheer walls. There is only an inky black there, ebbing and flowing and waiting. This vacuum even seems to absorb sound, air, life. Reaching deep into the bowels of existence and all knowledge that has ever lain dormant; this is the abyss that I look into, eyes never adjusting to the endless deep dark, but still aching to see what is – or may not be – there.

Trying not to lose balance on this precipice, I cannot help but be drawn into its depths. A sudden sound behind me – I spin and lose balance. I fall backwards into the pit.

It seems like I hang forever, motionless though I am falling. Hopeless that I have been lost to the abyss, I slacken, believing that to fight against this endless periphery of human experience, thought, and death, is too awesome a task for me. Relaxing all my limbs in the knowledge of my inevitable end, I realise something is holding me back. Something has caught my right arm.

Something pulls me back from that inky black. Over the top of the ledge, and I know I am not ended; there is still time! …Time for what, exactly? Time to watch more TV? Time to watch my father drink himself to death? Time for useless contemplation, soul-searching? It seemed that the only real thing left to live for was that universal truth – nothing. I sit confused, not understanding why I am still in the world, and not melting into the inky blackness I had found so terrible. It now seemed like a welcome place, where all my answers would be found and there would be no more death, pain, family, niggling stresses. Everything would dissolve into that oblivion, leaving no trace that once a girl had been there, a girl who thought and dreamed, who had fallen to darkness.

Something was still standing beside me, barely shaken by the effort taken to halt my eternal fall. It looked at me, contemplating not my tired eyes or the sex-hair lying in a tangled orgy on my head, or the sunken posture of a girl who had come so close to becoming nothing. Its touching gaze drew up my eyes from the ground. I cannot tell you what I saw then, only that in seeing Something I saw Nothing. I remember a presence but no visual entity. Something was just there.

How had I come to look into this abyss? I could not see anything there, only the all-pervading blackness that equates to nothingness. Emptiness. But strangely, I couldn’t stop looking, delving into the black beneath my feet. There was nothing to see… so why couldn’t I draw myself away? There was something waiting for me in that abyss.

Did you truly perceive nothing?

Yes.

Then you have discovered everything!

But - 

Eurhythmy - Part II - Sara.

So make sure you love like you’ve never been hurt

And when you dance, dance like there’s no one watching you

-Alexisonfire, ‘Get Fighted’

Pictures in the mirror

Pictures she never knew

Pictures in the mirror

Always regretting you

-The Living End, ‘Pictures in the Mirror’

I laugh at something funny on the TV. Dad does too, but then he looks at me and his eyes glaze over before he turns away. I don’t bother to ask what he is thinking. My resemblance to Mum has been pointed out so many times that Dad’s words have lost all meaning. He used to occasionally remark about something I said or did, or an unconscious mannerism I appeared to have picked up from her. In a way it’s funny, because how could I possibly have acquired those traits at such a young age, and retained them for over a decade, long after the influence was gone?

As Dad’s observations continued and repeated themselves, they grew so tiresome that I began ignoring them, until eventually he stopped himself whenever the fancy to comment came along. I don’t really want to know if I laugh like she did, or if, when I turn my head back over my shoulder, I give a class A greasy just like she did. I am my own person, not just a reflective shadow of my mother, and I don’t need to be constantly reminded that she’s gone. I think sometimes Dad forgets that.

*   *   *

Maybe music isn’t dead

Maybe we all just forgot what it fucking sounded like

                        -Alexisonfire, ‘Get Fighted’

I turn the music up louder. It’s Alexisonfire, my favourite band. Pip doesn’t understand why I enjoy them so much. All she can hear is the lead singer’s screaming; admittedly a prevailing aspect of their music, but you learn to get past that. Maybe it’s just an acquired taste? Who knows.

Even I didn’t really like Alexis when I first ‘discovered’ them. A sort of generic name; an angry mob with a gravel-throated lead singer, just like so many other bands out there. But after about twenty minutes, the music began to make sense. I found that first impressions aren’t always right. ‘Never judge a book by its cover’ or whatever they say. The irregular charges of the guitar, the diapason created by the backing vocalist, the thunder of the drums, the underlying pound of the bass – all these things seemed to take away my anxieties, cares, fears, tendencies towards masochism – perhaps even from reality itself. I can never pinpoint what it is exactly that stirs me, perhaps merely the fact that amidst a chaotic range of sounds they discovered harmony - eurhythmy. It’s like a drug, and I became addicted. The music brings everything back into perspective, removing the debris which suffocates me.

Pip still doesn’t like them, though. She’ll listen for my sake, but not for her own, and I think maybe that’s why. It’s hard to appreciate things when you’re too busy just putting up with them.

*   *   *

Have you seen your mother girl?

Has she gone away?

…Gone

When you wake in the morning, gone

-Stone Temple Pilots, ‘Pretty Penny’

The night that Santa comes is always the longest. Sleep comes slow and unwillingly; then one year you learn that the quicker you allow weariness to take you, the quicker the next day comes, all the sooner to get what’s coming to you.

This year, though, something’s changed. I’m big and know that Santa comes quicker if you go to sleep quicker, but I can’t. The air smells different. Like there is some shadowmonster holed up in the dark, smoking and waiting for me to sleep so it can come out. I shake my head. There are no such things as monsters. There is nothing hiding in my closet, nothing underneath my bed, nothing in the shadow behind the door. But still…

The night never seems to end. I don’t feel safe, and locate my teddy snow leopard in an attempt to stave off panic. I can hear the ocean through my open window, and ferns rustle outside with the wind. The sensor light switches on, and I sit up with a start. But it’s just Dad, trying to pull a jumper over his pyjamas and getting in the car. Why’s he going to work on Christmas?…

At about five, I get a shocking feeling, like I’ve been discovered by the shadowmonster, no longer in its hiding place, where it should be, where I want it to be. It wavers overhead, breathes fire into my face and laughs, an awful chainsaw laugh that cuts through the sheets I’ve pulled over my face to save me. Liana the leopard is there with me, and she trembles as I shake.

But it was a dream. A nightmare. How silly. Dad’s come into my room to wake me up for Christmas…

A faint dawn bared itself vaguely through the lace curtains, its ultramarine sky blended with orange and black.

*   *   *

  

I believe the grass is no more greener on the other side

-Savage Garden, ‘Affirmation’

Ducking quickly, I manage to miss the branch as it whines past the top of my helmet. Shadow doesn’t even slow down, not one notch; she keeps going, it wasn’t her head that nearly got smacked, after all. Stupid horse. The path begins to clear up a little as we reach the end. It opens up into a clearing, deserted but for a few tussocks of dry grass, clustered closely together so that they can get a decent drink in the depressions where dew gathers overnight. A single straggling tree, which didn’t make it to the edges of the clearing like the others, stands crookedly near the exit of the trail, and I tie Shadow to it so she doesn’t go off searching for some non-existent free-range feed. I give her an apple, and she snorts at the unoriginality of the meal, but eats it anyway.

Standing at the base of the crooked tree, watching a bunch of galahs taunt a lone black cockatoo, I lose myself in the desolate beauty of the place. This drought has been shocking, but the lack of rain doesn’t mean there is lack of life. The bush is tough like that, a real fighter, like the cockatoo struggling its way through a flurry of pink wings in the treetops above. The trees ignore the birds’ idiotic behaviour, busy in their own affairs. Shadow gets hit by a falling branch and isn’t impressed; I shake my head at her indignant expression and rub her neck as she moves closer to me for sympathy.

Sometimes I come here just to be alone for a little while. I’ll take up my usual position on a charred log where a long time ago a lightning bolt split open a tree, and put Alexis on full bore on my Discman. Normally I listen until the battery dies – I’ve usually sorted out whatever is bothering me by then – but today I turn it off after only a few bars of the second song. There’s something else here. Shadow lets the remains of her apple fall to the ground and begins to nod her head up and down in time. She can hear it too.

With a burst of feathers, the black cockatoo takes flight, leaving the triumphant galahs their patch of dirt and dry leaves. It is another fifteen minutes before I get up to leave. Shadow gets frightened by the dark, and nights come on quickly in June.

*   *   * 

Can’t you see that you’re dying alone?

Dying alone?

-Sunk Loto, ‘5 Years of Silence’

I never, ever want any member of my family to read these things. It’s not that they would hate me – I wouldn’t care even if that were the case, and I’m not at all sure that it isn’t. But there are just some things that you don’t want certain people to know. Maybe it’s fear of being too well-understood that I’m afraid of. I like having secrets.

My only real fear, I guess, is that I could die alone. I can’t think of anything more sickening. As remote as death may seem at this point in my life, the thought of ‘going solo’ – feeling entirely naked and vulnerable at my final moment – is truly frightening. Every creature feels vulnerable when they lack the comfort and shelter of loved ones.

What point would there be to it all, if there were nobody who even cared enough to be there, to say “I love you, and I’m going to miss you”?

My mum died alone. No one was there. No friends and no family to wish her farewell, to tell her that she mattered.

*   *   *

  

I’ve got the sun in my eyes

I didn’t see you passing me by

                        -The Butterfly Effect, ‘Gone’

I resent how young I was during those times.

The pink corner couch – it had always been my favourite. I felt safe there, cuddled in the warm fabric made friendly through wear and tear. Perched in front of the telly, I would gather my legs underneath me, or hug them to my chest, and often enough fell asleep there, small head nodding on the magnificent headrest, delighting in the diverse bouquets wafting from its seldom-washed softness. Like a baby animal that identifies its mother by smell, I will always be able to recognise that chair.

I used to call it ‘Mum’s Chair’. Sometimes I would come home from school to find her huddled there, her head drooped comfortably onto her shoulder, gently snoring – a comforting sound which I was rather fond of. It was different from Dad’s snore. It wasn’t annoying, and didn’t keep you up late at night with a rolling echo that resonated through the house. Mum used to make jokes about his snoring that made Dad blush. I didn’t always understand them, but I’d laugh anyway.

Youth, innocence, ignorance – they’re all one and the same. The times taken for granted are the ones most sorely missed. I wish I hadn’t spent so much time with the chair and telly. I wish I’d known.

*   *   *

I believe you don’t know what you’ve got until you say goodbye

-Savage Garden, ‘Affirmation’

I still can’t believe she’s really gone. Never-coming-back-gone. Parents shouldn’t just leave their kids like that. It’s not right. Every eight-year-old girl needs her mother.

The impact of not having a mother isn’t one that just hits and then goes away once you’ve dealt with it. It’s a recurring thing, like the seasons. A time comes when you think you have everything sorted out, think it’s no longer a problem,  that it’s something you’re over and won’t ever come up again, at least not in a negative way. Wrongo. Sure, there are times when you feel fine and as though it’s not such a big issue. You even forget about your motherlessness for days, weeks. But then something will happen – a friend complains about her mum, Mother’s Day cards start appearing in the newsagencies, her birthday comes around, stuff like that – and bang! She’s gone. There it is again. From summer you are plunged back into the depths of winter – cold, hard reality. You don’t have a mum, you haven’t had one for years, you will never have one again.

*   *   * 

Difficult not to feel a little bit

Disappointed and passed over

When I’ve looked right through

To see you naked and oblivious

And you don’t see me

                        -A Perfect Circle, ‘3 Libras’

The glazy window seems to shift and bend as I stare at the washing line below. Dad feeds laundry to it, then turns and beckons someone to him, with exaggerated gesticulations. Mum moves over to him, stooped, looking scared, looking like she’s retarded with her posture hunched in that way. She reaches Dad, who grips her by the hand as he points up to the window where I look down on them. Mum can’t see me, and Dad begins to yell…

I turn and rush through the shaking house. My exit through the front door is almost blocked by Dad, yelling at me to see Mum. “She’s just out the back, she wants to see you!”

“No!”

I fly past him, and make for the beach through an old path running behind the house across the street. I used to use it before Mum died, but it’s gotten overgrown in the years since. Fern branches and palms reach out and knot in my hair, catch on my clothes – tearing them away coloured with patches of blood – but I don’t slow down. Dad walks to the entrance of the path, but can go no further. Some invisible force stops him where he stands. Arms held out, pleading, he shifts and bends and melts into the ground.

It’s high tide. Two or three surfers ride the waves that rise high as the surges hit the elevated sand bar. I enter the openness of the beach, only then realising how perilously massive the waves are. One crashes down, bringing the tide line much closer. I cover my face, slip, try to get away, but my naked, bloody skin seems to meld with the particles of sand and shell. The surfers motion frantically for me to leave, to get to safety, but I cannot get up. I catch a figure in the corner of my eye – it’s her. Mum’s there, her nakedness barely covered by the tresses of seaweed cascading down her body like a veil. She stands beneath a second wave. Slowly her head turns towards me, like a Jan Vermeer portrait, and she looks at me, looks through me. I plead for a flicker of recognition, fail to notice the wave as it finally crashes down after a suspended eternity.

A loud roar, then black.

I wake up in a thick, salty sweat with the sound of fire resonating off windows along the whole street.

Eurhythmy - Part III - Louisa.

You always used to stay within arms reach

Now it seems I'm all by myself

-Alexisonfire, ‘Polaroids of Polar Bears’

I need to play the game again

-End of Fashion, ‘The Game’

The hallway grows darker as I power my way up to the end. I finally arrive at my door; as I stretch up to turn the knob, I dare a look back up the corridor. Just as I thought – there she is, peeking back in my direction. With a loud roar, she comes towards me, hunched over and moving with an ape-like stealth which hastens my chubby fingers on the handle and propels me with a rush of adrenalin into my room. It’s dark. Excellent. Searching around in the black I find my bed, and am under it in two seconds. Just as I pull my feet beneath the metal frame and pink covers, the door gapes open, and she is in the room, still growling, still hunting for the little figure gasping for breath in a perfect hiding place.

The light from the hall meanders in through the entrance and I can see her silhouetted legs and feet from where I tremble under the bed. She stirs towards the cupboard, rumbles a barely-audible “Boo!”, then loosens her grip on the door and sighs when it is found to be empty. Next she checks behind the bedroom door; I had hidden there rather ingeniously before, and hadn’t been found for ages! When that proves fruitless, the feet shuffle menacingly towards the bed. I cup both hands over my mouth – I’d been giggling and must have given myself away. The light from the hall is completely obscured by her bottom as she kneels down and lifts up the covers…

“Raah! I’m gonna getcha!”    

Shrieks of delight from me, “Aah! Vampire!”

“Raaah!”

More shrieks as I try to hem myself against the wall…

Eventually, the ‘vampire’ succeeds, as my mother pulls me out feet-first from my niche, and tickles me to sleep.

*   *   *

  

Sometimes

I forget I’m still awake

I fuck up and say these things out loud

                        -The Bravery, ‘An Honest Mistake’

“You know, you’ve never really talked to me about your mum before.”

Sounds of the playground continue in the background as I lay my head onto Pip’s shoulder. A fight looks ready to start about fifty metres away and half the school is forming a circle around the pugilists – God forbid they should miss it. Some teachers get to their feet warily nearby, unsure whether to become involved or wait for the scene to pass over.

“I know. I’ve hardly talked about her to anyone. I’ve hardly even thought about her. I guess it just makes things easier that way, y’know?”

“Yeah, I guess. Musta been hard though.” Pause. Pip’s not really one to be counted on to be very sensitive or understanding. After cruising through life the way she has, I guess you can’t really expect her to be, but I can tell she’s trying hard this time. “How old were you?”

“When the great potato famine hit Ireland?”

“What? Nah, when… she died.”

“Oh. Yeah, I was eight. I’d just turned eight. Like, a month before.”

“Shit, I thought you were younger than that!” The scoff comes out quickly and all wrong and she breathes in sharply, trying to pull the words back into her mouth.

“Eight wasn’t young enough?” Pip apologises with her eyes and I soften up. She’s mastered that look, it works every time. “I mean, would’ve been pretty bad if I’d been a baby, but then again at least I wouldn’t have to remember her. It’s just annoying… having these memories of someone, but not remembering enough to be able to… think about them as a person? I don’t know how to put it.” My head’s at an awkward angle and I sit up and straighten it. “I don’t remember her as a person. Just as this sort of, ever-present figure. When you’re that age, I guess that’s all your parents really are. Not people, just ever-present beings who feed you, buy you toys and tell you what you can and can’t do.”

“Yeah. That’s what mine are still!”

“Nice to know that you haven’t progressed past the level of an eight-year-old, dearie.”

Pip groans like a moron in reply.

A whirly-wind starts up, sending chip packets and leaves in an orchestrated dance across the asphalt. A group of Year Seven girls gets caught in the line of fire and emits a high-pitched wail, much to the amusement of an older group of Emos standing nearby. Lighting up their cigarettes, black and red fingernails exchanging a communal matchstick, they return to the fight, where one of the kids breaks off, sore and vexatious, after a badly thrown punch leaves him open for widespread taunting among the crowd. Disgraced in front of half the school. How like the juniors – they act so tough, as though all they want is carnage and mayhem. But really they’re just after someone to laugh at, someone to take the spotlight away from their own insecurities and faults. Pip looks up at the dissipating mob of kids and half laughs.

“Oh well. You always want what you can’t have.”

*   *   *

You had such grace in the end

I wish I could remember what colour your eyes were

But every time I looked at you my mind went blank

You had the best damn Sunday dress at the end of the world

The wall of flames that consumed you and everything that was good...

                        -Alexisonfire, ‘Jubella’

She went so quickly. Not even ten seconds would have passed between the time she appeared from her bedroom and disappeared downstairs and out the door, accompanied by two men. Ambulance officers. She didn’t want to go and protested, auburn eighties curls patchy on her head and in an awful mess, pyjamas haphazard on her anaemic body. But she’d stopped taking her medicine and had to go. I wasn’t worried, I was sure she’d be home for the next morning – Christmas – so I didn’t bother with saying goodbye.  What I didn’t know then was that this year, Santa wasn’t coming, and I was going to have the most precious gift of all taken away from me.

I’ve heard people say that closure is a basic need of the human psyche. But when you’re a child, it’s impossible to understand the need for goodbyes; everything is new and wonderful, life is just beginning. You don’t realise that bad things can happen; that a single, fleeting moment can change everything – ten seconds can change everything. Looking back, I would have said goodbye to her; I would have held her, cried my eyes out, clawed frantically and begged her to come back. I could’ve encouraged her to take her medicine again; maybe if she took the tablets with honey they’d taste better. I know she would’ve done it if I’d asked. Instead, I just looked out the window, from Mum’s Chair, and watched the ambulance speed off with her in its steel belly, afternoon light glinting off the metal casing like fire.

Such is the valuelessness of reflection. It’s good and well that I can now look back and say, I wish I had said goodbye, but what good does it do? It won’t change anything.

Dad was shattered. The world had been ripped up from under our feet, and so that we both didn’t sink into that quagmire which is grief, I had to be strong. I could still sense that furtive shadowmonster, a presence which preys on the forlorn and vulnerable. It was getting to both of us. I helped Dad as best I knew how, but it was hard to be an adult all of a sudden. I still needed a mother.

*   *   *

There’s an answer

If you reach into your soul

And the sorrow that you know

Will melt away

-Mariah Carey, ‘Hero’

“And then a hero comes along, with the strength to carry on…” Me and Mum are singing in the car on the way into town. We always listen to this tape, Mariah Carey. It’s Mum’s car music. We listen to other stuff at home, but whenever the two of us go for a ride in the car, this is our favourite song, and we sing it loud!

“And you cast your fears aside…” Mum’s a really good singer, nearly as good as the proper lady. Sometimes I stop and listen to her when we’re both meant to be singing. If she sees me stopped, she pretends to get angry – but she’s only joking! “Sara, you can’t just leave me to sing this part alone! It needs two voices!” And we laugh and laugh, and we sing.

“So when you feel like hope is gone, look inside you and be strong…” When the tape runs out, we never change it. We rewind it again and let it play over and over and we never get sick of it. One time, I asked Mum if we could listen to it in the house, and she said no, ’cause Dad’s a boy and he wouldn’t like it. Wouldn’t understand it. So, it’s our special car music, just for me and Mum. It’s like our own special secret!

“And you’ll finally see the truth, that a hero lies in you!” Today we’re on the way to the hospital. Mum has to go see the doctor, again. It’s so boring at the hospital! The toys in the kids’ spot all smell funny and sometimes Mum takes ages to finish. I always look forward ’til when she comes back, ’cause then we get to get back in the car and sing our song…

… “Hold on, there will be tomorrow…” Mum only sings quietly this time. Maybe she’s tired from singing on the way here? Oh well, I’ll sing loudly enough for the both of us then.

“In time, you’ll find the way, hey-ay-ayy!”

Mum looks at me and grins. “You’re my hero,” she says.

Eurhythmy - Part IV - Ray.

Poor little tin man

Still swinging his axe

Even though his joints are clogged with rust

-Alexisonfire, ‘Boiled Frogs’

I believe we place our happiness in other people’s hands

-Savage Garden, ‘Affirmation’

“Hey Sez! How was your weekend?”

“Yeah, weird. What about yours?”

“You’ll never believe it! Musko and Shelly had this fight, like, it was intense! I was like, ‘hellooo, I’m here too, you guys!’ but yeah, it was shameless! I reckon they mighta split up for good this time… Is something wrong?”

“Dad got sent to hospital. He had a coupla heart attacks. I think they’re gonna send him to Sydney.”

Pip just stares, thinking I’ve made a really bad joke, like that Mother’s Day when I joked about ‘not having to get mine a present on account of her being dead and all’, which was followed by fits of laughter from me and gasps of shock from everyone else. But she sees I’m not kidding and lunges a hug at me. “Oh my God! Are you okay? Why didn’t you text me? Where are you staying? …But I thought you didn’t like your grandparents!”

“I don’t, nevertheless, that’s where I’m staying. I’m orright. It was a bit of a surprise, that’s all. His own stupid fault, the bugger. Shouldn’t drink so much.” I attempt to flash a smile, but it’s a weak effort, and Pip doesn’t smile back. She disapproves of my making light of unpleasant circumstances anyway. All she can say is ‘Oh my God’ and ‘Holy crap’. I start laughing at her, but she smacks my arm.

“Oi, you shouldn’t be laughing! You’re nearly an orphan! Jesus!”

The blasphemy continues with the hugs, and by the end of the day I hardly notice anything other than the churning acrobatics in my gut. Even Pip’s caring interest goes unseen. What’s happened to me, to Dad? Mum, and now him too? Where does it end?

*   *   *

...You can waste your time

(Redefining the day that music died)

Or you can spend your life

(Guilt-free and ostracised)

-Alexisonfire, ‘Get Fighted’

Dad’s chair scrapes as he stands up. I can’t see them – the door is shut and my eyes are closed in case one of them comes in to check that I’m truly asleep. Dad walks a few steps, but then the chair scrapes again as he sits.

“Righto, what do you think I should do? You obviously know my own daughter so much better than me. Come on?”

She laughs. “Ha! Give her a smack. Lock her in her room until she’s ready to start behaving and get on with her life, so that we can get on with ours. Isn’t that what you want, Ray?”

“Of course, but it’s only been ten months. She was never this way before her mum died. Something’s changed in her and it’s to do with Louisa. I’m sure she just needs some time…”

“She’s had time. It’s been months. Kids bounce back from things like that. It’s to do with us. You have to talk to her and sort this shit out. Get her out here.”

*   *   *

…This old world is new world and a bold world for me

-Muse, ‘Feeling Good’

The long car trip flutters past, seeming like one instant I’m at Nanna and Pop’s and the next I am pulling into the visitor’s car park at St Vincent’s. I hate hospitals. I don’t want to be here, but Dad… I fear the threat of guilt more than the stench of sleep, disinfectant, and claustrophobic waiting rooms, so I go in. My grandparents lead the way, seeming all of a sudden to have lost the perpetual infirmity which keeps me from wanting to visit them. Their postures are no longer slouched and their hands are by their sides, not held meekly in front. I admire them in that moment, but I still resent them for bringing me here.

We wait forever outside the intensive care unit, in a small claustrophobic room containing only an algae-infested fish tank and a ‘No Smoking’ poster for decoration. There are only three other people in the waiting room and it seems pretty quiet; all I can perceive is the sound of breathing, the hum of the fish tank’s dysfunctional filter, and the soft metallic twangs of my bracelets. There’s a bloke sitting opposite me – green eyes, dark nondescript hair and a black t-shirt – and we sneak glances at each other every now and again. Funny how even in the midst of tragedy people can still have ‘other things’ on their minds. Eventually a nurse shows her head through the door, and my grandparents ask if we can go in. “Only two at a time,” she says. Three pairs of eyes turn to me – I tell them to go in first. They do, and I wait. My friend across the aisle and I mutually decide to halt our wordless conversation, each with a feeble smile and a nod of understanding. I sit and flick at a loose flap of plastic on my chair and wonder what he could be waiting for. News? To visit a loved one? The question of his name doesn’t even cross my mind; how odd, usually that’s the first thing people ask about each other. I try not to look nervous and am perfectly conscious of the fact that I’m failing miserably.

After about ten minutes the door opens and my grandparents exit. Nanna is crying and Pop is holding her shoulders with his old-man’s hands, blemished by sunspots from decades of working in the sun. It’s my turn.

*   *   *

I believe your parents did the best job they knew how to do

-Savage Garden, ‘Affirmation’

“Crash! I’m so glad I’ve found you! Crash, Cortex is up to something, and it’s up to you –”

“Sara?” The whiney female-sidekick voice is cut off as I pause the game and go to see what Dad wants. I hate it when he interrupts me while I’m playing the Playstation.

I walk to my room where Dad’s standing in the doorway. “What?”

“I got you something while I was at the shops this morning. It’s just there.” I look on my bed, and see a Stayfree packet of pads. I almost laugh but when I look at Dad I stop myself. Poor old thing! He’s gone bright red, couldn’t be more embarrassed if the whole world were watching.

“Oh, thanks,” I manage without giggling, somehow. It’s an awkward moment. Dad goes to talk, then doesn’t, then does.

“Do you, uh, know what they are?”

Please don’t give me the sex talk! “Yeah, Pippa told our group at school about them last year... We learn about all that stuff anyway. In Sex Ed.”

“Ok then, righty-o. I just thought – well, just in case you – I thought they might come in handy. One day.”

The poor thing! He’d probably been thinking about attempting this for ages. I can breathe again once he’s left my room, and nearly laugh at what’s just happened. How naïve to think his daughter didn’t know about all that stuff by Year Four! Poor Dad. He can’t look directly at me during dinner or for the next two days.

*   *   *

I want so much to open your eyes

Cos I need you to look into mine

Tell me that you’ll open your eyes

-Snow Patrol, ‘Open Your Eyes’

On television you are constantly exposed to images of sick, starving children from poor parts of the world. Over-exposure to these images often leads to a sort of distancing, a numbness to the plights of these unlucky people. However, no amount of desensitisation can prepare you for seeing a loved one, a parent, weak and comatose in a hospital bed. The manifold tubes and blinking machinery arranged behind him like a city skyline seemed like props out of a sci-fi movie. The glue fixing his eyes shut would have made him look like a wax model, but for the tears that trembled indefinitely in their corners. His face was whiter than the hospital walls surrounding him, making him seem dead. The figure on that bed wasn’t Dad. Just his shell.

I was hesitant to go near him. It felt like a dream – everything moved in slow motion; a hazy glow surrounded the patients and the nurses. As my eyes wandered about the ward, ripples appeared on the walls, as though by merely shifting my gaze I was causing the room itself to move. The only solid thing in the room was my father; he was the only object without that hazy glow signifying life.

A nurse touched my elbow and I let her lead me to his bed. He remained still, the green faces of the machines the only sign that he was still breathing. I didn’t want to touch him. I was scared. It wasn’t right for Dad to be like this, he’s always been so healthy, yet there he was, pale as a ghost but warm to the touch… I had clutched his hand in mine without realising. I pressed it to my face. A pulse monitor attached to his finger slipped off, and several of the machines began to wail. I panicked and dropped his hand, cringing as it collided with the metal bed frame. It took three nurses to figure out what had happened and get them to stop. The first nurse came to me again and told me it was time for visitors to leave. I bent and gave Dad a kiss on his wet forehead – but I didn’t let myself say goodbye.

*   *   *

You could see me reaching

So why couldn’t you have met me half way?

-Incubus, ‘Mexico’

“Sara, why do you think we woke you up?”

“Are we going somewhere?”

“No. We want to talk to you about something. Is anything wrong, anything you want to tell us about?”

“Um, no.”

“Why do you think I’m living here with you and your Dad?”

“I dunno.”

“Think about it. Why might two people decide to live together?”

“So they have more money and can buy nice things?”

She frowns. “It’s really not hard, Sara.”

I don’t understand what she’s getting at. Dad sees I’m distressed but doesn’t speak.

“I don’t KNOW!” Tears come and I whimper like a baby. I don’t understand why she’s here or what she expects me to say.

“Ray, I don’t want her in my house. Send her to her grandma at the coast, ’cause either she goes or I do! Choose!”

I glance at Dad. He looks confused. He gazes at her, then me.

“Do you wanna go stay with Nanna for a while?”

“I wanna stay with you!”

She packs her things and goes. Dad asks her not to leave but she slams the door in his face. He comes to wake me in the morning, and he’s angry, not sad.

“I hope you’re happy.”

*   *   * 

...“Not with a bang but a whimper”

What would you do?

Arms spread welcoming the impending nothing

-Alexisonfire, ‘Jubella’

 “We’ve gotta get outta here.”

I crawl into the back seat of the Mazda and shield my eyes from the brightness of the headlights as Pip turns the key in the ignition. Still half-asleep and not fully sure of what’s happening, I don’t fight against my abduction. The house lights remain off as Pip backs down the driveway – Nanna and Pop won’t know I’m gone until the morning when they go to wake me up. It’s also not until the morning that I realise I probably should have left a note.

Pip doesn’t speak as we drive past paddock after paddock, invisible in the overcast, moonless dark. The engine of the car exerts itself admirably along the windy country road, the sound of it lulling me inexorably back to sleep.

Falling asleep is the weirdest sensation. I love the feeling that you get – not often, but sometimes – when you find yourself neither asleep nor awake, but both. The limbo in between dreams and reality, where you feel an unlimited calm. No thoughts cloud your mind, and everything is absolutely still, frozen. Then you dream.

I am awakened by Pip nudging me with her gearbox hand. “Oi, there’s some arsehole behind me who’s been tailgating us for ages now – just thought I’d let you know… just in case.”

I turn to look out the rear window, rubbing my eyes with the butts of my hands, just as the bloke in the LandCruiser behind us turns his high beams on. The flaring lights blind me, and I become the proverbial ’roo caught in the headlights, trapped and waiting to be shot… What if he has a gun? What then? The glass in the car’s windows can’t possibly be thick enough to stop a travelling bullet, and I’ve seen on TV that depending on the calibre of a gun, you can get shot even through a car door…

I tense as I realise the LandCruiser has sped up and come level with our car. The man’s face is not unattractive, but has that something which makes it instantly threatening – a love of the chase, the kill. There is a flash in his eyes, and it isn’t coming from the intense beams of light which open up the early morning dark in front of his roaring vehicle. He is clearly visible, but the image of his grin lasts only for a second. He speeds up and overtakes us and is gone.

“Pretty freaky right there, Sez.”

“Yeah.”

I feel strangely fine as we continue on in the dark, which eventually begins to turn grey and then purply-orange with the rising sun. Topping the Clyde, I finally glimpse the ultramarine blue of the sea.

“We’re here.” A great shining expanse of water stretches out to the horizon, reflections of the vanishing stars as visible as fireworks on the crystalline surface.