Special Little Man

Heyyyyy!

Hi.

Hey guess what, I had coffee with Marti and look! Look! Look!

Nfh.

You’re not looking. Look! -- What’s the matter?

Nothing, nothing.

Bad day?

Yeah.

Aww. But look!

(she is holding a DVD box set. it is the second season of True Blood)

Oh, cool.

Pfft. C’mere.

No.

You want to talk to Mum about your bad day?

…um.

(a pause)

Yeah.

OK. Just a sec.

(she leaves. he drinks the rest of the Ribena. rain falls into the garden outside.)

(she returns, now wearing horn rimmed glasses, a blue bathrobe and hair curlers)

Aww here’s my Rojie.

Hi.

Awww here. Have a hug. Tell Mum about your bad day.

It was okay.

(she pulls a pack of cigarettes out from the robe and lights one)

Did you feel the earthquake this morning?

Nn-nn.

Felt like a big one. It was early, at like 10 or something. The sky got dark and the whole building shook. You didn’t feel it? At first I thought it was like a bomb or a missile or something… plane crash.

My Rojie. Worried about plane crashes. You’re my nervous little guy.

Yeah – but then it was weird, because afterwards I kept finding all this dust in my office, like white powder or something. It was getting into my shoes and everything. And then fucking Korea was –

Tsk.

Sorry Mum. Sorry. It’s that guy, he’s like… he had me on the edge of a panic attack all day. They’re doing performance reviews this month and he’s just walking around the office all morning staring at people’s work stations, doing spot checks. Who was in, who wasn’t in. He’s going to lay off half my team, I know it. You should have seen him, he was stalking around like some kind of primal hunter. And then he’s coming up to me and asking if I believe there’s a God – what are you supposed to say to that!? Like what, you’re going to fire me because I don’t… shit, could he do that? I don’t even know what religion he is, so I can’t lie. Fuck’s sake I can’t even work out what ethnicity he is!! Sorry Mum. I shouldn’t swear, I know. I’m just really worked up.

There there. I don’t like this man very much.

He doesn’t blink. Not very often anyway.

I don’t like anyone who’s mean to my little Rojie.

And he’s calling me all day, I mean what are you supposed to do? And oh God I haven’t told you -- he gets Janet to come in, all like “you have to go see Korea right now”, like “RIGHT NOW” and I go there and his office is empty. It’s just me and… he has all these little statues, like Easter Island things. And then I hear this thump, it’s like a horror movie or something, and really slowly he comes up from underneath his desk and stares at me. HE WAS HIDING THERE. Under his desk. And we have this… I don’t know what you’d call it, “conversation” isn’t really the word. He’s going on about Star Trek and man’s mission to the universe or some shit – sorry – and I’m standing there thinking “what have I done”, you know? “What have I done, why is this happening to me?” Just like “I’m going to get fired now” or “maybe he’s going to bite me to death”, and I don’t know why it’s happening, and all I can pay attention to is that my hands are in my pockets and they’re full of this white powder shit, and he’s not blinking, he doesn’t even blink once, I couldn’t take it, I thought I was going to puke, I actually had to go to the toilet and stand there for like three minutes because I thought I was going to puke…

My brave little boy.

…and y-yuh… yuh…

(gulping for breath)

You just let it out.

Hnnnhhhh.

That’s right. Let all that tension out. Deep breaths. You’re so brave.

(a long pause)

Huh. Hnnh. -- You shouldn’t smoke Mum.

Tsk.

(a long pause)

But he didn’t fire you.

No.

And they’re not going to. You’re too special for them to fire you.

Yeah.

My brave little man. You had a bad nasty horrible Wednesday but you made it didn’t you?

Yeah.

And you have your pretty girlfriend coming over and she’s going to watch True Blood with you. You like that show, don’t you?

Yeah.

That’s right. It’s your favourite show, and you’re going to have ice cream and everything’s going to be all right.

Yeah. -- Thanks Mum.

Tsk. I love my little man.

(she kisses him on the cheek, then smiles and walks out of the room)

(a moment passes. he has regained his composure)

…fucking Star Trek… I mean, what the fuck...?

(he picks the DVD box up off the kitchen counter. turns it over. reads the back)

Hmmph.

(she returns, dressed as previously)

Hey hon!

Hey.

(she sniffs)

Phee-eww! Did she smoke in here?

Yeah. I told her not to.

Ah well.

"It's a Trap"

Dark shape moving overhead
something tremendous
tremendous impact shakes the earth

A massive footfall

And it
(the shadow)
moves on,
and in its wake we have
pink dust, like
pink snow
falling down around us

You don't even notice,
you don't have time to lose,
you're up and moving


to find some clothes
to get dressed
to head out quickly
to cross the room
to a door, leading
to a passage
to a flight of stairs, leading down
to darkness;

to rub at your eyes
to hurry
to the bottom
to slip through a gap, closing, very narrow
to feel the walls close around your shoulders
to wriggle through, & out

to the light
to open spaces
to noises & people, rushing,
to almost forget
to check before running across
to the far side


to the side street
to the alley
to the path which leads
to the park
to the bus stop
to check your watch

to creep in through the basement carpark
to creep in late
to punch the button
to climb inside, be drawn upwards
to punch the clock

to work
to work
to stare out the window
to type to index to squint & agree
to hold, to wait, to drum your fingers
to work, to fidget,
to work


to stumble along
to take your bearings &
to realise you're lost
to realise you're tired, but then
to hear something
to listen
to hear them somewhere nearby, &
to carry on, looking

to crash against the mattress, exhausted, &
to try to think what you need
to remember for tomorrow,
to fall sleep wondering


to wake later in the night, remembering
to stare up at the ceiling, remembering

to work
to work
to lift them one by one
to carry each of them over & stack them
to carry them stack them load them up onto the trucks,
to step back,
to wipe the sweat from your face, then look
to the rest of it waiting
to be shifted, stacked & loaded


to exhaustion at the end of it,
to feel so fucking tired, &
to lean against the wall &
to wonder where all the money goes

to a bench
to sit
to take off your shoes before rising
to step inside
to silence
to the shade of a large cool room
to the muttering of dozens of people
to step amongst the kneeling forms
to find a place of your own
to kneel
to mutter
to mutter for hours
to barely know what you're saying, but simply
to ask
to say “please”
to repeat that word many times
to ask for relief
to politely ask for the pressure to relent
to ask
to be pardoned
to beg
to kneel & beg, & while so doing,
to try
to ignore the cold stone
to ignore the pain it is causing your knees &
to put aside your mounting suspicion that no-one is listening
to you


to work
to work
to lean against the wall &
to examine your hands
to admit
to yourself: it's not getting easier
to do this
to work & work &
to make it to that magical fucking pint
to the whiskey & the smoke
to that moment of peace

to accustom yourself
to a certain amount of pain
to accept it as inevitable, but
to admit
to yourself: it's getting harder
to ignore


to a waiting room
to wait
to stare about &
to wait
to be called
to stare at the faces of the others
to consider which seem stronger, which weaker
to hear your name
to walk in & sit
to bow your head
to listen
to them tell you what you need
to stop eating or stop doing
to breath a deep acceptance &
to nod;
to take it on the chin

to work, to work
to wake
to sudden pain, & then
to wait while they make the call
to watch them come in
to be lifted over
to a stretcher, carried
to the car, driven
to the ward, wheeled
to the bed, shown the controls
to lift it & lower it,
to wait there, to wait there
to take it on the chin, then


to a table & then
to a box & then
to a hole in the ground & then
to what?
to wait there?
to wait there & then at the sound of a trumpet
to be lifted up & carried away
to somewhere
to some great reward
to Heaven
to Jesus
to Santa
to life everlasting;
to be congratulated on your conduct &
to be told: “Yes”

The Big Sleep Dep Monster

The laughter dies, an awkward silence ensues, and then the ground quakes.

The Big SDM wakes, it comes lurching out of the soil, from a field or a hillside somewhere. Maybe out in Sterling, the outskirts of Perth.

It would yawn, except for that mangled face. It grinds its jaws in a yawn-like way.

It's sort of a greyish green monster. It has lean limbs, a dessicated face, teeth which grow straight from its cheeks. No time or expense wasted on lips or other such pleasantries.

It would blink, except that mess of tissue couldn't really be called eyelids, and the misty grey balls of mush therein couldn't really be called eyes.

It does, however, have a garage. From this garage it extracts two oily, bulging sacks, both leaking coloured powder.

The one in its left hand, the bag with the white powder is labelled FEAR.

Fear that you won't wake up in time for work, or that when you get there you'll have forgotten something. Fear that you're not doing a good job. That your colleagues do not like you, that your job itself is beneath you, that your childhood self would recoil in shame if it saw what a miserable hash you'd made of your life.

Fear that you'll be old before you know it, dead before you know it. Fear that you're missing the point, that people out there, your friends, are making a better go of being alive. You should be more like them. Or actually fuck your friends, let's have instead the fear that they're HOLDING YOU BACK. All of them. Holding you back from what? You don't know, and that scares you. Surely you ought to know what you're being denied.

Scary. Scary, scary fear.

The other bag, the one in the right hand trickling with candy-pink powder is labelled HABIT.

Because you need a little treat to reward yourself for getting out of bed on a Monday, let's say a danish or a donut, and then you're at work so there's your coffee. There's your chewing gum, good on you for not smoking. There's the mail, the Outlook Inbox, there's those fuckers you work with filing in. There's the 10:30 slump, waiting for lunch. The perfunctory lunch. Nothing too lavish, got to save money. The afternoon, Jesus, roll on the weekend. The clock, ticking. The chores, performed. Jesus, Jesus. Almost there. 4:30. 4:40. 4:45. The evening!

Except what to do, God, well there's the post-work run, dinner, a video maybe, a beer most definitely. Two? Any more than three and you have a drinking problem, so let's call it three. There's Monday. There's Tuesday. I wasn't kidding when I said roll on the weekend. Thursday. There's the weekend!

What were we going to do with the weekend? Tell you what, roll on payday. More money would solve this. Only the end of the month. Not much longer.

It's a monster all right.

The Big SDM hefts its two lethal bags, grins its mangled smile into the weak light, and sets off to destroy me.

It's big. It's HUGE. It's so utterly vast that a single one of its steps crosses 20 entries of Sleep Dep.