“Fierce Companions”
Wendy Balconi
Collage
If my fingers weren’t so cold, I’d sketch this afternoon in shades of grey. A wombat in the snow, plodding to the end of the week and just… dying. School’s out. Time to kick back.
Yeah, right.
I stop by the corner store, all straitjacket arms in my oversized jumper. The man at the counter frowns as I head for the fridge.
“No friends today? No vinegar wedges?” he asks.
“Just this,” I tell him.
He eyes the glass bottle. Glacial condensation drips down its androgynous curves.
“Ah! Ice-cold drink for ice-cold day. Like turning in same direction as skid.”
“Yeah, something like that.”
I break the seal. The Coke fizzes on the way down, stripping back taste receptors until my throat is as numb as the rest of me.
Outside again, I slip the empty bottle into my bag’s mesh pocket. 10c refund or ready-made squat for any genie that might be hanging around. I picture djinn in dusty squalls blowing vagrant with the leaves in the gutter.
Winter boxes me in. Like those genies, I stand naked to the draught. Skinless.
But a girl can dream, right?
Shivering, I take my pittance of hope and trudge the familiar footpaths back home.
I really want to take a shower.
That would be the best thing ever. Hot water and steam, sloughing the ice from my skin. But mum’s still at work when I get in. The only one there is my hobbit of a stepbrother, lifting weights in the garage.
“Hey, sis,” he grunts. He’s barefoot and bare-chested, dripping sweat onto his bogan tracksuit pants.
“I’m not your sister,” I mutter.
“Just as well, right?”
He looks me over as he flexes. He’s six years older, rutting on the hyphen in our surname. Fricken Neanderthal.
I hide in my bedroom until mum and Brad show up. When I brave the bathroom, I turn the shower to full blast and stand fully clothed outside the cubicle. Half a minute later the door bursts open.
“Mum!” I wail. “Beau’s trying to perv on me again!”
“Christ, Jasmin.” Mum doesn’t even come to investigate. “It’s Friday night. I’ve had a long week. Just try to get along, will you?”
Try to get along?
Beau leers at me. I leave the shower running and stomp back to my bedroom. No lock there, either. Because families don’t need privacy, I parrot my mum.
I sit at my desk and start drawing. I sketch a picture of Beau with his hand on the bathroom doorknob, being electrocuted. Then a picture of mum in bed with a rose bush. She’s cuddled up to it, bleeding happily.
Wake up and smell the fricken thorns.
At last Beau heads out with his mates. I hear wine glasses clinking; the burble of the TV. Then mum and Brad go to bed and suddenly the walls are way too thin. They’re still in the honeymoon phase, would you believe? Joy in a mutha’ucken ode.
But it’s an opportunity. Crablike, I scuttle out to the bathroom. One twist of the hot water tap. Five minutes’ respite before I fold the rug from beneath my study chair and wedge it under the bedroom door. Careful not to jangle the rods, I hang my Year 7 wind-chime project from the handle.
Then I huddle beneath my doona. Ears tuned to the night, I hear rev-heads on the nearby freeway. They roar south in single, bestial surges. Police sirens lag behind, too little, too late to matter.
I lie awake until exhaustion claims me.
Saturday morning stretches bleak as the Lake Eyre salt pan.
Our house always felt cosy back when it was just mum, Mayushii and me. 🛏3 🛁1 🚗1 in the bald terms of the real estate listing. Now we’re one cat fewer and two bogans too many. No room to move but there’s an emptiness inside me.
I miss Mayushii. Abby was able to take her, so at least I get to see her sometimes. But it still sucks. Mum marrying some deadbeat older guy is one thing. That’s her choice, her happiness or whatever. But when he brings his Bilbo son along with him, and a chronic fur allergy…?
Well, that’s about me, isn’t it? Living from moment to moment between fingernail scrapes down my spine.
It puts me on edge. Tears come from nowhere and I rip open an old letter that’s been sitting on the dining table. It’s an optometrist reminder for mum—one she’s clearly been neglecting. I sketch a picture of Mayushii on the back. I turn her from piebald Japanese bobtail to white tiger and draw her in the bathroom with me, curled up on the mat and giving contented little chirps.
Ready to tear shreds off anyone who barges inside.
“Good puss,” I murmur.
When the picture’s done, I roll it up and slide it into yesterday’s Coke bottle. I tuck this into my bag alongside bottles for the rose bush and the electrocution sketches.
Then I venture outside.
Free of the house, I feel less brittle. The wind is still cruel but there’s just enough spark inside me to brace against it. I follow the bike track down to the creek.
Leaning on the rails of the footbridge, I watch turtles drifting in the murk. There are seven or eight of them, semi-submerged. Bubble trails give away their presence and occasionally one will paddle its way up and break the surface.
I wait until the path is free of pedestrians, then throw my bottles in.
Okay, so it’s littering. $137 fine if I’m caught. But what price such beautiful dreams?
Glass flotilla launched, I think of the corner store. Vinegar wedges. Maybe see if Abby’s free to hang out? But night falls early in winter. Soon enough the chill takes hold again, seeping into my bones.
Like a ghost to its grave, I’m pulled back into the abyss.
Mum and I fight. Of course we do. It’s date night, and she and Brad have been waiting for me so they can go out and leave me alone with Beau.
Beau is in the garage, lifting weights in the same trackie daks and an unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt—his idea of classy.
Like what you see, not-sis?
It’s sick enough to be funny. I laugh, then spit on the floor. Mum goes mental at me.
The usual. Slammed, lockless doors. Folded rug and wind chimes.
Suffocation.
I hug myself tight enough to bruise my own ribs.
Alone in the dark, I hold my breath and try to cling on.
When the sound comes, I recognise it straight away. A tiny metal scrape, the start of a curse, then a heavy clank that can only be a cast-iron dumbbell weight hitting the garage concrete through layers of bare foot.
Beau screams.
There are twenty-six bones in a human foot. It takes the ambulance that many minutes to arrive, then his whimpering recedes and I’m alone in the house. Luxuriating in the eye of the storm.
How did you know? Abby asks. The hot water’s finally run out and I’m a prune in flannelette pyjamas. I sit cross-legged on my bed, texting her the details. The way you tell it, it sounds like a divine revelation!
No, I write back. Just a 10c recyclable genie let loose.
I can still see it as I burrow dreamily under the covers. The scratched thread on Beau’s dumbbell. Motion lines where the weight slips free. Kinetic art unfurled from within a Coke bottle.
It’s the picture I drew last Monday.
E J Delaney is a speculative fiction writer living in Brisbane, Australia’s River City. E J’s short stories have appeared in Daily Science Fiction and the podcasts Cast of Wonders and Escape Pod, as well as the Reinvented Detective anthology and in limited edition print collections from Air & Nothingness Press. E J has thrice been shortlisted for Australia’s premier speculative fiction accolade the Aurealis Awards, in 2021 winning in the category of Best Fantasy Short Story. “Bottled Up” forms part of E J’s series The Undertow, a tapestry of YA fiction set in Brisbane and exploring teen issues by way of magic realism. Online: ejdelaney.com.