Fiction: Dream, two nights ago, in written form.
I look out the window - fields, yellow, the slightly curving landscape stretching as far as I can see, only interrupted by the odd shed, line of poplars or spindly dead eucalypt. It used to be green, but now everything has dried, the grass and the wheat the same uniform shade. I haven’t seen any livestock or birds for a long time now, but I keep looking. I’m just a passenger. Passive. I don’t know where we’re going, or what we’re doing; all I know is that we’re going away from where we started off, and that’s all that matters. I don’t really know the driver, and he doesn’t really know me. We speak little, interacting only when necessary, but there is an understanding there, a tenuous, unspoken bond. We’ve been on the road together for two weeks now, each day driving until the sun goes down, since my mum left. She picked up a woman at the airport, in her 30s, and the two of them ran off together in pursuit of a “romantic new lifestyle together”, as mum put it. Dad was pretty shattered; I guess I would have been surprised too since it was pretty out of character for mum. Anyway, this woman stole something and turned mum in to the police, where, as far as I know, she’s still being held. For what reason and where, I don’t really know, and I don’t think I can care anymore.
Two nights ago, we slept in a shed along the road - there were many others there as well (there often are). I got into an argument, well, something like that. This girl, about my age, said something unforgivable, something that should never have been said. Everyone else in the shed knew it. The driver and another man held her down whilst I punched the living shit out of her, until she bled and bled and the screaming stopped. She will think before she opens her mouth again. There were no beds, just hay and a large television and VCR. It seemed almost like a surveillance video of the abandoned farm outside - animals being caught, captured, slaughtered. Livestock, pets, sparrows, even a peacock, their bodies being dumped in a large pile swarming with flies. I couldn’t watch; I felt more than ill. I got up and sat in the dark corner of the shed, behind the glow of the television screen, watching the faces reflected, mesmerised, revolted yet fixated. They watched until the sun came up, and the driver and I set off again.
Two nights ago, we slept in a shed along the road - there were many others there as well (there often are). I got into an argument, well, something like that. This girl, about my age, said something unforgivable, something that should never have been said. Everyone else in the shed knew it. The driver and another man held her down whilst I punched the living shit out of her, until she bled and bled and the screaming stopped. She will think before she opens her mouth again. There were no beds, just hay and a large television and VCR. It seemed almost like a surveillance video of the abandoned farm outside - animals being caught, captured, slaughtered. Livestock, pets, sparrows, even a peacock, their bodies being dumped in a large pile swarming with flies. I couldn’t watch; I felt more than ill. I got up and sat in the dark corner of the shed, behind the glow of the television screen, watching the faces reflected, mesmerised, revolted yet fixated. They watched until the sun came up, and the driver and I set off again.