australian fiction
-
I woke in the dark. The cabin stank of stale cigarettes and beer. I pulled on all of my clothes, but couldn’t find my shoes. I walked barefoot up the steps, leaving Cubby’s hulk snoring in the dark. The moon was huge and the light falling on the deck was bright grey and harsh. The…
-
At the bathhouse, I smile at a man in the changing area. I’ve come out of the sauna to get a cup of water. He’s sitting on a small white towel, on the bench next to the fan. We start to talk. He’s sixty-two. He tells me that he has found love recently. ‘It came…
-
They sit next to each other on the couch. The only light is from the kitchen and the moon. There is a faint tang of Sharizad’s sickness hanging somewhere in the room. “Carry on with the story,” she says. The sides of their bodies are touching. “It’s finished,” he says. “There isn’t any more.” “There…
-
She eats the last piece of lamb on her plate (having saved it till the end, as usual) and puts her fork down. She’s tempted to run her fingertips over the plate, to scrape all the sauce up, and then to suck her fingers clean. She’d do this if Ali wasn’t there. “So why are…
-
“The first time he came in, he told me that he was buying the bottles to give to someone at work, to add to a farewell hamper. He told me about how they had bought this fellow enough gifts to fill a box, that they were going to wrap it all up in cellophane and…
Barry Lee Thompson 