Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER.

Describe the beach. I left my shoes under that tree that is no longer there. I left that tree behind a long time ago and walked off barefoot, never looked back and now, looking out this window, looking back, the shore is so far away. The window is round and a gull soars past and I can’t see which way is back because all around me is sea, sea, sea. So tranquil.

Describe the beach, describe the beach.

I waited.

The sun slanted into the kitchen, it was late afternoon and that old radio was on, before you swiped it off the shelf just like that, you said ‘Enough of those voices, that infernal music, why can’t we all just be QUIET?’

Describe the beach describe the beach describe the beach.

By the time we got there our footprints were long gone and the sand was strewn with starfish. There must have been hundreds of them, all beached, all grey. Perhaps in the water, before, they were luminous, but now they were such a dull grey, like the sand, the sky, all such a dull grey, the only light emanating from behind the waves, the Indian ocean glowing jade green under winter’s white foam. Occasionally one of their legs moved, twitched a last flick of life before stillness, the absenting of life, the last star going out before everything turns to dust.

Describe the beach. Long, quiet, ten minutes end to end. One step before the next, on the liminal shore.

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER.

She looked at me like she knew me already. She didn’t ask questions but she told me her stories openly and freely.  We sat in her clean, sparsely-decorated, empty home. On the mantelpiece sat five shells.  One shell for each of her miscarriages.  Each was vastly different, as each loss had been.  There was a jagged white one – the first, she told me – a small blue one, another white shell, a red-tinged one and a purple one.  I imagined her walking along the beach, tears in her eyes, and a hole deep inside as she collected rocks and shells, feeling them between her fingers over and over before pocketing the right one.  Five sad trophies side by side in a lonely house. “I couldn’t do it to him anymore,” she said of her absent husband “I couldn’t do it to myself anymore.”

I sat in silence on the other side of the room. My story was different to hers, and one I could not tell her; one she could not hear.  I did not pick out a shell, or any other rare treasure from the sea after my abortion. I didn’t see the foetus as a baby, as a life. Pregnancy was a condition I was desperate to be cured of. I needed distance between me and him and I aborted the thing we made that would have glued us together for the rest of our lives. It was not sad, and there was no remorse. It was clean. It was clinical. I signed some paperwork and changed into a paper gown and put my legs in stirrups. And when I woke up they fed me miniature sandwiches and apple juice.  A friend drove me home where I slept some more and in the morning I packed one suitcase and took the train to the airport. I couldn’t handle looking into his eyes one final time, nor being held hostage by his mood swings and inexplicable rage. On the bench at home, if he looked, he would find my note: “You already know why.” If he didn’t see it coming then he’d never understand the leaving; he didn’t deserve the explanation he couldn’t understand.

“Do you think you’ll have children one day?” She asked me hopefully, a sad smile on her face. I looked at her collection of shells before I met her eyes “I’m not sure.” I shrugged gently.

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER.

Once upon a time there was a woman who became a mother. It didn’t happen overnight. Obviously. It started over night but then took 9 months to come to fruition. After nine months she had a round wrinkly little thing that could do nothing but required everything. And the mother wrung the best bits out of the grey world that surrounded her to try and grow and stretch and toughen up this little beast. The sky where they lived was never visible. It was always cloaked in a dirty grimy blanket of grey, but she would leave the kid to roll around in the tiny outdoor space they had, to soak up whatever withered traces of sunshine it could.

Every day, she would strap the child to her front and hug it to her chest like a hot water bottle. They would walk through narrow industrial streets, with gritty gutters and wrappers collecting in the corners and alleys. They would walk to the baby girl’s childcare centre, which was full of bright light and primary colours. Then the mother would go and spend hours cutting carrots into items of intricate garnish for high end catering events.

One day, stepping across the threshold from the coarse and grinding city, into the smooth and shiny reflections and colour of the child care centre, the mother was hit by the contrast in a way she had never experienced before. She couldn’t leave the girl there, where there was no chance of skinned knees from angry gravel or scratches from misjudging a rough corner.

Because of that, she decided to take her child with her, back out into the grey, and try to find the real colour and softness and grit and texture that she knew was out there somewhere in the world. They started small. One bean, sitting in some rubbishy dirt in a mug on their kitchen counter, sent up two small leaves at the top of a tender stalk.

And, because of that, a little colour started to leach into their life. And the child soaked it up. They collected snippets of coloured wool and painted patches of garish wall. They grew tall sunflowers with awkwardly heavy heads and mixed colours that were against the rules. The child began to speak, and began to point out the snatches of colour that might otherwise have disappeared into the overwhelming grey of the sky and heavy cogs of the growling industrial city where they lived.

Until finally, the child had absorbed all that there was to provide light and life in that city. She had grown from a round, wobbly small thing, into an almost adult. What colour they could collect from they streets around their little flat, she had harvested, accumulated, carried in and arranged on the shelves and on the walls. And it was time for her to go. There was nothing left for her to feed and grow from. When she left her mother, and left the city, the colour and the variety and the possibilities of the rest of the world swallowed her up. Occasionally notes and pictures find their way back to her mother, little snippets of the countries she had worked her way through or the people she had met. Biology students in Guatemala, theatre directors in New York, orangutan rehabilitators in Borneo.

Her mother tried to be glad for the colour and life her daughter was moving through, but all she thought was “Oh my god I miss you”.

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER.

Oh god, this is the most painful exercise. I feel exposed, like my pedal’s been forced to the metal

and I can see where I’m going. My hand is starting to cramp already and I can feel my breath

hitch. How strange, this isn’t a race, nothing of value is on the line and yet I fear my feet tripping.

No one is likely to ever read it, my voice, punctuation, spelling don’t matter, yet I’m running where

the ground is giving way.

For this task I just need to keep writing, so why don’t I just slow down and follow my breath? My

breathing will continue if I push or pause, so why panic? Perhaps if I concentrate on breathing, the

tension in my right forearm will ease and I’ll be able to release the strange panic building in my

throat caused by my own cruel judgement and fear.

I’m a cunt, I’ve done this to myself. Something of joy is becoming a pain and I’m resenting the

thing I love. The written word, the ability to be both precise and flippant, recording my profane

thoughts to posterity, where future generations can discard them as easily as I do.

Oh look, a bug, another thought, an itch and is that an SMS?

Surely these can distractions can save me from this task. They don’t. Only the ticking time will.

How interesting to see the changes in my handwriting in line with my breath,mounting and ebbing

panic. The width of the letters, the legibility. Could I turn this into a meditative practice, just watch

the flow of my words, be my own thousand monkeys on a typewriter, just observe what happens?

Perhaps I could just watch my fingers hold the pen and observe the lovely squiggles flow, flowing

squiggles, no calligraphy or arabesque, just squirmy wormy lines on a gum tree.

My daughter noticed this morning the similarities between our handwriting, the long hook on g’s

and y’s. Her handwriting has grown up so much in the last year, it has shrunk. As she gets taller,

her letters get smaller, but I hope her voice stays as loud and she remembers she is welcome to

take up space.

How much of my writing aversion has come from my fear of my handwriting,the incessant criticism

of the aesthetic form, without acknowledging the work, the effort, the thought. Allowing fear of

expression to fester, and showing surprise when creative expression manifests in subversive and

potentially disruptive ways, inviting the mockery of tricksters to undermine ridiculous assumed

authority.

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER.

Once upon a time there was a dog who thought he was a man named Steve. He had chosen the name himself, after his favourite cricketer. Steve loved cricket. There was something about it that just spoke to him. Steve was a fielder. He sometimes thought that nothing made him happier than running after balls.
This made office work rather dull. It was drag for everyone, as Steve knew only too well from the walk around the coffee machine, but it was really, really hard when all you wanted to do all day was run around after balls.
Steve’s office didn’t even have a window. But he realised this might not be a bad thing – being able to see the park all the time may have pushed things from bad to unbearable.
Every day Steve had to walk past the families and the trees and grass of that park. There was one tree that he always stopped at. Not to do anything; just to sniff. He could find out a lot that way – who was around, who was getting some and what meat was cheap at the butcher.
One day as he walked past, the tree had a message for Steve, a message of love, of longing, of need. Steve stood there for a good five minutes, just inhaling the message.
Signing off on the accounts that afternoon took him much, much longer than normal. Steve kept drifting back to his message.
He knew that she wanted, he knew where she had been, but he didn’t know where she was…or who she was.
He just knew that he would know her when he smelled her.
Because of that, Steve kept his nose to the ground for the next few days. He took more works than usual. He got up earlier. He also took the unprecedented step of having a quiet pee behind a tree in the park. The homeless man in the sleeping bag under the adjacent tree was quite surprised.
But to no avail. His mysterious someone didn’t turn up.
Days passed in a steady stream of accounts, audits, orders and reports. He signed forms in triplicate. He gave PowerPoint presentations to yawning faces. All was as it normally was.
Steve found it hard to focus. His work suffered. A steady drum beat of questions pounded in his ears. Who was she? Where was she?
Slowly, her scent faded from the tree.
And because of that, Steve’s hopes began to fade too. His ears drooped. His tail hung loosely under his jacket.
But one morning, on the first warm air of spring, he caught a whiff – just the faintest trace of her. She was somewhere within the nearest mile, he judged by the air currents, and she was south.
He looked at his Blackberry. He had no meetings until 10. Dash it, he would be late in today.
He pointed his nose to the south and set off.
After only a few blocks the smell grew stronger, richer, more complex, until finally he came to a small house with a green front door.
It was being locked by the finest bitch he had ever seen, from her pillbox hat to her neat navy pumps below a sharp pencil skirt.
Their eyes met. In spite of his best efforts, Steve’s tail began to wag. And he could see hers twitch beneath her jacket.
‘Easy, boy!’ he whispered to himself, and trotted forward to meet his future.

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER.

One last hour

She sees him one last time

He’s in his coffin in the chapel at William Cole’s

A cavernous space with church pews, candles and a raised platform

onto which they’ve wheeled her son

A coffin made of ply and steel

Built by uncles who share his love of steel and wood

A work of art with mini handles

Minis are his favourite car

One last hour, just him and her

She’s cold but not as cold as him

They’ve washed and brushed his hair

and put him in the shorts and Tshirt she’s chosen for his final farewell.

She can sense he’s been carefully placed

to prevent them seeing the holes where they’ve done the autopsy

She can’t bear the thought of what might be beneath his clothes

It’s terrible and she doesn’t know how to be with him.

He’s looking like he needs to go.

Somehow his face is sinking

and she feels it isn’t right to keep him with her any longer,

She’s got to let him go, uphold his dignity and get on with the job of burying him.

The road

Staring ahead at a world without shape

A blurr with no structure or contour or scape

a moment for screaming that helps with release

for driving out numbness that obliterates peace

Black bat

Grief descends, a great black bat

hanging dense and low

Encased by wings that keep it tight

from time to time it takes on flight

then air blows through and fans the pain

rejigging wounds through new terrain

and stoking flames that bring on fire

keeping love alive

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER.

Slow Learner 

This kid flops heavily on my bed, pushing my feet off so he can wedge the length of his body across the mattress. His jostling makes me lose my place in my book and while I reread the sentences, he rubs the dog’s belly and starts talking at me. I think I’m listening to him, until I realize there’s a pause with a question mark hanging in the air and that I wasn’t paying attention at all; I’m such a shit mother. I ask him to repeat the question and can already hear from the huff and tone that it’s a whine – another whine, and that is, of course, probably why I’d tuned out in the first place. As it turns out the question is not really a question…it’s a complaint disguised as a question…”Why do you always blahblahblah…? How come you never….whathaveyou?” This kid only ever complains in absolutes. And, fuck me, I’ve missed the question again and if I make him say it a third time, there will be ranting and I’m not up for it this minute. I take a deep breath, scratching my brain for something broad and non-committal to win myself some time to get context.
And while I’m still inhaling, before I’ve even said anything:
“And Mum? Before you start? Not everything you say has to be a fucking life lesson!”
I exhale, about to bite out a reply but I stop this time and think about it. This kid needs life lessons sorely – he is and always has been a slightly loveable holy terror, and he has only ever learned his lessons in life the very hardest way. In this moment I realize he hears everything I say to him but he disregards it or ignores it because it doesn’t have value for him. My teaching tales are meaningless to him because they are not his. His life lessons are all hard won – every one of them played out and experienced excruciatingly by him, and BAM! I get a life lesson of my very own…17 years too late to save myself the anxiety and him the irritation, but a life lesson just the same. I’d tell him this too but I don’t want to give him the satisfaction.
Why can’t he just take my wisdom; I’m so fucking wise!
This kid rolls his bowling ball head painfully onto my hip, flings his arm behind him, knocking my book out of my hand, closes his eyes and sighs.
“Play with my hair?” he mumbles. I rest my hand on his forehead resisting, with some difficulty, the urge to slap it hard and I start to draw squiggles over his scalp.
Lucky I love the little shit.

************

Touched

Once upon a time there was a man who lived a blinkered life thinking, not completely incorrectly, that everyone around him lived the very same blinkered life that he did. His days were carbon copies of each other: he rose, showered and dressed, ate breakfast scrolling through his phone, drove to work, logged onto his computer, completed his checklist of duties, chatted politely with his office mates and went about his day with minimum fuss and effort. At the close of his workday, he went home, logged onto his computer and enjoyed himself in various solitary cyber-recreational ways.  He didn’t question his life and he wasn’t bored by it. It was like he’d been born this fully grown man so adept at his routine.

Everyday he got a little older and found it a little more difficult to spend more than ten minutes at a time talking to any one person on any one subject. Away from the screen, his attention span seemed to shrink from people with their faces of skin and muscle and lines, but the man’s colleagues who were all very busy completing their checklist of duties didn’t notice this.

One day during an unavoidable conversation with the woman who answered the phone in the cubicle behind him, the man realized he couldn’t understand a single word she was saying. He rubbed his ears and frowned at her and she, unused to seeing him display anything but the most bland of expressions, grew concerned. Because of that, she placed her hand on his arm and asked ‘Are you OK?”

The man, still not understanding what she was saying, was deeply shocked. He could not remember the last time a person had deliberately touched him as she was doing. He puzzled over the sounds coming out of her mouth and the way she looked very seriously right into his eyes. He felt the warmth of her hand pulse right into the bones of his arm, up his shoulder and across his chest. His jaw started to ache. And instead of the man’s last breath being a final cutting short of the repetition that cradled his life, he died suffused with a moment of intimacy and wonderment that he had never experienced before.

The man dropped at her feet, and the woman stood frozen, her arm still outstretched in the air where it had been when she was touching him. She stood like this until finally the rest of the office appeared around her, jostling her, bending over him, asking questions, reaching for phones, calling ambulances, taking photos. The woman glanced down at the man now being rolled onto his back at her feet; the man so like a puppet every day she had seen him, now seemed shockingly human. She should be at home, she realized, picking sweet cherry tomatoes in her garden, talking to the chickens of her childhood memories, drinking tea on her back step, her bottom warmed by the sun they had soaked in all day. Life, after all, was a lucky dip.

Read more from Alyson here

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER.

Kall’kiuk crouched despondently on the pebbly beach, and gazed with blurred vision at the turquoise waves that lapped gently at his webbed, orange toes. No sign of anything on the horizon. His beak dipped to rest on his fluffy white chest, and he waggled his flippers in despair. The cold wind, straight from the south pole, tousled his green feathery crest and moaned as it left him behind, winging out over the languid sea, tossing the icy misty about in swirls of white hopelessness that mocked him and his aspirations.

Because Kall’kiuk had dreams. Not for him the humdrum daily activities of the colony. He could no longer bear the thought of another day of preening, of squabbling over nest-building, of fighting over pilchards. Even the terror of the predatory skuas had become just another unpleasant event in the endless antipodean day, intolerable in its mindless and unchanging tyranny.

His feet were beginning to get sore, standing on the sea-washed pebbles that grated and rattled with each tedious wave. He shuddered with dismay, and turned to waddle back to the colony, bur stiffened as he sensed something new , something different from anything that had happened ever before. He raised himself up to his fullest height, and cast his beady black-eyed gaze out toward the swirling mist.

There was a buzzing sound. It was not like the buzzing of the mackerel’s beating tail flukes as it flees a swift hunter’s beak, nor like the buzzing of his mother’s nest talk when he was a chick. It was thinner, but more constant, and it was growing in intensity. Something was coming through the fog. Sore feet forgotten, Kall’kiuk hopped on the treacherous stones to try to see further over the waves, his crest rising to a spiked green horn, announcing his agitation to the world.

A shape emerged from the mist, sweeping across the fluttering swell, grey at first, then resolving into black with a flurry of bright colours on its top, approaching the beach and pushing a wave of white foam before it as though it fought with the water itself. Kall’kiuk ‘s heart swelled. This was something new! It was no orca or leopard seal, indeed it was unlike anything he had seen or heard before! He hopped forward, his toes awash in the foaming edge of the sea, eager to see what this might be.

The thing ran straight at the beach, and ran up on it with a great crunching of gravel. It stopped, half out of the water, and the buzzing, which had grown to a deafening roar suddenly faltered and ceased. Then Kall’kiuk snapped his beak in consternation as the creature seemed to split into three parts. The main, buzzing part stayed beached, half in and half out of the water, but two other creatures, both tall and agile, leapt up onto the beach from the back of the main part. It was these that Kall’kiuk realised had been the coloured parts of the thing, for they were adorned in the most glorious shades of yellow and orange, as if it was peak mating season! They walked upright, like penguins, although their flippers and legs were the wrong shape, and now that the herculean buzzing had stopped, Kall’kiuk could hear them calling in low hooting sounds, which reminded Kall’kiuk of seals or walrus.

That thought gave him pause to think, and he hopped from one foot to another, uncertain whether to flee, but it was too late. With three swift strides of its long legs, one of the giants was upon him, and he was being held firmly in the grasp of its flippers.

What followed was disorienting, and bizarre to Kall’kiuk, but not painful. There was a great deal of poking and prodding, with the creatures all the time making quiet hooting sounds, and Kall’kiuk began to wonder if they were trying to give him a message of some sort. He signalled to them every way he knew how, but it seemed to make no difference to them, and he did not think they could understand him any better than he could them.

After some time, he found himself being stood gently on his own feet, and the creatures retreated to the thing awash on the shore. Shortly, the buzzing began again, and with a crescendo of angry vibrations, the thing hauled itself back into the sea, and spinning around retreated across the aqua blanket of the waves back into the mist. As the sound faded, Kall’kiuk ‘s heart plummeted. Had he failed some test? Was there to be no great revelation or adventure to come from this beyond a slightly undignified ruffling of his feathers? As the last view of the shadowy shape was swallowed by the sea smoke, his beak dropped to his chest in resignation and defeat. There would be no salvation. There would be no escape from the monotony of the colony. He felt a terrible lethargy rising from the stones under his cold toes.

But wait. He caught a glimpse of something shiny out of the corner of his eye. Craning his short neck, he could see something glittering near the top of his flipper. It looked for all the world like a funny shaped sardine, but when he snapped at it with his beak, he found it as hard as stone, and he could make out strange markings on it, nothing like fish scales should look. How had that gotten there, he wondered? And then, with a shattering realisation, he knew! He had not failed the test after all! The creatures had chosen him! They had put their mark on him. He hopped from one foot to the other in a paroxysm of delight. His adventure was not over at all! It was only beginning. Surely the creatures’ mark was a sign of some kind – of great things to come. And he had been chosen to bear the sign! Kall’kiuk stretched himself as high as he could and crooned with pride at the departed buzzing thing. Surely it would be back. Surely it would bring…well, Kall’kiuk couldn’t imagine what it might bring next time, but he was sure it would be wonderful!

Kall’kiuk spun around and raced up the beach. He had to tell the others. He had to make them understand. He would bring the sign to the colony. His life was forever changed. Nothing would be the same again. He was special. He had been chosen.

Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER.

“4.30PM: Valerie-Dawn Morton” 

Dr Angela Monahan groaned as she checked her calendar for the day. Valerie-Dawn Morton at 4.30. Christ. Bugger. Shit.

Angela was burning out fast and she knew it. Valerie-Dawn was her least favourite patient. It wasn’t because Valerie-Dawn was depressed, or anxious, or traumatised from being seriously bullied when she was a kid. It wasn’t because she cried at work every day, or that she didn’t have any friends, or that she complained incessantly at every session about her depression, the crying and that she didn’t have any friends. It was because she was fat. That was it. Valerie-Dawn was fat.

“I’m a fattist”, thought Angela. “A fattist arsehole”, she added. She had a couple of really, really fat clients. Like not just big. These people were massive. Corpulent. Morbidly obese, couldn’t- fit- their –arses- in- Angela’s -counselling -chair type of fat.

Valerie-Dawn had first come to see Angela because she wanted to lose weight. She was depressed and anxious and traumatised from being bullied, but Valerie-Dawn wouldn’t have that, she just wanted to lose weight. Angela liked to start where her clients were at, so she went with it and hypothesised to herself that they’d get to the trauma eventually.

“So, Valerie-Dawn, what do you think your life be like if you lost weight?” Angela asked her at about 4.35pm that afternoon.

“Well, I’d be thinner” said Valerie Dawn emphatically.

“And, what would life be like if you were thinner”?

“Well, I’d look better, wouldn’t I?”

“And if you were thinner, your life would be…”

“What?” spat Valerie-Dawn.

“You tell me what life would be like if you were thinner”.

“Well…….um… I…. I might like myself better” said Valerie Dawn quietly.

“Ah, and if you liked yourself better…”

Valerie-Dawn looked as though she might cry. Angela sat still and gazed at her. Her thoughts wandered. Jabba the Hutt came to mind and she marvelled that Jabba the Hutt was crying. Or was it that big fat wrinkly alien from Dr Who, whose name escaped her just then? Maybe Valerie-Dawn was a combination of the two, mixed in with a bit of sumo wrestler and one of those dogs that have hundreds of wrinkly skin folds that get infected and cover the poor little bastard’s eyes – a Shar-pei or something. Valerie-Dawn had wrinkly jowls like a Shar-pei, and Angela could see that Valerie-Dawn’s cankles had grown since the last time she’d seen her. Must be retaining fluid, she thought.

Valerie-Dawn’s corpulent face was getting red and there was snot streaming from her nose and her chin was wobbling from the effort of trying not to cry. She screwed up her eyes and shouted.

“I might like myself better! I’ll like myself!”

Angela started slightly, recovered quickly, and nodded. “And if you liked yourself, then…”

There was silence for a few moments and Valerie-Dawn heaved her enormous bosom and shifted her massive bottom in the chair a little, well, as much as her squashed hips would allow. She looked at Angela with hatred, with vitriol, and opened her mouth. Angela thought Valerie-Dawn might vomit.

“But I don’t fucken like myself do i? I fucken hate myself!”

Angela waited, knowing there was more.

“You know what? I had chocolate Freddos for breakfast today, and I had six Krispy Kremes at morning tea; there was a farewell for Damien who’s leaving. I took the leftovers, I took the box of leftover Krispy Kremes into the toilets and I ate them in there so no-one could see me. I felt sick but I just stuffed them in. And I had chicken schnitzel sandwhich and a bucket of chips for lunch, and tonight I’m gunna have dim sims”. Valerie Dawn was panting and she folded her arms across her chest.

“Jesus”, thought Angela. She couldn’t bring herself to ask the next “what would life be like”? question.

“You really do hate yourself don’t you?” she asked instead.

Then, Valerie-Dawn did something Angela had never seen an adult do. Valerie-Dawn heaved a huge deep breath in, and then held it. Her face blew out like a giant scarlet puffer-fish. Angela waited for the exhalation, but it didn’t come. She was used to sitting in silence, letting the story formulate, so she decided to just sit and wait.

Angela was fascinated and stared at Valerie-Dawn’s big round face and her tiny piggy eyes and her now-puce skin. And she waited. And still Valerie-Dawn didn’t breathe.

“Exhale Valerie-Dawn. Exhale” commanded Angela. “Valerie Dawn! Breathe out”.

But Valerie-Dawn would not. Angela could see beads of sweat gathering above Valerie-Dawn’s pale, sparse eyebrows. Angela got out of her chair, walked across the room to Valerie- Dawn and crouched down, her face even with Valerie-Dawn’s and blew hard and suddenly into her face. It was something she used to do when her cat was a kitten, and wouldn’t retract its claws out of Angela’s arm when she was playing with her. Like a circuit breaker. Angela wasn’t sure if there was anything in the psychology literature about this technique, but she did it anyway.

Valerie-Dawn let out a huge, stale breath and Angela rocked back on her heels. She felt like she was trapped in a wind tunnel. Valerie-Dawn wobbled her head a little and Angela could see her massive chest and stomach heaving, as she struggled to regain control of her breath.

Angela returned to her chair and gazed at Valerie-Dawn, feeling a little in awe of Valerie-Dawn’s steely determination to stop breathing; the colour of her face, the way she’s just suddenly made the decision to hold her breath. Valerie-Dawn was panting, and Angela was aware of her own heart racing and she made a conscious decision to breathe slowly and deeply and within a few moments Valerie-Dawn was mirroring her, and she began to relax a bit.

“I need to go to the toilet” said Valerie-Dawn. She extricated herself from her chair and opened the door of the consulting room. “Where’s the key?”

Angela got up and retrieved the key to the women’s toilets from behind reception, and watched Valerie-Dawn limp, like a penguin swaying from side to side, out the backdoor and up the pathway to the toilet block.

“Jesus Christ on a bike”, thought Angela, and went back into her room and picked up her phone to text her partner.

“Jesus” she wrote. “Valerie-Jabba the Hutt – Dawn just tried to kill herself in my office”.

“WTF?” wrote Claire. “Are you ok? What happened?”

Angela liked that Claire asked first if she was ok, and then what happened. Claire was good like that. Claire is a much better therapist than me, she thought. Claire is a good person. Be like Claire, she thought.

“She just held her breath and went purple”.

“What? Where is she now?”

“In the toilet”.

“Christ! Did she really think she’d suicide by doing that? Holding her breath like a little kid?”

“Dunno. I’ll ask her in a minute. See you at home honey. Oi vey”.

Angela could hear Valerie-D awn clumping back across the wooden floorboards of the waiting room, toss the key on the reception desk and then wobbled her way back into the room. She slumped heavily into the chair.

“Do you want some water”?

“Nuh”. Angela poured some anyway.

The two women stared at each other, Valerie-Dawn’s eyes narrowed and she put her tongue into the inside of her cheek, and pushed her head back into the chair. This action gave her an extra chin. This was Valerie-Dawn’s defiant look, and it pissed Angela off no end. But Angela decided she needed to admonish herself for being such an arrogant fattist; this woman needed her help, not her condemnation. But, she also wanted to see how long Valerie-Dawn could hold her breath. She wrestled with her conscience a few moments, picked up her pen and notepad, crossed her legs and cleared her throat.“So, Valerie-Dawn”, began Angela, “what do you think your life would be like if you keep on hating yourself?”

*****************

“The Gift”

She was a small girl in a baggy blue bikini. Her little breathing belly hung a bit over the front of her blue and white checky pants.

She was standing on the shore contemplating the sea anemones and she squatted down to get a closer look. She didn’t have her glasses on, so she had to get down really close, and she squinted. The sun was hot and she could feel her shoulders and back tingling with the heat.

“It’s gunna crack the ton today”. This from her big brother whose smooth brown legs with their downy blonde hairs appeared beside her.

“What?” She shifted her focus from the anemones and looked up at him.

Every day this summer she’d woken up feeling squeaky with excitement and before she’d even run down the steps to the landing and into the toilet, she scrambled into her bathers. Sometimes they were still damp and sandy from the day before and they were a bit hard to put on. She’d get the top all tangled up. She’d grab her blue towelling hat and smear zinc cream on her nose.

One day, just as she had successfully wrestled her chest into her bikini top, Sean had charged into her bedroom and said “Come on Jules, we need to go now. Right now”.

“What, without breakfast? Does Mum know?”

“Nah, no breakfast; we’ll get something later. Come On. Where’s ya hat?”

He hurried her out of the house and down the back lane. Church Street was deserted and quiet at this time of the day, none of the shops were open yet. Because of that, the street had an eerie, expectant feel as if it was lying in wait for the day to get going, as if it had something planned for the people yet to get up and start their mornings. Something that they wouldn’t get up for if they knew about it beforehand.

Sean and Julie walked hand in hand down the street and turned left when they got to the church, and then made for the beach. She was 5 and he was 8, and she had to run and skip a bit to keep up with him.

“Why are we going so fast?” she asked, panting.

“I wanna show you something, I don’t want you to miss out on seeing it”.

“Oh, what is it? Is it a s’prise?”

“Yeah, I reckon it will be. Come on, walk a bit faster Jules”.

They got to Beach Road, it was still so early, so still. And because of that there was no traffic and they didn’t have to run across to the middle of the road and stand on the traffic island, hopping from foot to foot on the hot bitumen waiting for the traffic coming the other way. They crossed the road and walked down the sandy track that led to the back of the bathing boxes and then the sand.

“Are you ready Jules?” Sean let go of his sister’s hand and led the way to the front of the beach house.

“Yes! I’m ready” she whispered. She felt as though she was about to see something very big, too big for her to even imagine. She hesitated until finally Sean had to grab her by the hand again and push her through the narrow gap between the beach huts. She fell into the soft sand, and as she looked up she saw before her, hundreds, thousands, maybe a bazillion she thought, of shining, sparkly creatures waving their tendrils in the early morning sun.

Her brother had given her a gift. The gift of a sunrise so beautiful she’d remember it forever, long after he’d stopped talking to her, long after he moved to America with the Soprano, long after the bathing boxes were bulldozed to create a marina.

“Oh the sea anemones! Look how many there are!”

It was very low tide, the sun was glinting off the water and as far as she could see were the creatures she loved. She was in awe, and she crouched down and stuck a finger into the very centre of an anemone and marvelled at the strength of this magical sea animal.

They heard a strange cry and a wail, and turned to see a woman in an old fashioned dress screaming and crying, running towards them.

“Kids, kids! Where’s the nearest phone? My bloody shitbox of a car has conked out up there on Beach Road”.

“There’s a phone box at the lifesaving club – up the beach”.

Sean indicated a squat brown building 200 metres from where we were. She turned and ran off in the direction he’d pointed.

“Who was that?” Jules asked. “She was wearing her nightie”.

“Dunno” he said, and looked out to sea. “Jeez it’s hot. It’s gunna crack the ton today”.