A short story called "Quietly Exiting the Stage"

Quietly Exiting the Stage

So Michael was finally going to do it – he was finally going to end his life. And all that. He was sure. This was it. He was absolutely sure. He’d be stupid not to, really. That was the thing: as much as he could appreciate why living had the potential to be really fucking good and beautiful and all the rest of it, and while he did love nature and his mum and ice-cream and the films of the Coen brothers and the book Infinite Jest, and while he had a really good friend called Peter, while these were all the pros, he had also spent most of his life desperately unhappy, and it wasn’t going to get any better, and he was sick of it – he was sick of being tormented by anxiety and dread and paranoia, sick of being in a near permanent state of blackest despair. Plus David Foster Wallace himself committed suicide and he was really smart and clever and had good ideas, so how could it be irrational? But he didn’t need other people to verify his rationality anyway – that was dumb. That was irrational. Which was funny. Anyway the thing was that he didn’t even know why he was still weighing up the pros and cons of life vs death; he had been trying to systematically figure that out for the last year or so, and, as difficult as it was because his mind was pretty fucking recalcitrant – which was often something that made him wild with rage and then despair and sometimes made him want to bash his head against the wall, but only really in an abstract way – he was now pretty much adamant that death was the way more rational option.

 Which was why he was in the study of the family home, sat on the swivel chair, gripping a pen, staring at a blank sheet of lined paper in a plain A4 notebook, and thinking about what to write in his suicide note. He was also thinking about a lot of other things, such as the fact that he had only found this notebook just minutes before, in the study’s old, dark-wood cupboard. Like with most sights he’d seen in the last week – a week whose entirety was spent in the knowledge that he would kill himself today (he had set the date for his own demise precisely one week before it would occur because he thought it would be, like, most rational to be brutally practical and matter-of-fact about his suicide) – he had made a real effort to sort of appreciate the cupboard. As he stared at it closely and inhaled its musky smell, he had even whispered to himself the words, ‘The last time I will see this old, beautiful cupboard’, which imbued the moment with a great Hollywood poignancy and gravitas. Of course, he had also whispered that phrase (except with different words after “this”, based on what he was looking at) for all the other sights he had made an effort to appreciate that week, and the practice had been tinged with irony even when he first did it, about his bed (which he was sitting on at that time) because, you know, it was pathetically cliché and lame, and it was also untrue that it would be “the last time” in the case of the bed, plus the whole ritual devolved into facetiousness immediately anyway, because after saying it was “The last time [he would see] the bed”, he started saying the phrase about, like, everything around him that his eyes fixated on, including his own body parts: “The last time I will see my leg, the last time I will see that hair on my leg, the last time I will see my hamstring wobbling, the last time I will see the reflection of my face in the window.” This ridiculousness was somewhat amusing to him at the time and also quickly meant the whole ritual had turned into a full-blown joke, although not a really funny joke; he had soon stopped chuckling after he said the phrase because that had become contrived-seeming and weird. But after he said it for the last time, with regards to that cupboard (he knew it was the last time because after he did finish staring deeply into the grains of the cupboard’s wood and all the rest of it, he had sort of made a note-to-self in his head that it would definitely be the last time, he had emphasised internally that it would be the last time, which was also rather Hollywood and thus which he also kind of phrased ironically in his brain) he sort of wistfully blew some air out of his nose and smiled slightly.

Another thing he was thinking about was the fact that, at frequent points throughout the entire past week, he had imagined himself being watched and judged by someone, often a specific person – like his mum or dad or his now distant friend Lucy or Peter – or he had imagined being filmed, both things which very often happened when he was alone generally: a weird quirk of his mind which pretty much informed most of his solitary behaviour, and which, when analysed, sometimes made him want to do the same abstract head-against-wall bashing mentioned previously.

Of course, he didn’t really know why he was thinking about any of this stuff, because, really, he was writing a suicide note and he should have been concentrating on that. Not that that was easy, because how the hell was he meant to start? Should he try to make it a pithy heartfelt statement to his parents just explaining that he was committing suicide, or should it be some elaborate essay that was really well written and impressive and which, like, explained everything – explained pretty much all the stuff his parents didn’t know about him and pretty much why he was committing suicide and apologised for hurting them, and then maybe got all philosophical on the nature of suicide and its popular representation, as well as depression, and the medicalisation of depression, and then maybe had some stuff about mortality in general and the afterlife, like basically a really good, sophisticated meditation on matters of life and death? But surely that was just incredibly pretentious and he was just doing it to show off and it was also really narcissistic, plus he was going to die soon anyway so what the hell did it matter? But maybe that was the wrong attitude, because he should care about this sort of thing, because he wasn’t just a dumb nihilist or whatever, he wasn’t just some emo or whatever; he actually wasn’t just ending his life for nothing, he still thought there was value in the world and stuff.

Eventually, Michael decided that he was just going to start and carefully write whatever came to his mind.

Dear mum and dad and whoever else reads this,

I know it’s pretty cliché to write a suicide note, and pretty lame to begin your suicide note by pointing out how cliché that is, but I guess there are some things that I’d like to tell you before I hang myself, which I’m about to do. […]

When he was on his 12^th page, after a few hours solid writing, Michael’s dad walked in the front door and Michael aborted the suicide plan. 

A short story called "Each to their own"

Each to their own

The TV is on, blaring in the background, but Elizabeth is looking down at her phone. She is scrolling through her newsfeed: perusing the photos of couples embracing and people at nightclubs wearing their going-out clothes and family snaps involving children with soppy captions; reading statuses about how happy people are to be in love and how appalling it is that a certain establishment treated them in a certain way and how draconian (what does that word mean?) the recent decision of the government to institute laws limiting press freedom is; judging all the things that her friends have liked – purposely appalling, anti-humorous memes that can make you laugh if you really force yourself to, the inane posts of famous comedians or celebrities, the ‘funny’, usually incredibly sexist pictures and posts from ‘genuine humour’ pages, the pictures of very thin women typically posing in underpants or leggings with their ass or tits the clear focus, and Dan Bilzerian’s photos of himself surrounded by a host of scantily clad women in provocative poses, all captioned with a vile, sexist phrase. None of these things are interesting in the slightest, but she keeps scrolling down her newsfeed. If she were to stop and think about why she is doing it, she would stop doing it. As it is, she knows she is going to keep doing it until she reaches something she has seen before, and then she is going to reply to some texts, and then she is going to check out Snapchat, and then she is going to watch TV with her full attention. Or maybe she isn’t, coz there doesn’t seem to be anything on. Maybe she is going to watch a DVD. In any case, she is going to do something. Of course she is going to do something.

In the kitchen, Julie is making the salad component of the steak meal the family always has on Friday nights. Her laptop is sitting on the bench about half a metre in front of the big, white ceramic salad bowl already carrying an abundance of cos lettuce leaves, some chunks of avocado and some finely sliced Spanish onion. She stares down at the laptop as she adds the slices of tomato she has just chopped up. She is watching the British crime drama she missed last night on ABC iview. A man is getting beaten. His face is covered in blood and his nose is crooked and globs of blood plop out of it. His nose has clearly been fractured by the previous punch. The assailant suddenly flees down the alleyway. As he dissolves into the darkness, Julie goes to the pantry to fetch the oil and balsamic vinegar for the dressing. When she retrieves them and returns to the bench, she makes up the dressing with an expert deftness and pours it onto the salad. On the screen, they are back at the police station, and the two female protagonists are chatting at the front of the shot about their utterly different perspectives on the nervous woman they interviewed about ten minutes before in the show, and in the background people are hurrying here and there, and a phone rings and then gets picked up by a black officer sitting at his desk. Then out of right of screen comes the middle-aged, balding boss with his usual sour expression: “Peter Jones is in a critical condition at hospital. Apparently, he was found in an alleyway with a broken nose and a gash in the back of his head from which he was haemorrhaging blood.” She tosses the salad with two big salad spoons as the two female protagonists voice their reactions. Up, up, up.

In the same general area of the house, John is sitting in front of the family’s big Mac computer watching an episode of Grand Designs on Youtube, using headphones so that its audio does not have to compete with his wife’s. It is about half way through the build, which has been delayed by terrible weather and trouble in getting loans from the bank, and the couple, who are living in a caravan next to the muddy construction site in a field somewhere in the North of England, are saying it has been hard to cope and then the man, whose name is George, mentions his wife, whose name is Katie, has fallen pregnant since Kevin’s last visit. Kevin congratulates them. Now Kevin is walking in front of the house, explaining what still needs to be done and how they are still yet to import the double glass from France. John shifts in his chair slightly, without moving his eyes.

So what am I doing? Typing this up of course. And as I do, I am staring at my computer screen and listening to Sufjan Stevens through my headphones.     

A short story called "Tiny Tower, a Description of Transporting a Bitizen to a Virtual Floor on the Virtual Elevator"

Tiny Tower; a Description of Transporting a Bitizen to a Virtual Floor on the Virtual Elevator

In the free, Smartphone, game ‘app’ entitled Tiny Tower, a small red square with two white, oppositely facing, slightly-spaced-apart equilateral triangles positioned in the middle of it (the direction wherein the apex of both triangles is ‘pointing’ representing the two opposite functions of the virtual elevator, travelling up and travelling down) frequently appears in the bottom left of the in-game screen [just above the tally of the game’s virtual currency of player-earned coins, which are in a state of perpetual increase – unless the game has only just been initiated by the player or the game has been reset, both of which contingencies indicate a functional virtual store has not yet been virtually constructed after the necessary player-performed process of purchasing a virtual floor with the Tiny Tower virtual coin currency and selecting a virtual floor type from five options – “Creative”, “Retail”, “Recreation”, “Service” and “Food” – and subsequently either waiting for its completion, which is a longer period of time the higher the number of the virtual floor, or by using one of the Bitizens (which are very small, human-like virtual-organisms ostensibly composed of ‘bits’ (hence their name), who have randomly generated  appearances with potential variations in gender, skin colour, hair colour, hair style, clothing colour, clothing style and accessories, for all of which variations there are an enormous amount of further micro-variations, which means an enormous potential for individual uniqueness (according to the NimbleBit developer, Ian Marsh, as of the 1.1 update, there are 4,294,967,295 Bitizens, rendering the chance of Bitizen duplication effectively negligible), though of course limits all Bitizens to exactly the same height and ‘physique’ (regarding the latter, they are all 2-Dimensional and have the same width)) called the Construction VIP Bitizen, which is one of the five types of VIP Bitizens (the others being a Celebrity, whose virtual function is to  attract a crowd of 50 Bitizens to the virtual store whereto the player delivers them; a Big Spender, whose virtual function is to virtually select one item at the virtual store whereto the player has delivered them and purchase its entire virtual stock; a Delivery Man, whose virtual function is to reduce the virtual stocking time of the virtual store whereto they are sent; and a Real Estate Agent, whose virtual function is to inexplicably conjure and then ‘move in’ as many Bitizens to the virtual residential floor previously designated by the player as there are virtual vacancies in that floor) whose virtual function is to reduce the time required for the virtual construction of a virtual floor by precisely 3 hours – due to the constant virtual profits which result from the constant virtual purchase of virtual items by Bitizens, and/or the virtual profits resulting from the transportation of Bitzens to the floors they desire whereto to be transported (as represented  by a number which is positioned above the Bitizen when they are in the virtual elevator), and/or the virtual profits resulting from transporting a Big Spender to a virtual store and him/her purchasing all the virtual stock, and/or the virtual profits resulting from the exchange of the other in-game currency, BitBux (which are earned randomly and sporadically instead of virtual coins after transporting Bitizens to the virtual floor they desire whereto to be transported, or after completing a virtual floor’s virtual construction, or after virtually employing a Bitizen in their Dream Job (whereof they all have only one, which is listed in their compendious individual summaries, which can be accessed either by pressing the floor whereon they are stood and subsequently selecting their individual thumbnail-photo, or by pressing the small green rectangular-shaped Menu button located in the bottom right of the in-game screen and subsequently selecting the button in the top row out of the four rows of buttons on the far left out of the columns of buttons with a picture of three ‘multi’-racial, ‘multi’-age male Bitizens as its symbolic representation and the word “Bitizens” below it and which, once pressed, triggers a screen whereon there are pictures of all the Bitizens in a list with a length determined by the amount of Bitizens inhabiting the player’s virtual tower, each of them replete with their ‘Bio’: name, current virtual employment, virtual skills (described in a numerical rank out of nine in the 5 colour-coded virtual store types), Dream Job, and current virtual mood (represented by an emoticon with three variations – red and frowning for ‘sad’, cream-coloured and horizontally mouthed for ‘neutral’, and green and smiling for ‘happy’ – all of which is based entirely on whether they have the appropriate virtual skill for their virtual employment or whether they have their Dream Job), or as a reward for enduring a voluntary advertisement for another game (a method of earning BitBux not always available to exploit), or simply after purchasing them using real-life currency) for coins in the virtual Bank (which can be accessed after pressing the green Menu button located in the bottom right of the in-game screen and then the Bank button which appears in the Menu screen as a button in the second-row-from-bottom out of the four rows of buttons on the far right out of the three columns of buttons with a picture of stacked coins as its symbolic representation and the word “Bank” below it and which, once pressed, has four exchange options: 1 Bux for 250 coins, 5 Bux for 1,500 coins, 20 Bux for 20,000 coins and 50 Bux for 100,000 coins, each available simply by the press of a button))] indicating that someone is waiting in the Lobby, waiting to ascend the virtual tower. Once the button is pressed, the screen either shifts downwards or remains stationary, both, depending on the previous screen positioning, ensuring that the player is looking at the Lobby level of the screen where an inexplicably conjured Bitizen is standing with an impassive expression inside the virtual elevator, waiting to be transported to one of the virtual floors, whose specific identity is elucidated, as aforementioned, once the part of the screen whereon the virtual elevator is projected is touched by the player (the action triggers a floor number to appear above the Bitizen) a process which also triggers the appearance of two large buttons just to the right of the virtual elevator, one an ‘Up’ arrow and one a ‘Down’ arrow – both redolent of the symbols contained within the elevator-notification button aforedescribed – either of which the player presses depending upon whether they desire to go Up or Down, both of which buttons the player may be required to alternate effectively in order to deliver the Bitizen to the desired virtual floor (though the ‘Down’ button is usually superfluous because the virtual elevator is programmed to drop gradually into precise stationary alignment with the virtual floor whereto it is nearest when the upward movement is stopped by the cessation of the player’s digital pressure on the Up button) and if it is the virtual floor whereto the Bitizen desired to go, he/she will alight from the virtual elevator, and, as aforementioned, the player will acquire either virtual coins equal to the virtual floor’s number multiplied by two or 1 Bitbux as a reward for this action, the latter of which is rarer, whose rareness means that if the player acquires it, it is followed by the sudden-appearance of a ‘Pop-up box’ informing them in a congratulatory tone, as conveyed by the exclamation mark on the end of the sentence, that a Bitizen has “tipped” them 1 Bux.

This tip stimulates a rush of dopamine to player’s brain, maintaining their interest. The player knows, of course, that if they can acquire enough Bux, they may perform a number of other actions beneficial to the development of their virtual tower. For example, they may upgrade their elevator.

Consequently, the player sits and stares at the screen for minutes and hours on end, performing the endless, ceaseless transportation of Bitizens up the virtual elevator chute, up this floor and that, up and down, up and down, inanity perpetuating itself like the constant accumulation of virtual coins on the bottom left of the screen.

       

A short story called "The Story of the Inception of a Global Phenomenon"

The Story of the Inception of a Global Phenomenon

He was extremely short, yet also scrawny; he had a small, pale and acne-marked face; and his dull ginger hair was shaped into an unfashionable fringe. Also, one of his eyelids drooped in a miserable way, lending him a look of permanent unattractive sleepiness.

He was standing in the playground – in the corner of the great asphalt space, at the edge of one of the basketball courts – standing and staring, with a serious expression, at the action occurring on the playground in front of him. There was a lot of action: intense games of basketball, skilful handball contests and spirited games of ‘tip’. There was noise all around him too: the cries of boys competing in games had melded into a loud, indistinct rabble of noise, distinctions between victory and loss entirely blurred. All of them were ebullient, gregarious and jocular boys; all of them were so different to him.

They didn’t understand anything of the world, they were all so ignorant. Only he knew the reality of the world. He had experienced life on the periphery, as an outsider, as a hideous and disfigured pariah! Normal society had spurned him, but he was not defeated. No, it was an advantage being an outcast, a blessing. His shunning had led to his realising his true purpose, his ultimate destiny in life: he would be an observer, an examiner of human nature – an interpreter of the mysteries of the world. He was to be a philosopher. He – unlike all of those in the playground – understood the truly callousness and cruelty of the world. They were all playing basketball in naivety of the truth – the truth of it all.

How can they smile when they will all eventually die? he wondered profoundly.

Standing there, still in the corner, a basketball suddenly landed next to him with a loud thump and he flinched. His serious gaze and rigid pose were restored as it bounced past him, slowly diminuendoeing. Samuel Peters – trailing it – began sprinting in his direction, his body hulking and sweaty, his gait lurching and awkward. It was a truly grotesque sight.

As he approached he spoke: “Hanging with your mates I see, Thom.”

Thom – thinking about how stupid he was, how oafish and juvenile and immature and ignorant he was – said nothing. He just stared at Samuel Peters, directly in the eyes.

“Okayyyyy” Samuel Peters said as he ran past him, towards the rapidly escaping ball. When he grabbed it and ran back towards the basketball courts, he didn’t try to engage Thom again.

When Thom saw Samuel re-immerse himself in his basketball game, he began humming to himself. It was a song he’d come up with in his head:

 “I’m a creep. I’m a weirdo. What the hell am I even doing here? I don’t belong here.”

He imagined a rock band playing it and started making guitar noises:

“Duh-dah! … Duh-dah!”

Then, all of a sudden, he heard a voice, right next to him. He felt his face flush. Where had it come from? There was only shadow. It spoke again: “Cool song man”. Someone was right next to him!

Out of the blackness next to Thom, a tall, gangly boy with a large face, great bulging eyes and slight kyphosis suddenly appeared.

“Where did you come from?” Thom asked in an accusatory tone, red in the face from having his highly confessional song intruded upon.

“I came from the shadows, man.”

“How?”

“I just did, man.”

“What do you want?”

“I want to make you an offer, Thom. We’ve been watching you, me and the guys. We’ve been watching you closely, Thom. We think you’re the guy we’re looking for.”

“What? Why? How do you know my na –”

“Shh, Thom, enough of your questions; you’ll have plenty of time for them later.”

“What is going on though?”

“Alright man, I’ll tell you. It’s just that… me and the other guys think you’re the right man to join our band.”

“I don’t want to join a band.”

“This is not a normal band, Thom, not at all. It’s different. We’re all people like you Thom. We’re all pariahs, lepers ostracised and shunned by a narrow, prescriptive society where everyone has to follow orders, where everyone is forced to accept their simple but meaningless place like a cog in a massive machine. We’re against that, Thom, we’re against the Wolf at the Door. We’re fighting it. And we need you, Thom. The truth is we need you.”  

Thom maintained his serious, impassive expression, giving nothing at all away. Secretly, he was excited but still somewhat wary – a little dubious of their true intellectuality, and of their sincerity and devotion to the cause. He’d faced a lot of disappointment in his life before; he didn’t want this to be more.

He chose his words wisely: “What’s the band called?”

“We haven’t come up with a name yet.”

Then it was sorted. He’d join because he could choose the name. This band would have to be under his control; he’d make that clear when he met the rest of them.

“I’ll join.”

The strange, gangly boy offered his hand. Thom took it and they shook. The gangly boy slunk back into the shadows, whispering as he did that he would see him on Friday afternoon, in Music Studio 4.  

Thom Yorke knew what he would call the band now: On a Friday.

A short story called "The Slope"

The Slope

He was sitting on his bike looking down at the steep slope that led to the road’s end, and behind it, at the dense brooding forest. His sister was on her bike next to him. The bitumen looked hard and menacing. The slope looked scary. He was frightened – he didn’t want to go down.

“Come on James, you can just use your brakes, it’ll be fine," his sister said.

“But what if I’m going too fast?”

“You won’t. If you put your brakes on enough you’ll go down really slowly.”

He was still scared. But if he could do it it would be really brave. He looked down at the slope: it was sinister, menacing. He looked down at his hands where they were gripping the brakes on both sides: the brakes looked small, inadequate. But he had brakes. He could go down really slowly with brakes like Miranda said. It would be fine.

He was going to do it.

“I’m doing it,” he said, looking at his sister with a serious, manly expression.

“Good luck,” she said, smiling.

This was it.

He released the brakes from both hands simultaneously; he started rolling, inching forward towards the drop; he was going slowly, he was calm; he tipped forward onto the slope; now he was going down, going straight down, the bike was gaining momentum, faster faster he was hurtling down, straight down the slope, he was going too fast going, too fast, this was bad, he needed to stop it; he grabbed the right brake as hard as he could. In an instant the bike’s front wheel stopped dead, the bike jerked upward and he was bucked off it; he was flying through the air, flying towards the hard, rough bitumen, about to be hurt, about to have his skin ripped off; he reached out his hands to brace himself for the terrible impact… He hit the bitumen in an unceremonious instant, hands first then knees.

He was dumbfounded.

What happened?

He was lying on the ground, right at the bottom of the slope. He looked around. To his right he saw his bike – his new, blue bike, his main birthday present – lying, with its handlebar twisted, on the ground. He was angry at it. Why did it have to do that to him?

All of a sudden, the pain of his wounds began to register. It hurt, it hurt so much. Tears were welling in his eyes. He shouldn’t have listened to Miranda, he shouldn’t have listened. The brakes didn’t work; the brakes had flipped him off the bike. He shouldn’t have listened to her. It hurt. His knees and hands were stinging so much. Now Miranda, that liar, that evil liar, was running down the slope towards him, saying, with a sympathetic tone in her voice, the words, “Are you alright?” No he wasn’t alright, he wasn’t alright at all; it hurt. It hurt and she was wrong, he shouldn’t have listened to her; she was wrong. Tears were streaming down his face and he was moaning. It hurt, it hurt so much. He looked down at his right knee and saw an ugly red wound. It stung on his right elbow. He tried to pull around his elbow so he could see it with his eyes; all he could see was its edge, but there he could see the edge of an ugly graze. Aww it hurt, it hurt so much. The palms of his hands, they were stinging the worst of all. As he turned his hands around so that the palms were facing him, he theorised that despite how much they stung, they probably didn’t have a wound on them because the skin never came off the hands. But he was wrong. There it was, a hideous sight: his palms, usually pinkish and soft, had morphed into a black and green mess of lumpy, loose skin.  

He screamed. He screamed loud enough for the whole street to hear. It hurt even more now; it was excruciating. His hands were broken, his hands were broken. With his hands held out in front of him, away from his face, he stood up and ran. He ran past his sister, he ran up the street, screaming and wailing at the top of his lungs. His hands were broken, he had to get home, his hands were broken. He shouldn’t have listened to Miranda, she was wrong. He had been right: he should never have gone down the slope. Now his hands were broken. And what if they couldn’t be repaired? His hands were black, why were they black? Black was bad, they were really bad. He needed to get home. Home, he was running towards it. He was turning left now, only one hundred metres to go till home. Home had mummy, he needed to get back to mummy. He was still screaming as he ran; faster faster faster. Houses were going past in a blur on either side of him, the bloodthirsty bitumen was a blur beneath his feet. He was approaching the driveway now, its façade familiar and comforting. He was almost home now, he had almost arrived. He would be in mummy’s arms soon. Mummy would know what to do, he would be safe with mummy. He ran down the driveway, still screaming, the tears still streaming down his face. He saw his dad, wearing a blue shirt and gardening gloves, pruning the bushes with secateurs up ahead. He ran up the driveway towards him and his dad turned towards him, secateurs in hand, a concerned look on his face. 

“James, what’s wrong?”

There was no time to properly reply. “I’m hurt,” he moaned as he ran on, past daddy, towards the brown brick structure with the blue door, that familiar place, where he would at last be ok. He kicked open the screen door with his foot and ran into the house screaming “Mummy!” He ran through the living room, towards the kitchen, panicked, frenzied.

And there she was.

A short story called "The Idea of Innocence"

The Idea of Innocence

Mr Terrason hated his job. The main reason for this was because he hated kids. That was because kids were so incredibly stupid and they frustrated him. His job was to teach them how to be less stupid and even when he did – even when the smartest ones would finish the institution in which he taught – they would still be incredibly stupid. All he did was completely fruitless and unrewarding and he realised this. Sometimes he wished he could turn back the clock twenty years and choose another degree apart from primary school teaching because it was surely the worst decision he ever made.

It was lunchtime and Mr Terrason was standing in the playground, waiting for some retarded kid to run too fast and trip over and graze their knee and start crying as if the whole world was ending. ‘God, don’t they ever think about anyone other than themselves?’ he wondered. He was surveying the scene as he stood: in one corner there were girls playing hopscotch, in another corner there were boys playing handball, in the third corner were boys and girls running around, and in the fourth corner were kindergarten kids frolicking about. ‘God, they’re all so stupid’ he asserted in his mind.

As he was standing there, all pensive and nonchalantly pensive, one boy suddenly ran straight in front of him, brushing his trousers. Mr Terrason was infuriated at the boy’s obnoxiously carefree spirit and shouted at him, “Slow down or else you’ll fall over and hurt yourself.” He wanted to add the three words, “You little retard” but knew the consequences of such an action. ‘Fuck my life is shit.’

Mr Terrason had, after all, just been through a bitter divorce from his wife (she wanted it, not him) and had a dead-end job which involved spending his entire days with kids who knew basically nothing about anything, still believed in magic and were, for the most part, incredibly unintelligent. ‘Some of them can’t even work out the two-times tables; I can barely fathom how retarded they are’, he thought pompously.

Fortunately, despite being lost in a great vortex of such thoughts, Mr Terrason was still able to survey the playground with a hawklike focus. His fierce gaze was focused in particular on the insolent child he had reprimanded only seconds before.

He was watching as the child fell over. Just adjacent to the steps that led to the old wooden assembly hall, just in front of the shady wood-chip-bedded garden, he had fallen. It was all over in a second… one fateful second.

I can see the scene in my dreams: my body moving forward, my legs striding gracefully forward below me and cool wind rushing against my cheeks; in front of me the flicking legs of Harrison – just need a little more effort then I will get him – just a little more effect then I will tip him at last; my mouth is dry but I am getting closer.

But then I misstep… I misstep, I stumble, I stutter and flap my arms, oh it is so desperate – so hopeless – and I am tipping and tipping and tipping then that’s it. I fall. First hands then knees then I am limp; I am limp and it hurts, it stings, it is excruciating and the ground is cold in the shade; it is cold, rough, unfeeling asphalt.

Brutal, barren and grey.

The crying started immediately and crescendoed to a terrible howl when the child gazed upon his bloodied knees.  ‘Shit’ Mr Terrason thought as he began to run towards the retarded child.

“AAHH, OWW, I want my mummy, OWWW, AAHH, AAHH.” It was a hideous wail, so vulnerable and desolate, like the whole world had crashed in on it, like the whole world had conspired to hurt it. Like everything that had led up to that moment in its life had been utterly pointless and it was about to die. Like everything it knew and had ever known had all been for nothing because now it had a gaping, bloody, unfixable wound gouged deep into its knee and it was all going to end and everything would be lost and there was no hope and the world was a pitiless place, an unfeeling place, and the universe was gigantic and emotionless and the universe was really no more than an infinitely dark and mysterious vacuum and their lives were insignificant and useless and it was all lost, it was all lost, it was all lost. “WHHYY?” A desperate plea that nobody could ever answer. Why did it happen to them? Why did it have to happen to them? The universe was horrible, hideous – it thrived off suffering and sorrow and fear.     

Mr Terrason picked up the whiny little shit and took him to the school nurse, who bandaged up the deadly wound while the child continued to cry. Its dejected moaning gradually subsided into a self-pitying whimper as the bandaging was completed. Eventually noise ceased coming from the child at all when it was given a lollipop; it had realised the world wasn’t ending.

‘Children don’t realise very much at all’ Mr Terrason asserted as he watched the initial repair work being performed on the knee.

He wished he was a child again often.   

A short story called "The Funeral"

The Funeral

Tom was sitting on a pew in the small chapel, surrounded by crying people. Some peoples’ eyes were just welling with tears, while others were full-blown weeping, tears streaming down their faces, eyes being dabbed with handkerchiefs. Some bodies were even being racked. His mum, sitting just to his left, wasn’t that grief-stricken, but she was obviously crying.

Tom, however, felt very little. Except confused, that is. He wondered if his expression was sufficiently sombre; he exaggerated his frown just to make sure. He wondered if he should make a bigger show of sadness and solicitude. Should he try to cry? No – that would be dishonest. But he didn’t know if he should be feeling more emotion. After all, Ma was his great-grandmother, he did visit her fairly often. Then again, he never really knew her. She was always just a frail, gaunt, liver-spotted reptilianly-wrinkly old woman with a soft croaky voice who lived in a nursing home with her own room which had a placard next to the front door reading ‘Coral Mae Lye’. That was such a strange name, wasn’t it? She was always just a nice, perpetually smiling old lady who that one time they’d walked into her room had been watching some Royal ceremony or something on the ABC on her box TV, and who seemed to like scones with jam and cream when they went to that café to get them those few times, and who used to be Tom’s mum’s grandma, the mother of mum’s dead mum, and a long time ago used to have a husband whom everyone called ‘Pa’, with whom she used to live in a lovely house and grow lots of vegetables, and when his mum was a kid she used to visit Ma and Pa at their house a lot with Nerida and Ma used to make Pumpkin scones for her and Nerida and they were delicious according to mum. Pumpkin scones didn’t sound at all delicious to Tom.

The last time Tom had seen Ma was at her surprise 100^th birthday party. As he had sat crouched under the table in the RSL club function room, he remembered he had been a little worried that when Ma walked in and they all shouted “Happy Birthday Ma” and she saw the big banner saying “100” and all her grinning family members, the decades of them standing next to the tables arrayed around the big room, she would have a heart attack or something. And he had been very worried that she might not believe she were 100. It’s not like she seemed that demented, but he knew he personally couldn’t imagine being 100. 100, it was so old. He imagined that old people constantly forgot how old they were, had moments were they just forgot everything about their current situation, were 50 again – that is, until they caught a glance in the mirror. But when Ma walked in and everyone stood up and shouted “Happy Birthday” and she saw that so many people, some of whom she hadn’t seen for years, cared so much about her, she looked really happy.

After that moment, the day had stopped being about her. By Tom’s reckoning anyway. When dad had said that after lunch he would recruit Toby and muster up some cousins to play a cricket match on the grass outside, Tom had been really excited. He had thought he was going to star in the match, what with his rep cricket credentials and his fast bowling, opening batting and catching skills. He had thought he was going to impress Toby a lot, as well as that girl distant relative whom he’d never met before. Unfortunately, while he did impress Toby in the pre-game catching game, in the match the dream didn’t pan out and Tom ended up embarrassing himself after getting out bowled. After he attempted a huge hoik and the ball hit the tree they were using as the wicket, he was so disappointed and frustrated that he ended up having a tantrum. Toby had looked really unimpressed.

The coffin was moving off the stage on a noisy industrial conveyor belt, heading towards a furnace. To Tom, the idea of being cremated was terrifying. It seemed positively infernal. In his mind’s eye he could see flames engulfing a coffin, burning fiercely, crackling, all the while him, the deceased, possibly still alive, screaming but not being heard, feeling the air outside the coffin get hotter and hotter until… The rest was too confronting to imagine.

Generally, this place seemed a bit miserable to Tom. The idea of having his remains dealt with in such a dreary, unceremonious setting was very unattractive. But his mum seemed like she was too preoccupied with her grief to care about the aesthetic of the place. As Tom looked at her, she was drying her tears with a handkerchief, like people did in movies. She looked at him and smiled. In return, Tom attempted to add a subtle smile to his sombre look.

Miranda, who was sitting on the opposite side of their parents and who had tears on her face, then said something to mum and dad. Tom began to look around the room. He looked at the middle-aged man who had spoken, at various relatives, some of whom he obviously recognised, like Nerida, Angus and Charlotte, and a lot he didn’t. Most of them were crying. When he looked across the pew, he noticed even his dad had tears in his eyes.

The coffin had moved out of sight and the red curtains had closed on the stage. Everyone began to get up. The pews scraped loudly against the floor. Tom, leading his family in the tight crowd of mourners, shuffled out of the chapel and into the sun.

He was relieved it was over. 

A short story called "Something in the Dark"

Something in the Dark

Timothy is sprinting, a slippery pavement under him. It is cold and dark and rain is pouring down, wetting his tweed suit and splattering loudly on the concrete ground. Every few steps a lamppost looms creepily above him and he is bathed in sallow light. Then he is in the dark again.

Something is lurking in the darkness behind him. He saw it soon after he got off the routine 342 bus. It was dark then too, but he had still made out a flash of something in the gloom behind. A flash of something white and tall – and wide. Bureaucratic. The more he thinks about it the clearer the image gets. It’s a businessman. A pale, fat businessman. With a comb-over. Grinning. Grinning maniacally. Murderously. And he had a briefcase, a brown one. A brown one in his right hand.

It hadn’t stopped following him; he is sure of that. The more he runs, the closer he senses it gets.

Its thirst for blood cannot be slaked.

Timothy is getting tired. Soon he will be unable to run any further. He can already sense he is dropping his pace. His breaths are becoming more difficult and more painful. His mouth is parched and clogged with thick, waterless saliva.

He swallows some; it stings his throat as it goes down.

His legs feel heavier and heavier, and his clothes are becoming more and more soaked. Sweat slides down his forehead, warmer than the rain.

He looks behind him, for just a moment: through the blackness, he sees a flash. The businessman is still pursuing him, close behind. He begins to sing the tune of Mary had a Little Lamb with his fast, shallow breaths. He looks behind him once more: he sees a flash again, this time closer.

For a moment, Timothy sees himself doddering to a halt, exhausted, absolutely unable to go on. He watches as he collapses to his knees. He watches as he takes out his crucifix necklace from under his shirt, kisses the small gold symbol and begins fervently praying. The movements of his mouth seem to indicate he is whispering “Please save me” again and again. The view switches to Timothy’s own as the businessman approaches him. His face is pale and porcine, his fingers – now stroking Timothy’s face – are fat and thick, and his belly, bulbous and with hairs poking out through his shirt, presses against Timothy’s back. The businessman’s erect penis presses into his rump.

All of a sudden, the businessman grabs the necklace, wrenches it off his neck and throws it into the gutter. It clatters in the dark.

The night is still again. Now the businessman slowly places his hands on Timothy’s face, their gross, fat, hairiness right in front of Timothy’s eyes, and begins to caress his face. He does it delicately, adoringly – like a lover. The businessman places his nails on his chin, and then – suddenly – shoves them in. He begins to dig – dig so hard his fingers penetrate his flesh. The squishy, viscous sound reminds Timothy of sticking his fingers into an orange. Within seconds, the fingers are firmly embedded inside.

And then the businessman begins, slowly and clinically, to peel off his face. Timothy watches as the skin below him is reluctantly ripped away, making a sort of sucking sound. His view is suddenly obscured by some clumped up, folded facial skin. And then, with an excruciating rip, he feels his face come completely off.

The view zooms out and Timothy sees his face is fleshy and red, his eyes – terrified and glistening – are staring out, and his mouth, whose lips are just discernible from the raw, peeled flesh, are letting out a scream.

Timothy suddenly returns to real life and sees something red and angular in the gloom ahead of him, illuminated by sickly lamp-light. He begins to sprint even faster. Now only a few steps away from the object, he perceives it is a telephone box.

He runs into the box. He sticks his finger into the tight coin pouch of his trousers and pinches as many coins as he can. A couple fall on the ground. He doesn’t pick them up – he begins to shove coins into the slot.

“10 pence,” he pants, “20 pence”.

It’s enough for a call. But the businessman is still behind him. He can feel him lurking only a few metres behind.

He scrambles for the receiver. He picks it up and begins pressing the numbers of Emergency: 999. It begins ringing.

Ring. Ring.

It’s taking too long. He releases the phone and runs out of the box. Now his only hope is getting home. He just has to make it home and then he will be safe. The businessman can’t get inside there.

Suddenly he slips and falls on the wet, hard ground. His hands and knees sting intensely. He can’t see them but he can tell his knees are badly grazed. For a second he is dazed, but then he puts his hands out in front of him and tries to get up. His feet scrabble uselessly on the slippery ground. Something – a hand – brushes his hair. He gets to his feet and starts running again. He wheezes and gasps for air.

The businessman is right behind him now, inexorably, indefatigably approaching his goal. He can feel his hot breath on his neck. For a second, Timothy considers whether to give up, to let the vision come true. But he doesn’t. He keeps running. His eyes water and his lungs hurt.

…

Just as he’s about to abandon all hope, he realises he’s almost home. Still running, he fumbles around in his inside coat pocket for his house key. He finds it and takes it out. A few steps later, he’s at his gate. Key pinched between two fingers, he fumbles open the latch, loudly slams the gate shut and sprints down his garden path. The handle of his front door glints before him. He hears a slight clink behind him. He bends down to the key hole; he tries to shove the key into it and misses. Finally, he jams it in. He tries to turn it but it won’t budge. He senses the businessman is about to get him.

“Come on, come on, come on”.

The key turns, the door opens and he jumps inside. He slams it shut.

He stands in the darkness, panting heavily. He registers that he is sore all over, and that his knees sting worst of all.

All of a sudden, he feels a desperate urge to turn on the light. He scrabbles on the wall next to him for the switch. He can’t feel it, only the slightly rough texture of paint on plaster. He is beginning to panic; the terror is returning.

Oh god, oh god, oh god.  

But then he feels it. He presses it and it is light.

He walks, shivering with cold, through the well-kept foyer of his house and into his living room. He turns on the television. It is the news, and on the screen there is an enormous mushroom cloud, billowing out with infernal power, consuming the screen. There is something behind him!

Outside his front door, there is no one around. There is no trace of any fat, balding businessman with a briefcase. None at all. Just the wind, running through the neighbourhood, rustling trees, making things clink. 

A short story called "Inside the Room, Sitting in front of the Computer"

Inside the Room, Sitting in front of the Computer

He was looking at a desk, and on it was a laptop computer surrounded by books and folders and paper, and so it was very cluttered. His vision felt very cluttered. He thought about the fact that his vision is always cluttered and the fact that there is always something you don’t see, there’s so much going on in every shot and you don’t always see half of it and that’s really disappointing, maybe. Is it? There was also a lamp diagonally to his right, just in his peripheral vision, but as he thought about it he looked at it and it was quite big and it was very metallic – quite shiny – and there was light coming out of its bell-shaped end which shined on the wall, and now he was staring at the wall which, when you looked closely, had lots of lumps on it. A whole lot of lumps. Millions of them when he zoomed his gaze out and looked at the portrait above the computer. It was a woman. It was a very weird painting. Very unrealistic. There was no woman there though. Just a painting. Just some paint inside a frame in the vague appearance of a woman. What did it mean? What did it want, with its vacant, black-eyed stare? Nothing. It wanted nothing because it was a painting made of paint painted by a painter. It was just a whole lot of lumps like the wall. It was a solidified mess of paint. Paint that used to be drippy and liquid was now smeared all over the wall and was really lumpy and he was looking at it, and now he looked around the room conscious of the fact that he was looking at the wall, imagining what people would think of him looking at the wall, so now he was looking at the printer behind him, and the open door behind that which led into the hallway, which led into the rest of the house. That made him think of going to the kitchen to get something to eat, but he resisted the temptation. Even though he was very tempted. And although there was nothing there he wanted, and though he knew that very well because he checked only about half an hour ago (or something like that because time doesn’t seem linear on these sitting-alone days, it drags and accelerates and then just drags and it’s just you and your body and your mind ticking along and everything else is still) he still really wanted to go down there and find some sort of morsel. A biscuit maybe, or a banana, or a muesli bar. Or maybe he would make himself some cereal even though he had already had it this morning.

Maybe. That was the word of the day, he thought to himself, and he thought about the fact that he was really deep for thinking that. And he thought about what other people would think of him for thinking that, and he thought about some people that he knew and what he was going to say to them the next time he had a conversation with them. And he distracted himself with these thoughts, fleeting and flying around his head like flies. Everything was flying around inside his head like flies, there was so much in there, even though there wasn’t. Because he was thinking about the fact that there was so much flying around in his head as well as the fact that it was just a lump of pink stuff with electrical signals. And it was hard to fathom that, because then you’d be working out the fragility, the substance, the reality of something you were using to do that, and it didn’t really make much sense but neither did anything. But that was useful because he now felt like he’d reached a happy conclusion on his word of the day being Maybe. There was a lot of maybe today, as there was in every day, and he really liked the word Maybe. He said it aloud now because there was no one home and he liked talking to himself, weird as that may seem to the onlookers that he imagined watching him in some sort of third-person video. It was weird he thought now to think about that, considering the fact that no one was ever going to watch what he was doing right now – or care – and neither was he, but he would love to see himself in the third-person because he never got to do that, and all at once that thought made him realise that he was always going to see the world through a first-person perspective. That he was alone. That was weird. That he was never going to actually empathise with anyone, in the whole entire fucking world, because he couldn’t see the world as they did, and have the mind that they do, and think the things that they do, and have the first-person camera eyes seeing him as they do.

“Maybe” he whispered to the air inside the room as he took another look around, and again thought about the fact that he was taking another look around. “Maybe I think too much”, he said to no one. And no one was listening and again he was thinking and it was annoying. And just when his mind returned to the knowledge that he had to do more study for the exams; just when he realised that he would have to sit down and write for hours; just when he realised that there would be some really stressful exams in a few weeks; just when he realised that writing this story was stupid, he began to notice the clicking of his fingers on the keys on the keyboard of the laptop on which he was writing, and he began to think about the fact that the story he was writing was coming to a conclusion, and he began to wonder whether it was good, and it was a very uncertain thing, as was everything, and he was alone, and he was thinking about his friend who was going to read it and he was wondering whether he would like it, and now he thought it would be a good time to stop typing and after these next few words he does.

A Diary Entry/Short Story called "Out of Body Experience on the Train Home"

Out of Body Experience on Train Home

I had a weird train trip home today. It all seemed very slow and serene and, like, liquid. At one point, as I was reading a chapter of The Justice Game titled “Diana in the Dock: Does Privacy Matter?” and trying (indeed really struggling) to think about what Geoffrey Robertson was saying about freedom of speech and privacy and how they in a certain way compete and how freedom of speech seems to be something people in the modern era are constantly fighting for but privacy is kind of marginalised and how he personally thinks this is bad and that they both deserve equal respect, which I thought seemed I dunno kinda facile and vague, I must have fallen asleep. I can recall I had this really intense dream involving paper and hands (I think) and a really loud, aggressive sound. It was over quickly I think, maybe 30 seconds. When I woke up, for about a second I had no idea who I was or where I was or even what it would mean to have no idea who I was or where I was. I think I was just a body.

I only know this because immediately after I snapped into consciousness. I suddenly realised that the noise in the dream was the sound of the train bumpily going over the tracks and that the noise of the train travelling as I sat there wasn’t as loud as it was in the dream. I wondered whether the extra loudness was real coz we were going over an extra bumpy bit of track or something or whether my brain had just increased it for the dream. This all happened very quickly, of course. Simultaneously, I knew that a second had just gone by but I sort of hadn’t been in it: I felt that I had just experienced something profound. Non-existence? Simultaneously I tried to recall the dream, which I felt like I remembered, but as I did I realised I remembered only a vague impression. Simultaneously, I saw that I was on a train that was regularly, languidly rising and falling and that I was looking at the back of strangers’ heads nodding with the rhythm of the train and that that was weird. Simultaneously, I saw that there was sunlight streaming in from the right and that it was striking my school uniform-wearing body and that a black blazer was behind my head and that I was resting my black, scuffed shoes on my black bag which has a hole in the corner and

Suddenly, one part of my brain forced me to remember myself. I’m Tom Aitken, I’m 17, I’m in 6^th Form at Sydney Grammar School, I’m travelling home on the train earlier than normal because I had a period 7 free which was because it was an A day, and I have heaps of homework to do, so much fucking homework, and I must be really tired to fall asleep on the train and maybe I should try and get to bed early tonight except I probably won’t, maybe I should take a day off school tomorrow except that’s probably a bad idea and there is also the Term II concert, I’m doing it for guitar and sax, I feel like I should go to school for that, and I recently acquired a sty under my left eye and, wow, I almost forgot, I have heaps of social anxieties and things to worry about in life, and maybe I should write about this but no I shouldn’t.

Everything returned.  

A very short story called "Monday Afternoon in the Shed"

Monday Afternoon in the Shed

The boy was walking home from school. He was happy because – due to his parents going away to Thailand for their Wedding Anniversary – he was going to stay at his grandparents' house this week.

He was on Norton Street, approaching the single-storey, red-brick house of his grandparents. He was thinking about all the cakes his grandma would bake for him and how much TV he would be allowed to watch this week. He was excited.

…

He entered their house with the creak of the screen door. His grandma spoke loudly from another room: "Is that you, Tom?” He could tell she was in the kitchen, probably baking a cake. There was a delicious smell in the air so it seemed likely. He ran through the living room and into the kitchen and there she was, wearing an apron, bent down in front of the oven. Her plump, bulbous bottom was sticking out as she inspected what did in fact appear to be a cake. All of a sudden, she stood up and turned around.

"Tom, it is you! It’s so great to see you!"  

"Hi grandma." She went up to him and kissed him. He rubbed his cheek.

"Hahaha, still averse to kissing I see."

He felt his face flush. He paused, embarrassed. Then he said "Can I help you with the baking grandma?"

"No, it's alright... But I think your grandpa needs some help out in the shed. Go in there and ask. I’m sure he’ll be grateful"

The boy walked through the kitchen, through the laundry and out the back door. There he could see the familiar ramshackle wooden shed of his pop. He walked towards it. He pushed on one of its big doors; it creaked as it swung open.

Inside, pop was bent over, vigorously shaving off wood with a plane; it squeaked and whistled and moaned. The shed had a distinctive smell. It was the mingling aromas of tobacco and linseed oil and something else – the boy couldn't quite put a finger on that other smell.

"Hello pop," he said.

Pop turned around, sweat dripping off his white moustache. "Oh you're here Tom. Good to see you mate." He walked over and shook the boy's hand. His hands were rough and calloused, his grip was hard.

"Your handshake is so strong, pop. It's so hard.”

"I'll show you what else is hard."

A short story called "Australia Day"

Australia Day

Hundreds of stupid, patriotic, macho and violent-looking hooligans were running past him on the wide footpath, holding beers in their hands. As they moved past a lot of them would shout things like “Australia, wooh!” and “This is fucken great!” Occasionally they shouted things directed at him: “What the fuck are you doing you poofta?”, “Where are your mates, mate?!” Almost all of them had flags tied around their necks which were suspended behind them as they ran, flapping aggressively in the wind. Jim himself was walking fast, with rapid steps. He felt panicked and he felt vulnerable and he suspected his expression conveyed that.

It was hot. He could feel the heat of the bitumen through his thongs, and the rocks that occasionally got caught between his foot and the soles of the thongs as he walked were very warm. He felt like his skin was burning as he walked. He had no sunscreen on at all and he had been out since nine o’clock this morning. His arms were already basically bright red. He wondered what his face looked like. Probably a vision of floridity. That thought made him more self-conscious.

He started walking faster. A group of women passed, for the first time in a while, all wearing bikinis, two of which were Australian flag ones. They were all expressing the same patriotic fervour as the men that ran alongside them.

He felt ill.

Luckily it was only a few more minutes till he would get home, then he could relax. Certainly if he wasn’t so paranoid now about the burliness and aggression of the men actually manifesting itself in a savage attack on him he could relax now. And it was paranoia because surely they wouldn’t attack him unless they provoked him. Or maybe they would. What if they did? Yeah, they did seem pretty aggressive and he was a prime candidate for attack being the outsider, the guy not wearing any emblems of Australia or even any colours associated with Australia, the scrawny guy with the worried expression on his face, the intellectual among the plebeians. So he was vulnerable to a savage beating. That thought made him nervous. He decided to accelerate into a canter, and felt even more keenly self-conscious than he had before. He didn’t know if he looked spastic.

Suddenly, he noticed a more intimidating man than he had seen all day running towards him on the footpath. This man was wearing an Australian flag and looked like he a massive steroids user, with enormous bulging muscles all over his body, and veins running all over those muscles. As he came closer and closer, Jim saw he had a mean face, with tiny angry eyes, and a completely bald, shiny head. As he came even closer, Jim noticed his fists were clenched and he was staring directly at Jim, a violent look in his eyes. Jim felt like he should run the other way, but he kept moving straight ahead – he couldn’t look scared, show weakness. They were now only a few metres away from each other and the enormous, muscly man was slowing down.

Shit, what the fuck is he doing, shit.

“Stop” the steriod man boomed.

Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit.

“Were you staring at me, mate?!”

“Not-not intentionally.”

“It looked like you were to me.” The steroid man moved towards Jim until he was right in front of him, his huge chest heaving as sweat dripped torrentially off his body.

“No-no I wasn’t, I promise you.”

Suddenly he raised his fist, ready to punch Jim; Jim cradled his head with his arm, preparing himself for impact… But the man was still in the exact same spot, breathing heavily and dripping sweat. He had brought his arm back to his side. Nothing had happened. Jim stopped cradling his head. He felt humiliated.

“Ha ha ha” the steroid man boomed and ran off down the footpath.

Jim started sprinting now. He needed to escape this hell as soon as possible, to get home, where it would be quieter and cooler, where he could be alone and not be bothered. His apartment building was only a hundred metres away now, he was almost home. He was running running running, his legs were striding on the footpath beneath his feet, but he kept running past the endless waves of aggressive men “Why are you in such a hurry mate?”, “What’s wrong mate?”, fifty metres, “It’s Australia day mate, lighten up!”, “What the fuck Dan, look at this cunt.”, twenty metres, “Slow down, mate!”, ten metres, five metres – he was there! He was at the gate! He quickly fumbled to get it open and ran down the path through the familiar communal garden and got to the door. He opened it and pressed the up button for the elevator, and waited. Finally, the doors opened. He got in and pressed 6, and pressed the Close Doors button, and watched as it went up: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, DING! He got out and ran down the corridor and found his room and entered it.

He locked the door.

A poem called "The Reverent Silence in the Church of Bedroom"

The Reverent Silence in the Church of Bedroom

The room is cluttered full of things –
Shelves and books and clothes and machines,
And in the centre lies the holy bed

Upon which I am sprawled.

I am focusing on the holy screen
And I can feel my eyes drying out
And I can feel my body cramping up
And I can feel its natural suppleness beginning to diminish within the confines of this space.

A wise man once said to me:
“Look out the window to prevent myopia.”

Outside the window, I find it wet and green,
Full of grass and trees and lovely scenes;

In fact, an entire world’s outside!

But to go there, one must always get up.  

When I look back inside the room,
The walls appear to have closed in around me,

And my mind is spurting aimless thoughts
Like a broken high-pressure fountain.   

I wonder if I can express myself…
Shall I write a didactic story?

Shall I paint a symbolic picture?
Shall I write an essay on the nature of this modern existence?

But who would give the slightest care?
And what the fuck is the point?

…

Perhaps the Lord in his infinite wisdom
Has a solution for my vexing qualm.

I ask him: 

“Lord of the 21^st Century,
What do you suggest I do?”

“…”

“If you have nothing to say to me, God,
I shall spend my days in prayer;
I shall worship you by the laptop altar
And its luminous electric screen.”

“…”

“Ok, sorted.”

…

In the silence of the holy room,
In the flickering Facebook light,

In the scrolling up and scrolling down,

I am born again.

A poem called "Journey into the Primal Heartland"

A Journey into the Primal Heartland

The blue sky spread out over the land
Like a great sparkling lake,
And the sun heated everything in a colossal furnace –
Searing droopy gum leaves and
Grevillea flowers
And the backs of a marching Aboriginal tribe.

But their resilience matched the onslaught
And they marched along,
Babies in woven bags and children in hands.

…

We were a marching troupe of homo sapiens –
A motley tribe of the suburban world,

As we walked along a sandy trail

That was carved through the land;
Up long hills, down the descents, and past the
Spiky, serrated trees.

A crunch was metrically repeated
As our footsteps displaced the sand,
And as our mouths began to dry…

Eventually we descended into the valley
Of the tall and shadowy forest:
And deep into dark we went.

Leaves crunched underfoot
With every measured step,

And little tweets of tiny birds
Rang out in the echoic forest.

They pierced the shadows and quiet
Only to disappear back into nothing.

Our march continued past
Knobbly gums and frilled ferns, and
Through a narrow corridor of
Scratchy tangles and shrubs…

Then finally out in a clearing! :
Out on top of a small stone cliff,
Peering over the depths of the forest
At a million, rustling leaves.

We scrambled down a slope
With rocks and soil loose under our feet,
And suddenly that was it:
We were in the ancient cave.

On the wall was the most intense red paint;
A simple wet earth pigment
Smeared as an animal on the old rock –
Primal human expression,
Created by the hands of an ancient human
Thousands of years ago.

And in that dark and breezy valley,
Surrounded by the beautiful forest,

We sat in our bright polyester clothes

And thought about work on Monday.

A long short story called "Receiving my Major Work after the Internal Submission"

Receiving my Major Work after the Internal Submission

I first started my Major Work before year 12 even began. Way before. I wrote the first page of it way back in April 2013, when I only sensed that that very document might eventually turn into my Extension Two English Major Work. At that time, I didn’t even know if they’d let me into the course for sure, having still been far away from the application process and under the impression that it would be really hard to get in.

I remember being pretty proud of the first page. It was written in a really unusual way, for me, and it had lots of short paragraphs and dashes and adjectives. It looked pretty sophisticated. I had showed it to my friend Harry, and he had said it was good, if a little clunky because of the excessive adjectives. That criticism I had basically rejected at the time, but I realised he was right much later.  

I knew from the start that the story was to focus on one average workday in the life of a middle-aged man, named John (a name which was meant to be imaginative in its extreme unimaginativeness.) He was to be somewhat recently divorced to a wife whom I later named Margaret, to have two kids, to be miserable, lonely, and to live a mundane, repetitive life mostly consumed by a desperately boring job as some kind of lawyer in a non-descript office in a generic Sydney skyscraper. My biggest influences when I began writing were the canonical authors whose books I’d been reading at the time, all of them interested in the psychological: James Joyce, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Virginia Woolf. Fascinated by writing about thought at the time, I imagined the story being written in a new, wonderful stream-of-consciousness style of my own making, a hybrid of the styles of those three authors. As all enthusiastic, arrogant young authors probably do, I imagined the story would eventually be on a par with the work of those others – except, frankly, better than Woolf and her idiotic writing style. In brief, euphoric fantasies, I imagined that I would publish the story by itself or as part of a novel that I was going to get around to writing straight after school, and I imagined the multitudinous accolades that would be heaped upon me: I imagined the story being called a ‘spectacular first work which truly conjures the profound out of the mundane’, a ‘blistering short story which captures the essence of the solipsism and routines of modern existence with its shocking nihilistic message’, I imagined being called ‘a precocious writer of virtuosic talents who can seemingly do anything’[1], I imagined being called the greatest writer of the 21^st Century, I imagined winning a Pulitzer and Nobel Prize, I imagined having a legacy greater than Shakespeare and of being eventually dubbed the greatest writer and genius to have ever graced the Earth with his presence and of being venerated by thousands of people around the world and ... On a more earthly level, I imagined, vividly and with a fairly strong sense of conviction, that my story would get full marks from the teaches at my school. I saw myself becoming a very minor celebrity at the school, talked about in hushed whispers by mostly kids in years below, who would say things like, “Did you hear about the Year 12 boy who wrote that amazingly sophisticated and intellectual story with all these words I don’t understand? He’s probably a certified genius or something.” I imagined not necessarily being in Showcase because I thought I was better than that, and possibly not even getting full marks in the external BOS mark because they wouldn’t understand my true brilliance, but I certainly imagined doing very well in Extension Two English.

Little did I know that I was seriously fucking deluded.

The whole class was sitting around the big old wooden table. Nobody was talking and everyone looking worried. Tom’s stomach was tied in knots. He was drumming his fingers on the table, his nails clacking loudly. He looked down at the area of the table his fingers were interacting with: carved into the dark wood was a crude, cartoonish penis, a swastika and FUCK, in caps. Ms Leicester was beginning to toss Major Works to their respective owners now. After two had been dispensed, one slid towards Tom. He dragged it in front of him and looked at the title: A Day. Yes, his masterstroke title – this was his.

Knowing that it would be better to end the suspense as quickly as possible, he flipped straight to the back of the Major Work proper, in front of the Reflection Statement.

By the time I had “got in” to Extension Two English with a super clever letter of application which addressed the relevant teacher in the second-person (ie like that book by Italo Calvino that I hadn’t read at the time and still haven’t read and don’t particularly want to read but whose plot outline I already know), and after year 11 had ended and the holidays had happened and I began to confront the reality that soon all life as I knew it would be over and other angsty teenage things, year 12 began. And I seem to recall the start of year 12 wasn’t so bad, particularly because of the subject of Extension Two English. I remember walking into class for the first lesson of that subject and thinking ‘This is my time to shine’ (or something to that effect). I had a very good feeling about the subject, mainly because my amazing story about the middle-aged man named John was now over 11,000 words, and I hence had basically 12 months to excise the worst 3000 words from it. This, in my mind, would eventually render it perhaps the best story ever written.

I remember my teacher for the subject, Ms Leicester, was giving us these speeches at the time about how, you know, a year sounds like a long time but it goes by very quickly and that you can’t be complacent, you’ve got to start work now. While she spoke in these moments, I would just be sitting there, utterly calm, thinking, ‘I am going to top this subject’. Those were good lessons – although perhaps a little too relaxed and easy for me. Anyway, at some point our first assessment appeared: a five minute ‘Viva Voce’ between us and two teachers, one of whom was to be your class teacher, in which we were meant to explain the basic facts of our Major Work in its present form and the process of development that had led to that stage, and then answer some questions asked by the teachers. In the few lessons leading up to it, Ms Leicester had emphasised that it was not particularly important and had generally presented it as a rather easy and straightforward task. Partly as a result of this (the other part being of course my outstanding arrogance and complacence), I was so unconcerned about it that I didn’t even bother to find out what percentage of my overall assessment mark it counted for. A fatal mistake, in hindsight.

As I’d been really busy that week, I did even less preparation than I’d planned to do, merely scribbling down a few fractured dot points on a scrap of paper in the lunchtime on the day of the assessment, which was to occur at 3pm. But I hadn’t been worried about that lack of preparation. After all, I was so much more eloquent than basically everyone else in my year, and I had written the most of my Major Work out of anyone else in my year, and, except for a few exceptionally industrious, nerdy students, most of the Extension Two cohort had barely done any work either. That said, I was very nervous as I walked up the stairs towards the room in which the Viva Voce was to take place, accompanied by the two teachers who were to examine me. I remember at the time wondering why I was so nervous; now I can only assume that my unconscious body knew what was going on better than the thinking bit did. The reality is that I was so unprepared that I didn’t even know that I was meant to speak for five minutes in a row – I had assumed that I would be given regular questions, not just at the end. When I sat down and the two teachers asked me if I was ready and then said ‘Start’, I quickly realised that I wasn’t going to be interrupted as I spoke. This shock made me yet more nervous, and although I thought I was babbling pretty fluently and coherently and intellectual-soundingly, I was very uncomfortable and I felt my face flush, which made me more nervous and self-conscious, and at one point I remember I lost track of my sentence, which was a minor thing but terrifying at the time. And then, after only four minutes had elapsed, there was nothing left to say at the front of my mind, so I said, ‘Can I stop?’ They said ‘Sure’, both of them assuming expressions that suggested they were trying to conciliate and reassure me, but also seemed to hint that they were maybe a little disappointed. I dismissed the latter inkling at the time, but now I see it was founded.

In the Q and A session which followed I’d thought they’d be nice to me, especially given what Ms Leicester had been saying in her speeches in class, but they weren’t. One question I felt was particularly surprising and a little nasty came from Ms Leicester herself. This is roughly what she said: ‘I have been through a divorce, you know. And it’s a very difficult process when you have to deal with a lot of stuff. And you’re a teenager. [She laughs]. So, frankly, I think the thing both of us are wondering about is what on earth you know about being middle-aged and going through a divorce. [She laughs again]. So, I guess what I’m saying is what motivated you to write about this character?’ I’m not exactly sure how I answered that question at the time, though I’m sure it was a bad answer. That same question about my motivation for writing about a middle-aged person kept cropping up throughout the year, and I never gave Ms Leicester a truly honest response. For ages, I kept feeling that it was unfair that I should be interrogated about my motivations – after all, is it not the duty of the author to try and escape his or her consciousness and to try to imagine what it is to live another’s life, even if that is drastically different from their own? Worse though, I was also embarrassed about the truth. The truth was that the character wasn’t so far away from me. It was basically just me, combined with little bits of my irascible, more mentally rigid dad, transplanted into the body of a middle-aged man whose life had essentially ended up a train wreck. I very recently came to realise that the main motivation was me imagining the worst possible scenario of my life at around age fifty: divorced, miserable, unfulfilled, and terrifyingly alone and introverted. In any case, what I did know at that time was that such an unhappy, hopeless character was the perfect vehicle for an exploration of the keen interest I held at that time in nihilism. The story was meant to be a powerfully bleak look at someone looking back at a life in which they had achieved nothing they’d set out to achieve, and looking ahead at the slow decline towards lonely death.  

Unfortunately, middle-aged teachers don’t want to hear that their age marks the beginning of the end. They don’t want to know that all that’s left for them is a gradually steepening descent to the grave!  

When I walked out of the Viva Voce, I felt very disappointed with myself. This was compounded when I talked to Matthew Thompson straight afterwards and thereby discovered that the Viva Voce did count for a fair chunk of the overall assessment mark, and hence that in a space of about ten minutes I’d ruined my chances of topping the subject. Nevertheless, I did retain hope that I would get around half way through the year. I reasoned that other people would go terribly, particularly people like Alex Mojad. And in any case, I didn’t do that badly myself – I did speak pretty eloquently.

So it came as a bit of a shock when I got 12 out of 20, and bottomed the cohort. It seems silly now but I was absolutely devastated by that result at the time. I guess it was mainly because it not only dashed my hopes of topping the subject but dashed my hopes of coming even top three or four. If you look at my Extension Two English journal, you can see a long, rambling, despairing elegy written just after I received that mark, which finished with me declaring, with stirring determination, that I would not falter again and that my internal mark would be 92/100.

If only that were true…

Tom looked at the page: written in lead, right in the centre, was the number 25.

25? It couldn’t be 25. But it was unmistakable: it said 25. Tom thought it was out of 40. How could he get 25? His stomach tangled itself even more tightly than before.

 “It’s out of 40 right, m’am?”

As soon as he asked the question, Ms Leicester’s expression immediately became deeply solicitous and almost guilty. “Yes.”

Tom could feel his face melting. It was too much. No. It was just too much. Why did these things keep happening to him? No. How? And it was so good, too. Harry read through all the drafts. He’d said they were good. Yes, there had been lots of problems with it, but he’d spent so long correcting them. He’d been writing it for so long. So much longer than anyone else in the room. No. Why did he never succeed? Look at Martin over there, his story wasn’t even that good, but he got, yes, 40. And this was the third time it had happened. Why did it keep happening? First the Viva Voce, then the Reflection Statement, now this. Why? He’d have to tell Harry. He’d be so shocked.  

Ms Leicester started to speak to him: “Mr Simons had very strong feelings about your Major Work. He’s worked at the Board of Studies Marking Centre more recently than any of us, just two years ago, so I respect his judgement a lot. I think it’d be good for you to have a chat to him today.”

“Ok.”

“I’ll remind him that you need to talk to him and that he should be available. [She laughs]. Also you know Dr Haig well, don’t you?

“Yep.”

“Well, let’s go talk to him after class.”

Tom was very slightly mollified. “Ok” he said. He paused. Then, with a quavering voice, he said, “I kinda feel like there’s no point me submitting it externally.”

“Let’s have a talk about this with Dr Haig,” Ms Leicester said, her expression still solicitous and concerned.

“Ok.”

He’d have to get over it. He’d just have to. He took a deep breath. Well, but that was it, Extension Two English was well and truly fucked for him now.

Ben, sitting next to him, spoke: “What did you get?”

“A pretty bad mark. You beat me,” Tom said quietly.

“Oh. Sorry.”

Ben immediately started talking to Edward, who was sitting on the other side of Tom.

“What did you get?” he asked.

“Oh, 35,” Edward replied.

“I got 34. I’m pretty annoyed because, like, I know if I just made a few changes I could have done heaps better. They’ve made a comment about me not exploring the characters enough. I just could have changed that and then my mark would have been way higher.”

Meanwhile, on the other side of the room, he was hearing from Martin and James’ conversation that James had got 38/40 on his incredibly pretentious but also unoriginal and unintellectual and unsophisticated ‘postmodern’ series of vignettes mocking the way we consume art.

Tom had never hated every other living person on earth as much as he did in that moment. But he also just felt so weak all of a sudden. His face was twitching and wobbling as he tried to keep it in place. He was trying so hard not to cry. He wondered if he should run to the bathroom and just let his face melt and then bawl like teenage girls do in movies, but he decided against it. He just sat there, silently.

There’s not really much to say about my Reflection Statement except that I had thought it was really good and really well-written and had expected to get full marks – or at least very close to it – and when I didn’t, and instead came fourth bottom of the cohort, I was seriously fucking pissed off and frustrated and sad. At that point, it felt like the teachers must have something against me, especially when I noticed that one of them had circled the words “Posit” and “Opine” as if they were a mistake. I asked Ms Leicester why, and she said Mr Simons had said they were “pretentious” and although they hadn’t initially drawn her attention, she had agreed. She then said that it looked as if I was trying to distinguish myself from the rest of the cohort by using those words and, finally, that they made me sound “like an old professor”. That made me furious. I used those words for the sole reason that they were the most apt for their respective contexts. I didn’t even countenance the possibility that in a formal task using formal but unobscure English words would be regarded as pretentious. How absurd! Not that I expressed any sentiment of that kind to Ms Leicester, but I did defend my use of them with a fair amount of vigour. I couldn’t help feeling a bit like the teachers were Pol Pot and I was a dissenting intellectual at that point. In hindsight, this may have been a bit melodramatic.  

Anyway, after a few days I decided that there was no way on earth that I was going to let myself fail again: I was going to get a good mark on the bit that counted, the Major Work, and there was no doubt about it. This was the part of the assessment that would finally test my mettle – that would separate the preternaturally gifted geniuses (me) from the hopeless incompetents (everyone else). Or so I thought.  

Accompanied by Ms Leicester, Tom walked swiftly through the library the short distance to Dr Haig’s office. As soon as they entered, a conversation began.

Ms Leicester looked at Dr Haig, who was looking a bit confused: “I thought it’d be a good idea for you two to have a chat about the Major Work, considering you know each other well.”

“Oh ok,” said Dr Haig.

Dr Haig walked right up to Tom’s face, like he always did when he talked to people. He began to speak:

“I know your mark. I was very shocked when I found out because, although I haven’t read your whole Major Work, I know you, and I’ve been reading your writing for two years and I wouldn’t have expected that.”

The proximity of Dr Haig’s bespectacled face to his own made Tom go a bit red. He was still working to stop his face melting, and he was self-conscious about how visible that was.   

Ms Leicester spoke: “You have always been one of the best contributors in class, and you’re very good at analysing texts and all that stuff.”

“Mm,” Dr Haig said.

Ms Leceister spoke again, looking at Tom: “Your initial reaction was ‘What’s the point of continuing?’” wasn’t it?”

“Yep,” Tom replied.

“Well I certainly think that you should continue.”

“Yes I agree,” Dr Haig said. “There’s nothing to lose.”

Tom decided to speak: “Well, there’s no point not continuing, but it would be a wasted unit I think.”

“Mm,” said Dr Haig. “You’re doing alright in 2 Unit and 3 Unit, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“Well you know it may not be a wasted unit because of the nature of moderation.”

“Mm,” Tom replied. Tom suspected Dr Haig didn’t know just how badly he had done in his previous two assessments. If you’re coming around third bottom of the cohort, you’re probably not going to do very well, no matter how the scaling works.

“Also, I’d like to read it myself. Do you have a copy that you can spare?”

“Ah, well, I can print another one out today because the document’s on my computer.”

“Ok. Thanks.”

Tom felt a little better now. At least Dr Haig was going to read it. He sort of hoped that Dr Haig would read it and think it’s brilliant and be so appalled at the injustice of his very low mark that he would demand it to be marked again.

“You should chat to Ms Simons as soon as you can,” Ms Leicester said. “I think it’ll be useful for him to explain why he gave you that mark, to give you some feedback and advice on how you might improve it. I’ll remind him that you’re looking for him.”

“Ok. Sure.” He didn’t think he was going to see Mr Simons today. He didn’t feel like it. Anyway, now both Dr Haig and Ms Leicester looked like they had nothing to say. “Thanks for this,” Tom said.

Both of them smiled. Tom walked out of the office and back through all the noise of the main area of the library, weaving through the tables full of chatting students. English was first period so he’d be staying up here. He’d need to find Harry so they could rehearse the speech. They wouldn’t have much time. He looked right, through the glass windows. On the other side of the playground, the big clock read 8:17. They would only have 20 minutes, if that. He still felt sick to the stomach, but his face was no longer melting. How much of what just happened would he tell Harry? They didn’t have time to waste so Tom couldn’t give him a long, cathartic confessional speech. He’d just have to steel his nerve, tell him what mark he’d got and what had just happened as calmly as he could, wait for Harry’s incredulous and sympathetic response, and then start rehearsing with him. He spotted Harry sitting on a table alone. He walked towards him.

I described earlier how my original influences in the project were Joyce, Dostoevsky and Woolf. Well, I actually stopped reading these authors either before year 12 began or just after it, and begun to read other authors whose books were much less focused around the psychological. This naturally affected how I wanted to write. Undoubtedly the most influential writer for me became David Foster Wallace. As much as I tried not to be, I became a real ‘fan’ of his in a way I had never been for an author before. After reading Oblivion, I began to learn all about him, and watch all of the radio and television interviews featuring him that existed on Youtube. After that, I set about reading every non-fiction piece he’d written that I could find on the internet. I’ve now done that. Just after Christmas, I embarked upon his famous epic, Infinite Jest. I am still reading this now, almost 8 months later, having constantly been delayed by the business of the HSC, but am almost finished. The consequence of this obsession was that I began to try and imitate his writing in my Major Work. I attempted to write in perfectly metric, elegant sentences, integrating slang and highly technical lexicon, basically only ever using commas and full-stops, and diminishing considerably my use of stream-of-consciousness, which had predominated in my Major Work originally. The closer I got to the point when I would submit my Major Work, the better I thought it became because of this influence. Then, while I was initially uncertain about what I should cut, I thought the process of getting it down to the word limit made it even better, as it forced me to excise the inferior or superfluous parts of the story that up till then I’d been ignoring. The closer I got to the point of submission, I felt I was getting wiser as a writer, too. Some extracts from Hemingway’s Death in the Afternoon that I read, which were all writing advice and whose message amounted to, ‘Don’t write like an egotist, big, fancy words aren’t impressive’ made me see with even greater clarity that some parts of my Major Work were unnecessary. On top of this, I had a meeting with Ms Leicester a couple of weeks before submission, and though she was by no means unwaveringly laudatory about my Major Work, she seemed to be suggesting it was pretty good. And once I implemented a bit of her advice, I felt like my Major Work was, well, very good. My friend Harry had confirmed this, too. When the moment arrived, I submitted it with confidence.

Thus, it came as quite a shock when, bleary-eyed on a Thursday morning, I found out that my Major Work was not just somewhat flawed but massively so.

 It was period 3 and Tom and Harry had a free together. They were standing next to a basketball hoop, neither of them talking.

Tom decided to speak: “I have to do something or else I’ll get really stressed. Something physical.”

“Ok.”

Tom started pacing around, looking for a ball. Under some chairs just off the basketball court, he found one. He began to bounce it, moving towards the hoop. When he was just outside the circle, he shot. He missed. Harry picked up the ball and shot; he got it in. Tom ran up to retrieve the ball before Harry could and shot again. Again he missed. It seemed all too fitting that he’d be having a bad day in basketball too. Not that he was particularly good anyway.

“God hates me” he droned, intending for the comment to be construed as only semi-sincere.

“I think you’re being dramatic” Harry replied, as he shot and missed the hoop and the ball began to bounce away from them.

Tom was enraged by that remark. He began to chase after the ball, partly to stop himself from erupting.

Dramatic? Wouldn’t it be justified to be dramatic in this situation? What’s wrong with being dramatic anyway? Can’t a man be dramatic? And Harry doesn’t even know the least of what’s going on in my life. He’s not trying to empathise with me. He just thinks I’m being a whinger. Fuck him. Seriously, fuck him. Should I tell him this? I don’t know. Would it be good to? I don’t know.

Tom picked up the ball now and began to sprint with it back. When he returned, he and Harry kept shooting hoops. For minutes, they didn’t talk. They just watched as the other person mechanically shot, squinting bitterly in the sunshine.  

Just before lunchtime on the day I received my Major Work back, I received a notice that Dr Haig wanted to see me. When I went up to his office for the second time that day, I was informed that he’d managed to arrange Mr Rodgers to remark it that night. It was all very underhand – so much so that Dr Haig told me himself that I ought to keep it “discreet”. I felt very happy about this, and though I made a conscious effort not to get my hopes up too high, I expected that Mr Rodgers would increase my mark, if only by a few integers.

However, the next day, when I encountered Dr Haig in the morning, he informed me that Mr Rodgers had not increased the mark and may have even given me a lower mark than I received had he been one of the teachers originally responsible. I was shocked again. Again I wondered what on earth was so goddamn awful about my Major Work. But I had to get over it. And I did. I’m pleased to say that I did. Nevertheless, I didn’t fulfil Ms Leicester’s request by avoiding talking to Mr Simons until after the term had ended, whereupon I wrote the following email:

To: obs@tyhgram.nsw.edu.au
CC: sfl@tyhgram.nsw.edu.au; llh@tyhgram.nsw.edu.au

Dear sir, 

On Thursday morning, in SFL's Extension 2 class, I, Tom Aitken, received my Major Work back. Just before the moment of truth, SFL had told everyone in the class that the mark would be at the back of our Major Works. I was nervous but in an excited way (rather than fearful). Yes, I had not expected getting 12/20 in the Viva Voce, and yes, I had definitely not expected 21/30 for my Report considering I had put a lot of effort into it and thought it was good, but I wasn't thinking about that trend of abysmal marks as I quickly flicked through A Day to the last page. I was thinking mainly of glory. 

Then I saw the mark. In lead pencil, near some lead pencil comments that I wasn't interested in reading, was the number 25. My initial thoughts were 'What? Didn't Ms Leicester say it was out of 40?' That was how incredulous I was. I then said to her, "The Major Work's out of 40 isn't it?". With a solicitous, almost guilty expression, she replied "Yes". I felt like the wind had been sucked out of me – I was distraught. I think despite my best efforts to hide that devastation, she saw it and started saying reassuring things about my Major Work and how it was marked. She mentioned how Dr Haig hadn't read it and how you were the one who pushed for the lower mark and she explained how she had deferred to your judgement (those weren't her exact words but that was the subtext I got) as you were the most recent one of the markers to have worked in the BOS marking centre. She then suggested I talk to you today, saying that she would remind you to be available. Finally, she said that I should talk to Dr Haig about my mark as I knew him and he might have something to say to me. I replied to this with "Ok". I felt my face melting; I had to exert a lot of effort to keep it in place. Despite this, I managed to get these words out: "I kinda feel like there's no point me submitting it externally". She rejected that immediately and started talking to the class more generally about how it was always hard giving harsh marks because they knew we all poured our blood, sweat and tears into them. I felt like leaving to go into the library bathroom and, like, let my face melt, but I decided not to. I just sat there, as Ben van Persie lamely attempted sympathy and then started talking to Edward Lee about his mark. 

After the (very short) class had finished, I walked over to Dr Haig's office with Ms Leicester. He talked to me with his face really close to my face in the way he always does. He said very nice things. He said that he was very shocked by my mark, because though he hadn't read all of my Major Work, he had been reading my writing for the past two years and so this was very unexpected. As he talked, though, I felt stressed. I felt my face go a little bit red and the muscles on my face twitch and wobble as I tried to stop it from melting. After Ms Leicester interjected by saying to Dr Haig that my initial reaction had been, 'What's the point of continuing?' he said that I should definitely continue. I replied with, ‘There’s no point not submitting it, but it would be a wasted unit I think’. Haig or Leicester then said, 'You're doing alright in 2 Unit and 3 Unit aren't you?' I said yes, even though I am doing pretty averagely in 3U because I got 14 for my creative in the Half Yearly Exams and am doing less well than I should in 2U. He then said that it may not be a wasted unit anyway because of the nature of the moderation. I knew about this already and I think Dr Haig didn't realise that my internal mark is 66%. Even if the external mark is the one that really matters, a 66% internal mark means I can't do really well. I mean, that's obvious. He then said he would like to read it and asked that I get him a copy. That made me feel a little better. Finally, he suggested, like Ms Leicester had, that I should talk to Mr Simons. I said I would but I knew I wouldn't, at least that day. I felt too fragile to meet someone I'd never met who didn't like my Major Work. It was far too scary. 

What made all this doubly awful was that I had to perform the English 2 Unit speech only 20 minutes after I left Haig's office, with Harry Radcliffe, whom I know you know. Just before we started rehearsing, I told him about my mark as undramatically as possible and he was more incredulous than me. He had read every single bit of my Major Work I'd ever written as we constantly send each other writing. We talked a bit about it and he offered me his sympathies and, despite me being distressed, we then began our practice. Eventually, I resolved to try my best to not think about my result and it kind of worked. I decided that, you know, who cares what they think. I did care but that's the only way you can cope with that sort of thing.

At lunch, I then found out that Dr Haig had decided to get Mr Rodgers to mark it, the official reason being the discrepancy between Ms Simmons and you. This pleased me and I was again a little bit excited -- though I made a point of not getting my hopes up too much and knew my mark wouldn't suddenly be boosted to the high 30s out of 40. But, to be honest, I did expect it to increase. So it made it all the more shocking that the next day when Dr Haig pulled me into his office and informed me that Mr Rodgers was if anything even a little harsher than you, and had the same sort of criticisms. I wasn't devastated by this but I was certainly surprised. I kept thinking 'What on earth is wrong with my Major Work?' When I told Harry, he was shocked as well. He keeps telling me it's really good. I mean, I basically believe him. It is something that I've been essentially refining for a year. And, to be frank, I can't help but thinking of all the people in the 4U cohort whom I'm better at writing than, whom I've been writing far longer than, who beat me.

I realise everything I just said is ostensibly irrelevant to you and as a short narrative of my life is probably an unusual thing to send to a teacher – particularly one I haven't met before – but I felt I had to say it to both humanise me and to give background for what I'm about to say. What I'm about to say is a series of questions that I'd like answers to (though of course you have the right to just ignore me).
Did you think my story was well-written?
Did you like my story?
If my story was so incompatible with the rubric why didn't Ms Leicester tell me that I needed to make drastic changes? (I had a whole year to make changes, she'd only have to tell me and I would have done it. I could have even submitted something completely different. I had so many other things – essays, other short stories, poems. But no one told me my Major Work was going to get an awful mark. How was I meant to know? I had the same problem with the Viva Voce and the report: no one told me anything specific about them before I did them and if they did, there's no way I would have got as low a mark as I did. I thought my report was very good, but little did I know that lots of specific information was vital (and little did I know that the words 'posit' and 'opine’ were just far enough on the pretension spectrum to be crossed out. And, in any case, I thought we were meant to write formally!))
You wrote on the back of my piece "Ageing is an insufficient complication to drive a short story" – does that mean you personally need big 'complications' in stories or BOS requires them?
You also wrote on the back of my piece "You need to flesh out his character arc with backstory and development" – why is that so imperative? Did you think my character was unreal or incredible?
What is a character arc anyway?
(In reference to one of Ms Leicester’s comments) isn't my concept really obvious? It's just meant to be, like, bleak. It's about a dude with an awful life. What is it with a concept? My concept has never been accepted and I'm not sure why. How do concepts work? I'd rather talk about the themes of my Major Work than a concept but I always have to talk about a concept.
Does the rubric for the Major Work have anything about ability to write? To be frank, how is it that I can be beaten in the only HSC subject purely about writing skill by people who frequently commit malapropisms and solecisms? By people who can barely write coherently?

More than anything, I'd really like a considered answer to these questions because at the moment I can't help thinking that this whole thing is horrifically unfair. I'm not hugely concerned about my ATAR and I can probably afford to have a bad unit like this and still get a very 'respectable' mark, but what I'm hoping is that these questions are answerable and answerable in a way that will dispel my feeling of utter indignation.

I don't know when you'll actually receive this though. I'm hoping you have access to your school email during the holidays.

Sincerely,

Tom Aitken, author of the critically savaged A Day. 

  

In case you were worrying, no, I didn’t end up sending the email as written above. Luckily, I made a decision to send it to Harry before I sent it to Mr Simons and by calling it strange and advising me to change it, Harry steered me away from the jagged rocks that could have been the personal details I included, the arrogance of a lot of what I said and the generally inappropriate tone of this email. In the end, basically the only part of the email above I included was the questions, and even then I omitted the last one. While I was a bit affronted and indignant when Harry suggested I should change the email, as I was still very angry about my mark and how I’d been treated and felt that any alteration would amount to a dilution and hence betrayal of my true feelings, I was eventually able to see the light.

The funny thing was that none of the teachers saw the email for the whole holiday, and when it had finished, I had almost completely gotten over the disappointment. “Time like an ever-rolling stream, /Bears all it sons away; /They fly forgotten, as a dream/Dies at the opening day.”[2]

Now I’ve only got this Major Work to desolate and infuriate me. That is, unless you give me a good mark for this. I reckon this is likely. You should be very impressed by it, particularly considering I’ve spent an aggregate of about five hours on it and I’ve already written 7,318 words.

But back to what I was saying. When the teachers finally saw the edited email and I returned to school for the next term, the two responsible for giving me the mark had a long chat with me about why they gave me the mark, and it wasn’t about my talent so much, more just that the character was unlikeable and my concept was weak according to the criteria and I wasn’t concerned enough with how everything might all work together to reflect the concept and all that sort of stuff. This was good to hear because it dispelled my paranoia that my Major Work was not even slightly well-written. And now, well, I’m fine. I’m mentally stable. My face has long since stopped melting.

Anyway, I guess you may be wondering why marks have had such a profound impact on me. They shouldn’t after all. They’re just numbers. They’re not a reflection of my character or my worth as a human being; they’re not even a reflection of my industry or intelligence. They mean very little that is real and important and worth caring about. But it’s hard to keep that in mind when that’s all people talk about in year 12. And while getting a super high ATAR is not at all vital for the course I want to do at university and Extension Two English will almost certainly be a dead unit for me now, the feeling of loss of pride and hurt resulting from something into which you invested so much time and energy and emotion being dismissed as bad is pretty powerful.

And you know, when I think about it, the marks themselves probably had a profound impact on me more as a catharsis facilitator than a desolator. What I mean by that is that getting bad marks in a subject I’d really wanted and expected to do well in served as a synecdoche for all the other troubling stuff going on in my life at the time. The assessment marks had such a profound impact on me because they somehow symbolised at once: the pervasive stress resulting from the year 12 workload and the endless pressure of exams; my grandpa recently having a stroke and how I felt when I visited him and saw him incontinent and incoherent and watched my dad and the family try and cope with that; my insecurities and angsts about my social life; my insecurities and angsts about leaving the comforting repetition and conformity of school forever; my insecurities and angsts about the fact that I will inevitably start to move away emotionally from my parents; and my insecurities and angsts about becoming an adult in general and all that entails – having to fill in that tax form that I haven’t filled in, having to get a job, having to shop for myself, having to arrange things for myself etc.

It’s for this reason that I think that lead-pencil 25 will forever be seared onto my retina.

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[1] Which was a quote from a critic I’d read on the back of David Foster Wallace’s epic Infinite Jest. I’ll talk about Wallace later. He becomes important.

[2] Watts, I. O God, Our Help.