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The Morning Surf by Samuel Eastwood (12 to 15 years)

My eyes flickered open, creating the slightest contrast between the black of my eyelids and the quiet, dark of the night. I knew it was time. The delicate cat-like movement, practised to perfection over the years, allowed me to escape my house. My family unawaken.  Against the decrepit shed an old mountain bike rested. Subtly mounting, balancing my board on my knee and wet-suit on my shoulders, I pushed off the curb and flew down the steepest hill on the coast. The hill would have been lethal to new-comers but I maneuverer down at a dangerous pace, daily practise proving worthwhile once again.

After years of travelling the route the houses seemed the same and as the harsh wind hit my face like a right jab I looked up to the rapidly disappearing moon, following it. A beacon. Rounding the final corner the noise I yearned for the most at school and home lifted my spirits to the clouds. The crashing waves, dragging back the helpless sand, into the abyss that was the ocean. Jumping from my bike, I donned the wetsuit and flew to the water. The board glided through the weak waves of the shore with noticeable ease. 

I felt the rush of freezing salt-infused water resisting the direction of my movement, yet I continued to paddle towards the greatest waves in the universe. Amateur waves were sliced clean through by the pointed, almost serrated, board. The tide was high and the waves monstrous. The sun hinted on the blissful, deep blue horizon and I rested leaving the paddling to the current, dragging me towards the reef out the back. 

Now accustomed to the piercing cold I felt something brush against my right foot. It was soft and smooth and I instantly knew that it was a kelp of some kind. Looking down to confirm my suspicion I was dazzled by a jaw-dropping natural beauty; The partially visible sun had reflected onto the water, creating a sort of censored light, which was illuminating the vivid coral. I was astounded and almost fell from my board. My attention was quickly diverted to readjusting my stature so upon looking back the miraculous sight had disappeared, a moment lost in time. 

The first wave was a complete failure. I rose too quickly, nose-dived and emerged extremely disorientated. The second wave was a great success. I jumped to my feet on the board and was instantly enclosed in a tunnel of sparkling aqua-marine, foamy whitewash thundering towards the jagged rocks, a hungry predator. Shooting out the left side and copping a spray of straggling backwater, I lay back on the board and waited. 

Perhaps twenty decent waves came and went. The usual gang of surfers did not arrive, leaving me with the whole beach to myself. Starving, I decided it was time for breakfast and rode a small wave back to the warm, welcoming sand. I ate a muesli bar and a banana.

Weekends were always a relief; Time to surf and a break from school. Breakfast was quick. The sand crunched under my toes as I retreated to my utopia of coral and swell. After a long paddle and an excruciating wait the biggest wave possible arose. In hindsight, I shouldn’t have taken any chances but it was just too good to miss. So I began to paddle. I was hoisted

to the crest, my powerful board powerless. I skidded across the top of the wave until I slipped and fell headfirst into the churning whitewash. Tumbling, my hand sliced across a stinging part of this glorious sea-garden. I had cut myself on a rose; beautiful to look at, agonising to touch. I resurfaced and swam to the board. 

I probably should have gone in. Raindrops of blood could be dangerous considering the high number of shark sightings along the coast this time of year. Notorious predators dominating the waters, waiting like hawks for their next meal. Yet again risking my luck I stayed on the reef, the tide rising slowly.

The pattern of surfing for everyone on the coast revolved completely around the tide. Nothing else mattered. I realized just how important the moon was as I eyed down the line. If we didn’t have the moon, our waves would be so very different. What an interesting thought.

I felt the chill of the harsh wind battling against the warmth of the sun and it suddenly occurred to me just how close I was to the local shark colony. I was really walking on thin ice today. As my spine chilled to the bone, and not because of the cold, I started paddling to the far side of the reef, my mind set on returning to the ever-welcoming sand. 

Another big set came and I knew trouble was coming. I paddled but lost my balance diving uncontrollably into the wash. Coughing and spluttering I pushed off the coral, agony for my foot this time. 

Resurfacing, I started to panic. I seriously needed to get to shore. I lurched forward, plunging onto the board like a seal flopping onto a rock, trying not to think about pain. Or the tiny drops of blood seeping from the cut. I paddled for a small wave. I stood up, curved left and then right. The board stumbled towards the beach. I never felt the smooth shadow gliding behind me. 

A race of life and death, the board rushed me towards safety. Eventually, I reached shallow water, now populated by the early-rising swimmers of the day. The shadow turned, it sulked back to the depths of the ocean. Hopefully never to be seen again.

Blood Sausages by Eszter Coombs (16 to 18 years)

Blood Sausages Or ‘A Manual for Adolescent Gurlz’

Inspired by Lucia Berlin’s short story ‘A Manual for Cleaning Women’

I bought one of those cups on ebay for four dollars and five cents and I watched a lady on youtube say you fold it like a taco. So I squatted in a corner of the bathroom and I looked at it and thought, “like a taco?”.

So I folded it and it was sucked up for a few hours and after a few hours I pulled it out and blood got all over my fingers and gloopy and then I emptied it in the toilet. I sat down and thought oh my god.

The next day we sat on the side of a bit of a hill at lunch and I said, “I got one of those cups on ebay”

The next day I went for a walk. My parents went to ALDI, which takes a lot of hours, so I went for a walk. They don’t like it because they think something terrible will happen because I am a small teenage girl, but I always put on a collared shirt and wraparound sunglasses and a long raincoat and I look at myself in the bathroom and I think I look like a robust young man.

There was a blind man and a woman at the park and they were walking a chihuahua very slowly. The chihuahua was yapping and they were murmuring.

I did an I'm not listening to your conversation walk, which is fast and involves quivery lip movements to show that I am deep in thought. And not interested in their conversation. They were talking about Nicholas. 

Two robust young men sat on a bench. They were talking about her.

One of them said, “I just don’t know what to say to her.”

Then the chihuahua came over to me and I tensed up because I thought he might think I was hiding blood sausages (or something) in my underpants and I thought he might start sniffing me in strange places and I thought that maybe the woman and the two robust young men would look at me like there was something wrong with my vagina and I don’t want there to be anything wrong with my vagina.

The chihuahua sniffed my ankle, which was fine. OKAY.

The next day I stopped menstruating and got on the 460 bus. I stopped menstruating temporarily, only. Jesus Christ. The next month I started menstruating again.

I got up early and I went downstairs and I got a fresh pair of socks out of the filing cabinet and I went into the kitchen in my fresh pair of socks and my father’s crocs (which rhymes) and I boiled the kettle. I poured the boiling water from the kettle into a saucepan. I took the cup out of a pink satin bag with a little pink drawstring and I boiled it up. The woman in the video who talked about tacos told me to.

Then I got on the 460 bus. We sat a bit further down the hill at lunch. When I left after period 5 I spotted John Malkovitch in a baseball cap. He was driving a toyota tarago away from the school gates.

“John Malkovitch!” I thought to myself. I saw Bob Dylan once, in Kensal Rise.

The next morning, I got up early and I went downstairs, got a fresh pair of socks out of the filing cabinet and boiled up the cup (which also rhymes!). I shampooed under the tap because I was pressed for time. 460 bus.

The next day (night) my mother went to a dinner party and my father went to the dentist, both of which take a lot of hours, so I went for a walk. My brother went to sleep. He had a nap. Next to the park is the wharf, where people leave books, and where the fluorescent lighting is lovely and fuzzy, so I went and stood there in my wraparound sunglasses and stared at spines. I found ‘Usborne Puzzle Adventure Omnibus’, the 1997 edition. Also on offer: ‘How to Write and Sell your First Novel’, ‘Lost City of the Incas’, ‘Roget’s Thesaurus’, ‘Bhagavad-Gītā As It Is’, ‘How to get Great Marks for your Essays’, ‘The King Within: Accessing the King in the Male Psyche’, ‘Origen de las Especies’, ‘Fantastic Word Puzzles’ and ‘The Selected Novels of Somerset Maugham’...

I was standing there when the chihuahua tinkled in (tinkle tinkle) and I thought, vaguely, ‘blood sausages’. The man and the woman followed and I thought about saying “good evening”. I didn’t, because next the woman patted her knees and breathed at the dog and all three of them turned around and tinkled out together like a nice family. I watched the nice family leave, standing in the nice fuzzy light.

TO AVOID THE SPREAD OF CORONAVIRUS PLEASE AVOID CONTACT WITH STAFF AND PASSENGERS. WHILE AWAITING THE FERRY, PLEASE SPREAD OUT ALONG THE WHARF.

DING DONG.

DING DONG.

Said man with robust voice.

The next day the 460 bus was late. Consequently I was late for school. Consequently I was given a tiny little piece of paper to give to my modern history teacher. Consequently he put it in his desk drawer full of other tiny little pieces of paper. “If you keep arriving late,” my parents tell me, “there will be consequences.”  This is true.

After modern history we sat at the bottom of the hill and I took a bite out of a hard boiled egg. I find hard boiled eggs really disgusting.

The next day I stopped menstruating and got on the 460 bus.

Bitter Fruit by Rinjani Soengkoeng (19 to 24 years)

Inspired by a photograph of ‘Bindi Jack’ found in Bitter Fruit: Australian photographs to 1963, created by Michael Graham-Stewart and Francis McWhannell, with Jonathan Dickson.

Part I

In the ring, he is fire. Harsh lights set the sweat slicking his roped muscles aflame, and turn the droplets loosed with each blow into blazing showers of sparks. A sidestep, a feint, then out of nowhere the meteorite fist crashes.

The crowd barely has time to register the sound of bone crunching before the dance begins again, feet waltzing to the ghost of your granny’s radio while the arms do butcher’s work.

“You coming to the fight tonight?” Yellowed fingers reach into a pouch.

“Hellfire Jack against the Newcastle Kid? What kinda question is that?”

Laughter, drought-dry. Fingers find what they’ve been looking for. “Gonna be a good

one, I reckon.”

“Not for the kid.”

“He knew what he was getting into. They’re soft, these white fellas. Think just ‘cause

they invented the bloody stuff they’re bloody invincible.”

A match scratches, and an acrid smell rises into the evening.

“Ahh, don’t smoke that stuff around here.”

“If its good enough for Jack its good enough for me.”

The bloke – no, boy – in the middle of the ring is a goner. Da whistles through his teeth as the kid jerks around like a fresh-hooked trout. The flannel-clad knee pressed against Janie’s trembles with excitement – Da knows what’s coming next.

The crowd seems to agree, and silence weaves its way through the close-packed bodies. It leaves the sound of flesh and bone meeting in bloody embrace intact, however. One heartbeat, two. And then Janie can feel it – a hum around her wisdom teeth, an itch under her skin.

The lights seem to flicker, although that’s just a trick of the imagination. The pressure in the shed, meant to hold a couple of trucks at most, is immense.

Underground Fighting Ring Busted: Police Find Drugs, Dead Body

…New Holland Police Force raided an unassuming terrace house, home of the

infamous Willie ‘Smiler’ Nelson…

…found evidence of doping with a dangerous new drug colloquially

known as ‘fosfer’…

…’glowing’…’inhuman’…

…encouraging political violence by holding mixed-race fights…

And in the ring, in the tiny space left clear of the rows of makeshift benches, fire becomes lightning. The man – the dancer – the god as Da would say – glows green-white like a matchstick-maker’s mandible, like a cat’s eye at night. Skin dark as rain-soaked earth now hurts to look at. Time seems to slow, overtaken by Janie’s galloping pulse. A feint, a sidestep.

A wave builds in power, far out to sea. And then, under his opponent’s jaw, it meets the shoreline. The boy’s pale-thatched head snaps back, and for a moment Janie can see his skull, outlined in fluorescent green as the fire swallows his breath like a snuffed candle. 

“You know what it does.”

“He looks fine to me. Almost killed that Italian last week.”

“Yeah, and how long do you think that’s gonna last? You’ve seen the other blokes,

bloody Harry’s only 30 and he was coughing out his insides at the pub the other day.

Looked like bloody sewage, all black and rotten.”

Spittle lands on the yard dust, a slimy pearl. “For God’s sake, Jim.”

“I’m just saying.”

Cold suddenly replaces the warmth of Da’s knee as he leaps up, dragging his daughter with him. Noise fills the shed, chasing the silence out into the weekday night. Da is crying as he cheers, work-hardened fists raised and second-best boots stomping. But Janie is looking at the ring. 

A circle of light floating in the shed’s darkness, a bubble of violence. In its centre stands a man with bowed shoulders, gloves hanging useless at his sides. His dark skin is traced with St. Elmo’s fire, and phosphorescent sweat rolls off him. At his feet is a body, white and shrunken except for the pitiful pulp of its battered face.

The standing man raises his head, and for a moment Janie could swear – swear on her mother’s life – that his glowing white eyes find her own. 

…the remains were identified as Hellfire Jack, winner of last year’s Inner West

Heavyweight Title…

…’almost unrecognisable’…

…enjoyed considerable support amongst the native community…

…charged with unlawful disposal of a body…

…laid to rest in his home suburb of Tanner’s Hill, a segregated settlement …

Part II

Rest, finally. In the deep darkness of the earth we return to ourselves and are purified. It is the darkness of a shuttered eye, of the space between worlds. Decay is a sweeter word than you think.

These bones are already soft, as though returned to a newborn state at the time of their interment. A sponge soaked in poison. At first, the bones lie untouched, surrounded by a burning firefly nimbus – the unholy fire of corrupted innocence. Years pass before the earth is ready. 

But eventually work resumes. For it is work; each compound must be broken down to its constituent atoms, and those atoms re-distributed where needed. The process is perfect, for there is no intention, no consciousness. The earth continues to wash the bones in darkness and wrap them in saprophytic linen, heedless of its above-ground children’s concerns.

Some compounds are more resistant than others, their molecules woven together tightly like a smallpox-ridden blanket. The earth knows what do, however. Has it not dealt with dead king’s gold, with bullets and bayonets, with the effluvia of the fertiliser factory and the hatter’s shop? As flesh slides around the embedded arrow head, as the sea smoothes the broken bottle’s edge, so the earth proceeds. 

Within the bones, the resting bones, wakeful rootlets grow. Their questing hairs receive the earth’s gift blindly, and deep underground, the darkness lifts. 

Mysterious Glowing Weeds Found in Local Cemetery 

…discovered by Tanner’s Hill resident Janie Cook, 63

.