Forestville

‘It is the pathetic of all pathetics,’ thought Cedric Nonsense, studying his reflection as it went to pelican a bottle of red wine, ‘for a writer to write about a writer.’ After first light had given him the customary wink he had cantered to the garage in a beige dressing gown, a garage where columns upon columns of opaque bottles frequently had him trying to remember the colours of the wallpaper. In many ways, Cedric was a writer writing about a poet.  In many other, more notable ways, he was a fornicator, an unemployable doctor, and a negligent father of two. This last point was driven home by the daily occurrence whereby Cedric’s fifteen year old son Alistair, inserted a middle finger into the anus of Cedric’s fifteen year old daughter Ricotta, whilst they both lay on a single mattress that moonlighted as their sleeping quarters. Years of close proximity laced with a naïf’s understanding of custom compelled them to act on their stirrings, not by shuffling their feet in the timeless prelude of adolescent courtship, but rather by reaching out for warmth from their respective sibling who slept only a heartbeat away.

Alistair emerged from the womb fifteen minutes before his sister whereby biology had already bestowed upon him Foetal Alcohol Syndrome, which led to a host of other gifts, namely epilepsy and later, stunted growth, poor coordination, a distinct lack of imagination and a certain impulsiveness. This last trait had him currently enrolled in a Juvenile detention centre, the package bundled together with regular appointments in a therapist’s office, sitting with Miss Lebedev as she brainstormed ways in which he might be able to quell this certain impulsiveness. The conversations in her office had an underlying theme:

‘How are you today Alistair?’

‘How are you?’

Ricotta followed Alistair out of the womb with all her mental facilities intact, but when studied closely it was observed that four fingers of her right hand were missing. The doctor regretted that the thought ‘this has me bloody stumped’ had inhabited him at that precise moment. After their Mother’s exhausted heart beat its last, closely they were indeed studied, albeit discreetly, by five parties who shared a vested interest. The twins received greater attention from these anonymous figures than their father, who it seemed only remembered their existence whenever Alistair chose to take him by the neck and refresh his memory. Alistair and Ricotta Nonsense, the twin victims of circumstance. As they grew, a bubble encapsulated them at all times; until Ricotta begun high school and Alistair was enrolled the only children they knew were each other, and the only other person besides their father that ever came into contact with them was Jenny White, who materialised at certain hours in certain moods to conduct their home schooling. And so, as they developed, questions of the sexual were easily answered. They assumed the spoon position as babies, held hands during infancy and when Ricotta first suggested that Alistair’s hand should seek regular residence in her ‘little lady part’ it set a precedent that would become something akin to teeth brushing or kettle boiling

Or in Cedric’s case, foraging. The single mattress, along with the coffee table, the Chinese crockery set, the fridge, the television and the trio of goldfish all came to be at the Nonsense residence simply through sheer thriftiness. His foraging at a local garage sale happened to lie in sync with his then nine year old children complaining of back aches and bruises caused by sleeping on the wooden floor. A twelve part biography (with parts three, four and nine misplaced by the owners) of the Scottish Barrister Lachlan McDonald lay dancing before his eyes in the debris of last day paraphernalia. As he whispered to himself ‘I must have these,’ he was struck with an inspiration. He tapped a woman on the shoulder.

“I wish to negotiate.”

“Yes?”

“Upon my purchasing of these novels, may the mattress be subsequently sold at a discount price?”

“What mattress?”

“That mattress.”

“That’s not ours.”

“Excellent.”

And so as Cedric gleefully affixed the newest addition to his station wagon, Alistair and Ricotta were about to discover that sexual interludes could very well be carried out with some degree of comfort.

Every cent that he spent was provided by the seemingly bottomless resources of Derek Chester. Once a week a six hundred dollar cheque, signed by Derek with a flourish, would arrive in the letterbox to support Cedric’s two children. Derek was also financing Ricotta’s education and Alistair’s reformation. Cedric both despised and embraced this charity. These two feelings dictated the way in which he used the money, as if by showing intense frugality towards his children and using the bulk of it to fulfil his own desires, he could thumb his nose at Derek from the safe haven of debauchery that his benefactor had unwittingly paid for.

Cedric Nonsense was often being struck by various inspirations and certain realisations that seemed to him as if they were beamed down from somewhere alien, and as he stood studying his reflection clutch a 1995 Shiraz, he was struck with an idea as to why it would be holding such a bottle on such a morning. It was his forty sixth birthday. His reflection omitted an overture of snorts before laughter took over, and almost immediately, Cedric followed suit until they were both doubling up on the floor with streams of tears and abdominal pains. These tears were for many things: for exhaustion, for nostalgia, for his previous disgraces, for the late Nana Beth. He glanced at his HOOTH ring and his laughter ricocheted off the garage walls. In the euphoria he decided that today he would treat himself by splashing out just a little bit more than usual at the brothel. The phone began to ring as if on cue and the laughter ceased and the 1995 Shiraz bottle smashed to the floor, waking up Ricotta Nonsense.

“Ali… Alistair!”

“What?”

“Did you hear that?”

“No.”

“I think Daddy hurt himself.”

“So?”

“I’m going to go check.”



If Cedric Nonsense foraged simply as a way to fill in the blanks, then William Fong foraged to ensure that his family did not starve. His mother and father, Mailun and Eric Fong, had run a successful business trading comic books to the middle and upper classes of Shanghai, and it wasn’t until little William appeared in Mailun’s belly that the couple decided they wanted to bring up their son in a more friendly and prosperous environment. Migrating to Sydney was a sound idea in principle; they set up shop in Chinatown and for just over a year they made a decent living continuing their business. In hindsight,  it was probably in their best interests to learn the native tongue, both to expand their business beyond Chinatown, and to sooth the rash of racism that would come back to haunt them. During this year, William was born. He was an overweight blob of giggles and smiles, and his parents counted their blessings

A short time later, Mailun and Eric Fong stood to watch their livelihood being attended to by scores of firemen, constructing a mental inventory of every uninsured item that was being swallowed up by the flames. It was a significant inconvenience that the store doubled as their home.

Eric’s list (the highlights)

•          Comic books (both traditional and modern)

•          Money in the safe (five figure amount)

•          Passports, visas and other relative documentation.

•          Lease

Meilun’s list (the highlights)

•          Furniture (Mostly vintage)

•          Food

•          William’s clothing

•          William’s crib

Eric and Meilun’s list

•          The skin on William’s face. (In other words, his cherub-esque smile)

Meilun blamed Eric and Eric blamed providence for the way in which William was left to play host when the fire invited itself in.  Eric told his wife, as their son slept upstairs, to close the shop for half an hour and join him for lunch at the Kei Kun Restaurant next door. Meilun, being Meilun, suppressed her maternal concerns and did as she was told. A fireman found William lying unconscious in his crib. His ears had slid off, one eyeball had melted, the other had bowed to unconsciousness and both his chin and tender lips were dangling off what was left of his face. The fireman in question made a mental comparison to eggplant and chose to keep this to himself.

After this event, a twenty year old woman who was studying fashion at university tendered a witness report, stating that whilst wandering through Chinatown, she saw three shirtless men run inside the store and in her words they ‘torched the place up’. The shirtless assailants were never caught. Defined in one newspaper as a ‘hate crime’  and simply ignored in another, Meilun grew to despise her husband , teaching her son throughout the years to stand in front of the mirror and count every fleck of missing skin, the total being an accurate indication of his father’s cruelty. They relocated to Killarney Heights where they have since squatted in an abandoned house. William would never be able to negotiate his mouth around the vowel shapes required for enunciation, and his muteness rewarded Eric the opportunity to assert his authority without ever being spoken back to. As soon as William was old enough, he was instructed by his father to search for food and to keep a low profile, as if anyone ever found out about their existence, and furthermore chose to report them, the Fongs could very easily be deported back to China. Even with these various burdens, William would grow to be simply incapable of hating anyone and despite the haunting aesthetic that drew attention wherever he went, he still smiled in almost every situation.

It was on the morning where Cedric Nonsense found himself to be forty six that a weighty parcel arrived at the Fong’s residence. William, now twenty one, had never gone to school; such were the more important priorities of finding enough sustenance for himself and his frail parents. He had learnt to read Mandarin through the various comic books salvaged by the flames, but his extremely limited grasp of English served to be not nearly enough to decipher a note that was scrawled on the envelope. He recognised his own name however, causing him to grin with confusion.

To William Fong,

An explanation.

He fished out a leather bound book and it became instantly obvious as he sifted through the pages of English scribble that this mystery was not to be solved over night. ‘A work of fiction?’ he thought, ‘Or is this something more with the mystery…’

Just like Cedric, William was struck by a moment of inspiration that he would use to combat the difficult exterior world he had been forced to orbit in. As Eric Fong began shouting for William to find food, it was with a definite bounce in his step that he ventured out to fulfil his duty as a son.



Cedric had regained his composure and answered the phone.

‘Yes?’

‘Happy Birthday Cedric.’

‘Bruce?’

‘That’s me.’

‘Why have you contacted me?’

‘Just you know, to wish you all the best.’

‘I see that you still enjoy rubbing my nose in it.’

‘It’s not like that Cedric. Not anymore. I promise.’

‘You are a deceitful fatso’

‘Don’t be like that.’

‘A deceitful and overzealous fatso. Do not contact me in the future.’

And with this request, Cedric placed the receiver back on the hook. He wrenched the telephone out of the wall, and the guts out of the telephone. He walked over to his tool kit, picked out a greasy bottle of oil, and poured the entire contents over the circuit board. Still not satisfied he went to kick the telephone, but inflexibility and inertia willed him onto his back, where a not so small shard of glass pierced the skin of his right arm.

‘Shitting damn,’ he said to the ceiling.

During the commotion Ricotta Nonsense had tiptoed in the nude towards the garage window to investigate what she was convinced was the sound of broken glass. She served as a witness to her father’s actions, and so she waited for a time before entering his vision. Taking a breath, she went inside and immediately, oil and alcohol began tickling the deepest recesses of her nostrils.

‘Happy Birthday Daddy!’

‘Thank you.’

‘Is everything okay?’

‘Everything is fine. I accidentally fell whilst engaging in my work.’

This work involved writing manic, citation free and alcohol infused diatribes on T.S Elliot’s ‘Hollow men’, an activity first suggested fifteen years ago by Derek Chester. At the end of every session, signified by Cedric running out of steam, he would digress to doodling on every free inch of paper, and once the page had been condemned to a collage of abstraction, his pen would encroach on the words he had written until the page looked like an infant’s depiction of a spider web. That this activity did not involve physical exertion and therefore injury of any kind, it was very important in these situations that Ricotta played along with her father and that her father maintained the pretence that his life was in the most formal of orders, as to disturb this symbiotic relationship was to force Cedric into the uncomfortable recognition that the exterior perception of him was synced to his ruptured interior.

‘I’ll get the broom.’

‘That will not be necessary. Put on some clothes and fetch me the newspaper.’

‘Okay! So what do you have planned for the day?’

‘Please put on some clothes and fetch me the newspaper.’

‘Won’t be a minute!’

‘And feed the fish.’

‘Of course!’

Nothing remotely inspired Cedric to become vertical, and the recent phone call from Bruce Armstrong almost demanded that he remain reclining on the not so small shard of glass.

Ricotta, having returned to the bedroom, was deep in thought. With hips cocked she tried to pick out clothing that would best compliment Cedric’s special day. She had it narrowed down to a sleeveless green top with hugging jeans, or a modest red dress with a frilly finish. It was at this precise moment of indecision that Alistair was sprung violently from the mattress by one of his many nightmares. Ricotta swivelled around instinctively and jumped to her twin’s aid.  On every second morning she would bend down to gently lift him out of his fright and confusion. Alistair’s counsellor, Miss Lebedev, had subdivided these nightmares into three categories.

Armoured figure wields the battle axe

Alistair is chased by an armoured figure (most times a male of indeterminate age) through a never ending car park. Wakes when figure catches him. (poss. close spaces = hospital environment?)  Sights – ‘Nothing except when I turn around, and then it’s just like this stainless steel type weapon. Sounds – ‘Medieval fancy armour noises and laughter like a hyena’ (NB. encourage his use of simile) Smells – Less responsive. Scale of terror – Less responsive (Relevance of armour? poss. disconnected feelings to Cedric?) Conclusions – Pending.

Satan: working full time at Mitsubishi Motors

Alistair hires a car from a bald man (same man in every dream) who calls himself ‘Satan’. As Alistair is driving down a mountain road he realises there is no brake pedal and soon flies off the cliff. Wakes upon impact. (Poss. Satan figure is his version of Cedric?) Sights – ‘The guy’s got this weird twitch and yeah just what I said, mountains…’ Sounds – ‘The car sounds like one of those cars from a video game.’ Smells – ‘Leather and rubber’. Scale of terror – Less responsive. (Relevance of mountains? poss. no relevance.) Conclusions – Pending.

The sea lice develop an insatiable appetite

Alistair is underwater as his foot gets trapped under a log. As his chest tightens, a host of microscopic creatures begin to gnaw on every part of his body. (Esp. penis and anus). Wakes upon inhalation. (Poss. a hangover from foetal alcohol syndrome?) (NB. Do not put previous insight in report) Sights – ‘I’ve got my eyes closed.’ Sounds – ‘I’m underwater...’ Smells – If I can’t breathe I can’t smell.’ Scale of terror – Less responsive. (Relevance to underwater? Poss. feeling closed off from reality?) Conclusions – Pending

‘Ali! Ali are you okay?’

‘Yes.’

She began to stroke his hair.

‘I’m fine.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes.’

In her relief, she turned back to the wardrobe and squealed with delight. It now seemed obvious to her that the modest dress with the frilly finish was an absolutely perfect choice.

‘What happened?’

‘Daddy had an accident.’

‘Drunk?’

‘I don’t think he had been drinking.’

‘Why are you wearing that dress?’

Ricotta beamed.

‘It’s Daddy’s birthday!’

‘So?’

‘That reminds me, I have to get his newspaper.’

‘Um,’ Alistair gestured towards his morning erection.

‘I’ll be right back.’

‘Please.’

‘One minute Ali!’

              Ricotta burst through the front door like a race horse out of the stall, pirouetting down the stony steps as she sung snatches of melody. Her toes slipped between the blades of dewy grass as she breathed in the morning air. Ricotta knew that the day was going to be just excellent. Her neck was wearing the sun like a much loved scarf, and if it weren’t for the desires of Cedric and Alistair, she felt she would just collapse on the green lawn forever. On a neighbours radio there sung out the mania of Judy Garland, accompanied by an unselfconscious big band. Ricotta’s arms became windmills, her legs springing in time with the music. She turned up the volume in her mind and grinned wildly. Her hips swayed for the stern birds wrestling in the trees, for the cars dragging their owners out of bed, for the ginger cat that was giving morning joggers a cursory gaze, for the wasp buzzing a force field around her, for the skinny deaf man washing his car, for her mother, for Professor Chester, for Nathalie’s innocence. She was simply feeling silly. Skipping to the rolled up newspaper, she decided it would be festive to pick out some poppies for her father as well. Ricotta crouched down to scoop up a collection as she suddenly became aware of a human shadow reaching out to where she was kneeling. She looked up slowly to see that its owner was a young man with no hair, no ears and a single blue eye that was attached to the strangest looking face she had seen in her entire life. The moment seemed for them both to stretch into eternity. Ricotta fixed her two eyes onto his one as she waved slowly with her deformed hand. The strange face tilted backwards to reveal two sets of yellow teeth with its girlishly pink jaw stretching to its absolute tautest. Sadly for them both, this moment limped into the next moment. Her hand dropped as she stood craning her neck to watch the young man scurry down the street. Once he had disappeared from view, Ricotta headed back inside to offload the flowers and newspaper to her still horizontal father, and to lift up her skirt for her still horizontal brother.



The insult that Cedric had thrown at Bruce Armstrong was not far off the mark. Once Nana Beth had passed away it seemed to Bruce and his wife Audrey that the challenge of losing weight would be impossible. The collective compulsion of disregarding nutrition for microwaveable shepherd’s pie was one they could not kick without their late mentor. Even their deep involvement with Mormonism was not enough to distract their insatiable appetites. They combated the defeatism by ensuring that their daughter would not suffer a similar fate.  Bruce’s time bomb of a heart ticked on as he buried his face in his meaty hands. It wasn’t Cedric’s insult that rattled him, for he had been acclimatised to this brand of hostile reception from the very beginning. No, it was simply that he was missing Nana Beth and the niche environment she had offered him. The opportunity of upheaval, of support, of substituting unhealthy desires. Now, left to his own devices, he day dreamed constantly of cheese and chocolate, of mince and pastry, of ice cream and yoghurt. The occasion of Cedric’s birthday marked the twentieth anniversary of HOOTH’s inception, and it was becoming increasingly clear to Bruce that he was the only one who still missed it.

As he sat fondling his HOOTH ring, his thoughts were interrupted by the crackling lure of bacon and the sparkling voice of his daughter. Taking three shallow breaths, he slowly lifted himself out of his office chair, and feeling torrents of sweat about his torso, made his way to the kitchen.

Upon entering he saw his wife stooped over a plate of scrambled eggs and pork sausages, and his daughter tying her shoelaces.

‘Hello Audrey!’

‘Hello Bruce.’

‘Hello Nathalie!

‘Hello.’

‘It’s your sports carnival today isn’t it sweetheart?’

‘Seems that way.’

‘What events are you in?’

‘I’m not in any.’

‘What?’

‘Just joking.’ She wasn’t joking.

Bruce began to fry a pancake.

‘Nana Beth turns seventy today Audrey.’

‘Yes?’

‘I was thinking it might be nice to take a drive out and see her.’

‘I don’t think so Bruce.’

‘What with the weather being so nice and such.’

‘No, Bruce.’

‘It would mean a lot to her.’

‘No. Are you wearing the underwear Nathalie?’

‘Yes.’

She wasn’t wearing the underwear, or for that matter, any underwear.

‘Where is your ring Audrey?’

‘I took it off. Sit down Bruce. Nathalie, say grace.’

As the Armstrongs bowed their heads to thank Jesus, it certainly wasn’t the saviour that had entered their thoughts.

Nathalie, with no Mormon guilt, thought of Ricotta Nonsense and their plans to throw their school’s sports carnival into disrepair.

Bruce, with some Mormon guilt, thought of Nana Beth and his plans to visit her in secret.

Audrey, with much Mormon guilt, thought of Cedric Nonsense and her plans to suppress these immediately by eating a calorie enriched strawberry cake.



Cedric, with a not so small shard of glass imbedded in his arm, hadn’t asked his daughter to fetch the newspaper in order to read it. The Nonsense residence still held a subscription to the local newspaper simply because Cedric had never cancelled it. And over time he lost all desire to cancel it, as the daily arrival had slowly put into motion a ritual he had come to depend on. Every morning Ricotta would collect it for him, and every morning Cedric would burn it in the garage with a mixture of petrol, lighter fluid and efficiency. Since 1986, where he sat in a smelly cell gazing at his mug shot on the front page of The Sydney Morning Herald, The Daily Telegraph and The Australian, current affairs had held little interest for him. His story had run for some thirteen weeks and the slow systematic dismantlement of his pride had deemed it a Pavlovian challenge for Cedric to come into contact with the inky freshness of a newspaper.

On his forty-sixth birthday however, he had requested the newspaper for an entirely different reason. Once Ricotta had delivered the goods, of which the poppies already lay in the bin, and after she had skipped off to make him a ‘special breakfast’, he set about dressing his wound. He sat up gingerly, took off his shirt, tore apart the newspaper’s plastic covering, popped open another Shiraz bottle and picked up a non descript piece of telephone wire that had become dislodged in the aftermath of his recent vandalism. A first aid course he had taken at the very start of his medical training, and reinforced nearly every day of his six years as a General Practitioner spelt out explicitly  what to do and what not to do in the case of a wound that is deep and bloody enough to provoke infection. Cedric Nonsense was in the compromising position whereby the proper equipment for such a procedure lay in the pantry, which was in the kitchen, which was where his twin children were no doubt lurking. This was enough to see him ripping apart fragments of news stories, wrenching out the not so small shard of glass with a whimper, drowning the wound with a half empty bottle of 1995 Shiraz before fastening the strips of paper to his arm with the telephone wire. Satisfied, he hastened to put his shirt back on before temptation forced him to look at the mirror. This mistake had been made far too often.

Cedric’s sporadic snatches of bare reflection were a compulsion fuelled by a vanity that had crept up in his early twenties. Before Nana Beth passed away, he had always maintained a bovine complexion, something to do with low metabolism, a shaggy fringe and a shaggier beard. During his stint at medical school, his appearance sat well with his fellow female students. He was seen as something of a brooding figure who, due to the complex and enriching thoughts that lay behind his green eyes, did not have a minute to accommodate the more shallow and corporeal aestheticism that so many other men aspired to.

Now, whenever he caught a glimpse of himself without clothing, what snarled back at him was a gaunt, grey torso that showed nothing more than the intricate details of a skeleton. Shoulders that went inwards rather than outwards, ribs like brail, penis in a vegetative coma, red testicles that possessed a surplus of scrotum, pasty legs that made for a trapeze like balance. Cedric pitied the prostitute who would be attending to him that evening. Taking all the energy he could summon, he left the garage to partake in Ricotta’s ‘special breakfast’, feeling the telephone wire suffocate his arm.

Ricotta was humming a Garland tune as she organised breakfast. She stabbed at the curling onions, threw on a rasher of bacon, and cracked an egg. This all took place in a shoebox kitchen. One hot plate lay above one cupboard and beside the sink. The refrigerator had one foot in the kitchen and one in the dining room, or in the evening, the living room. A spherical bowl sat on the table, where three goldfish spent their days slowly navigating its parameters. From here was one door, currently closed to hide Alistair showering and one other door, currently open to reveal the twins’ mattress. Hardboard floors and dusty walls gave the house a scratching smell of sawdust and wood chippings. When the family moved in, Cedric has erected a structure in the backyard that looked like an oversized kennel or an undersized public toilet. This was where he rested his head. The garage hung precariously off the side of the main house, an aluminium box filled with bottles, tools and now, blood and broken glass. With a thorny front garden and a wiry fence, these were the components that made up the Nonsense Residence.

‘Whoa’, Ricotta whispered.

She was looking at the man’s strange face in the frying pan. During her idle poking, the mess of onions had become a circle, within which a piece of bacon smiled whilst the solitary egg stared up at her. Ricotta waved at the face and went cockeyed.

‘This isn’t so bad’ she said to it.

It responded by sizzling and dribbling out of proportion.

The piping from the bathroom begun to shake violently, signifying the end of Alistair’s shower, and with the pock pock of Cedric’s thongs getting louder, she capsized the egg and pressed down firmly.

Five minutes later, Alistair, Ricotta and their father sat down to celebrate.

‘Cotty, why is he eating that and I’m eating this?’ Alistair asked

‘Sorry Ali, we’ve run out!’

‘I purchased food yesterday.’ Cedric said.

‘Liar.’

‘So daddy have you thought about how you’re going to spend your birthday?’

‘No.’

‘Maybe he’ll buy some food.’

‘I purchased food yesterday.’ Cedric said.

‘You’re lying. If you’d got food it’d be in the fridge wouldn’t it?’

‘I’ve got my sports carnival today! I’m in the one hundred and two hundred meters, high jump and discus! 

Her father responded with urgent scrapes of Chinese cutlery. He looked up slowly at his son.

‘Is your therapy session at nine Alistair?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you require a lift?’

‘That’s so nice daddy. Ali you should…’

‘ I require food in the fridge.’

‘I purchased food yesterday.’ Cedric said.

‘Ali oats are healthy!’

‘They look like, like sprog. I’ll swap with him.’

‘It’s his birthday! His special day.’

‘I don’t care!’

‘Ali…’

‘I’m not eating this Cotty, I’m not. I want what he’s eating.’

‘I purchased food yesterday.’ Cedric said.

‘Liar.’

They finished breakfast in silence, listening to the distant barking of a Chihuahua.

The dog in question was barking fearfully at William Fong’s face from the safety of its fence. William was holding the weighty manuscript and four plastic bags filled to the brim with eggs, cheese, spaghetti, bread, tomato sauce, bacon, and various other foodstuffs. His hands were thus engaged and his intention to hold a finger to his lips to silence the frightened puppy was a futile one. Indeed, the gesture itself would have been exceptionally futile, as it was impossible to determine exactly where his lips were and where they were not.

William had never stolen anything from a house before and it was clear to him that the Chihuahua’s ear piercing yapping was a sort of karmatic retribution for his sin. His days were usually filled with upending rubbish bins and compost, finding speckles of nutrients that he would then wash and rewash in the sink of a public toilet, before preparing a sludgy broth over a makeshift fire in the backyard of the abandoned house his parents had occupied since the destruction of his face and their enterprise. Today, he had other ideas. As he marched out into the sun with the manuscript under his arm, he resolved to throw all his eggs into one basket and spend the remainder of the day in the Forestville library, borrowing every translation book he could find. This called for shortcuts, and there was no better shortcut then to scavenge at the source. This happened to be the Nonsense kitchen. In his mind this crime had been reconciled in three ways. The manuscript that bulged with mystery, the welcoming smile he had received from the dancing blond girl and the welcoming wave he had received from her near fingerless hand. He had circled the block before walking back to the exact spot he had stood in where he had watched the girl. The front lawn now vacant, he crept through the wiry fence, up the stony steps, and into the wooden house. He was immediately met with the sound of male moans from one of the closed doors, and this spurred him on to rummage with efficiency through the fridge and single cupboard, placing each item delicately into the plastic bags. The animalistic noises from the room kicked his heart into high gear. ‘A mad house!’ he thought. As William Fong scooted back out the moans reached their zenith, an intense ‘AHHHHH’ing and ‘OHHHHH’ing, and if only he hadn’t been lugging a weighty manuscript and four plastic bags he would have blocked the holes in the side of his head as he galloped out onto the street. 

William was pleased with his efforts. Not only had he saved time, but he had collected enough food for a week, something that would surely please his irate father and grant William more time to decipher the manuscript. There was only one day of his adult life that he had defied Eric; the first day he became an adult. On his eighteenth birthday he had fulfilled his chores in the daylight, but instead of concocting and manipulating the gathered ingredients into something edible for his parents, he simply left them in their bags and caught the bus to a nightclub in the city, called Chinese Laundry. Not having any form of identification, the bouncers admitted him on account of saving time and to avoid a potential spin story from a desperate journalist bringing into question the nightclub’s discriminatory ethos involving the severely disabled. Muteness and mutilation translate fairly easily within society’s collective subconscious as not being of a sound mind. The bouncers, proficient on the one hand at breaking the limbs of combative patrons, were out of their depth concerning one William Fong. So what did one William Fong do once he had entered? He strode to the middle of the dance floor among milieus of disgusted faces, and flung his body about for hours with the biggest grin he was capable of as his dance partner.

He paid dearly for his behaviour on arriving home. The bags of food lay in the same place, and the only difference one could spot was the presence of Eric Fong, sitting cross legged on the ground with a deadly glare. William was beaten before being instructed to cook in the cold for his father and mother without saving a morsel for himself. Eric stood at the window to supervise.

Once William had fled from the Nonsense residence and the little dog he slowed his pace and with a relieved smile, travelled the kilometre to the Forestville library.

The Forestville library doubled as a community centre, and in one of the centre’s offices Miss Lebedev currently sat with case files spooled out on the desk in front of her. Alistair Nonsense would be arriving in ten minutes for their nine o clock appointment, and as always, she was having a private panic attack. It wasn’t so much his abrasive behaviour that bothered her, both past and present, as she was as used to this as a prostitute is to penetration. It was rather her overwhelming emotional attachment to him. Since she had taken on his case a year ago, erotic transference had slowly consumed her psychological integrity, so much so that the moment he walked into the door, tiny hairs on the back of her skinny neck stood up to attention. She was forty one, and he was fifteen, which added to the dilemma.

She had some time ago been romantically involved with his father, a puddle of history she wished would evaporate. Alistair reminded her of the handsome Byronic hero that Cedric once was, before she ever learnt of his history and sordid double life. She hated Cedric Nonsense with every fibre of her being, hated how he had raised his children and hated how they never were a given the chance to meet their mother, due to his negligence. She often brought to mind Henry Fielding’s statement, quoted fifteen years ago by her friend Derek Chester, ‘What must become of an infant who is conceived in gin with a poisonous distillation of which it is nourished both in the womb and at the breast?’. It took herculean resolve not to openly agree and share in the anger that Alistair spouted out about his father. Instead, she locked her jaw and nodded, safe in the knowledge that soon, justice would be served.

She had earlier that morning, on the back of Nana Beth’s seventieth birthday, set into motion a series of potential cataclysmic events that she no longer had any control over, events that could see her locked away for the rest of her days, events that could rupture the lives of Derek, of Bruce and Audrey and Nathalie, of Alistair and Ricotta and Cedric. It was due to this last name that she had gone through with it at all.

This was pushing her private panic attack towards the danger zone, and so she swallowed two tablets of valium and rifled erratically through various case files of her other clients to try and convince herself that this was just another day. Business as usual. She picked out three files at random.

Poppy Morgan

16 years old. Currently enrolled in Manly Hospital. Has a consuming compulsion to kneel under wasps nests and flick lit cigarettes at the aforementioned nest…

She turned to another.

Damien Junior

10 years old. Currently enrolled in Balgowlah Correctional Facility. Picked out his father’s collection of Japanese fish and penetrated each fish individually with toothpicks until the fish died.

And another.

Red Jenkins

13 years old. Currently enrolled in Newport Correctional Facility. Has an uncontrollable urge to expose himself to unassuming seniors…

Miss Lebedev’s tactic was not working. She couldn’t help thinking that these cases paled in comparison to how Alistair ended up in a Juvenile Detention Centre. Cursing herself, she went for the drawer that was dedicated to him and him only. Inside was a tape player that held a record of their discussion about the incident. After rewinding the tape for the umpteenth time, she clicked ‘play’ and placed her head on the desk.

‘So Alistair, maybe you could elaborate on the incident?’

‘What does elaborate mean?’

‘Expand’

‘What?’

‘Tell me what happened.’

‘He was crying. It was pathetic. Cotty tried to help him but he ignored her. Then he told us we were going to the country for the whole weekend, and I said ‘no’ but he dragged us into his wagon. I think I was ten, if I was older I would’ve stood up to him. On the way to god knows where, he was crying more and more, saying ‘Jenny Jenny Jenny’ and drinking behind the wheel. He was being a really useless person. We ended up at some farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. He told us to unpack, and locked himself in some room. He must’ve pissed and shit in his empty bottles cause he didn’t come out for three days.’

‘Do you know who Jenny is?’

‘I remember some chick called Jenny yeah. She hung around a lot when me and Cotty were kids.’

‘Do you have any idea why your father might have been crying?’

‘He’s weak.’

…

‘What happened next?’

‘The farm house was like a oven, and the whole place smelt like cow shit. All the walls were like tin or something and me and Cotty had to stay there for three nights.

‘So how did the incident happen?’

‘It’s none of your business.’

‘You can tell me or a judge, I can guarantee that if you tell me it will be a lot easier for you.’

‘’Are you going to send this tape off somewhere?’

‘Where would I send it?’

‘I dunno what to say. The first night was bad, it was so hot and Cotty was reading me some shit about astrology or something. And I could hear the fool crying and saying ‘Jenny Jenny Jenny’. I got up and left the room.’

‘And you went outside?’

‘Don’t talk over me please… I went outside and saw this massive horse in the distance. I could hear it purring or whatever noises horses make. Sorta like sighing. I walked towards it cause I could still hear him sobbing and Cotty was humming and I had to get away. So I walked to the horse.

‘What did the horse look like?’

‘It was black with droopy lips and wearing some purple vest and it had a boner.

‘A stallion.’

‘What?’

‘A male horse is called a stallion.’

‘It had scary eyes, like all white and it just stared at me for ages. I started sorta slapping its face a bit.’

‘Why did you slap its face?’

‘I DON’T KNOW.’

‘I’m sorry. Please continue.’

‘I slapped its face and the horse bit my finger really hard and started kicking its feet around and nodding its head a lot. So I pulled out my pocket knife.

‘And?’

‘And I drove the blade through its eye.’

‘Miss Lebedev, Miss Lebedev?’ spoke the intercom as she fumbled to switch off the tape recorder.

‘Yes?’

‘Alistair Nonsense is here to see you.’

‘Please send him in.’

It was instantly evident to her as Alistair entered the room that he was stoned. His eyes were barely open as he sunk slow motion into the armchair. It was in the vicinity of twice a day that he would meet Daniel and Gorman at Darley Oval who would chop up marijuana for him behind the club house. They had set up a bartering agreement where in exchange for the drugs, Alistair would not reveal to their parents that their children were homosexuals.

‘How are you today Alistair?’

‘I just saw an alien!’

‘Where did you see an alien?’

‘Just outside, some creepy thing with a weird face walked into the library…Jesus.’

‘Are you high?’

‘Very!’

‘Alistair we’ve talked about…’

‘I’m hungry.’

‘Marijuana does…’

‘Not from the weed, from not eating any breakfast.’

‘Why didn’t you eat breakfast?’

‘Because he didn’t have any. Enough for himself though. You should have seen him, stuffing his face with bacon while I had this snot to eat.’

‘Porridge?’

‘Whatever it was, it was unfair. A birthday can’t make up for anything. ‘

‘So your father had no food in house?’

‘Nothing. Nothing! Everything he had he made Cotty cook it for him.’

‘Is this why you took the marijuana? Usually it’s not until the afternoon that you…’

‘I don’t know. I called Danny and Gorm, they answered, we got high. End of story.’

The most upsetting thing for Miss Lebedev during these sessions was not Alistair’s inability to understand that a question was not necessarily synonymous with confrontation. She had learnt quickly that progress was not to be made by trying to change his patterns of language and aggression. The curse of Foetal Alcohol Syndrome had removed all possibility of this.’ The most heart breaking thing for Miss Lebedev was that whenever he spoke, he constantly tugged at the armchair, a clear indication for her that he was perpetually uncomfortable in his own skin. During their year of daily consultations, the chair had slowly been reduced to a mess of yellow foam and after every appointment she would get on hands and knees, picking up every fleck that had fallen from Alistair’s anxious ripping.

‘Is there anything that you would like to talk about today?’

‘I had one of those nightmares.’

‘Which one?’

‘It was the crazy axe one

‘Did you see who it was chasing you?’

‘Yeah, for some reason she didn’t have her helmet on.’

‘She?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Who was it?’

‘You.’

‘What!’

‘I’m joking. I don’t remember it.’

Miss Lebedev was trying desperately to hide the fact that her chest had severely tightened.

‘Why are you standing up?’

‘I’m going.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘Darley Oval.’

‘Alistair it’s only been ten minutes. Let’s try for at least another five?.’

‘Bye bye!’

‘Alistair why are you going back to Darley Oval?’

‘Danny and Gorm are bringing me food. And more weed.’

‘Alistair!’

The door slammed, and Lebedev tugged fiercely at her hair. She picked up the phone.

‘Hello?’

‘Derek it’s me.’

‘Is everything okay?’

‘I don’t think Cedric is spending your money on the kids.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Alistair just told me there’s no food in the house.’

‘Alright alright it’s okay, I will call you later. I’m caught up with this sports carnival at the moment.’

‘Thank you Derek.’

‘Goodbye.’



If Derek Chester knew what destructive plan Ricotta and Nathalie had devised for the sports carnival, he would have used a stronger phrase than ‘caught up’. The girls’ mannerisms did not offer him any tip off, and until lunch time they were just two students among a thousand, waiting patiently for their turn to compete. If anyone could have predicted the afternoon events, it would have been Derek. His eyes always magnetised towards Ricotta with an intense protective force, and in light of Miss Lebedev’s phone call, he was watching her today more than ever. He had already held the assumption that Cedric squandered the money on frivolity, he just wished that today, on Nana Beth’s seventieth birthday, on HOOTH’S twenty year anniversary that he would show some sensitivity, some tact, some recognition of the hand he had in their collective history. To ensure that the house was devoid of food on such a day was to Derek both a personal attack and something wholly within the manipulative space that Cedric dwelt in. It seemed unjust that Alistair and Ricotta had to bear the consequences.

In the distance he saw Ricotta stand up suddenly and shimmy her way through the aisle of knobbly knees. A second later, Nathalie stood up and shimmied in the opposite direction, crouching in and out of Derek’s view every few seats. His brow furrowed as he tried to decide which girl to keep an eye on. The pair had been in trouble a plethora of times for their behaviour, and the various punishments that were doled out by their tired vice principal never outweighed the thrill they felt from accomplishing one their escapades.

‘Just like her mother,’ he thought.

Ricotta disappeared around a corner and instinct willed Derek to follow her. As he rounded the corner he glimpsed Nathalie continuing her unusual behaviour, having now ducked and weaved through three full rows of oblivious students.