2024 Results
2024 Judges
2024 Winning Entries
About the Northern Beaches Writers’ Competition
2024 Results
1st Place:
‘The Lady Stuck in the Window’ by Caroline Sully (click or scroll down to read!)
2nd Place:
‘The Hungry Ghost’ by Ivan Logan (click or scroll down to read!)
Northern Beaches Commendation Award 2024:
‘Glass Heart’ by Kate Mitchell (click or scroll down to read!)
Shortlisted entrants:
(in alphabetical order)
- A World Within – Kayleigh Greg NSW
- All Clear – Anne McEncroe NSW
- Beyond the Looking Glass – Mijmark NSW
- Glass Heart – Kate Mitchell NSW
- God’s Crystal Ball – Connery Brown NSW
- Hollingwood Estate – Mandy Munro NSW
- I Am – Averil Robertson VIC
- King of Glass – PS Cottier ACT
- One More Day – Sonia Zadro NSW
- Relic – Eleanor Platt ACT
- Skinny Dipping – Laurie Keim QLD
- Sometimes I’m Made of Glass – Jennifer Harrison VIC
- The Parting Glass – Geoff Dawson NSW
- The Hungry Ghost – Ivan Logan NSW
- The Lady Stuck in the Window – Caroline Sully NSW
- The Princess Jewel – Sybille Lechner NSW
- The Remedy – Samuel David Medley QLD
- The Submarine – Alison Killick VIC
- When Glass Turned on Man – Jan Mosler VIC
- Window Panes – Claire Hampson NSW
2024 Judges
Many thanks to our wonderful judges for 2024…
Primary Judge
Zena Shapter is a multi-award winning author of speculative and contemporary fiction, conjuring journeys into the beyond and unusual. Author of ‘When Dark Roots Hunt’ (with Book II in the Palude series out next year!), ‘Towards White’, and co-author of ‘Into Tordon‘, she’s a “writer with a need for adventure” (Midnight Echo magazine), writing “cold and brutal” stories (Tor.com), who “deserves your attention” (Lillian Csernica, Tangent Online). She loves movies, frogs, chocolate, potatoes, and living with her family on Sydney’s beautiful Northern Beaches, where she’s also an inclusive creativity advocate, writing mentor and editor. Find her online via @ZenaShapter and zenashapter.com
Judging Panel
Azmeena Kelly: Azmeena is a Northern Beaches local who writes stories that explore our interactions with technology, and imagines realities where science and magic can coexist. Azmeena has published a number of short stories and is working on her first novel.
Mark White: Mark is a journalist and writer with an interest in speculative fiction. His first published story ‘Power to the People’ was published in the anthology, The Flesh of Your Future Sticks Between My Teeth (Figuration Press, 2022). When not at his keyboard, he can be found at the beach or trying to keep his balcony garden happy.
Rae Blair: After a career in corporate communications, editing and PR, Rae published her debut novel More Than I Ever Had in 2022, an Australian historical fiction based on a true story. She is currently writing in the women’s suspense genre and is passionate about the craft of storytelling.
Victor Petersen: Victor is active in the local Northern Beaches writing community. He has written books and games to learn language, and has a number of translations from Chinese published. His most recent publication is Lunyu Analysis.
Sylvia Jimenez: Describing herself as an observer of human behaviour, Sylvia’s thirty year career in corporate communications, publishing and advertising means that conceptualising creative storytelling has led her to the concept that everything we do is tied to a story that wants to be told. She has a BA in English Literature and Creative Writing and, alongside writing contemporary women’s fiction, she is also a freelance writer, social commentator, and is busy writing her debut novel as well as keeping connections open on her blog: sylviajimenez.com.
2024 Winning Entries
1st Place: ‘The Lady Stuck in the Window’ by Caroline Sully
It poured with rain the day we moved in. The house which had looked so enchanting on a sunny final inspection day seemed hunched against the weather and gloomy. The polished floorboards exaggerated every sound as the removalists lugged, muttered and shouted.
I wished I’d asked my parents to mind Lila, our four-year-old daughter, for the day. It was hard enough directing the removalists without having to watch her too. James, to expedite the procedure, was helping the removalists, hoping to find a box of Lila’s toys to keep her occupied for a while.
At last the toys were found, Lila chattered happily to her Barbies, the furniture was in more or less the right place and boxes filled most rooms. The removalists had gone, leaving bootmarks everywhere. James and I felt shattered.
“Thank heavens I marked the box with the kettle and mugs,” I sighed.
“I’ve got something better.” James opened an esky, grinning, and ripped the foil off a bottle of Chandon.
We sipped from plastic tumblers as we explored our new home. It had been built in the late 1950s, and aside from a newish kitchen was virtually unrenovated, which is why we could afford it. Set high on a hill it had district views with a tiny triangle of ocean visible from the picture window in the living room.
“Ocean views, Sasha, ocean views,” said James.
“If you squint,” I giggled, duly squinting. “We did it. We’ve bought a house.”
By the time we’d finished the bottle the rain had stopped and the clouds were moving. The house felt lighter and larger. I unpacked some very necessary boxes marked Kitchen and Bathroom while James made up beds and made sure the TV worked. There was a tacit agreement we wouldn’t be doing much more today and would be ordering Uber Eats.
Lila, bored with her Barbies, wandered into the living room as the sun finally broke through the clouds and poured through the windows, making rhombuses on the floor. She stared at the picture window, transfixed. “Look, Mummy, there’s a lady stuck in the window.”
“Don’t be silly,” I said. Lila had a vivid imagination. But I looked anyway, and it took me a minute to see it for myself.
It was obviously the original pane of glass, and either time or something odd in the foundry process meant that seen from a certain angle against the sun there looked to be a naked woman imprinted in the glass. A faint outline, but she was almost full size, busty and wasp-waisted, with pageboy hair; very 1950s.
“Heavens, Lila, there is too. James! Come and look at this!”
James, by the look on his face, was about to make a lewd comment but remembered Lila was sitting on the floor at his feet. “Well, that’s certainly a unique feature. I bet nobody else has a window quite like this one.”
“She’s stuck there,” Lila said. “Stuck in the window.”
The outline began to fade as the sun moved, and the pane of glass became just another window. James and I ran our hands over the glass but it was perfectly smooth.
“I’ll find the ladder tomorrow and check the outside,” James said. “For now … Thai or Pizza?”
* * *
James said the outside of the window was smooth and straight. He washed the outside and inside even though the previous owner had left the house sparkling, in case traces of detergent had caused the figure to materialise.
Lila was delighted when the ‘lady stuck in the window’ appeared late that bright afternoon for a fragile few minutes.
We parents shrugged. It just made our house more interesting.
Lila started at her new daycare centre the next week and came home excited every day. Because I worked from home as a graphic designer, I was free to collect her each afternoon and listened to her babbling away in the back seat of the car. “We learned a new song, Mummy. It’s from Bluey. Shit, I can’t think how it goes now though.”
I nearly ran into the car in front. “Lila! Where did you learn that word?” We were very careful not to swear in front of her.
“What word?” Lila said craftily.
“The one you said just before you said you couldn’t remember how the song goes.” God, you had to think quickly with kids.
“Shit?” Lila giggled. “Shit shit shit?”
“That word. It’s a naughty word. You mustn’t ever use it again. Did one of the kids at daycare teach it to you?”
“No. The lady stuck in the window said it.”
I took a deep breath. “Don’t tell fibs, either.”
“I’m not.” Lila, in the rearview mirror, stared defiantly into my eyes. Her tense face was the forewarning of a tantrum so I let the topic go and concentrated on the road.
When we arrived home Lila gave a cry of delight. “The lady’s there in the window!” She almost tripped me as she skidded across the floor and sat cross-legged, staring at the glass and looking for all the world as if she were listening to someone read her a story. She moved only when the lady faded with the changing sun.
I hoped the novelty would wear off soon. Winter wasn’t far away and the angle of the sun could mean the ‘lady stuck in the window’ mightn’t appear at all. With luck.
We discussed it when Lila had gone to bed. We agreed she’d grow out of it, just as she’d grown out of an imaginary friend last year called Tizzy. Tizzy had apparently told Lila to do naughty things such as throw her food across the table, kick her grandfather in the shins and stick her tongue out at strangers. Tizzy had lasted a month.
That night I had a strange dream. The ‘lady stuck in the window’ wasn’t just an outline. She was a three-dimensional living being standing in the living room, with blonde hair and blue eyes, uncannily like a grown up vintage version of Lila, which was disturbing. She laughed at me, winked a blue-shadowed eye and blew me a kiss from shiny red lips before stepping back into the window and draining away to a faint shape. I woke up with my heart racing at 2.16am.
Carefully I rolled out of bed and checked on Lila, who was sleeping peacefully and cuddling her stuffed unicorn. I padded to the living room where the picture window was clear and uncluttered by any human form.
“Shouldn’t have had that third chardy,” I muttered to myself as I sank a glass of water in the kitchen and tiptoed back to the bedroom.
The next few days were cloudy so no naked woman manifested in our picture window, to Lila’s sorrow and my relief. Friday saw sun stream into the house in the afternoon, warming the rooms and making the Murano glass vase my grandmother left me glow and shoot turquoise patterns onto the wall. This house, as I unpacked, was feeling more and more like home.
Lila waited for her ‘lady’ to appear and of course the cow did. She was there for a mere five minutes but it was enough to light up Lila’s face. Lila skipped to her room afterwards, humming happily. The song was vaguely familiar but I couldn’t place where I’d heard it. Not from Frozen, anyway.
Prepping veggies for a stir fry before James came home, I could hear her singing in her offkey high voice, and stopped to listen. Shoes … rice … chilling … willing … makin’ whoopee. What? That was from my grandmother’s era. Not something I’d ever ask Google to play or the daycare would teach her.
I crept down the hall and peeked around the door. One of her Barbies was lying on her back on the rug and Lila was making her only Ken doll do things to her he didn’t have the equipment to do, in rhythm to the song.
“Lila!”
Her guilty face told me she knew exactly what she was doing. “Betty taught it me,” she said defiantly. I hadn’t noticed until now how like James she looked when she stuck her chin out.
“Who’s Betty? A kid at daycare?” But I knew the answer.
“The lady stuck in the window. That’s her name. She told me the song and the dance. Barbie’s makin’ whoopee.”
“Well, she can stop makin’ whoopee right now because that’s not a nice dance to do. It’s for adults, not little girls like you. Tell Betty to stop telling you naughty things.” I was at a loss as to how to handle it. In the end I grabbed Ken and walked off with him, shaken. I shoved him on top of the fridge, ignoring Lila’s wails.
Feeling stupid, I stood in front of the picture window. “Betty, leave our daughter alone. Stop it. Go away.” Naturally there was nothing there except clear glass.
After dinner James and I had a serious talk about replacing the unique picture window.
You know what’s coming: I had another dream about her. This time she materialised from the window, laughed in my face and shook her head so her pageboy bob swung around her shoulders, then she sashayed back into the glass and vanished.
I called a glass replacement service the next day but they said they couldn’t get here for a week to measure, that storm last month had all the glass guys still running around like headless chooks.
We had a cloudy weekend so I planted veggie seedlings in raised beds and Lila ran around the backyard giggling like her usual self in between helping me plant while James used his new lawnmower for the first time.
On Monday the sun returned and so did Betty for a few minutes. Oh, bring on winter, I begged, realising Betty would have been and gone by the time Lila was home from daycare.
Tuesday afternoon Lila played in the backyard and it wasn’t until I checked my little seedlings on Wednesday morning I discovered they’d been uprooted. It wasn’t a possum or wallaby; they’d have been eaten.
“Why did you pull the seedlings out?” I asked Lila, knowing the answer.
“Betty told me to. She thinks kale is sh – rubbish,” she said.
“Betty isn’t a real person,” I said, holding her by her shoulders and crouching down to look into her eyes. “You listen to me, not Betty. She’s like Tizzy. She’s pretend.”
“No she’s not.” The lift of the head, the stubborn chin. She picked up her little backpack to go to daycare.
In my dream that night Betty smirked.
The glass guys came on Wednesday and promised a replacement window with thicker, safer glass as soon as they could get around to it. They arrived in the morning to measure and didn’t see any apparitions in the window.
We had two weeks of rain, which helped my poor replanted seedlings regain their strength and meant Betty wasn’t visible. Lila sang songs from Frozen and helped me make cupcakes after daycare.
Relief flooded through me when the glass guys rang to say they had the new pane ready. Bye bye Betty. I booked it for Thursday morning, the earliest they could install it.
Feeling a bit stupid I tacked a sheet in front of the picture window on Monday afternoon. We had sunshine forecast for the next week. I told Lila she couldn’t talk to Betty anymore and the resulting tantrum left us both exhausted. Lila lay on the floor hammering her feet against the floorboards and her screams echoed through the house.
Shaking my head, I went into the kitchen to make coffee and heard a thump and crash from the living room. I ran.
Lila stood defiantly over the pieces of my grandmother’s Murano glass vase, which were scattered in unrepairable shards. “Betty hates you!”
“And I hate Betty,” I said childishly, tamping down a flood of rage and the urge to burst into tears. That beautiful vase! One of my most treasured possessions, passed to me with love; the only tangible memory I had of my grandmother aside from photographs. “Go to your room. Now. That was a very naughty thing to do.” I trembled as I watched her stomp down the hall. Biting back tears, I swept up the pieces and binned them.
James and I discussed it that night and we both believed ‘Betty’ would disappear with the new window. I’d have to explain to Lila that she’d gone away to live somewhere else and wasn’t coming back. I slept badly that night, with Betty taunting me, wagging a red-nailed finger in my face.
Two more days until we had a new window. When I collected Lila we went to a park on Tuesday and to the beach to build sandcastles on Wednesday. I made sure any chance of seeing Betty was gone by arriving home at dusk.
Lila was safely in daycare when the men replaced the window on Thursday. They took the old pane out and put it on their truck, telling me they’d dispose of it. I heard them curse as it cracked and fell in two. Take that, Betty, right across the waist, I thought maliciously. The new pane was thick and strong and had no hint of naked ladies. I waved them off cheerfully, watching Betty leave the property. The house felt light and free. I hadn’t realised the atmosphere that had been building up before now.
Lila begged to play dressups that afternoon when we got home as she’d played dressups that morning and had been a mermaid. She was so happy and normal I let her loose in our bedroom with some of my pretty clothes while I brewed a tea.
I grinned as I heard her shuffling down the hall in what sounded like a pair of my heels. I turned to see her wearing my red sparkly top as a dress, cinched in at the waist with a scarf. She’d pulled her hair back from her face and used bobby pins to create a vintage pageboy look. She’d been at my makeup, but it wasn’t applied in the messy way children have. Her eyelids were carefully plum brown, and she’d used my eyeliner to create expert cat-eye flicks in the corners. Her pretty pink lips were now bright red, not a smudge in sight, as cleanly painted as if she’d been doing it for years. Blush on her cheekbones. Eyebrows drawn in arches. All so professional. All so reminiscent of a 1950s pinup girl.
I shuddered. “What are you doing with that makeup on?”
“Hello Sasha,” Lila said in a grownup voice that had nothing of her usual girlish lisp to it. It was the voice of someone who drank gin and smoked a pack a day. Her face was sly, her eyes full of knowledge. “I’m not stuck in the window anymore.”
About the Author
Caroline Sully has been making up stories and writing since she could hold a pencil as a preschooler. Her stories have been published in the past in Woman’s Day, and in the 1980s in two horse magazines (she was horsey back in the day and still likes a canter). She has won several short story competitions over the last four decades. Her more recent short stories, many of them humorous, are available to read at carolinesully.wordpress.com. While short stories are her preferred medium she is currently working on a novel. Caroline lives in the Pittwater region of Sydney’s Northern Beaches and is inspired by the beauty of the area. She is also an artist and exhibits in shows in the Northern Beaches.
2nd Place: ‘The Hungry Ghost’ by Ivan Logan
As far as Gnome knew, Rena had been punched exactly twice in all the time she’d worked there. By her own admission, it had been her fault for not seeing it coming. This time, she stepped neatly to the side, using the guy’s momentum against him to send him sprawling across the sticky dancefloor. For a moment, he was in mid-air, the beer bottle suspended in space beyond his outstretched fingers, frozen in time by the flash of the strobe, and then he was down, and the glass shattered everywhere.
Gnome hauled him up by the collar like a ragdoll and marched him out through the club’s entrance and onto the pavement. Rena followed behind, coming to a halt next to the huge man, her head coming up as far as shoulder. She gave the guy on the ground a little smile.
“Enjoy the rest of your night,” Gnome called out, folding his arms.
They waited for a moment, watching the flow of expressions across the guy’s face, but then he picked himself up and stumbled away down Oxford Street towards the bright lights of the city.
“Nice work,” Gnome said.
“What?” Rena asked.
“I didn’t even see you move.”
“I’m quick when I need to.”
“Quicker than me. I didn’t even see him kicking off.”
“Don’t feel bad about the fact you nearly let a lady get smacked in the face. I’ve been doing this a while.”
Gnome laughed, then checked his watch.
“How much more?” Rena asked him.
“Another hour.”
He turned, and they made their way back into the club. Inside, the night was winding down: bodies in booths, still a few people on the dancefloor, two guys at the bar alone on stools. Gnome wrinkled his nose and glanced across at Rena, getting up the nerve. She looked up at him and he launched into it.
“So, fancy a drink after?”
Rena surveyed him coolly. “How long?”
“Uh, what? Just one, if you want. Maybe two. Your call. I mean, up to you.”
Gnome looked into the pale grey eyes of the diminutive woman, watching her watching him, her expression curiously neutral.
“Look, only if you like. No stress,” Gnome stammered.
“No, I mean, how long you been building up to that?”
“I… I dunno.”
“C’mon, you do. Just a drink, or a drink and a cuddle?”
Gnome flinched.
“I just thought, maybe, I mean….”
“How long you worked here?”
“I dunno. Six months. Yeah, six, maybe.”
“Did no-one warn you about me?”
Gnome shook his head slowly.
“Maybe they should have.”
“Why?”
Rena leaned closer, grinning up at him. “I eat men.”
She patted him on his cheek, her long, thin fingers cool against his skin.
“This is where you say something like, you like being eaten. Or, that you’re too tough to chew, or some shit. Guaranteed I’ve heard it. Like I said, been doing this a while.”
The grey eyes were drawing him in, standing in the middle of the nightclub, red-lit by the dancefloor spotlights, her lips the colour of blood. Gnome knew he was staring at her, but that he couldn’t look away, however much he wanted to. She seemed to be staring right into him, like he was transparent, and he felt it again.
He’d felt it the first night they’d worked together. There was something about Rena. She looked like she was in her twenties, jet black bob framing a pretty face, soft features, but her eyes said something else. Her eyes were ancient, like she could look straight through you, just like now.
“I’d shatter you,” she murmured, and it sounded like a confession.
Rena blinked, scanning the thinning crowd, and Gnome felt suddenly like he could move again. He made a low, rumbling sound in his throat.
“Yeah, look. I didn’t mean to cross the line. I just thought….”
The eyes flicked back to him again. He hadn’t even seen her head move and suddenly he was caught in her stare. Then, she seemed to relax.
“There’s nowhere open,” she said.
“I… uh, what?”
“After work, where’s there to go once we shut? We’re where everyone else comes for one last drink.”
“I guess I didn’t think about that.”
“Want to come back to mine?”
Rena’s expression was neutral, but Gnome found himself nodding.
“I’ve got half a bottle of whiskey,” she continued.
“You sure you want to invite me back?”
“Yeah. Home ground. Though, I’m warning you, it’s not much, not on what Billy pays me here.”
“I’m good if you’re good.”
“Just a drink, or a cuddle?”
‘Whatever you want.”
Rena smiled. “Yeah, it’s whatever I want.”
Afterwards, they snaked through the back streets in the pre-dawn chill, after Billy had given them both a bundle of notes and a smile. In the east, the sky was beginning to lighten, the stars fading slowly into the gathering blue.
“You always work the graveyard shift?” Gnome asked, shrugging further into his coat against the cold.
“It’s my thing. I’m not afraid of the graveyard. Plus, cash in hand. So, why they call you Gnome?”
Gnome laughed. “From when I was younger. We went and got completely destroyed one night, and I lost all the boys. Or, they lost me. They got up the next morning and that’s when they found me, propped up against a bush in the middle of the front garden, fast asleep.”
“So, not because of your jolly demeanour.”
“Nah, but I got that too.”
They approached a battered low-rise apartment block, its bulk looming in the dark. They went inside, down a flight of stairs.
“Basement flat,” Rena commented. “Like I said, not crash-hot, but it’s home.”
She unlocked a door, opening it to reveal a tiny bedsit.
“Cosy,” Gnome said, as Rena crossed over to the little kitchenette.
“I get by.”
Rena extracted glasses and a whiskey bottle from the cupboard. Gnome followed her movements as she poured their drinks. There was a practiced air about them, precise yet elaborate, like a dance.
“You been here a while?” Gnome asked her.
“As in, this flat, or the city, or the country?”
“I meant the city.”
“A while, yeah.” A small smile flickered across Rena’s face, as if it was a private joke. “But my family’s from Europe.”
“Miss them? Your family I mean?”
“Not really. They’re all dead now.”
Gnome accepted his glass from Rena, seeing a shadow flicker across her face. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It’s been a long time. Sit?”
Gnome flopped down onto the battered couch, looking around the little apartment. Besides the bed and the TV against one wall, there wasn’t much to look at. Leaning against the wall was a full-length mirror, mostly covered over by a sheet, exposing an ornate wooden frame. It was the most expensive-looking thing in the entire place.
“I don’t have much,” Rena murmured, settling down next to him, as if reading his mind.
Rena’s mouth turned down at the corners, and she sipped her whiskey, the glass sparkling in the light.
“You like old things,” Gnome said, breaking the little silence between them.
“Yeah.”
He reached out, wrapping her hand in his, enveloping her long, delicate fingers. “Your hand’s cold,” he said.
“So’s the rest of me.”
“You need a thicker coat for coming home in.”
“Wouldn’t matter. I’m always cold.”
“Maybe turn up the heating in here?”
“I don’t have the money.” Rena sipped her whiskey, regarding Gnome over the rim of her glass, ageless grey eyes observing him carefully. “When I told you I eat men, you weren’t put off.”
“Nah.”
Rena shook her head. “Gnome, I like you. I really do. It’s been a long time since I’ve had fun with someone at work, or ever, really. But, you crossed a line and it’s a big one. I do eat men. You won’t live to see sunrise.”
Gnome felt a chill run up his spine. He shifted in his seat. “Uh, should I just leave?” he asked.
“You’d never make it to the door. But you’re still going to try. They always do.”
Gnome’s focus dropped to the glass in his hand.
“It’s just whiskey. I’m drinking it too. It’s not drugged.”
“You’re starting to freak me out, Rena.”
Rena knocked back the rest of her drink and got up from the couch. She padded barefoot across the carpet to the bottle. “Let me show you something,” she called over her shoulder.
Gnome got up and followed her.
She indicated the cloth covering the mirror. “Take a look.”
Gnome looked from her to the mirror. Cautiously, he reached out and tugged the cloth away to find himself face-to-face with his reflection. “Looks like a proper antique,” Gnome muttered, but his eyes were on Rena again.
“Take a good look in the mirror. What do you see?”
Gnome stared at his reflection again. “Me,” he replied.
“Anything else?”
“The wall behind me. The door.”
“Me?”
Gnome glanced at her, seeing the grave expression on her face, then back to the mirror: she wasn’t there. His blood ran cold. Gnome met her gaze, and for the first time, he felt afraid. “That’s not… uh. It’s not real. That’s just….”
“Just stories? Unfortunately not. You get it now?”
Gnome stared into her scintillating grey eyes, seeing her come alive before him, bright with anticipation. His thoughts began to fade.
“Understand?” Rena asked. “You have no idea how hard I’ve worked to keep my secrets. You have no idea how hard my life is.”
Her hand was against his cheek, cool skin against his face. He hadn’t seen her move.
“Please,” he whispered into the silence between them, as the dread rose up within him.
Rena’s eyes locked onto his, and he was lost in her gaze. A part of him wanted to run, but the other passively accepted that he was face-to-face with something inescapably lethal. Despite towering over her, he was helpless.
Then, Rena seemed to come to a decision, relenting. She stepped back, refilling her whiskey glass, swirling the amber liquid around and around, contemplating it. “You have no idea how hard my life is,” she repeated, taking a sip.
“Please let me go.”
“How?” Gnome half-expected her to rage at him, but instead she crumpled, her face drooping. “I’m sorry.” Rena put her glass down, facing him.
“Let me go. I won’t tell,” he begged.
“Yeah, but you’re gonna know. Then, all this,” she waved a hand at her little bedsit, “All this is lost. Everything I’ve managed to save, I’ve gotta give it up, and I can’t. I just can’t, not again.”
She rounded on him, suddenly animated. “I can’t trust you. I can’t move again. I’m so hungry, and so utterly trapped.”
Rena knocked back her drink, slamming the glass down on the counter. Her hands curled up into fists, white knuckled. “You get that, right? You shouldn’t have asked me in the club. You should have walked away. I’m so hungry, and it’s so hard.”
Gnome stepped closer, his mind racing, taking her shoulders in his hands. He felt her stiffen, and suddenly it was like pushing against rock, her body immovable. Then, gradually, she slackened, looking up into his face with despair. “How much do you need?” Gnome asked.
Rena blinked at him, uncomprehending.
“I mean it, Rena. How much do you need, right now?”
He released her shoulders and offered his forearm to her face. Quickly, she reached out and encircled his wrist and elbow in an iron grip. She parted her lips, exposing little sharp canines, then hesitated, looking up at him.
“It’s okay,” Gnome nodded.
Rena bit. The pain seared through him, and he cried out as Rena began to feed, her breath cold against his skin, her hands locked around his arm. Gnome closed his eyes, carried away by a sudden, overwhelming euphoria. When at last he opened them again, Rena was standing in front of him, pressing an adhesive dressing against his arm.
“Still with us?”
He gaped, struggling to form words. “What… did you do?”
The ageless grey eyes bored into him, and he felt his thoughts fading again, but then Rena looked away, breaking the spell.
“This is why our victims don’t struggle. It’s why our familiars bond with us for life. Even if we kill, it’s not cruel because those last moments are the purest bliss. You should sit down, before you fall down.”
Gnome pressed the dressing against his skin and collapsed heavily onto the couch. Rena perched next to him, extracting her phone from her pocket to get comfortable. Gnome scanned around the place again, still reeling.
“No laptop, no….”
“Technology. Yeah.”
“Don’t like it?”
“Oh, it’s more that technology doesn’t like me. We’re not friends.”
Gnome blinked, feeling his focus returning. “You got a phone though.”
“Yeah. Pretty much all I got.”
“It’s classic, real buttons. I haven’t seen one of those in years. Never upgraded?”
“To a smartphone, with a touch screen and all?”
“Yeah.”
“Nah. This works. I can send messages and make calls. All I need.”
“I heard they’re turning off the old network,” Gnome murmured vaguely. “You’ll be forced to upgrade then.”
Rena stared at her old phone. “Yeah.”
She screwed her face up.
“Rena, what?”
“It’s shit. Touchscreens don’t work for my fingers. I don’t appear in selfies. I can’t unlock them using Face ID because I don’t have a reflection.” She shook her head in disgust. “I can’t use voice assistants because they can’t hear my voice. I can’t bank at the major banks because they’re rolling out biometrics, or get a driver’s licence even though I predate the internal combustion engine, because they all need a photo.”
She shrugged uselessly.
“What happens when all the banks use biometrics, Gnome? What happens when you can’t get anything done without speaking to an AI assistant? The world is closing up around me and I can’t keep up. I’m able to punch through doors and control people’s minds and live forever and because social security is now all on computer, I can’t even get a bloody job anywhere that doesn’t pay cash-in-hand.”
Her eyes swept around the dingy bedsit, the bed, the mirror she’d kept all these years even though it just reminded her of who she used to be and what she was now.
“I’m trapped like this, living like a hungry ghost.”
Rena reached out, her hand cool to the touch on Gnome’s arm over the dressing. He laid his hand over hers gently.
“Can I really trust you to take all my pathetic, worthless secrets to the grave?” Rena asked.
“Yeah. I’m gonna help you.”
“By feeding the hungry ghost?”
“I guess.”
Rena sighed, wearily. “It’s too late to go home, wanna stay? The bed’s mostly for show. I don’t need to sleep.”
“What will you do?”
“Catch up on a book or something.” Rena smiled at him. “Sorry about your arm.”
Gnome shrugged his massive shoulders. “I’ve had hickeys before. I’ll live,” he said.
About the Author
Originally from the North of England, Ivan Logan packed a suitcase and bought a one-way plane ticket to Sydney with the intention of staying for a year, over two decades ago. He now lives in Sydney with his family and two dogs, turning a love of reading into a passion for storytelling that he squeezes into the gaps of a busy professional career
Northern Beaches Commendation Award: ‘Glass Heart’ by Kate Mitchell
Cicadas screeched in crescendo, rattling Bryan’s frazzled brain. He wiped the sweat from his brow, then fiddled again with the twine as his calloused fingers clumsily tied the bunch of balloons to the gate. It was only nine am as he hovered under the shade of a frangipani tree, but it was already thirty friggin’ degrees—one of those days where all he wanted to do was fall asleep under said tree or watch the footy with an ice-cold beer and the air-con blasting. He puffed out his cheeks with an abrupt sigh; at least it was cool inside. Shattered with exhaustion, he checked his watch again. Still time. Kids weren’t usually early to a birthday party, were they? One last tug to tighten the knot, he let the balloons go with flourish. They drooped over the fence like a group of idle teenagers. Shoulda got them filled, Bryan cursed, scratching his bald spot and wondering why on earth he’d pictured balloons standing to attention without the aid of helium.
With a vision of Ailsa rolling her eyes at what an idiot he was, he walked inside and whipped his notepad off the counter, next to the giant pink cake he’d picked up from the local bakery. He examined his list for the umpteenth time.
‘Pass the Parcel’ wrapped: check.
Pinata hung (remember blindfold and bat): check.
‘Pin the Tail on the Unicorn’ (use blindfold from pinata): check.
Food prepared and cake ready (remember candles & lighter): check.
Party bags: check.
Balloons on gate: check.
Tidy house: check?
He scanned his surroundings. The house looked tidy enough. Maybe not to his wife Ailsa’s standards, but it would do. He’d done most of the party preparation the night before. Thanks to Pinterest with its overflowing well of inspiration for parties, and YouTube for its logistics, he’d found out how to stuff the unicorn pinata with sweets and he’d meticulously wrapped layer upon layer of newspaper around the ‘Pass the Parcel’ present (remembering to include a chocolate bar between each layer and marvelling at how spoilt kids were nowadays). He’d done a terrible drawing of a unicorn for ‘Pin the Tail’, but if Chloe minded, it didn’t show, and she’d set about colouring the mythical beast and adding a mountain of rainbow glitter.
Still, he couldn’t dislodge the doubt that settled heavy on his chest, the feeling that he could never pull this off. That he was a failure.
Bryan was the go-to for DIY, but party organisation had always been Ailsa’s domain. Bryan couldn’t understand why she’d seemed so uptight at what he thought a simple celebration with a few good friends. Parties were supposed to be enjoyable, weren’t they?
“Y’know what Bryan?” she’d snapped at him after one particularly busy celebration. “You seem to have all the know how—why don’t YOU do it next time?!”
Now he understood.
Bryan’s stare now rested on Chloe who was looking at the front gate with the lacklustre balloons, waiting for her ten best friends to arrive. In her pink tutu, black and yellow striped vest and transparent purple fairy wings, she resembled an exotic insect. The morning sun beamed through the window and reflected off her corn silk hair.
“Hey darl, they’ll be here soon,” he reassured, kissing the top of his newly turned six-year-old’s head. Bryan had checked the invite about thirty times during his night of splintered sleep to ensure he’d put the correct date and time.
“I’m just jumping in the shower.”
“Kay.” Chloe replied, without looking away from the window, lest she missed a buddy stroll through the gate.
Bryan grabbed fresh clothes and headed to the bathroom, set the shower on cold and marvelled at how much calmer he felt. Showers fixed everything…well almost everything. He brushed his teeth, dressed and remembered to chuck on some anti-perspirant (the party might bomb, but at least he wouldn’t go down stinking). He was debating whether he should shave, when he heard a squeal, then SMASH.
Bryan raced out to find the birthday girl standing in the kitchen, a mosaic of broken glass around her, one bare foot tucked under the other.
“Sorry Grandad!” Chloe cried, tears brimming. “I was getting mum’s vase down to put flowers in it!”
The sea-green glass vessel in the shape of a heart—a silly, tchotchke his then fifteen-year-old daughter, Rachel, had thrifted from Vinnies after receiving her first pay packet—now lay in smithereens on the tiles. His shoulders slumped; this was a bad omen.
He recalled how Ailsa, frugal Scot ‘til the end, had admonished Rachel, Chloe’s mum, for spending her money on pointless things.
“You should be savin’, not be wastin’ your hard-earned cash on ornaments,” Ailsa grumbled, “especially breakable ones!”
For the next week Rachel had wound Ailsa up every time she passed the heart-shaped vase, clinking her fingernails against the glass and giving her mother the side eye, singing “Once I had a love and it was a gas, Soon turned out to be a pain in the ass,” from the Blondie song, ‘Heart of Glass’. Ailsa would tut, but even she couldn’t deny Rachel’s charm, lips twitching against an impending guffaw.
“Oh, darling.” Bryan choked, struggling to pull himself into the present.
The large, gaudy vase had embodied a majestic air since Rachel had died. They’d given it pride of place on the kitchen table and he and Chloe often poked frangipani flowers in the top. Chloe would state, as if she’d just had a conversation with Rachel, “Mum likes to see flowers in there”.
Transfixed by the glinting glass daggers on the floor, Bryan thanked God for the millionth time that Ailsa had lived to see their granddaughter, Chloe, enter the world but exited it before their only daughter Rachel had. Ailsa would never know the image that was branded for eternity in Bryan’s mind of Rachel’s strong, vibrant body, once brimming with strength and vitality, lifeless in the hospital bed.
He blinked and collected himself.
“Steady—don’t move Chlo, you’ll cut your foot”.
Glass crunched under his thongs and his back ached as he rescued his granddaughter from the sharp, glistening ocean and plopped her back by the window.
“Nana hated that vase, didn’t she?”
“Well, love, let’s just say she had a complicated relationship with it,” Bryan replied.
“Why?”
“She just didn’t like…trinkets.”
“Why?”
“She thought they were wasteful, I suppose. But for some reason she kept your mum’s vase here. Maybe she did like it, deep down.”
“Do you think she would be cross at me then, for—” Chloe flicked her gaze towards the kitchen.
“No, darling! She wouldn’t care one tiny bit.”
Chloe had understandably become intrigued with ghosts of late; all she wanted Bryan to read her were stories about haunted houses. Grief worked in mysterious ways. After Ailsa had died, and the shock of his sudden loss started to wane, Bryan had dived down the internet rabbit hole wanting to learn all he could about myocardial infarction. He’d visited the murky depths of activist veganism and even tried going vegan for a few months. He’d looked at the science, was horrified by the data, saw statistics of countless people stolen by heart attacks. He’d surfaced asunder bobbing about in the soup of myriad woo woo theories. One conspiracy to the next, buoying him along as he tried to cling to the slippery life raft that could never answer his question. Why?
One theory that stabbed at him to this day, was that heart attacks were the result of a broken heart during childhood. She never talked about it, but Bryan knew Ailsa endured a harsh upbringing and it cracked his heart to think her precious heart maybe never healed.
He worried every day about Chloe’s innocent heart.
“Darl,” he said, knees cracking as he squatted down to wipe a rogue tear off Chloe’s cheek, “I know your birthday won’t be the same this year without your mum. But her and nana are safe together somewhere, probably laughing their heads off about the stupid vase! And we’re gonna have a great time today, okay?”
“Will you do the games and funny jokes like mum?” she asked, hopeful.
“That’s the plan.”
“I miss mum so much.” Chloe’s blue eyes sparkled, still wet.
“Me too, Chlo. Me too.”
Rachel and Chloe had ended the lease on their flat and moved in with him so he could support them during Rachel’s chemo. It had been less than a year since she’d passed. Bryan was wise enough to avoid the internet this time around and tried to suppress his panic if Chloe ever complained of a sore anything.
He’d learned that life was impatient, and it didn’t wait when someone died, didn’t stop to let you pause, exhale. Some days he didn’t know if he had it in him to keep going. But then he would picture Chloe’s endearingly jagged teeth in a smile that could light up a room. A mirror image of her mum. And he would force himself to put one foot in front of the other and just keep going.
“This will be a fun day though, right grandad?” Chloe asked, needing extra reassurance.
Bryan nodded.
He hoped he’d done enough. Rachel had been hilarious, always up for a practical joke or a sneaky jump fright, she was like a big kid. Halloween before last, he’d woken in fright seeing Rachel’s prosthetic leg propped up on the pillow beside him (where Ailsa should have been), complete with fake blood round the rim. It was like the horse head scene from The Godfather. “Christ Rach, what are ya trying to do to your old man?” he’d bellowed, once he’d connected the dots. Rachel and Chloe had peered around his bedroom door in fits.
Chloe hugged him suddenly, as if sensing her loss was also his. “I love you grandad.”
Bryan squeezed her in return, melting with adoration. He berated himself for revisiting the past, he must keep looking forward. Today was not the day for him to unravel; he couldn’t let Chloe down.
“Who do ya think will arrive first?” Bryan asked.
“Hmmm. Maybe Ella.”
“Okay darl. You keep watch and I’ll clean up the glass.”
Bryan swept the shards into a spiky pile and bound the sharp mess tightly in newspaper. Should he vacuum too? Yes, wouldn’t want one of the girls to receive a fragment in their foot. As he pushed the vacuum over the tiles, he thought how capricious it was of glass: solid, unyielding and if treated well, could last forever—he’d pulled a few old beer bottles from the harbour just last week, hundreds of years old, smoothened by the coarse sea, yet stoically intact—but a nudge, a push too far and in an instant, glass’ vulnerability was exposed for all to see. Powerful and fragile. Strong and delicate. He returned the vacuum and carefully wrapped another layer round the heavy package, added sticky tape for extra security and with an equally heavy heart, closed his eyes in quiet farewell to Rachel’s vase.
#
The party was a blur. By the time the final guest arrived, they’d already lost half an hour and Bryan worked himself into a frenzy trying to corral the girls into the different activities and games he had prepared. They were only just singing happy birthday around the cake when the parents started showing up.
“Great party, Bryan, looks like the girls had a fabulous time,” chirped one of the mums who’d come for pick up. The mums all looked the same in their impossibly wide-legged pants and floaty tops parachuting around them, making them appear like well-groomed apparitions.
“Hope so,” he winked at her, then felt self-conscious. Was it okay for a man to wink at a woman now? He couldn’t keep abreast of all these new rules. Was it okay to say ‘abreast’?
Chloe interrupted his inner crisis by tugging at his shirt.
“Grandad!” She stage-hissed, “you forgot ‘Pass the Parcel’!” She was holding the package Bryan had wrapped the night before.
“Oh no!” exclaimed Bryan, smacking his forehead, “let’s do it now then!”
“Yay! Come on everyone!” his granddaughter shouted, her purple fairy wings bobbing.
The sugar-fuelled girls shrieked in delight at the bonus game and scrambled to sit in a circle, a pool of sweet faces shining in anticipation. The mums crowded round, creating a forest of billowy, fabric trees.
“That’s right,” Bryan mumbled to himself and reached for his glasses and phone, “we’re gonna need some music, aren’t we?” He tapped Chloe’s playlist—mostly Taylor Swift songs—and the game began.
“You can’t peek grandad!” Chloe admonished.
Bryan duly turned to face the wall, then paused the song at random. He swivelled round to see who the parcel landed on. Chloe. She tore hard at the newspaper, ripping the words into pieces, hoping to reveal the first treat.
There was a second of static as her face darkened, confusion and alarm flickering across, a storm piercing the horizon.
Bryan’s stomach lurched: in the middle of Chloe’s lap, sat the pile of broken glass he’d swept off the kitchen floor earlier, the heart-shaped vase but not the heart-shaped vase, in all its threatening, razor-edged glory. Back to haunt them.
The room fell silent.
What kind of man does this? the mums’ thoughts flashed in the chilled air.
The air-conditioner ticked in response, The kind of man who failed to protect his wife and daughter.
Bryan couldn’t form words, his voice cracked as he opened and closed his mouth like a dying fish. The room spun, his pulse hammered in his ears and the corners of his vision blackened.
Chloe broke the spell with a thrilled yelp and started to chuckle. She laughed harder and harder until the other girls began giggling too. Chloe was laughing so hard; she was in danger of either spilling the contents of her bladder or jiggling the newspaper-glass-shard mess all over the carpet and Bryan had to lunge down to safely retrieve the ‘Pass the Parcel’ imposter. Everyone was hysterical.
“Graaan-DAD!” Chloe howled, red-faced having finally caught her breath, “that was the BEST joke ever!”
It took a minute for Bryan to realise the unfamiliar feeling—that he too was shaking with laughter. It poured into his heart and relaxed his chest like the embrace of a long-lost lover. The fragmented glass twinkled up at him cheekily and the ever-present darkness that lurked inside, cleared for a sublime moment.
He was broken, yes, but still showing up.
The pressure of the weighted blanket that hung over Bryan’s tense shoulders released and floated up through the roof, rose above the tree-tops and danced beyond the clouds like a helium-filled balloon.
About the Author
Kate Mitchell works in insurance by day and writes and illustrates by night. Originally from New Zealand, she has lived on Sydney’s Northern Beaches for eighteen years. She loves wobbegongs, green tea and the way dogs lovingly look up at their owners. Kate Mitchell is the kind of person who feels awkward writing about themselves in third person.
About the Northern Beaches Writers’ Competition
The Northern Beaches Writers’ Competition is an ‘Art & Words Project’, founded by author Zena Shapter, and proudly supported by the Northern Beaches Writers’ Group and the Northern Beaches Council.
