my death

I went into the back bedroom at my grandparents’ house in Newcastle. The house was much as it was when they were alive, but they were not there. I remembered the fear I used to have as a child about that particular room and realised that I no longer felt that way. I lay on the bed, which faced the opposite direction to its real-life position, and conjured the sensation of being my grandfather.

The room changed and instead of the window looking out over the fence, it became a doorway which opened out onto Queen Street, Brisbane. It was about four in the morning. I could hear a pack of young men making their way down the street; they were boasting about how they had beaten up a girl earlier in the night. I knew there would be trouble and waited quietly on the bed. One of the men came into the room and slashed me slowly with a small silver knife – I could feel my hands being sliced open but I didn’t look down. I managed to wrestle the knife from him and stabbed him several times, finally thrusting the knife into his groin and twisting to make sure it wounded him badly. He fell to the ground, blood pouring out of the wound & forming a puddle around him. Someone who seemed to be my brother (although not my real-life brother) came into the room, shocked by the scene. I asked him to call the police. He hesitated, studying the body on the ground, and then left the room. Suddenly, the rest of the gang, armed with baseball bats and knifes, entered the room and my original attacker stood up. They pushed me outside onto the street and began to beat me up. I resigned myself to death and closed my eyes. Next I was a spirit. I came back to the site of my murder a short time after and watched as my brother vomited beside the enormous pool of blood on the road.

running & safety

I was running away from something—a machine like a robot. It was short but moved quickly and was gaining on me. We were tearing through the corridors of an institution that housed lecture halls, rehearsal studios, theatres and more. It was multi-leveled and vast. I realised that the robot would have trouble following me up and down stairs, so I raced into a central stairwell and ran as fast as I could up the zigzagging staircase, winding my way to the uppermost level of the complex. Once there, realising that the robot would be in hot pursuit via another means of getting to the top, I ran out onto the landing and, following another woman, I jumped over the railing and slid on my bottom down a sloping wooden structure like the tiers of seats in a theatre, minus the seating. The slide to the floor went on and on as I steered myself around architectural objects, shooting down at high speed. At the bottom, the woman and I ran across the foyer through the automatic glass doors, out across a grassy square to a building on the other side. We were flushed and laughing. I realised that I had had fun and she commented on how well I looked.

Later, I was sitting around a table with a group of people I knew and loved in a house where we all lived. It was night and we were quietly talking. A big man came in and sat with us. He had just woken up and he smelt of stale alcohol. He was hairy and brutish, his bare arms punching the air as he shouted about this and that. I knew there would be trouble, specifically something concerning me, so I did my best to quietly leave the table and exit out the front door. He realised I was going and roared after me. I fled down the stairs into the dark garden and, knowing he would assume that I took off down the street, I doubled back around the house and waited around the side behind a bush. He thundered down the cement driveway and up the road whilst I crept back up the stairs and signaled to everyone to be quiet, I hid back in the bedroom area of the house. Everyone knew that I was in danger and kept silent. My friend C was there and she took me in her arms for a moment, saying she understood, before I found a discreet position behind a bed.

Later again, I was at a party in a backyard that sloped down away from the house. There was a table set up under a canopy from where a few men were serving drinks. I was standing in front of the makeshift bar, watching a group of people sitting at a table not far from the bar, further down the slope, as well as keeping an eye on a bunch of men who were standing on the verandah overlooking the yard. There were plastic glasses of sparkling and beer, none of which looked very appealing. I was talking with the guys serving drinks when there was a thudding sound from up near the verandah and raucous laughter. One of the drunk men had thrown himself off the deck, bellyflopping onto the grass below. He got up and did it again. Others followed suite, recklessly allowing themselves to fall, even though the verandah was high above the ground. I was dismayed at their behaviour, knowing that it would end badly. Even the men serving drinks began to act badly—they became rough and unpredictable. Eventually, the crowd disappeared and I looked around me. There was only one person left, a lovely woman with dark hair. We embraced and I told her that I loved that she was dependable, that I could count on her. We walked out of the space together and went to our home. There, we each went to our respective rooms and threw open the windows which had been sealed by huge wooden doors. The light flooded in and reached the innermost rooms of the rambling house. We rearranged the furniture and made ourselves, finally, at home.

siblings

Strange dreams.

My sister and I were sleeping in a double bed in our childhood bedroom. Our bed was directly in front of a low set window. In the darkness, my brother crept through the window and lay two fully blown yellow roses on our bed, each with a card. I woke and he was disappointed that I had seen him leaving us gifts. I picked up my card and could see that it was identical to my sister’s card – both had pictures of beautiful fairytale images on the cover in purple hues. Inside the card, my brother had written a message. It was somewhat shorter than the message to our sister, but I knew that because my birthday was coming up, he would write more inside my birthday card. I was worried about him and wondered why he was bringing us gifts. Was he leaving?

I was in the home of my teenage years and it was night. I could hear someone at the front door so I opened it. A version of my sister walked straight in. Though she looked like my sister, I knew it was not her. This person was taller, bigger in every way, and seemed to be only half-present. She walked up the stairs, along the hall and into my bedroom, where she lay down on the floor and crawled under the bed. I followed her upstairs and saw where she was hiding, so I pulled her by the ankles out from under the bed. I told her that she had to leave even though I felt concern for her. I reminded myself that this wasn’t really my sister. She ran down the stairs intending to hide in another part of the house, but my brother appeared and tackled her to the ground. He too told her that she had to leave. I wondered where my sister was. I noticed the curl of my brother’s hair.

climbing

I was driving in traffic up a steep hill. As I neared the top, my car slowed and struggled. It felt weak, unable to make it. I pressed my foot on the accelerator but the car flipped sideways and I fell out onto the road. I lay on the road, gripping the hot tar with my arms and legs, trying not to slide back down the hill. I felt stuck, unable to stand or move forward, as the traffic swerved around me.


A friend dropped me off, somewhere in the back streets of Kotara in Newcastle. I didn’t recognise the area but the roads seemed to be in a valley, lined with trees and shaded; they criss-crossed and twisted like a labyrinth. I walked the streets, in and out of neighbourhood properties, trying to find the right place. I walked into a house where I seemed to be expected. A meeting was taking place: four or five young men in their early twenties and a woman a little older than me. She started taking the meeting and it quickly became apparent that it was about a sales job. For some reason, the woman mentioned that she was forty-one and, although I am still in my thirties, I stood up and said that I was also forty-one and too old to be at this meeting—I didn’t want or need this job. I walked out the door, thinking that the rest of her meeting probably wouldn’t go too well. Outside, I was uncertain about which way to go. I surveyed the streets, wishing that my friend had waited for me. I felt that I should choose the steepest hill for surely that would lead out of the valley. Reading the street signs, I chose a street and with cement stairs leading straight to the top. I climbed the stairs but as I neared the summit, I began to lose the strength in my upper legs. I had to use my arms and my legs to climb the stairs, to keep going, so that I would make it to the top.

run over

I was driving with other people in the car. I think there were three of four of us. I turned a corner, taking it only slightly too fast, but couldn’t slow the car adequately for what was ahead. I could see that people were crossing the road but couldn’t seem to slow down enough. As I drove around the corner and straightened out on the adjacent road, I ran over a woman who was crossing the road, driving at a very slow speed. We, in the car, listened as first the front tyres and then the back tyres ran over her. It sounded very much like driving over a speed hump. I was instantly in dread, not only for the woman and in expectation of her injuries or death, but for the guilt and remorse I would feel. Strangely, as we hopped out of the car, I felt very little and I was surprised.

stolen water

I was at a party. I brought a bottle of San Pellegrino sparkling mineral water with me to drink throughout the night. I put it in the refrigerator along with other people’s drinks, whilst I helped the hosts with some food. I talked with a few people but felt quite isolated from the crowd. Early in the evening, I went to the fridge to get my water but the bottle was missing. I looked around the kitchen but I couldn’t see it anywhere. I began to ask people if anyone knew who had taken my water. No one seemed to know. A woman suggested that she make me a cup of tea but I refused the offer. I felt very angry that someone had taken the water and I was determined to find it. I walked through the rooms of the house looking for the water, and then went outside, searching further. I could see a huge crowd of people gathered about a concert area, like people at a festival. At the edge of the crowd I could see some friends that I used to spend time with when I was in my late twenties. I went over to the group – they were drunk and lying about on rugs – and there was my water, almost all gone. I found out that it was S that had taken the water, not caring that it wasn’t his, and had used it as a mixer for their drinks. There was another bottle of water there that I could have taken, but I didn’t want it – it wasn’t as clear, as clean and cold as my water. I yelled at him, telling him that he had no right, that he should provide me with another bottle of water, that he had taken what was mine. I went to walk away and then felt like I should apologise for being so worked up, mainly so that the group would not think badly of me, but when I went to speak, the words wouldn’t form – I had no voice. I knew that I could not apologise as I really was not sorry, that I truthfully felt upset and wronged, and that if they judged me for that then they were judging the true me. I left the group.

canvases

I was waiting at my grandmother’s house for the courier to come and deliver canvases, early in the morning. The truck arrived but instead of parking in the driveway, the driver maneuvered the truck up onto the verandah, blocking the doorway. My father and I could not sidle around the truck so we took the old goods lift, which suddenly appeared in the wall, downstairs to the garage, intending to guide the truck downstairs so that we could transfer the canvases directly into the lift. Once there, I realised that the truck was too tall to fit in the garage so my father and I told the courier that we would meet him upstairs, if the driver could pass the goods from the back of the truck into where we would be waiting in the loungeroom. We hopped back into the lift and pressed the button. The lift traveled up and past our floor, the doors not opening, and then it began to behave erratically. First it plummeted toward the ground. I called to my father, asking him to curl his legs up off the floor so that, should we crash, our legs would not be broken. Next the lift shot off sideways down the street, cruising down several blocks before returning to the garage. By the time we made it back, the courier had left and had unpacked the canvases into the garage. Instead of four canvases of the correct size, there appeared to be about thirty five canvases of very odd sizes – way too small or tall and very thin. They were also shoddily made, the canvas not attached to the frames adequately. Moths flew out of the packaging protecting the frames and I could see that they had eaten through the fabric in areas.

I was very relieved to wake and welcome the actual courier who delivered four beautiful canvases this morning.