Amyo's Stories

Lunch Time

2008-10-10T13:16:30Z

I was sitting at my desk, eating a tuna sandwich and minding my own business when I heard a short stern cough behind me. It took a minute for it to register. Then I carefully put down my sandwich and slowly swivelled in my swivel-ly chair.

Annette was standing there, arms crossed. I wiped my fingers over my mouth. “Hi.”
“Hi.” Her voice got all wavery when she was upset. “Can I have a word?”
“You can have more than one if you like.” I offered a smile, but she didn’t take it. She looked at the floor instead. “I need to talk to you. In private?” She ducked her head towards the fire stairs and in a flash, she was gone.

It was cold in the stairwell. It smelt like cigarettes and old people. I felt goosebumps pimple my upper arms. Annette was standing in the corner.

“Look, can this be quick? I’ve got a stack of work to do and a tuna sandwich and…”
“I’m pregnant.”

My lunch did a back-flip inside my stomach.
“Oh God.”

Starry Night

2008-08-23T15:24:06Z

Nik curled up on the hard straw mat and tried to sleep. Her body was exhausted – unfamiliar muscles ached – and yet she couldn’t switch off her mind. Thoughts were buzzing inside her brain, it was almost making her dizzy.

With a sigh she sat up and pushed the tattered blanket away. It was pointless just lying there, she may as well be doing something useful. She crawled out of the tent, careful not to wake the others.

The cool night air was soothing. The sky was brilliant with stars – Nik couldn’t tear her eyes away as she stumbled towards the campfire. It was easy to forget your troubles under a sky like that.

By the fire, Nik found a spot to sit down. Still staring up at the stars, she swept her thick hair off her sticky shoulders and tied a knot. It took a few more minutes for Nik to realise she wasn’t alone…

He caught her by surprise. She stood up quickly. It was the dark-eyed boy, he was perched on a rock, a huge old book in his arms.

Train Trip

2008-07-29T03:58:16Z

He was balding, his salt-and-pepper hair combed forward to hide the fact. He was wearing a black leather motorbike jacket and a pair of aviator sunglasses – as though on his way to an audition for Top Gun: the sequel. And, he was standing way too close to me as our train chugged away from the city.

Every couple of minutes, his leather-clad arm would knock into me as I stood quietly, reading my book and minding my own business. And with each moment of contact I felt my rage grow – like the strip of mercury in a thermometer on a really hot day. My eyes were still reading, but my brain was planning an assault – I wanted to kick him in the nuts or squeeze my hands around his thick neck.

Just so you know, I’m not usually prone to homicidal daydreams… but my quiet after-school train reading time is really important to me. And this guy was totally violating my personal space! Plus I have a sixth sense about people, and my senses were telling me this lame leather-jacket guy was a total jerk.

Pancakes Fix Everything

2008-07-26T13:27:48Z

Madison made pancakes for breakfast on Sunday. The pancake-y smell woke Sally up, and she shuffled into the kitchen in last night’s clothes, last night’s eye make-up smeared across her face.

‘I love you,’ Sally said as Madison set a plate down in front of her.

Madison was watching her eat. ‘We’re not talking about last night,’ Sally said. She speared some pancake with her fork. ‘In fact, I think I have amnesia. Can’t remember a thing!’ Madison rolled her eyes.
‘In that case, you should come with me today. Josh is having a BBQ and it’s gonna be a total sausage-fest. If you catch my drift…’
‘No way,’ Sally shovelled more pancake into her mouth. ‘I’ve decided I’m going to become a nun. Or maybe a lesbian…but then I’d still have to date, right? Nun it is.’

Two hours later, they were both primping in the downstairs mirror – the one with the good light. Sally squinted and ran her fingers through her hair. ‘How did you talk me into this?’
‘I hypnotised you,’ Madison said with a smile. ‘C’mon let’s go!’

Scene At An Airport

2008-07-26T12:33:56Z

Jess waited for him in the airport lounge. She sat in a vinyl chair and stared at her feet, at the other people milling around, at complete strangers hugging and kissing and crying. Later, she would say she knew something bad was going to happen. But that was impossible.

When Simon appeared, she leaped up out of her seat. She waved. He ducked his head, and tugged his suitcase along, eyes glued to the floor. She threw herself at him, and squeezed him tight. Her lips brushed his.

“It’s so good to see you! I missed you!” More squeezing. He felt stiff in her arms. “You must be exhausted. Let’s get you home. I’m cooking you dinner”

They barely spoke on the ride home. Well, he barely spoke. Jess fiddled with the radio and swore at other drivers. She asked him a million and one questions. Simon was very quiet. Tired from the trip, that’s what it is she said to herself.

He waited until after dinner. Jess was still eating. He put down his fork and cleared his throat. “Something happened…I did something…”

It's Just A Bad Date

2008-07-01T13:30:50Z

It’s a bad date when he turns up hungover and dressed like an English soccer hooligan. It’s a bad date when you pay for dinner and he doesn’t even pretend to reach for his wallet. It’s a bad date when you walk him to the ferry and you’re relieved when he only kisses your cheek.

On the taxi ride home, Sally was talking her brain down from a window ledge. ‘Bad dates happen to good people,’ she told herself, but her brain was in panic mode. ‘I’m gonna end up old and withered and ALONE ’ it was shrieking at the top of its lungs. If brains have lungs?

She gave the driver a $20 note (the ride was only $14.50) and stumbled up the front steps like a drunk. She’d only had one beer.

Madison opened the front door before Sally could wrestle with her keys and the lock. She was wearing stripy pajamas. And a huge expectant grin. ‘Well?’
‘Woeful.’ Sally pushed past her.

In her bedroom she kicked off her kitten heels and sunk, face-first, onto the bed. ‘This is it, Brain,’ she thought to herself. ‘Last date ever!’

What's In The Woods

2008-06-24T05:40:40Z

Tucked up in bed, Hannie couldn’t stop thinking about the woods. How it felt to be out there, alone in the dark.

She could hear her parents murmuring downstairs. They had been so worried, her mother said when she came in with the tray of hot tea and toast. She certainly seemed happy to have Hannie home, as she fluffed the pillows, smoothed down the duvet and clutched Hannie’s small pink hand between her own.

But in spite of the warm welcome, and the comfort of her big soft bed, Hannie was starting to feel an itch. Go back, a voice in her head was whispering. There was a tingling that started in her toes and hummed along her limbs.

Like a sleepwalker, she peeled away the covers and got up out of bed. From the window, she could see the woods, awash with shadows. Go back, the voice said again. Hannie’s fingers gripped the window sill. She leaned forward and pressed her forehead against the cool glass. There was something moving down there. A dark shape. It moved again. Two burning eyes stared up at her.

The Fear

2008-06-22T00:09:32Z

“Nobody cares…” Hannie sniffed and wrapped her arms around herself. She wondered how long she could stay out here. Would they even notice she was missing? She was never going back…

A twig snapped. Heart thudding, Hannie peered over her shoulder into the dark murky distance. She saw sinister shapes in every dark corner. That gnarled old tree – a man with an axe. The craggy rock face was a crouching murderer with a hunchback and an eye patch.

Hannie squeezed her eyes shut. Her breathing was heavy and too loud, her heart was beating against her chest. “There’s nothing there,” she whispered to herself, but even so, she started running, back towards the house.

Weird woods-y noises rushed through her ears – the roar of the wind, the crunching of dead leaves, the twitter of insects and animals. Her own breath was ragged. And then, her left foot hit something hard and she was flying.

The wind knocked out of her, Hannie lay face-down on the cool, damp ground. Head swimming, she closed her eyes.

The Secret

2008-06-12T13:26:00Z

The screen door clacked shut behind her as Hannie huffed off into the yard. Mosquitoes hummed in the air, but Hannie was too mad to care. She stomped her slippered feet, squashing the yellowed grass.

Their house, a tumble-down brick cottage, backed onto the woods. They weren’t supposed to play there. There were stories… about crazed escapees from a mental institution… children disappearing… strange noises… But Hannie didn’t believe anymore. “Stupid grown-ups. They always LIE !” She bellowed and with balled fists, she marched forward.

There was a holey hedge that hemmed the property. Hannie stooped under it and powered into the darkness, shoving aside the wild thoughts that buzzed through her brain. Her rage was red-hot, it sizzled and fizzed. Her fingernails bit into the soft skin of her palm.

After a while, she stopped dead and spun around to face the house. A canopy of hunched trees blocked her view, Hannie could only just see the roof and a speck of yellow light in the attic window.

A Tale Of Two

2008-05-22T14:03:15Z

They were cousins; their fathers were brothers. And while they swam in adjacent laps in the genetic swimming pool, Lauren and Kristie were so lacking in similarities their classmates considered their “cousin-hood” an elaborate ruse, made up to score neighbouring seats in English class.

Lauren, the elder cuz by three months, had always been a beauty. She spent her childhood adored by passing strangers, they congratulated her parents on this goldilocked, blue-eyed belle-of-a-girl.

Kristie, on the other hand, at 16 felt “dumpy and disgusting”. She was blessed with physical attributes few teenage girls desire – big boobs, short legs, a shock of orange hair and myopic eyeballs which required optical assistance at the tender age of 8.

The Odd Couple (as christened in the staff room at Glenworth East High School). Beauty and The Beast (as suggested by the school’s resident delinquent, Mike Potter).

__
a quote from Kristie’s dog-eared diary which she scribed each night by the light of her bedside lamp.

Water World

2008-05-12T09:02:58Z

Elliot stands on the deck, the icy wind whipping at his hair and lashing his shirt against his neck. His ears are pricked, waiting for the slightest sound, the faintest hint of something out of the ordinary, but all he hears is the slap-slap of waves against the hull. He stares out to sea, watching the shiny water ripple, willing himself not to feel the biting cold.

And then he sees something. A fleeting, shiny something – one minute it’s there in the water, the next it’s gone.

Did he imagine it? Elliot takes a step forward and leans out over the water, his eyes searching the murky depths below. But there’s nothing there. He shuffles back to his position, shaking his head and rubbing his hands together. It’s the cold. It’s making me lose my mind, he thinks.

She slips aboard while his back is turned. Like a streak of lightning, across the deck and into the shadows – her feet don’t make a single sound. She watches him watching the water, she hears him breathing and muttering. She waits.

It's My Party And I'll Die If I Want To

2008-05-03T11:57:55Z

‘80s songs were pumping on the stereo. Madonna. The Vapours. The Knack. Lily’s living room looked like a scene from Star Trek. The green twinkle lights she’d hung for a festive touch cast a sickly hue. The hommous looked positively repellent. And then there were the guests: dancing (badly), talking (loudly) and drinking the toxic party punch in plastic cups.

It was Neil’s appalling suggestion to have everyone dress as a dead person. And so, Elvis and Mother Theresa were deep in conversation while Kurt Cobain and Princess Di were doing shots by the window. The green light and clouds of smoke made the room look like a meeting for Dead Celebrities Anonymous.

Lily, in her bouffant wig and swooping eyeliner, shimmied as she refilled the chip bowl. “Who the heck are you?” Jesus was ogling her.
“Amy Winehouse.”
“She’s not dead!”
“Not yet, but there’s a good chance she will be by the end of the party!”
Jesus snorted. Lily glared at him.
“If we’re getting picky, I’m pretty sure Jesus rose from the dead, buddy.”

Wanna Be In My Gang? (Twilight Challenge)

2008-05-03T11:33:02Z

I knew that this was the stupidest, most reckless thing I had done yet. But it was too late now. The exam paper was inside my folder, and I was walking out of the classroom at high speed, feeling my pulse pump super-fast.

Kate was waiting for me outside the library. “Did you get it?” She was probing me with her choc-brown eyes. I feigned sadness, then tapped my folder with two fingers. “Yes! But how did you…”
“It was easy,” I whispered. “I just gave her a sob story about needing extra work!” Kate was grinning wildly and I started to feel giddy with anticipation. This was it. I was finally in! After weeks of stupid tasks and demands, I was going to be in Kate’s gang. I’d have people to sit with at lunch time. I’d have friends to see on weekends and hang with after school. Suddenly, it was all worth it. The stealing, the lying, the humiliation. It was all behind me… until Kate opened her mouth.

“So tonight. Meet me at the mall. Let’s see if you’ve got the balls for a little five-fingered discount!”

Who ya gonna call?

2008-04-27T14:03:31Z

I manage to coax Callie back inside. She perches herself on a chair in the lounge room, her backpack still on – in case she needs to make a hasty exit.

I do laps in front of the TV wracking my brain for what to say. C’mon Coop. Time to be the big man…

“I think we should call the police.” Callie chews a strawberry-blonde wad of hair. “And say what? My basement smells rancid and the house is making funny noises?”
“I don’t know!” Callie leaps to her feet. “We’ve got to do something! Let’s just go! You can stay somewhere for the night.” I shake my head.
“Mum and Joe trust me. I’m minding the twins… I can’t go and hang at Josh’s with two screaming babies…”
“Fine.”

We’re at an impasse. I know Callie wants to go. Or run screaming from the place might be more accurate… but I’ve got to stay. And then it hits me, like a strike of white-hot lightning.

“The journal,” I blurt it out loud.
“What?”
“Joe’s grandfather built this place, right? Joe said he kept a journal – it’s upstairs in the library!”

Tea For Two

2008-04-27T13:40:56Z

Corinne has chocolate brown hair she likes to hide behind. Her apartment is small and neat, no excess clutter, no framed photographs of dogs or babies or friends clutching cocktails. The only sign of decoration – a collection of teapots, five in all, resting on doilies on top of a wooden cabinet.

She’s never told anyone about the teapots. She’s never had to – no one’s ever been here before to see them. Corinne has lived in her small neat apartment for three years without a visitor. She’s never brought a lover home, she’s never played the happy hostess for the girls at work, or had a family member stay the night on the sofa-bed.

But that’s all about to change…

Tuesday. Just another day, that’s what Corinne thinks. She wakes up and eats breakfast (porridge) in bed while flipping through a magazine. She takes a shower and walks to work.

The shop is already open. Heather is hunched over the counter. “Great! You’re here,” she clicks her pen. “New girl starting today. Need you to show her the ropes…”