X
The Dead Nun Game
“Five, four, twenty.”
“Yep.”
“And she was born, umm, eighteen, nine, forty-three.”
“That’s only six numbers. Split the eighteen?”
“Split it.”
“Okay, so five, four, twenty, one, eight, nine, forty-three.”
“That’s seven?”
“That’s seven.”
Kensey slid the completed OzLotto slip across the counter. Her skin was peeling from a Bay Run sunburn. Now her forearms looked like the cratered surface of the moon. She caught the cashier glancing at them as he handed over the receipt.
“Are you going to buy that?,” the newsagent piped up to the man by the entrance.
“I’m good.” Greg closed the newspaper, neatly folded it, and returned it to the pile.
The Dead Nun Game was a sure-fire success when it came to lottery numbers. Every Wednesday morning, Greg would scan the obituaries of the Herald. If there was a dearly departed woman of the cloth, her birth-date and death-date were used for the mid-week OzLotto. On nun-less weeks, he and Kensey had less success. Today, Greg had a good feeling about Sister Maura.
The two stepped out into the morning, made for The Patisserie on the next block.
It was a deciduous sort of day, and the brisk weather made Greg’s arthritic hand play up. Surgeons had to replace his bung thumb meat with a tendon from his wrist flexor when he caught it in a plane seat some months before. Now it seized up on chilly mornings. If there was a silver lining, it was that he was now a fully-fledged ambidextrous masturbator. He also got some compensatory Mileage Points.
“I read yesterday that nodding is meant to make you a third more popular.” Kensey said.
“You better get a go on then.”
“Fuck off.”
The Patisserie made the fastest coffees. Not the best. But the fastest. That’s why they went. Every Wednesday, they’d be given exactly $22 petty cash to grab coffees for the 10am stand-up meeting. It was Kensey’s idea to inflate the price so her and Greg could grab their single OzLotto ticket on the company dollar. This weekly newsagent detour meant the two office assistants had to sacrifice a more quality bean for a speedier preparation, however. They’d troubleshooted this.
Their boss never cottoned on. He had a voice that always sounded like he was asking a question. Every sentence ended in an upward intonation. The man lacked conviction. He’d never made an assertion in his life.
Trays in hand, the two set forth once more. On the way back to the office, they passed a guy who looked like Eddie McGuire, but it ended up just being a man in a suit.
“Hey, you want to hear my impression of someone from the country?”
“Go on.” Greg replied. His hand had gone numb, so he rested his coffee tray on a power box as they waited for the light to change.
Kensey cleared her throat.
“Oi, how good are utes?”
Greg nodded.
“Not bad.”
The light turned green.
X
Postage Sprayed, or the Impromptu Jettisoning of Breakfast Fruits
“Hey, can I bin my Granny Smith? Yo? Officer?”
Zeke looked like Mickey Rourke after he did all that stuff to his face - like he was the first person to ever receive botox, in the frontier days of plastic surgery. The Patient Zero of botched cosmetic clinical trials.
It took the man pressing his shiny cheeks against the thick plexiglass of the door across the hall for Troy to finally make the connection. It’d been weighing heavily on his mind all night, but he’d refrained from staring too long at his neighbouring cellmate for fear of verbal retribution. With Zeke now wholly occupied by his fruit disposal, Troy had ample visual opportunity to put two and two together.
Troy’s own allotted early morning breakfast, a disagreeable Red Delicious and three plastic-sealed Vita-Weats, remained at his side on the scratchitied bench. Any drunken appetite he’d had in hours previous he chose to suppress once thrown into the tank.
—
“Having a good time, brother.”
That’s what Zeke was in for. Troy was happy to leave it at that, but the stranger reciprocated the line of questioning.
“I, uh, accidentally posted a letter to someone I shouldn’t have, then I tried to destroy it with my garden hose when I couldn’t get the letterbox door open.”
“Allegedly.” Zeke called across the hall, before looking over each shoulder to people who didn’t exist.
“Oh, yep. I didn’t realise the hose was on mist mode though, so I dunno if it worked.”
Troy remembered the legal advice.
“Allegedly,” he added.
—
Zeke tried threading his apple core through the speak-hole in the glass now. Too large, the juice pooled around the circular rim instead.
“Back from the door please, Ezekiel.”
The rattling of keys preceded a baby-faced officer in the doorway. He motioned to Troy:
“You feeling yourself now, Mr Sandaga?”
—
At the front desk, Troy pocketed his phone and wallet. The officer’s own Android sat in a business card tray. The tinny sounds of the Southampton match emanated through the station. New daylight breached the double doors.
“Signature here. Again, it’s not an admission of guilt, just an acknowledgment that we’ve held you overnight for your own safety. Your court date is this one here.”
Troy watched the apple core hit the hallway linoleum just as Aribo slotted in a miraculous equaliser. Zeke and the Southampton-faithful celebrated in tandem.
—
The air felt particularly breathable this August morning. Like the first deep inhale after biting down on a Fisherman’s Friend. A young couple in activewear and matching keepy-cups passed Troy at an athletic pace. He nodded politely, to throw them off the scent of his earlier incarceration, before finding a ride-share bicycle leant against the station wall. He had to download a new app.
It was only when he’d worked up a sweat down the way that his hangover finally caught up. Troy wished he’d pocketed the Red Delicious for the road.
X
Jared, From My High School
Jared used to spar with the flora when he was on the piss. He’d find a good branch, one at eye level, with real big old droopy leaves to help with his punch accuracy, and he’d get a few jabs in on the pilgrimage to the next bar. He used to make the noises too, like car pistons. Jared never fought anyone in real life, but. He was chill-as. It was just plants, and only when he was on the piss.
Jared used to cut lines with his Timezone Card. He said it had the best edge on it, that his Opal card’s plastic cover was all peeling, and that would waste the blow. Then he said that if he was ever getting owned at Big Buck Hunter, he could just suck on the edge of the card for a cheeky pick-me- up. He never had to, but. He was pretty good at Big Buck Hunter, and at Daytona too.
Jared organised our Formal. It was on this fuck-off huge boat at Darling Harbour made pretty much entirely of glass. He overcharged everyone in the year by five bucks, except for his mates. With the extra cash we got a room at the Ibis to pre-game in. It wasn’t massive, but it had a balcony so that was pretty sick. We got too into it, and we missed the boat, so we all split one of those Water Taxis, and the guy drove us right up to the main boat, where the Formal was. Enoch recorded it on his phone, and it got heaps of buzz on Insta. Looked so awesome. But then the company got in trouble for letting us board from the Water Taxi, so Enoch took the vid down.
Jared had this idea for a TV show he reckoned would smash it over in England. It was called Two Birds, One Stoner, and it was about these two hot chicks that lived with this one pothead guy. It would kind of be like 2 Broke Girls, he said, but it had to be in England, not America, because they called hot chicks ‘birds’ in England so it would work better.
We all hung around after high school for a bit, then it all just kind of fizzled out. I went to Jared’s place the other week. He got off social media a few months back, and I didn’t have his number in my new phone, but I was pretty sure he still lived at the same spot. I was in the area, so I knocked on the door, but all the lights were out even though it was already pretty dark. This guy next door was watering his yard which was mostly concrete, and he said no one had lived there for a bit. I don’t know what happened to Jared, but he was always pretty switched on, and everyone loved him, so he’s probably killing it at some sick job.
X
The Bullock
Henry took off his head and tossed it in the gully amongst the dry ribbon plants and lemon pages of discarded JBHIFI catalogues. He took his hooves off next, but these he held onto.
You can’t hitch-hike without opposable thumbs - drivers just think you’re a cow having a general wave - but Henry didn’t have any pockets, and the upturned hooves resembled sweaty containers for his phone and wallet.
His phone and wallet were still in his locker. He didn’t have time to retrieve them before he walked out in the midst of the one-thirty. He could be udderless in an Uber by now, but his decision to bail was the only impromptu aspect of the whole performance, and one that ended up creating more immediate logistical problems than the big-picture ones it solved. The hooves stayed empty.
It was the height of Summer, the kind of weather where people get reprimanded for watering their gardens before dark. As Henry dawdled down the asphalt, the whoosh of the traffic blew a reprieving wind through his bovine get-up. The gusts made his udders jiggle.
He walked until all that remained of the park was the domed red roof of the Splash-tacular Slide ride. When even that had disappeared, Henry put the opposables to work.
It didn’t take long before a beaten Honda Civic trundled to a stop some metres ahead. It hugged the concrete barrier, and through the rear window, Henry watched the driver fumble for the triangular hazard icon that would deem the hatchback’s stop on a busy highway conscionable to passing motorists.
Henry approached the passenger-side, tossed his hooves into the open window.
“Mountain Dew?”
Lofa took a sweaty can from his apron. Henry obliged, closing the door behind him.
“Stuart wants us offering juices instead of soft drinks now. It’s all sugar anyways, so I don’t really get it.”
Lofa’s visor hugged his forehead fat, and the barcode behind his ear ran inky pigment down the crook of his neck.
“Is he angry?”
“Always. More worried than angry though. Where were you gonna go? The only thing for ages is the Super Cheap Auto— Put your belt on.”
It wasn’t until they were back in the staff carpark that Henry remembered his head, and for the second time that afternoon, the man set forth on costumed foot.
The gully sat well below the level of the road, and Henry had to hug the embankment as he descended backwards. He hoisted the head by its horns - Connie the Cow had not been disbudded - and picked at the itinerant burrs.
A semi-trailer blew past on the outside lane and the JBHIFI catalogue fluttered in the aftermath. They were selling the final season of Suits for $19.99, which seemed like a pretty good deal if it hadn't expired yet, so he folded the front page into his hoof.
Henry put on his head.
