Marooned

At the peak of its popularity, not even the most shameless travel agent would’ve described Barren Island as a thriving cultural hub. Automating the lighthouse at the turn of the millennium finally reduced the population to zero. Thanks to the decommissioning of the lighthouse at the dawn of the twenty twenties, there was no point in me waiting for a maintenance crew to rescue me.

Initially, I’d assumed that the consequences for losing two hundred kilos of the Calabrian mafias marijuana, in a boating accident, would be joining my yacht on the bottom of the ocean, with the aid of concrete boots. Instead, I was left stranded on Barren Island, the assumption being that I would starve to death if I didn’t die of thirst first.

I still cannot identify the fungus that grows in Barren Island’s tiny fertile oases. It is so unfamiliar to me that I’m not even certain that it is some kind of fungus. I couldn’t care less about that now though. I played the equivalent of Russian roulette with almost everything that grows on Barren Island and won. The guano, the rocks and the soil are the only things I haven’t deliberately tasted in my reckless quest for survival.

The highest price I paid for my gung-ho experimentation is a few hours of delirium. The vomiting and the diarrhoea didn’t last long. I made a careful note of what tastes good, what gave me visions of vampire smurfs swimming in the blood of pterodactyl gospel choirs and what left me feeling as mellow as the music of Miles Davis.

The dim-witted thugs, who left me stranded on Barren Island, obviously didn’t do their research. Although there is only one pond on the island that is much deeper than a puddle, staying hydrated proved to be easy. If the ephemeral streams converging on the pond had all dried up simultaneously it would have been a different story. Presumably, it is the water gushing into the pond from those streams that prevents algae from growing. Unlike most of the ponds on the island, the water in the deepest one isn’t guano flavoured either. I don’t know what keeps the birds away from it, but whatever it is it isn’t lethal to humans.

Occasionally, I was able to trap fish in the rock pools I could access without risking being swept into the ocean. Most of them were poisonous toad fish though. I successfully hunted a few birds with stones. But the bulk of my Barren Island diet was always seaweed, edible fungus and bitter tasting leaves.

After being marooned on Barren Island, hundreds of nautical miles from any hint of civilisation, I went from a portly 85kg to an emaciated 70kg. According to my reflection in the pond, my weight eventually stabilised. And my body adapted well to the small amount of food I was able to gather.

It never occurred to me that I would have the opportunity to write my story down, that it would ever be heard by anyone who’s incapable of long-distance telepathy, not until I saw a large yacht gliding across the cruel sea. It was the first vessel I’d seen since being left to die. The below deck portion was the size of a small mansion, but I was still astonished to see it somewhere as isolated as Barren Island. At first, I thought it might not sail within in earshot of me. It wasn’t long before I wondered if the crew had seen me before I saw them though.

I wasn’t certain I had been spotted, so I climbed to the top of the highest of the three hills on the island, removed the tattered remains of my flannelette shirt and waved it around like I was attempting to generate a hurricane. The yacht, with Gulliver emblazoned on its side, continued to glide closer. Eventually, a lifesaving device, connected to a sturdy rope, was flung into the only bay on the miniscule coast. It’s entrance was too small for anything larger than a kayak, so maybe rock pool is a more apt description than bay.

I made my way to the shore as swiftly as I could without risking losing my footing and toppling into the ocean. Cautiously, I waded into the shallow bay, or deep rock pool, and inserted myself in the lifesaving ring. I didn’t have any shoes, and the shells of the oysters clinging to the rocks were razor sharp.

I soon discovered that there weren’t any men onboard Gulliver, and that the all-female crew preferred to swim topless in the swimming pool and jacuzzi built into the bow. Sometimes they swam naked. I hadn’t seen a woman for three months. It was longer since any of them had seen a man.

Never in my life have I been as popular as I was during the journey from Barren Island to Port Louis, the capital of Mauritius. Lucy, the most androgynous member of the crew, shared her clothes with me, and a whole lot more. I can’t say that Joanne, Nicole, Angela, Melissa, Melanie, Megan, or Jane have inhibition in their vocabulary either. I don’t have fantasies anymore, just realities.

Staying in touch with the all-female crew of Gulliver would have been a terrible idea though. What an extraordinary coincidence it was that some of them turned out to be the ex-wives of the thugs who had marooned me on Barren Island. The others were their new fiancées. That adds a whole new dimension to the importance of keeping a low profile doesn’t it. Since being rescued from Barren Island, I have been moving more often than Edward Snowden.


© Rodney Hunter, 2024

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Murphy’s Law

There was no doubt in eighteen-year-old Wade Ellis’s mind that he had met the love of his life. His still burning flame, Chelsea Peachey was an older woman. He’d met her at her twentieth birthday party. Before he met Chelsea, Wade had never celebrated a six-month anniversary. On their night of nights, Chelsea and Wade went on what they called a fun medley.

They started at Stevo’s Ten Pin Bowling Arena. Normally, Wade was obsessed with conquering his personal record of two hundred and thirty-four, but that night it was all about the dance moves they incorporated into their run up, so much so that Stevo nearly kicked them out before they’d completed the first frame. Considering the amount of twisting, pirouetting and comical leaping about they did it was surprising that neither of them dislocated a finger. Somehow, none of their shots found their way into the neighbouring lanes. Despite all that silliness, they even managed the occasional strike.

Wade’s favourite part of the bowling alley leg of their six-month anniversary fun medley was the ultra-marathon kiss beneath the Stevo’s Ten Pin Bowling, Est in 1988 sign. Chelsea is an exceptional dancer, but according to Wade there is more rhythm in her kiss than her feet. Their tantalising tongue rumba prompted a spate of remarks from passing motorists.

“Woo-hoo” said someone who didn’t look old enough to have their driver’s license.

“Get a room.” said a balding man, who looked and sounded uncannily like the principal at the high school Wade had recently left.

“Give it to her” said the seventy-year-old bowling alley janitor as he pulled out of the carpark.

“Can we join you” enquired a middle-aged couple who looked ready to get out of their car. With the comments going from bad to worse, Wade and Chelsea decided to move on to the food leg of their funtacular medley. They went to Legendary Loaves. It used to be a bakery chain, but it had evolved into a restaurant. Legendary Loaves specialises in long sandwiches, on five kinds of bread, with centres ranging from all meat to vegan.

Wade’s sandwich featured a smashed avocado spread, three kinds of mushrooms and salmon. Chelsea’s vegan sandwich had something called eggplant, something called tofu and various other ingredients that were as foreign to Wade as the occupants of flying saucers. The closest he came to demystifying Chelsea’s choice was tasting traces of it during their after-meal kisses.

“I don’t know what you two think this place is, but last time I checked it was a restaurant and we need that table soon, real fuckin soon” a frustrated diner to be said five minutes into Wade and Chelsea’s after dinner kissing session. Worried that the situation would escalate, Chelsea picked up their fruit salad and tiramisu desserts and motioned for Wade to follow her to the door.

Wade had never been one to take a step back. Chelsea wasn’t scared of what the irate customer might do, she was worried that Wade would end up in the back of a police van. The enraged diner was five foot nothing, as flabby as a bowl of jelly and probably over forty. Although barely eighteen years old, Wade was pound for pound stronger than most twenty-five-year-old gym junkies, had viper like reflexes, and one punch knock out power in both hands.

Chelsea had seen proof of her boyfriend’s battle-ready hands when he’d chased and cornered a colossal hand bag thief, a few weeks earlier. The thief’s arms were as thick as Wade’s legs, but none of his windmilling blows came within cooee of landing. The first punch Wade threw short circuited the connection between the ogre’s brain and his limbs. After a delayed reaction, he went down. As he tried to get to his feet he fell again. His third attempt at getting up looked promising until Wade kicked him in the sternum. The fallen giant was too preocuppied with gasping for breath to protest as Wade rolled him over to retrieve an old lady’s handbag. She had fallen over as it was wrenched away from her. It was lucky she hadn’t broken any bones on the unforgiving concrete footpath.

Fearful that her gung-ho boyfriend would be on the receiving end of a bashing next time, Chelsea had been ultra cautious about which streets they walked after dark ever since. She fervently hoped that, in the not-too-distant future, Wade would be less like Chuck Norris and more like a quaker. Otherwise, Murphy’s law would surely catch up with him eventually. Chelsea’s grandfather had introduced her to the concept of Murphy’s law. The gist of it being, when things can go wrong, they will go wrong.

The third leg of Chelsea and Wade’s six-month anniversary medley was the Enigma Valley Wax Museum. They had fun getting into compromising positions for the camera with reproductions of everyone from Olivia Newton John to Elton John. It was after Chelsea decided to emulate Monica Lewinsky with the wax dummy of Bill Clinton that they were finally escorted from the premises. Maybe it was for the best, because she was planning to use her folded up umbrella as an imaginary strapon to take the Dear Leader of North Korea from behind. The security personnel at Enigma Valley Wax Museum would not have seen a funny side to the world’s most ridiculous alpha male being mocked like that.

The final leg of Wade and Chelsea’s funtacular journey was a Thai massage. The therapy centre was beautifully adorned with sculptures of everything from Buddhas to elephants. They shared the same room. After the rhythmic tapping on their backs ceased and the relaxing music faded away, Wade made a few remarks about happy endings. Both the masseuse and the masseur looked nervous. Thanks to their limited English, neither of them realised he was joking.

“Chels, if he was for real when he said full body massage, he hasn’t finished yet has he. I guess ya needta show im the colour of your money. If that doesn’t do the trick, stick some cold hard cash in his undies.” Wade’s lack of a filter only led to more outrageous statements from there.

It wasn’t until after they had gotten dressed and finished their herbal tea that Wade noticed the wedding rings on the massage therapists’ fingers. Their teenage children returned from a trip to the movies, just as Wade and Chelsea were leaving. One of them looked far too familiar. Wade couldn’t remember his name, but he was sure they’d been in the same science class in year nine.

Behind Wade’s depraved joker facade was a frustrated virgin. By the time he met Chelsea, he’d read dozens of novels about modern day Casanova’s and seen pornographic videos outrageous enough to make a God fearing wowser’s eyes bleed. He’d hoped that, on the night of their sixth month anniversary, he’d finally get the chance to put theory into practice, but when they got to Chelsea’s house both her parents were home. As usual, the spare bedroom had been prepared for Wade.

“Don’t you two dare get to know each other in the biblical sense” Mr Peachey said with some deeply suspicious glances. Too make sure he wasn’t being too subtle, he’d removed Chelsea’s bedroom door and the guest room door from their hinges before the lovestruck young couple arrived. Wade was scared of dying from frustration. It was over a fortnight since he’d “scratched the devil’s itch” as Mr Peachey referred to it in his anti-masturbation rants. Never in the history of humankind had anyone been more immune to embarrassment than his daughter. Over the years, he’d inoculated her well and truly.

Wade didn’t know it yet, but he was about to test the limits of his girlfriend’s immunity to humiliation. He’d reached the point where sexual frustration made sleep impossible. With sunrise not far away the need for rest overwhelmed all other concerns. Begrudgingly, he took matters into his own hands for the first time in weeks.

“You’re a true champion” Wade told himself, as he succeeded in making his furtive self-massage last long enough to thoroughly enjoy. Considering how long it had been since his last session, it truly was a remarkable achievement. Curious about how far he could shoot, Wade switched his phone torch on. Somehow, he managed to stay completely silent during the most enduring climax he’d ever experienced. The fruits of his labour flew high and long. “Home run man, home run” Wade whispered in triumph after his tribute to the Nike swoosh cleared the foot of the bed by a ridiculous margin.

“They’ll never suspect a thing” Wade promised himself as he buttoned up his shorts and got up to clean up after himself. “With no carpet to worry about, what could possibly go wrong?” Wade whispered as he strolled to the foot of the bed, handkerchief in hand. “What is that doing there? This cannot be happening, this cannot be happening, this cannot be happening…” Wade uttered over and over again as he discovered where the culmination of his pleasure had gone splat. His billabong of semen was fast becoming a creek. It trickled its way across one of Mrs Peachey’s evening gowns.

“What can’t be happening Wade” Mr Peachey demanded to know from the doorway. Chelsea was busy rubbing sleep from her eyes as she ambled down the hall, wondering what the commotion was all about. “Murphy’s law, when something can go wrong it will go wrong” were the words printed in black on her white satin night dress.

“What’s the matter dad”

“Why are you all up so early.” Mrs Peachey yelled from her bedroom.

“You’ve all interrupted my morning crossword puzzle, so this better be important.” Chelsea’s nana yelled from the granny flat. Even Chelsea’s dog Ballsup, and her cat Slash, seemed to want to know what was going on.


© Rodney Hunter, 2024

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The Rules

The priest really earnt his $550 dollar marriage celebrant fee. Joe could never have fit his biography into a ten-minute speech as elegantly as Father Love, who had known him since he was an altar boy sneaking sips of the blood of Christ and secretly spitting in the holy water. Joe had transformed into a sensible young adult since then.

Father Brimstone, the man in charge of Candlevale Parish, was old school enough to insist on a pre-wedding counselling session. Somehow, the aptly named Father Love had managed to keep a straight face as he skimmed through the evils of pre-marital sex with Joe and Trish a few days before the marriage ceremony. The young couple took Satan and his lakes of fire very seriously, so seriously that one could have been forgiven for thinking they were actors in a comedy, not a twenty-one-year-old couple in 21st century Australia.

“Okay people, this won’t take long. Father Brimstone told me to stick to the script he gave me. If you have any questions it doesn’t cover, feel free to ask. I’ll do my best to answer them. You two have been each other’s favourite person for as long as either of you can remember, so I’ll skip the parts about the Vatican’s views on divorce. Obviously, you’re both strict Catholics, so you know that abortion, contraception, polyamory, adultery, pre-marital sex, masturbation and homosexuality aren’t acceptable. I wouldn’t normally discuss all those things in just one sentence, but you’re educated Catholics so there’s no need to elaborate.

No doubt, you’re aware that having sex is only okay for the purposes of procreation, that God hates it if you do it for fun, so if procreation isn’t possible for you two then the church frowns upon any bedroom shenanigans. You’re probably well aware of that, but it’s one of the core parts of Father Brimstone’s script, so I thought I better mention it. There’s a few other compulsory bits. Let me see, um… Everything else in the script is very obvious to scripture teachers and youth group leaders of your calibre actually. Unless you’ve got any questions, we’ll leave it there.”

“Is God okay with fancy underwear, you know, the kind with frills, lace and see through parts and all the rest of it?”

“I wouldn’t worry Trish. As long as the purpose of the fancy underwear is to help one to procreate, I’m sure God is fine with it. It’s no worse than colourful feathers on a bird.”

“What if it’s see through in the most intimate places, or crotchless?”

“Trish, Father Love doesn’t need that level of detail to advise you darling.”

“As long as only your husband sees the fancy underwear it really doesn’t matter Trish.”

“What about during medical appointments with my GP or gynaecologist and so on, does it matter what I wear then?”

“I don’t think the catechasm, I mean the catechism, has anything to say about that, but I recommend wearing something non-descript, something plain and purely functional for occasions when anyone besides your husband needs to examine your private parts. These days, that might be a good idea when travelling through airports too. We can’t have our customs officials getting distracted from conducting body searches in the proper manner can we. Fancy underwear can cause trouble anywhere. Some parishioners have let Father Brimstone and I know that their body is their temple by sitting in the front row, during mass, wearing miniskirts and panties reminiscent of stained-glass windows. We could do without that sort of mixed messaging. It’s just not on. They should keep Victoria’s secrets secret from everyone except their husbands and God.”

“You don’t have any more questions do you Trish?” Joe said with a pleading look in his eye. He breathed a deep sigh of relief when she shook her head.

Minutes later, in the hallway of the presbytery, Father Love and Father Brimstone leapt in the air and bumped chests as they uttered the words “It’s sin Sunday Mary fucka.” It was the one Sunday of the month when Father Pious and Father Innocent conducted both the morning and evening masses, so Father John Love and Father James Brimstone were free to run amok. Normally, they went to Fantasy Land, a brothel with a back entrance that was obscured by an overgrown garden. They always travelled there by train, to make sure their cars weren’t spotted in the vicinity.

Father Brimstone’s favourite Fantasy Land roleplay involved giving Mother Mary a good seeing to in Joseph’s carpentry workshop. The son of God and his Earthly stepfather were always collecting firewood at the time. Father Love’s favourite roleplay was largely the same, but he was more of a Joseph man, so in his fantasy it was Mary and Jesus who were out collecting firewood.


© Rodney Hunter, 2024

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The Altruistic Billionaire

Alicia Gray was only twenty-three years old, but she had already interviewed dozens of major celebrities. The subject of her next interview, best-selling novelist Jeremy Sorbonne, was renowned for making outrageous statements when people least expected it. Alicia was sure that the time she’d spent working on building sites, before she went to university, would render her immune to his most debauched remarks. She was barely nervous at all, as she rode the lift to Sorbonne’s modest sized unit.

Jeremy Sorbonne owned the penthouse. Its balcony was as broad as a suburban backyard, yet he chose to live on the floor below in a modest sized apartment. Sorbonne had never been one to flaunt his wealth. Unlike most billionaires, he didn’t have servants to answer the door for him. The security personnel in the apartment complex lobby were his only line of defence against overzealous fans and political enemies.

“Come in gorgeous, come in” Sorbonne gestured towards his lounge suite down the hallway. Alicia had heard that he called ugly people gorgeous to be playfully sarcastic, nice people gorgeous to pay homage to their inner light and pretty women gorgeous whether he wished to take them to bed, or he simply felt as cheeky as the palace fool. Sorbonne could act as well as he could write, so he was notoriously difficult to read. Alicia had the feeling that he had no intention of being opaque with her though.

The prize-winning author was dressed in jogging shorts and a singlet. The latest in running shoe technology hugged his feet. Apparently, he’d been working out on his treadmill. Its electricity supply was supplemented by an exercise bike. Some of the weights lining the walls of his spare bedroom gym looked like they might be difficult to roll across the floor, let alone lift. Sorbonne wasn’t bulky, but his physique was as chiselled as a comic book hero’s nonethless.

Unlike some of the celebrities Alicia had conducted hard hitting interviews with for the left leaning Waves Magazine, Sorbonne’s balcony wasn’t big enough to feature a swimming pool. Potted fruit trees lined the glass wall. Above them, was an awe-inspiring view of an azure sea. The loungeroom was his office. His ergonomic desk and chair dominated the centre of the room. An antique upright piano sat where one would expect to find a television cabinet. It all blended well with a bookcase old enough to have belonged to Lord Byron.

“Have a seat darling. You look like you’ve been out in the scorching heat for an eternity. What’s your cure for that, a towering glass of ice water or something sweeter?”

“On hot, steamy afternoons, like this one, soda water with slices of lemon and lime and crushed ice is my favourite drink.”

“You’re lucky I’ve got a slushy blender. Any sugar with that refreshing concoction?”

“No thanks”

“You’re sweet enough already, I’m sure.”

“Is it alright if we get started while you’re making that drink?” Alicia replied, ignoring Sorbonne’s brazen flirting. His phone was ringing, but he didn’t appear to hear it.

“A go-getter aye. Give it to me girl.” Alicia couldn’t help but giggle at the famous author’s unselfconscious, carefree banter. She had heard that he was normally a quiet and introspective man. That may have been so, but he certainly wasn’t shy. Sorbonne took his time slicing the lemon and lime. He looked lost in a wonderful daydream as he poured newly crushed ice from his blender into the mix.

“Before we get to the serious questions, what are you thinking right now?”

“The sight of this drink got me thinking about a swimming pool and you dressed in a floral bikini diving right in.”

“You don’t always have your filter switched on do you Mr Sorbonne?”

“No, not really, I’d much rather talk about your bikini top falling off and getting stuck in the filter of my fantastical swimming pool than switch my filter on. You did ask me what I was thinking, did you not? That can be a risky question girl.”

“Do you normally flirt so openly when being interviewed by young women?”

“Only the ones that can’t help but look at me like they’ve never seen a man before. Normally, I’m the quintessential gentleman, but for you I’m making an exception. How could I not? I’ve never been big on filters. Filters are for people with something to hide babe. By the way, I resent the idea that asking me what I’m thinking isn’t a serious question. All my thoughts are serious, whether we’re talking serious business or serious fun.”

“I’m going to shift to my idea of a serious question now Mr Sorbonne.

“You can call me Jeremy, if you like darling.”

“Jeremy, are you concerned about the link between excessive consumption and environmental degradation? It’s a two-part question. Would you agree that the worst offenders, as far as trashing the environment through excessive consumption is concerned, tend to acquire their wealth through the exploitation of the poor?

“Oh, I know where this is going. I’m not one of those evil billionaires sitting on their private island throne, stroking a prize peacock with priceless stolen jewels cloistered in its cloaca. I don’t make my money from paying malnourished people two dollars an hour to work sixteen-hour days. I’ve checked, all the Sorbonne merchandising is as fair trade as Oxfam. I bet you’ve checked too. I have a friend that underpays and over works his staff. Nobody ever mentions how he lets them have Sunday off once a month. Journalists always want to focus on the negatives. He’s as persecuted as Jesus.”

“Obviously, you’re joking. You are joking, aren’t you? You’re so good at looking deadly serious whether you are or not. One Sunday off per month doesn’t sound like much of a positive.”

“I’m much more generous than that miser. The people who work for me have every Sunday off. To tell the truth, the staff at Sorbonnecorp usually have their entire weekend free. And I’m as generous with my money as I am with their work/life balance. I’m much more philanthropical than Oprah ever will be.”

“That said, I’m not claiming to have taken a vow of poverty. My ocean view is magnificent, and masterpieces decorate my walls, but the dimensions of my home are humble enough. It’s just a three-bedroom apartment with two bathrooms. Admittedly, it wasn’t Davo the tiler that laid that elegant mosaic on the balcony. And that’s not department store carpet either. The carpet I walk is fit for a Pharoah. It’s as lush as a meadow beneath my feet. And my antique furniture is as pleasing to the eye as the sculpture gardens in heaven. It’s as comfortable as beautiful too; rather like you, I think.

Are you hitting on me?

“It’s just a compliment darling, don’t get carried away like a raft in white water. Are you a fan of white water Miss Grey? Do manly rapids get you going? It’s alright, you can answer, it’s strictly a canoeing question” Sorbonne assured her.

“Yes, I like canoeing. Moving on now, why should all these exquisite, extraordinarily expensive things around us be owned by you and you alone while there are people in the world who struggle to find a milk crate to sit on, or a battered second-hand mattrass to lie on?”

“First of all, I’ve bought plenty of mattrasses for the needy in my time and delivered hundreds of them myself. You ask how I justify owning these beautiful things? Most of what you see before you is wonderful art. Whether we’re talking about this lounge sweet, the bookcase or that painting of a molten clock I bought the other day, it’s vitally important to preserve it. How would the craftsman who made my bookcase feel if he learned it was no longer overladen with learning? How would the man who made my loungesuite feel if he found out that nobody sits in it anymore? Wouldn’t that render it as useless as a trail bike collecting dust in someone’s garage? If you disagree, feel free to sit on the floor baby.”

“Don’t call me baby.”

“You love it. You wish you didn’t, but you do.”

“Your Rolls Royce, isn’t that an unnecessary extravagance?”

“I sold it a month ago and gave the money to my favourite suicide prevention charity. That car appreciated in value just because my saintly arse was in the driver’s seat for a bit. The sedan I drive now isn’t as prestigious as reliable. I’m planning to get a new one as soon as the warranty runs out, but I’ve never had more than one car at a time. I’m not a shopping addict like my friend Elton. Don’t you have two cars darling?” Alicia would have said don’t call me darling, but she didn’t want to get bogged down in an interview etiquette debate.

“I drive two cars Jeremy, but I don’t own two, the one in the carpark beneath this building is owned by the magazine.”

“Does anyone else drive it? Your silence tells me no. Isn’t that like owning two cars?”

“I need my personal vehicle to take my younger sister to dancing lessons and my little brother to football practice etc. I’m not allowed to use the company vehicle for that.”

“Relax baby, I’m just teasing. Shall we continue? You keep being the hard-hitting socialist journalist. I’ll keep being the suave, sophisticated, billionaire author whose hobbies include, philanthropy, generosity and saving the world. Being the guy, whose best-selling novel outsold the entire Harry Potter series, feels a hell of a lot better than owning too many cars or houses. I’m no twenty first century Karl Marx, but I’m not Milton Friedman either.”

“You talk as though this apartment is your only home, but don’t you own literally hundreds of properties?”

“That is sort of true. Technically, I own one hundred and eighty-six properties with a combined value of approximately two point four billion American dollars. I’m not your typical landlord though. Some of the farms, apartments and houses in my property portfolio are lived in almost rent free by struggling writers, painters, musicians, sculptors, dancers, magicians, teachers, nurses and medical students. I never charge the market rate. Some say I’m guilty of being too much of a patron of the arts and not supporting education and healthcare enough. Maybe they’re right, but I do support a few public hospitals, schools and homeless shelters though.”

“Can you recall all of your major assets?”

“From my mansions, to the brand and colour of my spare toothbrushes, I can describe all of my belongings. It’s easier than recalling the details of my shortest book.”

“You would have me believe that you’re far more philanthropical than your lifestyle is extravagant and wasteful, but aren’t you a jetsetter between your various residences? How do you reconcile the burning of so much aviation fuel with your claims of being environmentally responsible?”

“You have an exaggerated idea of my travel schedule Miss Gray. I’m too busy writing to spend much time in planes. Perhaps you are unaware that, unlike some people in my financial position, I don’t have a private jet waiting for me at the nearest airport, with a pilot and a team of mechanics on retainer. I could if I wanted to. I’m one of the few people in the world that could choose to shower themselves in such opulence. Most people will never be burdened by that choice. I have travelled business class, on long haul flights, a few times, but I’ve never travelled first class, not once. I don’t need a hotel room at ten thousand metres to arrive on the tarmac refreshed.”

“Occasionally, I need to duck across the Tasman for book launches. Whenever I go to New Zealand, or somewhere else nearby, I always travel cattle class. It’s unusual to see me in a chauffeur driven limousine too, you’re more likely to find yourself seated next to me on the bus. One needs to speak with regular people to keep a grip on reality, I think.”

“Earlier, you mentioned the importance of wonderful art not going to waste. Wouldn’t the priceless paintings on your walls and your aristocratic furniture etc benefit society more if it was in a museum?”

“Yes, to some extent, but not as much so as you seem to believe. Although I spend eighty plus hours a week writing and researching, for fifty weeks a year, year in and year out, it’s not just me, a few celebrities and other close personal friends of mine that that bask in the wonders of my abode when this introvert puts on his party hat.”

“A lot of people say you’re an introvert, but how true is that?”

“How many extroverts, or ambiverts for that matter, do you know who spend eighty plus hours a week behind a desk writing with their phone on silent?”

“Don’t you have research assistants to help you give your stories their extraordinary realism?”

“Yes, but I don’t blindly accept their conclusions. My assistants don’t exactly do my research for me, it’s more accurate to say that they smooth the path. I still walk it. There are times when it’s important for me to communicate directly with historians, sociologists, anthropologists, ecologists, climatologists and all the other ologists whose academic papers my assistants expertly select and summarise for me.”

“What was I saying before I started going on about research? Oh, that’s right, I was talking about how a lot of people get to see this place. I hang out with some A Plus celebrities, it’s true, but I can guarantee you, that you’ve never heard of most of the creatives that enter my domain. Many of them are currently no names battling to escape the drudgery of meaningless nine to five jobs. I sponsor the brilliant ones. I give books about the creative process to the moderately talented ones. And I play billiards with most of them.”

“Marilyn Bolt from the Great Southern Land Gazette accused you of buying friends and influence in the arts world, do you have anything to say in response to that?”

“Not a lot besides mentioning that I’ve had the misfortune of hearing that guy sing karaoke once. Normally, when a journalist assaults my ears with that kind of caterwauling, I like to say stick to writing, but in the case of that hack a different retort is in order. Marilyn Bolt had a go did he? If I was wealthier than Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg combined, I wouldn’t dream of buying that skunk a beer to keep him on side. I shouldn’t insult skunks like that. He’s not a skunk, he’s not even a skunk’s arsehole. I wouldn’t waste dead fly infested dregs on that semi-literate loser. I am supportive of fellow creatives, who I believe deserve my help, but my writing speaks for itself, I don’t need to curry favour with anyone. Talk about a textbook case of projection Marilyn. His boss Sir Richard Mordor can go fuck himself too. Feel free to print that in full.”

“A little while ago, I was telling you about how I like to play billiards with up-and-coming creatives. I didn’t get around to mentioning how I commissioned a talented young carpenter to fashion a lid for my Victorian era billiards table so it can double as a dining table. Look how seamlessly the new blends with the old. Isn’t it wonderful. Despite my best efforts, I was unable to find an entirely original piece like that which predates Edwardian times.”

“I can’t say I’ve ever delved deeply into the history of furniture before, but it sounds fascinating.”

“It is.”

Are you able to play that beautiful upright piano that sits where a television would in a regular home?”

“You think I bought that beautiful instrument just so I don’t have to leave home to listen to Billy Joel and Elton John tinkling the ivories in search of their next recording?

“You make it sound as though they pop over most afternoons. How often do they visit you?”

“These days just a couple of times a year unfortunately. When I lived in London for half the year and New York for the other half, I saw them more often. You wanted to know if I can actually play the piano. I stumble my way through most classical pieces, except for the simplified versions, but I can learn to play pop tunes quicker than the average hack. There’s rhythm in these fingers baby. I don’t get too close to anything with strings attached, but I do alright when it comes to keys and drums. In most realms of my life, I’m good at finding the keys and drumming up support for just about anything. While I’m seated at the piano or the drums, I’m less persuasive. They’re not just there for decoration though Miss Gray.”

“How do you get away with playing the drums in an apartment?”

“I invested a lot of money in sound proofing for the second bedroom, more money than most people are willing to spend on a new car, but don’t tell anyone” Sorbonne said with a conspiratory wink. Once again, Alicia wasn’t sure if the poker faced author was joking or not.

“Earlier, we were discussing air travel. Can we return to that topic now please.”

“You don’t give up do you.”

“Don’t you think it would be better if people avoided air travel, whenever reasonably possible, until fully electric passenger planes are capable of long-haul flights?”

“Fully electric long haul passenger flights aye? They’re nearer to the horizon than laser beams concentrated enough to use as weapons, I suppose. I might still need to be cryogenically frozen like Austin Powers to shorten the wait for them though. Did you know that international man of mystery’s powers of seduction are nothing compared to mine? Have you stumbled upon that fact in your research? You don’t want to know about that though do you, you just want to talk about the responsible use of resources, carry on.”

Alicia couldn’t help but burst into laughter, but she was laughing with her interviewee, not at him like the dominant side of her personality wished to. After she’d finished wiping the mirthful tears from her eyes, she continued the interview.

“Some reviewers say that you have written surprisingly few books, that you’re too much of a perfectionist to write an epic novel every year, year in and year out for decades.”

“You make me sound so old when you say that. You know I’m closer to thirty than forty don’t you? This face is not a mountain range yet, it’s still the Nullarbor Plain. This my darling is the moment where you’re supposed to chime in and say ‘The Nullarbor Plain Jeremy, what do you mean? You’re anything but plain.”

“Shall we return to the topic of your books Mr Sorbonne?”

“As long as we can take the scenic route and hold hands along the way, I’m happy to put aside my good looks and talk about my books.”

“Where are we going exactly?”

“Just to the balcony and back. My GP advises against sitting still for too long. I’m just following his medical advice that’s all. Shall we oxygenate our brains together? Does that sound nerdy enough for you Miss Gray? You are coming with me aren’t you Alicia?” Sorbonne held out his hand as though it was more of a statement than a question.

Alicia gripped Sorbonne’s outstretched hand. It wasn’t a dinner plate mocking, earth moving equipment rivalling mechanism, reminiscent of the hands the heavyweight UFC fighter Alicia once interviewed. Sorbonne’s hands, it seemed, had been designed for a standard sized QWERTY keyboard. They weren’t much bigger than hers, but despite their modest size, they looked just as capable of crushing a stone as cradling a butterfly. Although she didn’t normally hold hands with the subjects of her interviews, Alicia kept reminding herself that there was nothing untoward happening. This situation is no more intimate than a line dancing class, she silently repeated to herself.

As they stood gazing at the ocean, Sorbonne casually interlaced his fingers with hers and caressed her hand soothingly. It felt far too good for her to think about objecting. Thoughts of his hands migrating to her thighs and beyond bubbled to the surface. Banishing them proved to be impossible. Sorbonne’s phone was ringing again, and once again he ignored it. Alicia wondered why he didn’t just switch it off.

“Shall we continue the interview.” Sorbonne finally said.

Alicia was glad that the recording app on her phone was still running. Her concentration was as broken as an egg dropped from the roof of the Empire State Building. She composed herself and asked another question.

“Jeremy, there is no doubt that some of your novels and short story collections have been read and re-read by literally hundreds of millions of people, yet every eighteen months of so tens of millions of readers still find the the money and the time to read your latest masterpiece. There are literally millions of in depth amateur reviews online to prove it. The novella you wrote during the school holidays, when you were only sixteen years old, has been turned into a Broadway musical. Several of your other books have been adapted to the silver screen.”

“Why do I have the feeling that your speech isn’t going to conclude in the fan girl manner it started?”

Suddenly, Alicia badly needed another lemon and lime soda water.

“I’ll get you another drink” Sorbonne promised. How did he know she was thirsty? What gave that away? And how could he be so sure that her next question wasn’t a flattering one, despite the lead up? He was right of course. Alicia was beginning to feel like her mind was as transparent as a glass box. She found it impossible not to stare at Sorbonne’s athletic form while his head was turned. Jeremy Sorbonne wasn’t a noted sportsman, yet he looked like an Olympic middle-distance runner. He pulled out his phone and hastily checked his messages. He replied to one of them. His fingers danced over the electronic keyboard with impossible speed.

Before Alicia could avert her gaze, the cheeky author was looking right at her, responding to her dilated pupils with an impish grin. Thoughts of his lips upon hers and his strong hands taking all sorts of liberties flooded her mind. She had checked in the mirror before she left home to make sure her purple lace bra was invisible beneath her lilac silk blouse, she’d checked several times, but to no avail. Despite her elegant, businesslike outfit she was starting to feel as naked as a burlesque performer in the final moments of their act. For the first time, Alicia stammered as she continued her line of questioning.

“There-there is an extraordinary amount of merchandising associated with your stories, everything from toys to t-shirts to colouring in books to 3D printed garden gnomes.” she said between sips of icy lemon and lime soda water. Alicia continued “you’ve written everything from award winning children’s stories to epic novels more popular than Steven King’s most famous work and more beautifully crafted than Hemmingway’s finest efforts. Do you see yourself as an advocate of fast fashion and the billions of dollars’ worth of other unnecessary peripheral products that your writing has inspired?”

“To be honest, I do think that the merchandising dragon is out of control, but that monster can’t be slain now. It treats spears like splinters. I believe I am influencing it for the better though. I’m not simply letting it run rampant. Having said that, as influential as I am, it’s not like the merchandising dragon is prepared to sit and roll over upon my say so. I won’t say I’m just the writer, but I can’t be the marketing people, the accountants, the entire board and all the investors too. The situation isn’t perfect, but at least I’m not shutting my eyes to it all and letting other people represent my work however they like. There are more than enough third rate book reviewers out there wilfully misrepresenting my work, so I do the best I can to stop merchandisers from doing it too.”

“As important as the accurate representation of your characters is, the focus of my question is the tonnes of plastic etc that goes into manufacturing more toys than the children in wealthier nations could possibly ever need. Unfortunately, the bulk of it ends up in landfill, instead of being passed to the next generation, because there is a new range of toys and ornaments etc coming out every year.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to distort your question Miss Gray. I’m a passionate advocate of upcycling and recycling. I’ve invested a considerable amount of money in scaling up the manufacture of biodegradable plastic. Sorbonnecorp is doing better with the transition to environmentally friendly products than most companies that sell affordable toys and ornaments. There is still a long way to go of course. I am among those who are increasing their wealth through excessive consumption, but at least I’m diverting literally billions of dollars of that wealth into worthy causes, including recycling. There is only so much I can do though Miss Gray. I can’t be the puppet master of the millions who are too thoughtless to take their preloved goods to their local opportunity shop instead of putting them in the trash.”

“Moving away from waste management issues now. Do you think it was a mistake to allow so many of your books to be converted into movies?”

“Yes and no. I am not just a fan of the written word. I celebrate all the arts, books, movies, live theatre, the lot.”

“There was one question regarding merchandising that I forgot to put to you earlier. I must warn you, it is rather provocative. Isn’t excessive consumerism a drug of sorts, a psychological drug and aren’t those most responsible for building a culture of consumerism somewhat analogous to dealers of illegal illicit substances?”

“Whoa, that question sure is a little more provocative than the earlier ones darling. You forgot to ask it did you. Are you sure you weren’t just trying to lull me into a false sense of security before firing that one at me? You were trying to set me up for a sucker punch, I bet. I have a question for you Miss Gray. Do you think that everyone who buys a printed copy of that monthly magazine you work for has time to even skim through it? No doubt, some potential readers get their dopamine hit when they first see the cover of Waves Magazines. Then it sits on their coffee table for a while, slowly getting buried beneath the magazines they actually get around to reading, before being flung into the recycling bin, or the trash.”

“Just one more question sir.”

“It’s sir now is it. You don’t know whether to berate me or fellate me.” Alicia was dumbstruck. A heady concoction of outrage and desire left her reeling. She didn’t know whether to storm out in protest or grab one of the velvet cushions from Sorbonne’s lounge sweet and get on her knees.

“Don’t get too worked up darling. I’m still in my interviewee chair. I haven’t exactly tucked you under my arm and carried you to the bedroom or the kitchen bench, at least not yet anyway.” If virtually anyone else had spoken to her like that, Alicia would have immediately stood and briskly headed for the door, but instead she was battling to avoid squirming in excitement.

“What was your question darling? Most of the people who interview me ask me how much tax I pay. Is that it?” It was a predictable question, but not everyone Alicia interviewed was sharp enough to see it coming. She didn’t say anything she just let Sorbonne continue.

“I’m not going to tell you precisely how much tax I pay, but I’m prepared to reveal that it’s always tens of millions of dollars more than Donald Trump has ever paid in one financial year. I’m not into tax avoidance. I love contributing to public roads, hospitals, schools, libraries and sporting complexes etc without cutting ribbons and handing over novelty cheques. Paying enough tax means contributing to society without being dragged away from my word processor. Giving a speech at a charity dinner was cool the first few times times. Usually, I’d rather just pay enough tax and donate online than do all that self promotional bullshit though. Over the past decade, I’ve paid more tax than the amount of revenue that globally renowned magazine you work for has generated. Is the ballpark I’ve sketched for you small enough?”

“Alicia was out of words; all she could think about was Jeremy Sorbonne tucking her petite form under his arm or over his shoulder and carrying her to wherever he wished to undress her. Presumably, he would do so agonisingly slowly. She couldn’t imagine him rushing under any circumstances, not unless he was fighting a fire or tackling a terrorist.”

“Would you like another lemon and lime soda water? You’re trembling, so perhaps you would like a splash of vodka and a little sugar in it this time? You pour, I can’t have you thinking I’m trying to get you drunk. Perhaps it’s a massage and not a beverage that your frazzled nerves are pining after.”

Alicia found herself leaning towards Jeremy Sorbonne without consciously deciding to. His touch felt more expert than that of any massage therapist she could recall. He kneaded the tension from her back as easily as a lesser mortal could’ve squeezed the excess water from a sponge. Then he worked on her scalp, face and arms.

“While I was studying for my doctorate in creative writing and my masters in English literature at Oxford, I worked part time as a massage therapist. I started as the secretary and was trained on the job” Sorbonne explained. “How about I get some massage oil and a towel so I can do this properly? Would, you like to remove your trousers and your blouse so that I can access your legs and stomach? I want you walking out of here feeling like you’ve just returned from the most peaceful meditation retreat in the known universe. Nothing less is good enough for my favourite Waves Magazine journalist” Sorbonne crooned.

His fingers glided from Alicia’s feet to her thighs with the aid of a liberal splash of lavendar oil. He went tantalisingly close to brushing against the edges of her purple lace panties. Sorbonne was just as disciplined in his soothing of Alicia’s pectoral muscles, which ached from too much swimming and driving. What had happened to the man who mentioned wild sex as casually as one might speak of the weather? She waited in vain for him to slide his hands beneath the cups of her brassiere.

Alicia’s heavenly gaze turned to a miserable frown when her interviewee turned massage therapist informed her that it was time for her to get dressed. She was a storm of ambivalence. She hadn’t known it was possible to simultaneously feel so humiliated by the disintegration of her professionalism and so thrilled by her capitulation. How had she succumbed to the wiles of such a rude and arrogant man? How did he manage to talk to her the way he did and leave her silently pleading for more? Why hadn’t he made wild, passionate love to her yet? Sorbonne’s shifting of gears from bombastic Casanova to a genteel massage therapist was the definition of inexplicable. It was all so bewildering.

“Your interview seems unfinished. Feel free to come back tomorrow with more questions. Any time after six in the evening is fine. I’ll have packed away my laptop and my old-fashioned notepads by then.”

Less than twenty-four hours later, Alicia found herself knocking on Jeremy Sorbonne’s door once more. This time, her hair wasn’t tied into a businesslike bun. Neither was she dressed in a lavender silk blouse, tailored navy-blue slacks and sensible office shoes. Part of her still wanted to look like editor in chief material, but the yearning to be ravished by the world’s best-selling author trumped every other consideration. As Churchill might say, Alicia’s black velvet dress was like a good article, short enough to create interest and long enough to cover the subject. Normally, a hint of cleavage was enough to make Alicia feel like a naked woman in a crowded church. That night she wasn’t remotely uncomfortable about her creamy breasts peeking out of her shy floral silk brassiere. Her legs trembled from anticipation as she heard Sorbonne’s footsteps in the hallway.

“You look frightened. Tell me what it is you wish to say. There is no judgment here” Sorbonne soothed as they sat beside each other on his exquisite antique lounge suite.

“I was wondering who was on the throne when your bed was born from a tree in a royal forest.”

“I see, you’re here to continue our discussion about the history of furniture, of course you are. Come, explore history with me in the master bedroom. Maybe, while we’re there, I can teach you to talk like a bad girl. You won’t go to hell for it, I promise. If you overdo it, you might get a good spanking though.”

“Oh God.” Alicia muttered as Sorbonne tucked her under his arm and carried her to his king size bed.

“Never mind God, since when has that prude been dedicated to giving you pleasure? How about we forget that puritanical kill joy for a while” Sorbonne teased as he dumped his student of Earthly delights on to freshly laundered silk sheets. His trail of kisses was more epic than Magellan’s journey.

“Did I say you can take that off yet?” Sorbonne chided playfully as a frustrated Alicia began to slide her black velvet dress over her head. Sorbonne gave her the spanking he’d spoken of earlier, but not for uttering anything he would’ve refrained from writing in an erotic novel. He disciplined Alicia for her impatience. Fear and excitement intermingled as Alicia felt the sting of Sorbonne’s stern hand. Finally, he removed her dress. By the time she lay breathless beside him, he’d introduced her to acts she hadn’t even read about, every one of them more thrilling than the last. As Alicia lay in her favourite writer’s embrace, his phone began to vibrate on the bedside table, but he didn’t answer it.  

As they stood on Sorbonne’s balcony, gazing at the sunset glazed Pacific, Alicia had never felt more relaxed and vibrant. They sipped absurdly expensive wine as mindfully as monks.

“You chardonnay socialist, you” the quality craving, best-selling author teased.

“I might have too many interview questions left to get through tonight. I haven’t asked you anything about the characters in your novels, or how you crafted the plots, yet.”

“Don’t worry, we can finalise the interview after breakfast tomorrow” Sorbonne said with a wink. “Oh, and by the way, that call that came through when we were recovering from our bedroom adventures, that was my accountant ringing to let me know that my purchase of Waves Magazine has been finalised. I found out via voice mail, while I was getting our drinks.”


© Rodney Hunter, 2024

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Rise of the Machines

“The day that Dionysus the Elder of Syracuse invented the catapult was the day that the world stopped caring about shot putters hurling cannon balls the length of tennis courts. All of a sudden, those King Kongs of track and field looked remarkably puny. They were banished from Mount Olympus forever. And as soon as muskets were more accurate than inebriated stone throwers, archery ceased to be a sport. That’s how it works people, every time machines do something better than humans, yet another talent is consigned to the rubbish dump of history.”

“You want a more recent example? I’ll give you one. In 1949, the American propellor driven bomber, Lucky Lady 2, circumnavigated the globe. It went up to six thousand kilometres at a stretch without quenching its thirst for aviation fuel in midair. That’s a lot less drink stations than you use in a marathon Eliud Kipchoge, you loser. If you had of taken up running before the first transatlantic flight in 1919, maybe a sportswear company would have been impressed enough by your feats of endurance to sponsor you, but not anymore.”

“The Lucky Lady 2 flew at speeds of up to three hundred miles per hour and reached altitudes higher than Mount Everest. This momentous voyage was the last nail in the coffin for the sport of athletics. Nobody cared about pole vaulting after that Sergey Bubke. The equivalent of leaping on to the roof of a double storey house just didn’t mean anything anymore. And when Javier Sotomayor did the equivalent of jumping over the tallest NBA players head, by a big enough margin for a crow to fly through the space between them, nobody noticed. Javier Sotomayor, your high jump world record wouldn’t have been enough to leap over the grassy knoll and tackle the second gunman let alone clear Mount Everest. You never did get your act together did you.”

“Thanks to planes soaring higher than the Himalayas and racing across the sky like shooting stars, Carl Lewis couldn’t make a name for himself either. Winning every long jump gold medal at the Olympics from Lose Angeles in 1984 until Atlanta in 1996 didn’t help. Even the Wright Brothers early experiments achieved a more sustained flight than Carl. With those magnificent men in their flying machines making falcons look as pedestrian as heroine snorting slugs, Carl’s athletics career was over before it began Amelia Earhart.”

“Thanks to the Lucky Lady 2’s circumnavigation of the globe and Chuck Yeager’s shattering of the sound barrier in a jet plane, hardly anyone knows Usain Bolt’s name. A salt lake dragster obliterated the sound barrier before his career even started. No lucrative sponsorship deals awaited him. A measly thirty miles an hour is all he could manage in top gear. That’s nowhere near the sound barrier Usain. A Toyota Corolla hatchback travels faster than that within a couple of seconds of the lights going green man. Foot speed just isn’t trending anymore, it’s just so preindustrial revolution. Why be a runner? Unless you want to be as forgotten as the Tour De France, what’s the point Pheidippides?”

“Nobody remembers you Pheidippides. You thought that running all the way from Marathon to Athens, to let people know the Persians had been defeated, was a sure way to be famous forever, but those magnificent men in their flying machines went heaps further. Pheidippides, you’ve plunged into the pit of obscurity. You’re as unknown as those crazy people who brave the cold, choppy, waters of the English Channel, to swim to continental Europe. None of them can get an inch of column space in their local rag anymore, not unless they’re Brexit refugees, not with all those planes, trains and automobiles making such incredible journeys.”

“When eleven-year-old Tom Gregory said, ‘hey dad, I just swam from Britain to France,’ his father wasn’t interested.”

“He said ‘take a long walk off a short pier son.’

“But dad, I already have, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you” Tom replied.

“Then his father said ‘go away son, I’m busy watching a documentary about submarines. They can stay the height of a skyscraper beneath the waves. They can do it for weeks at a time too, so why would I care about you swimming across the surface of the ocean for less than twelve hours? Boats have been doing better than that for thousands of years. Not even the school newsletter will want your story son.’ It’s true, that’s exactly what Tom Gregory’s dad said. I didn’t just make that up. I’m a professor of history at the University of Atlantis you know.”

“It’s not just all those fancy motor vehicles that have rendered old school excellence obsolete. Thanks to electronic computers, nobody pays attention when primary school children multiply twelve-digit numbers, without the aid of a pencil and paper, let alone an electronic calculator. Daryl, from Mr Smith’s remedial maths class, can add up faster with the help of an app on his i-phone. Never mind that he has no concept of what a million is. It was Daryl ‘how many fingers do I have again’ Dallas who had the Guinness Book of Records people knocking on his door. That boy knows how to push buttons in a hurry. Faster is better than slower, bigger is better than smaller and higher is better than lower. Marvelling over brain power is so 1950’s.”

“Computers are taking over man. Any day now, Chat GPT will compose wittier and more original pieces than William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens and Mary Shelley possibly could have written with the aid of a word processor. Eventually, AI will use our social media data to tailor epic novels to our individual taste. Don’t wait for the evidence; the AI salespeople, I.T gurus and the science fiction obsessed psychiatric patients know what they’re talking about. No doubt, when the IT prophets are proven correct, the literary flair of homo sapiens will be obsolete.”

“Nobody will care if they never read another piece of writing woven from authentic creativity, profound personal experiences and months of skilful research ever again. The complete absence of emotion behind creative writing algorithms will be irrelevant to even the most ardent fans of authors. Literature buffs won’t merely embrace AI novels, plays and scripts as one option among many. AI tomes will be infinitely more popular than cameras as an alternative to portraitists. That’s what the IT people keep saying, and everyone knows that they are the experts on what makes bibliophiles tick. What would literature professors and psychologists know?”

“The evolution of chess tells us where human creatives are headed. In 1997, when the supercomputer Deep Blue defeated world champion Gary Kasparov, human tournaments were no more. You failed to keep chess alive Gary. And you didn’t even go to its funeral did you. Thanks to you, chess has been dead for decades Gary. That’s how it all went down.”

“Multimillionaire and five times world chess champion Magnus Carlson begs to differ? What an intriguing figment of people’s imagination Magnus is. Obviously, all those videos of him on YouTube are just CGI. And whenever you think you see him live, it’s just a hologram. He’s a mass hallucination too, just like that Netflix series the Queen’s Gambit. Human chess is dead and human literature is on the brink. Any day now and human creatives of all descriptions will be redundant. Computers will leave people with nothing to do besides sit on the couch and worship them.”

“Writers, musicians, punk rockers, dancers, comedians, magicians, sculptors and painters will be as outmoded as fighting sabre tooth tigers with wooden clubs Captain Cave Man. If you’re one of those fossils who still flocks to art galleries to admire Rembrandt, Renoir, Van Gogh, Dali, Cassat, Kahlo and Picasso your ocean is about to be the Dead Sea. It’s not just the algorithms that will make human creatives redundant, it’s the robots too of course. Who will want to see human performers once robots can match their hand eye co-ordination, speed, agility, rhythm, tone, timbre and interpretation?”

“Soon, being inspired by human striving, courage, discipline, playfulness, spontaneity, humour, creativity, grace and athleticism will all be in the past. There will be robots as unconscious as marble finding everything in the marble Michelangelo. All the ladies will want those walking, talking substitutes for 3D printers for soul mates. Their plastic abs will feel so real that women will never want to take biological men to bed again. What’s that you say? Women are worried that the robots won’t be emotionally available enough? Don’t be silly. The obsolescence of human partners is inevitable. Modern automatons will learn to feel soon enough Pinocchio. Once the oblivious mimicry of artificial intelligence has been sufficiently refined, human charisma and compassion will be as obsolete as creativity Jesus.”

“Like every other claim I’ve made, that one is as plausible as my academic hero status at the University of Atlantis. Don’t you go calling me a name dropper, I really do know Jesus, Pinocchio, Usain Bolt and all the other celebrities I mentioned. They were all in the room the first time I delivered this speech. They don’t like to be left out of things, so I mention them every time I give this talk now. Every one of them is among my five hundred closest friends.”

“Do you often talk to the statues sir? Is it a good way to prepare for a live audience?”

“What do you mean statues, they’re my students. The appearance of stone is just an illusion.”

“This is a sculpture garden sir, not an auditorium in a conference centre, or wherever it is you think you are. Would you be willing to come with me to a nice shiny, disinfected place where they have lots of coffee and vending machines full of chocolate bars? There are some nice people there, who I am sure would love to talk to you. They will want to ask you some questions to see if you are okay. They’ll even take your pulse for you, to make sure that you’re nice and relaxed.”

“They won’t sneak up on me and inject me with tranquilisers will they?”

“No, of course not, why would they do that?”

“How do I know I can trust you?”

“I’m a police officer, so of course you can trust me. It’s my job to serve the community, so why would I lie to you?”

“What’s your name?”

“Roger Rogerson.”

“That sounds like an honest name.”


© Rodney Hunter, 2024

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Captain Controversy

It was a long time since the patrons of Cloakman Gallery had seen anything more controversial than an oil painting of a bowl of fruit, a water colour of a sun caressed bay, or a bronze statue of an affable sporting hero in their beloved cultural oasis. Croydon Clayderman was about to change that. As he unveiled his grandest masterpiece, the collective gasp of horror was even louder than he’d anticipated. It was so loud that it echoed off the dome ceiling like a bomb blast.

Clayderman’s tallest offering was a statue of Poseidon, just like he’d told the administrators to expect. He’d given them enough photos of his work in progress to keep them happy. The sketches of the sculpture to be didn’t include any fictitious details. It was the missing details that sparked controversy. Some conservative art lovers shouted angrily and gesticulated wildly at the sight of Clayderman’s God of the Sea. Others wept in anguish. A few gazed at the exhibit in stunned silence.

The trident that Clayderman’s Poseidon held was different, very different. It was so different that the entire Cloakman Gallery Board feared being ended by an aneurysm if they gazed at it for too long. The tips of the trident’s prongs were suspiciously reminiscent of Darth Vader’s helmet. The shafts were suspiciously veiny. And the mermaid balanced on one of them looked suspiciously ecstatic. It couldn’t have been more obvious what the mermaid perched on Poseidon’s personal appendage was doing.

If the Cloakman Gallery Board had known all of the details of the most prominent sculpture in Clayderman’s exhibition, he wouldn’t have been permitted to set foot in the gallery let alone exhibit his work there. Clayderman had also painted a bowl of fruit, a bowl of fruit in which a mermaid was doing something it shouldn’t have been with a cucumber. Poseidon cradled this painting in his other hand like it was a priceless heirloom.

“That’s the best evidence yet that cucumbers don’t belong in fruit salad” Royce Mercedes, the flabbergasted president of the gallery roared. Mercedes was about to put the kibosh on Clayderman’s exhibition before the rest of his sculptures had been unveiled, but a tsunami like surge of online ticket sales stopped him. The Cloakman Gallery was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, so Mercedes and his colleagues had to make a choice between respectability and existence.

Fortunately, no children were present on the opening night. The website administrators scrambled to edit the promotional material, to make it clear that the exhibition was strictly for adults only. By the time Croydon Clayderman’s other works had been unveiled the hasty alterations to the exhibition’s advertisements had been made.

Clayderman’s sculpture of Osiris, Horus and Anubis, in a game of strip poker, was chaste in comparison to his rendering of Poseidon, but extreme enough to make the regular patrons of Cloakman Gallery blush. The solid silver dioramas depicting the destruction of Carthage and the sacking of Rome were as brutal as the mermaid obsessed version of Poseidon was pornographic.

Some critics claimed that Clayderman had merged several exhibitions into one, in a haphazard fashion. Others were convinced that he was portraying the link between established empires taking military conquests for granted and the increasingly hedonistic lifestyles of the major players. In Clayderman’s universe, even the Gods dropped the proverbial ball sometimes. It wasn’t just Poseidon taking hedonism to a whole new level. Zeus was too busy getting it on with a harem of harpies with herpes to notice that he was no longer the King of the Gods. Apparently, Clayderman was stressing the importance of safe sex, among other things.

While Royce Mercedes contemplated convincing his fellow board members to cut the exhibition time from a month to a week, ticket sales doubled and doubled again. Unrealistically, Mercedes hoped that Croydon Clayderman would restrict his opening night speech to little more than “thanks for coming” but the artist had a story to tell about every sculpture. For the entire time that he was discussing his Poseidon and Zeus sculptures, Clayderman was thrusting his hips back and forth in the direction of his twenty-two-year-old girlfriend Elvira Washington, who was dressed as a mermaid. At first, she timed the blowing of a kiss with each thrust. Then she seemed to imitate the vocalisations of a dolphin.

“I’m talking in a mermaid tongue” Elvira finally explained. According to tabloid journalist Marilyn Bolt, “it was arguably one of the top one hundred strangest incidents of the evening.”

“What did Zeus do wrong when he fucked a harem of harpies with herpes, anyone? Will someone have a go at answering the question please?” Clayderman pressed.

“Shouldn’t the question be what did he do right?” Royce Mercedes ventured.

“Did nobody notice the unopened packet of condoms, sculpted in bronze, on Zeus’ bedside table? I’m glad we’re not here for a game of Cluedo people. With you lot working on the case it would never get solved.

“For your information, we’re all bona fide member of MENSA, our intelligent quotients are in the one hundred and forties” Jacqueline Mercedes the secretary of the Cloakman Gallery Board spoke up in defence of her family, whom she presumed were the targets of Clayderman’s stinging words.

“I don’t have time to discuss that glorified brain teaser club bub. I’m a magician on a mission. Before the effervescent refreshments arrive, lets talk about Ares, the Greek God of War over there. That guy isn’t noted for his bubbly personality is he. Look at him drooling at all those modern weapons he sees in his crystal ball? Like the crystal ball, his drool is fashioned from glass. In the dim light it’s hard to tell the difference between it and real saliva isn’t it Magyver. That’s right, Richard Dean Anderson, the Mr Fix It TV detective of the 1980’s, is here in the flesh. Although, he is standing so still that one could be forgiven for thinking he’s one of my waxworks figures. Returning to the topic of Ares spit, if you look closely enough you can see little demons in it. Would someone like to guess how I created that effect? Anyone? Come on…”

Ticket sales for Clayderman’s exhibition, which was titled The Takeover, continued to rise. By the fourth day it was necessary to usher gallery patrons in and out of the main exhibition room once every two hours, to avoid being in breach of fire safety regulations. After only five days the merchandise storeroom was nearly empty. The Cloakman Gallery’s procurement officer scrambled to purchase more books, posters, t-shirts and cups by the van full.

Royce Mercedes wondered why Clayderman’s exhibition was titled The Takeover. His reinterpretation of Syrian, Egyptian, Greek and Roman mythology/history had a lot to say about the rise and fall of bronze and iron age empires. Maybe it was just a reference to ancient power struggles in general.

It wasn’t until Clayderman made an appearance at the Cloakman Gallery’s Annual General Meeting that Mercedes understood what the artist had in mind when he labelled his lewd, yet brilliant, exhibition “The Takeover.” By his standards, Clayderman was dressed in sober business attire. A floral tuxedo, irridescent purple platform boots and a matching top hat was his idea of orthodox. And so was the bejewelled disco stick that he refused to stop twirling until the meeting was called to order. To Royce Mercedes utter dismay, Croydon Clayderman was duly elected president of the board. Mercedes hadn’t even realized Clayderman was a member of the gallery until moments before he’d witnessed him striding into the conference room in his ridiculous outfit.

“So, what should you expect from me as president? Yours truly is inviting the Cloakman Gallery down a more liberal path” Clayderman began his inaugural speech. After a brief pause, he continued. “From angelic to obscene, abstract to hyperreal and everywhere in between, art is for exploring not ignoring. The world has changed since the invention of photography people. Not everyone wants to acknowledge it, but it has. In our time, the post-impressionist gems of Van Gogh, which were once thought to be absurd, are as mainstream as Rembrandt. Yes, it’s true, despite the denial, they’re as mainstream as the Nile. I tell a lie, those treasures are the fucken Amazon baby. And yet for the art psychonauts among us, their consciousness altering properties are a spoonful of LSD Mary Poppins.”

A confused looking, Royce Mercedes looked around the room for a woman in Georgian era garb, with an allegedly gravity defying umbrella, but he didn’t see anyone who matched the description of Mary Poppins.

“I was being poetic Poindexter” Clayderman mocked. As he continued his speech, he drew a cartoon of Mercedes confusing a zebra with a horse and a yak with a giraffe. It was as though Clayderman had two brains. As he sketched with his left hand, he gestured theatrically with his right.

© Rodney Hunter, 2024

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West Vale’s Wild Western Frontier

To quote Garth Izzard’s kindergarten teacher “That kid wouldn’t help an old lady pick up her walking stick, not unless she guaranteed him two thirds of her pension cheque first.”

Garth didn’t grown kinder with age. He was a great admirer of former U.S Secretary of State and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Henry Kissinger. Not surprisingly his favourite Kissinger quote was “the illegal we do immediately, the unconstitutional take a little longer.” Garth’s shareholders trusted him to apply this philosophy humanely. His interest in the carbon trading scheme, reluctantly implemented by Prime Minister Jock Waffle, was assumed to be as altruistic as God.

On Garth Izzard’s latest carbon sink acquisition, in Western Sydney, native plants shielded rapidly advancing exotics from bulldozers and boom sprayers. Izzard was apoplectic with rage when he learnt this weed imperilled wilderness would need to be regenerated manually. Reality slowly forced his hand.

Eventually, he provided his army of Sunday hippies with free tools from the reject depot of his hardware chain and permitted them to dumpster dive for biscuits, at the back of his supermarkets, providing they waived their right to insurance cover for needle stick injuries.

Garth was astonished to discover his flood of generosity wasn’t enough to inspire fourteen-hour shifts of hacking into seething masses of Lantana and Morning Glory with the ferocity of a Spartan warrior in a fit of roid rage.

Impatient to rid himself of his ageing eco maniacs, Izzard fed their morning tea stockpile of stale biscuits and use by nineteen eighty-six lime green cordial to his pit bulls. They were there to chase the hordes of doddering pensioners off his land once and for all. Garth’s departure speech was brief and brutal.

“If you greenies are doing what you love why do you need me to reward you for your Olympic swimming pool of shirt saturating, eye stinging sweat? Fuck off you fucking hordes of tree hugging lemmings.” Garth’s chief accountant Niles Cash attempted to console his heartbroken employer.

“Sir, unfortunately slavery is frowned upon in twenty first century Australia. It must be hard to accept the mighty injustice that your problems can no longer be solved with your favourite stock whip or cattle prod. Don’t fret, I have the utmost confidence in Prime Minister Jock Waffle’s top-secret plan to abolish the minimum wage.”

“Niles, why do the criminal classes expect their living handed to them on a platter?”

“Left wing lunatic propaganda makes them soft sir. Should I rebook your pedicure and four hands Hawaiian massage? Perhaps what you need more than anything right now is to discuss the matter with your psychologist, to help calm your Greenie mangled nerves?”

Matt Rush, the owner of land restoration behemoth Mother Nature’s Bodyguards, was busy yelling at Southwestern Crew Supervisor Davo Davidson when he first learned that corporate tycoon Garth Izzard was seeking to get in touch with him. The red phone in his brief case was vibrating angrily, but he was enjoying himself too much to end the call with Davidson.

“Davo, we aint changing the company name to The Weed Massacre Gurus. It’s the perfect label for a heavy metal band that advocates the use of heroine laced with crystal meth but not for a bush regen company. Yes Davo, I know your Green Thumb Green Berets start screaming threats of violence at blackberry thickets before dawn, in between mumbling obscenities at the hairy extra-terrestrial goblins they claim have stolen their tools, but that’s not the kind of truth we want emblazoned on of our fleet of utes. Yes Davo, yesterday I said it’s your best idea yet, but that wasn’t a compliment Davo, it was a comparison, like comparing influenza with radiation poisoning.”

“What, you’re planning to leave the company and you’re begging me of all people to be your referee? If you leave this company in anything besides a body bag, all I’ll reveal to prospective employers is the true nature of your fixation with the rare Cumberland Plain Land Snail!”

Whenever Matt Rush wandered on to site, productivity plummeted and suicide climbed. He did the least damage when innovating from afar. His latest lunch time musings had led to the purchase of a squadron of spy drones to monitor the length of his employees breaks. Rush lapsed into a daydream about arming his surveillance fleet with low calibre weapons to shoot down Indian Mynas. It was one of his more practical ideas.

Home time was near. Davo Davidson’s elite line up of chain sawing lunatics hadn’t massacred a hectare of African olive trees yet. Assistant supervisor Laura Bogan’s treatment of the jumping ant bite on Davo Davidson’s tackle was unorthodox to say the least. She was too focussed on her work to notice Davo’s video link to his backyard Cumberland Plain land snail farm. These creatures are rare in the wild but at Davo’s place they’re in plague proportions.

“For Chrissakes, not now” Davo hissed, as his phone vibrated in his pocket. He struggled to speak normally as Matt Rush’s voice tormented his ears like a demonically possessed angle grinder.

“Davo, if your crew hasn’t smashed five hectares of African Olives by midnight, you can forget about recouping the cost of fuel this week. Nathaniel Smoke and Mirrors Daniels, our new accountant, is more creative than Leonardo Da-Vinci. He could take away all your entitlements and at the same time make it look like you’re overpaid. Don’t even think about sabotaging the spotlights. Penalty rates? ROFL muthafucka. Davo, if you approach the union, you and the snails gonna be all over YouTube.”

“Oh, I nearly forgot, HR manager Gail Wilde will be on site next week to discuss Mother Nature’s Bodyguards anti-bullying policy. Make sure ya ready for that loser, or I’ll kick you up the arse so hard you’ll be farting through your nostrils and punch you in the nose so hard you’ll be sneezing out your arse. I’ve gotta go, the CEO of Stratosphere Apartments is here to treat me to a gourmet lunch, bye Davo.”

“Yes Madam, we’ve got that former wasteland, near the National Park, looking like forest wilderness and pretty signs advertising Stratosphere Apartments sponsorship. Until the bulldozers arrive, nobody will suspect a thing. That penthouse discount is huge. Words can’t express my gratitude. Sorry, I must take this call.”

“Jonathon, of course I’ll be happy to edit that solar farm construction site threatened species report. Yes, a few commas are out of place, of course that’s all you mean. I’ve got to go, Medusa Crabtree, the CEO of Stratosphere Apartments is here for an urgent meeting.

Matt Rush was sampling the two thousand-dollar bottle of Champagne, that had mysteriously found its way to his desk during Medusa Crabtree’s visit, when Garth Izzard strolled into Mother Nature’s Bodyguards HQ. He was flanked by his most obsequious lawyers. The dollar signs in Rush’s eyes flew like fireflies in a cyclone. The tender manager, Billy giant appeared from nowhere. He brandished his pen like a flick knife in anticipation of ruthless negotiation. The participants stared at each other across the boardroom table like rival gangsters in a high stakes game of poker. By three A.M the ten year one hundred-million-dollar contract was a done deal.

“Get up ya mug” Matt Rush roared as Billy Giant collapsed from exhaustion on a crocodile hide door mat. “It’s alright, he’s out cold, he won’t feel a thing” Rush explained to Rowena the cleaner, as he used Billy for a door mat on his way back inside to get his keys.

Matt Rush, Billy Giant and HR manger Gaile Wilde embarked on a mission to assemble the greatest conservation and land management crew ever to wear Mother Nature’s Bodyguards high vis orange and forest green. Most in demand was former Western Sydney Warlords prop forward Richard Johnson. It was said that Lantana shrivelled and died in terrified anticipation of the first cloud of Metsulfuron from his lethal weapon.

Once Johnson had been poached from Weed Busters, Liverpool’s landscaping, amateur stunt car driving and mixed martial arts legend Dangerous Dylan Donovan was in Mat Rush’s sights. The man could plant trees as fast as he could get a handbag snatcher in a headlock. Dangerous Dylan Donovan’s sidekick, Jumping Giles Corkhill, was renowned for high volume spraying in places where a goat wouldn’t dare tread. High volume spraying was illegal in the sensitive environs of Izzard Reserve. As long as Garth Izzard’s favourite Henry Kissinger quote “the illegal we do imediately, the unconstitutional takes a little longer” wasn’t emblazoned on the crew’s uniforms, he wasn’t worried.

As far as ecovandalism is concerned, even Garth Izzard and Matt Rush had their limits. The unofficial reason for Dangerous Dylan Donovan’s employment was putting Richard Johnson back in his cage if he insisted on using plutonium to kill Alligator weed, like he’d allegedly done during his stint at If it’s Noxious we Nuke It. Richard was disturbingly prone to taking things literally. It was rumoured that he was under investigation by ASIO and the Federal Police, concerning alleged links to the Russian mafia. Many assumed that was how he’d ‘acquired his long since confiscated stockpile of radioactive herbicides. Johnson was still in denial concerning the illegality of lacing Metsulfuron with uranium.

Then there was Dexter Finklestein, a former botanist and master storyteller. Finklestein was like a hybrid of Grandpa Simpson, Robin Williams, and Aussie TV presenter Don Burke. You could never tell when his marathon talks on the environmentally friendly herbicides of the future would shift to how he’d once robbed a Melbourne tram, with a cap gun, while dressed as a fifteenth century Japanese bandit. His hobbies included pressing plants and telepathic communication with ducks. With Dexter on board Plant File was obsolete.

Oliver Oxford, the man who spoke of his heroics with the S.E.S, as though they were unsurpassed by the most daring exploits of the S.A.S, joined the crew as some sort of consultant. Precisely what his job was nobody knew, but he seemed to enjoy polishing tools, making sure the site boundaries had been marked, listing his qualifications, discussing the botanical dictionary he’d been working on since he was four and ranting and raving about what he’d do if he was the Prime Minister. What Oxford loved most was giving orders to those whom he imagined were his underlings.

Ricardo Hohns, the last recruit, was renowned for cutting down African Olives and privets in his sleep. Some mornings he’d wake to find himself poisoning a stump halfway down a cliff. Matt Rush bought him a tent and made him the site security guard. After all, at 3am, how many things are scarier than a guy with a zombie like stare charging at you with two bow saws in hand and a tube of weed killer between his teeth?

Laura Bogan, former member of the southwestern crew, was appointed supervisor, based on Matt Rush’s belief evil people get the job done. Aware that Matt would be onsite for the first week of the new job, Laura marked the boundaries at dawn. She even polished everyone’s tools. Oliver Oxford was slow to forgive her for stealing his favourite means of procrastination.

Laura was marking the borders when a tennis ball skipped across the shallows of a heavily polluted creek like it had been struck by Roger Federer and splashed an evil looking puddle into her face. The mouthful of water from Izzard Creek was infinitely worse than raw sewage. Laura looked about wildly for the culprit. She imagined Ricardo Hohns was responsible and wrote this down. After a few dabs of liquid paper, the tennis ball became a rock.

Laura rolled her eyes at Dexter Finklestein who was engrossed in a conversation with a non-existent koala. Shockwaves from Dangerous Dylan Donovan’s speakers had more than Laura’s coffee cup vibrating to the tune of Uptown Funk. “Too hot, hot damn, too hot for the Police and the Fireman, too hot, hot damn, make a dragon want to retire man, to hot, hot damn, say my name, know who I am……”

At first glance Dangerous Dylan Donovan looked like the best equipped bush regenerator she’d ever seen. Bogan eventually realised his trailer was merely the casing for gigantic speakers. Laura decided she would have a talk with Dangerous about his sound system affecting the breeding patterns of local wildlife, as soon as her chain saw fuel ran out. Upon noticing how incredibly good looking he was she spoke of the wonders of a nearby cave instead, a moist wonderland with countless satisfied visitors.

Jumping Giles Corkhill, somersaulted to Earth from the lounge chair bolted to the floor of Dangerous Dylan Donovan’s ute tray. “The boy knows how to make an entrance” Dangerous stated with pride; before turning his attention to Oliver Oxford.

‘Give me the run down on Golden Whistlers Oxford. That’s one over there isn’t it?

“The scientific name is Pachycephala pectoralis, Dangerous. They’re distributed throughout eastern and southern Australia as far north as Cairns and as far south as Tasmania. They inhabit rainforest, scrub and open forest. Usually solitary and deliberate in their movements, they possess a sweet and ringing song.”

“Sorry, I wasn’t listening, can you repeat that Oxford?”

“Don’t annoy me by raving on about birds, I’m busy” was Dangerous’ response to take four.

“It’s okay Oliver, it’s all good practice” Rowena, the crew’s morale and safety officer consoled.

She would’ve reprimanded Dangerous Dylan Donovan but his boulder pulverizing biceps, meteor shattering manly jaw and larrikin grin left her feeling too dizzy to speak.

The news Matt Rush was on site prompted the crew to scurry to the makeshift parking lot for a discussion on which weeds to target, the dangers of cutting down weed trees in which crew members had taken up residence and questions concerning how Richard Johnson had acquired a dozen mining helmets since signing on. Richard had a gripe of his own.

“I wanna know whose bin spreadin bullshit stories bout me and the Wussian Mafia. Whoever it is, I’m gonna knock im inta the middla next year.”

Oliver Oxford, who had been front and centre, poised to impart his knowledge on everything from Work Health and Safety laws to the likely date of the Apocalypse had mysteriously disappeared.

“What do you mean rumours? It’s all true isn’t it” Ricardo Hohns piped up.

Johnson lurched forth like Frankenstein. He swung and missed, almost uprooting an African olive tree. Hohns looked as relieved as a man who has successfully crossed Conrod Straight, during the Bathurst One Thousand, by a hair’s breadth.

“Do ya, do ya, do ya wanna dance” Riccardo sang after regaining his composure.

“I hate that song” Johnson bellowed. As he covered his ears Riccardo lunged and planted a leaping overhand left on the point of his chin. It had less effect than a marble clanging against the turret of a tank.

Dangerous Dylan Donovan barked instructions ‘Riccardo, use your speed, circle counterclockwise and unload with a right on his recently re-attached ear’

“What speed?” Riccardo asked.

“You betta find some real quick or I’m gonna havta step in for ya.” Dangerous removed his jacket faster than a Spanish bull fighter shifts his capote and flung it the length of a bowling alley into the waiting arms of Jumping Giles Corkhill. If he’d been any more accurate Giles would have been wearing that jacket.

Hohn’s taunted his Godzilla dwarfing opponent “Johnson, you look like a teletubby hybridised with a troll. You’re so stupid that when a coconut hit you on the head, you cracked it open to make a cup of cocoa.”

Riccardo ducked beneath a hay maker that might’ve decapitated him if it had landed. “You’re behaving like children” Rowena screeched, startling the combatants into standing as still as statues and shocking the cheering mob into silence. Any more of that and both of you can stand in neutral naughty corners all day without pay.” Matt Rush, who had bet Dangerous Dylan Donovan five hundred dollars on the outcome of the fight gave Rowena a nod of approval. Rush had bet that Hohn wouldn’t last more than thirty seconds. Dangerous had bet that he would, a smart move considering he was the fight’s choreographer.

The moment the fight started, Rush forgot about the miners’ helmets Richard Johnson had mysteriously acquired, coincidentally on the same day a tunnel was discovered between Izzard Reserve and Inglewood Coal Mine. A series of other distractions, such as a possibly deliberate low-speed car crash out the front of Rush’s house, saw to it that his focus never returned to the tunnel, or the stolen miners’ helmets. A case of beer was enough of an incentive to convince Richard Johnson not to talk about that tunnel ever again, or to recreate the link between it and the mine. The entrance that Johnson had discovered was filled in and a more obscure one dug elsewhere.

It wasn’t long before large Leaf Privet massacring chainsaws and Lantana annihilating brush cutters destroyed the serene atmosphere as shockingly as Dangerous Dylan Donovan’s sound system. Knap sack herbicide sprayers blanketed Moth Vine, Cape Ivy and Morning Glory patches, which were spreading so rapidly that time lapse photography was barely needed to watch their advance.

When nobody was looking, Richard Johnson, drilled and poisoned the world’s largest African olive tree with a jackhammer and a drum of diesel. He charged at the next African olive infestation with a chainsaw like a soldier going over the top at Gallipoli. Four former NFL players, seconded from the landscape construction crew, hauled fallen weed trees from his path. Johnson was supposed to be drilling and poisoning those trees and leaving them in situ, but that wouldn’t have satiated his appetite for destruction.

Meanwhile, in stark contrast to Johnson’s rampage, Ricardo and Rowena were busy extricating Erharta From a patch of Weeping Meadow Grass. What could be more enjoyable than euthanising weeds with such a fascinating Goddess, Ricardo wondered. She enthralled him with tales of everything from mushroom farming to entertaining hospitalised children with her ukulele.

“There’s a Rufus Fantail and a Yellow Robin” Rowena. Ricardo also delighted in pointing out and naming specimens of shy little native herbs such as Solenogyne bellioides and Cymbonotus lawsonianus. He was so pleased to see them, one could be forgiven for thinking they were the larvae of giant butterflies thought to be extinct for millennia.

“Out of the sun Ricardo” Laura Bogan barked with the fury of a rabid Doberman.

“I’m perfectly comfortable” Ricardo answered.

“Get the fuck out of the sun now” Laura screamed, as she aimed the nozzle of a Staraine laden sprayer at his eyes. With his hands raised in the air Ricardo did as he was told.

“I’m just thinking of your safety Riccardo.” Laura reminded him.

Rowena looked ready to flip Laura into an African Box Thorn thicket.

Laura made a note in her diary “Ricardo always seeks the shadiest spots to work, at the expense of other crew members health.”

Just a few days later, Richard Johnson was in trouble for spraying a patch of Asparagus Fern with Agent Orange.

“Who is Agent Orange? Who does he work for?” Johnson demanded to know, after Laura Bogan invited Rowena Grey, the site safety and morale officer, into the conversation on the whereabouts of Johnson’s illegal herbicide supply.

After terminating the interview, Laura gazed at a pair of red belly black snakes slithering into a hollow Grey Box stump. Ms Bogan was nothing like red bellies, the timid puppy dogs of the venomous serpent world. She longed for a cup of their venom to add to the crew’s coffee. None of them were subservient enough for her liking.

Ms Bogan’s crew damning diary contained more fantasy material than the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Ricardo Hohn was the main character. She had hated him ever since he’d informed her that the weeds she’d chastised him for ignoring were native plants. That diabolical humiliation occurred on the day that the Challenger Space Shuttle exploded. Laura had been plotting her revenge ever since. Mother Nature’s Bodyguards CEO Matt Rush said he was looking forward to reading the damning reports in her diary.

The moment Laura disappeared from site to visit her dope dealer; Richard Johnson rummaged through the bag she left behind. He was hungry. The two-litre bottle of Coke, the packet of Oreo’s and the stray goat, he’d had for morning tea weren’t enough. He felt around for false compartments, sniffing for anything that vaguely resembled food.

Eventually, Johnson pulled out an exercise book. After reading the chapter entitled Richard Johnson, he considered sending Laura Bogan’s van falling end over end into Izzard Creek. The handbrake would be no use against the one-man scrum that was Richard Johnson.

Johnson broke into everyone’s vehicle in search of sustenance. He discovered that Oliver oxford was writing his memoirs. Richard couldn’t get through the first paragraph before flinging the offending material on the ground in disgust. Oxford claimed he’d taught Johnson the art of simultaneous brush cutting and knap sack spraying.

“That Mista Puniverse bludga musta shown me howta do it with the Lego version of a brush cutta and spraya. Otherwise howda fuck coulde’ve lifted em?” he raged.

Richard Johnson went to lunch early, leaving a cloud of dust in his wake as he sped from the property. He paid little attention to the late model silver Lamborghini he nearly ran off the road. The driver got a good look at the Mother Nature’s Bodyguards logo on the side of his vehicle though.

If Office Works had of been closed it might’ve been the victim of a ram raid, for the sake of borrowing a shredder. Johnson fed the life and times of Oliver Oxford into the biggest, baddest document destroyer he could lay his hands on.

“Are you going to buy that sir? You’ve been testing it ever since I started working here” sales assistant, Melanie Tulip challenged him. He glared down at her as though she were trying to talk him into paying five dollars a minute for the air he breathed. Then he used his unbelievably good eyesight to examine her sheer, lacy underwear. Shoddy brain surgery, after Johnson’s fight with a tractor, had given him the ability to see through any clothing less opaque than a leather jacket.

“Your panties are blue” he stated, as proudly as if he’d just solved one of quantum physics most baffling mysteries. From that day forth, Melanie wore six pairs of stockings and yoga pants beneath her trousers.

Richard reread Laura Bogan’s diary as he drove back to site only twenty k’s over the speed limit, He had one hand pressed firmly on the horn, to drown out anyone who might have a problem with his latest multitasking feat.

Johnson almost side swiped Dangerous Dylan Donovan at an intersection.

Dangerous’ own lunch time escapade would prove to be more action packed than Richard’s, but he didn’t know it yet. After his lunch shenanigans, Richard hurled himself into his work with the gusto of one tank trying to stop the United States air force.

“I am King Kong’s conqueror, Godzilla fears me. I dare you to unleash your fury upon me” he roared at a patch of Inkweed as he sprinted towards it with a spray pack the size of a swimming pool on his back.

Dexter Finkelstein wandered off site to share his supply of LSD with a wombat. Laura Bogan was still on her usual three-hour break, to visit her dope dealer and to attend a few orgies, including one hosted by an extra-terrestrial from somewhere in Alpha Centauri. His claim to fame was possessing more penises than fingers.

Oliver Oxford spoke to everyone in earshot about the superior ergonomics of his loppers and his reclining camping chair. Every hour, he shifted to saw another African olive tree. He was one of those people who manages to do less work than the long term unemployed, without ever being out of a job.

Dangerous Dylan Donovan raised his middle finger as a scowling, silver Lamborghini driving, gang leader cut him off at the entrance to the service station. Dangerous was searching his wallet for cash when something slammed into his cheek bone. Had a wedge tailed eagle committed suicide on his face? Dangerous whirled around to see a shirtless body builder type shadow boxing and kissing his own biceps in triumph.

Dangerous was not amused. He grabbed his detachable driver’s side door and used it for a shield as he advanced. Luckily, the door was reinforced with titanium, and he was wearing his Kevlar body armour, because a variety of stolen weapons ranging from a crossbow to an AK-47 were trained on him. All of them were fired simultaneously. Once mirror boy’s henchman realised they’d exhausted their ammunition, there was an eerie silence.

Jumping Giles Corkhill returned from the pizza store across the street. Dangerous Frisbee’d the ute door to him and motioned for him to reinstall it, as he headed for the self-kissing show pony, with his right arm cocked. In his haste, the startled looking mirror boy crashed into the wall between the service station and the outhouse. Now he was cornered, his ailing bravado was inflated once more. Donovan’s now upright right arm reminded him of a cobra poised to strike. His left arm dangled by his side as though it were partially paralysed. As Mirror Boy prepared to counter a devastating right cross, he was knocked senseless by a left hook.

“Idiot” Dangerous remarked as he strolled back to his vehicle and refuelled.

“That’s Dangerous Dylan Donovan. Some call him the twenty first century Arthur Fonzarelli” an autograph hunting bystander proclaimed.

“I call him dead” the gangsters roared in unison. Jumping Giles Corkhill casually sipped his frozen Coke. Dangerous had gotten them into and out of situations more dire than this. He looked bored by the ease with which he flung his attackers into their vehicles. Jumping Giles slashed their tyres before they could disentangle themselves.

Two carloads of police officers pulled into the service station to replenish their donut stockpile and as it turned out to make some arrests. Nobody had reported the fight to them. The service station attendants were too preoccupied with fighting a dumpster fire and chasing away graffiti vandals to even notice it.

“Not again” Lawry, the owner, moaned as he discovered the confectionary freezer had been stolen.

If they’d watched the evening news, Dangerous and Jumping Giles would’ve seen CCTV footage of Dangerous versus the West Vale Boys and Jumping Giles standing idly by sipping a Frozen Coke. Mirror Boy and his cohorts had robbed two service stations in fifteen minutes before their stoush with the most feared weed sprayer since Genghis Khan took a dislike to the clover in his palace garden.

The story immediately following Dangerous Dylan Donovan’s kung fu movie like exploits at West Vale Convenience Store was reported in one hundred and eighty-five countries. Someone had stolen the Australian Airforce’s Hypersonic 3000 prototype. The Hypersonic 3000 could either function autonomously or with a pilot at the controls. It was the culmination of a reverse engineering project that had begun in the Nevada Desert in 1947. Inexplicably, before the final tests could be completed, one of these multi-billion-dollar aircraft went missing. Interestingly, a Hypersonic 3000 flight simulator had been stolen about three months earlier.

Laura Bogan didn’t see the evening news either. She was too busy ringing Dangerous Dylan Donovan to interrogate him about misuse of company vehicles.

“Speeding on two wheels is against company policy? Since when? I’m busy darl, the Warlords are playin. I’ve got five hundred riding on the first scorer. We’ll talk about work at work. Then again, I’ll probably be too busy then too.”

Dangerous turned the volume down, knowing Laura would yell for ages before pausing to discover he was gone. He recorded every call from Laura Bogan and sent the audio files to Ricardo to summarise the death threats.

Not content with disturbing Dangerous Dylan Donovan during a Western Sydney Warlords match the previous evening, Laura Bogan made the mistake of offending Richard Johnson again.

“What do ya mean we can’t arm drones with herbicide cannins. I could fly em by remote control from my car during an extended lunch break. I’d neva be more than two feet from an ice cold six pack.”

“Garth Izzard just isn’t prepared to pay for that kind of technology” Within moments of Laura being out of sight, Richard had stolen her diary again and sped off on another Office Works escapade. There was a strong police presence in the shredder section. Sales assistant, Melanie Tulip was wearing three pairs of yoga tights under her trousers. Richard bided his time at a café across the street while he waited for the four police cars to depart.

“If I give you that shredder for cost price, will you promise to never come back?” the exasperated manager offered as Johnson walked through the door.

“I will consider your offa after testing it a little more” Johnson replied as he headed for the car park, shredder in hand. Aware of the natural disaster proportions of a Richard Johnson tantrum, the manager paid for the stolen item himself, saving the company from the need to make a hefty insurance claim. The shredder made short work of Laura Bogan’s forty thousand words of meticulous fabrication. Richard considered shredding his copy of the Responsible Use of Herbicides Handbook too. In the end, he decided to save that one for his next book burning. Richard made a phone call to Oliver Oxford, who he hoped had taken time out from bird watching to fill up his herbicide spray pack.

Matt Rush rang Laura Bogan to request a copy of the diary she’d been discussing forever. Richard Johnson eavesdropped. According to Dexter Finklestein, eight kookaburras and five goannas suffered from strokes during his fits of laughter. The electronic copy of Laura’s diary had been mysteriously deleted from her laptop and online back up. Using her name for the password had proved to be a bad idea. Every member of the crew knew that the guillotine of rough justice was about to descend upon Laura Bogan. It was a guillotine they’d all had a hand in building, sharpening and polishing.

“Closed circuit television footage will show that since the beginning of the job, Laura has repeatedly left site before lunch time and not returned until midafternoon” read an email from Ricardo Hohn to Matt Rush. Garth Izzard backed up the accusation in a video conference call.

“It’s true Matt, it was quite cunning how Ms Bogan avoided the regular trails and built her own personal gates but not as cunning as Dangerous Dylan Donovan’s installation of extra surveillance cameras.”

Realizing she was destined for a long walk to the bus stop, Laura Bogan attempted to ring her recently estranged younger brothers for a lift and to organise a hit on Ricardo Hohns and Dangerous Dylan Donovan. In their current predicament it was surprising they’d managed to keep their phones. What was less surprising was that they were in prison for the armed robbery of two West Vale service stations and conspiring to rob a third.

Ricardo Hohns, Jumping Giles Corkhill and Dangerous Dylan Donovan were preoccupied with bigger issues than Laura Bogan’s revenge plans. The Dangerous Cave, which was somewhat like the Bat Cave, had recently been carved into the bedrock beneath Garth Izzard’s biobanking property. Although it wasn’t an earthquake prone area, Dangerous Dylan Donovan had insisted on his hi-tech hideout being more earthquake proof than any structure on the San Andreas fault.

For the past few months, Dangerous Dylan Donovan had been busy creating the impression that he was just a hardworking employee of Mother Nature’s Bodyguards. He’d actually spent more time in his new Hypersonic 3000 flight simulator below ground than planting shrubs and spraying weeds in the world above.

Learning to fly the aircraft hadn’t been the hardest part. Neither had bamboozling the Australian Airforce twice, first with the theft of the flight simulator and then the protype aircraft itself three months later. The most challenging task of all was getting the German construction crew that built The Dangerous Cave in and out of the country, without attracting too much attention. Dangerous had watched Better Call Saul enough times not to complicate matters by getting into a turf war with a Mexican drug cartel. Building The Dangerous Cave in utter secrecy had been a challenging task, nonetheless.

At first, Dangerous had merely wanted a next level computer game, but then he heard about the plight of Julian Assange, a man who was being persecuted and prosecuted by the United States Empire for exposing war crimes. Dangerous Dylan Donovan was a man who made his own rules. That was undeniable. Unlike the U.S Empire, Dangerous wasn’t hypocritical enough to break his own rules time and time again. Someone made the mistake of telling Dangerous that rescuing Assange was impossible, even for him. That was when he decided that having a Hypersonic 3000 flight simulator in his possession wasn’t enough. Why train, if you’re not going to fly the plane?

The top brass in the nearest military base at Holsworthy had no idea anything unusual was afoot as the expertly camouflaged camera shutter like door to the Dangerous Cave opened and the Hypersonic 3000 took off as vertically as a helicopter. Dangerous Dylan Donovan cleared the continental shelf long before the most cluey amongst them had cleared the sleep from their eyes.

The Hypersonic 3000 wasn’t just the fastest plane ever built, it was also the most manoeuvrable, the most versatile and the stealthiest. Perhaps the fact that it is still the only electric jet in the world that can be safely recharged by lightning says it all.

The Belmarsh Prison authorities had denied Assange winter clothing and put him in a cell adjoining an exterior wall, so that he could be tormented by the icy winter draft. Dangerous had learnt this and numerous other facts via the letters he’d exchanged with Assange. Officially, those letters had been written by musician and human rights activist, Roger Waters. If MI6, ASIO or the CIA had had the faintest clue that Dangerous Dylan Donovan was up to anything more concerning than service station fights these days those letters would have been analysed by a broader array of deciphering software.

It takes an extraordinary amount of energy to turn laser beams into steel reinforced concrete cutting tools, so Dangerous recharged the Hypersonic 3000’s batteries in a lightning storm over Indonesia. Then he flew through Chinese and Russian airspace completely undetected. He didn’t do so for any military reason. Sometimes Dangerous does things because he can.

By the time the Thames came into view, Dangerous had renamed the Hypersonic 3000. Forevermore, it would be known as the Dangerous Mobile. As he zeroed in on Belmarsh Prison, he wondered how many US embassies would be razed to the ground within 24 hours if some fool made the mistake of capturing him.


© Rodney Hunter, 2023

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Chance Meeting

Shortie Pinkerton jabbed at Ben’s jaw as the smaller man attempted to walk around him for the fifth time. He managed to hit him high on the forehead. Shortie was built like a rhino, and he wasn’t an all arm and no harm kind of puncher. He waited for Ben to fall. In the back of his mind were thoughts of the wallet in his back pocket and the money it might contain.

In that split second of hesitation, Shortie saw his intended victim step back. A maniacal grin appeared on Ben’s face. That grin said you’ve ignited my rage, a rage with more than enough fuel to incinerate the planet a thousand times over. I am every bomb ever built. Shortie thought he was witnessing something he’d seen before. He was wrong, so wrong. He waited calmly for the surge of adrenaline he’d sparked to manifest as words like come on, or let’s go. Instead, Shortie’s intended victim circled him in an eerily silent fashion.

Ben’s predatory smile had melted away leaving an expression as impassive as that of a crocodile on the hunt. Nervous now, Shortie, who was actually the taller of the two men, fired straight left and rights, but this time it was like trying to hit a ghost. His intended victim was always an inch or two too far away. Shortie was quick off the mark, but his opponent was so fast he evaded him easily by moving straight back. Shortie tried everything. He even tried switching from orthodox to southpaw, something he’d never done in a real fight before.

Shortie had swift head movement, but he was dodging feints not punches. He was being as utterly dissected as a toad on a laboratory bench. His initially reluctant opponent was still more patient than any fisher. Clearly, he was waiting for Shortie to make a mistake, not just any mistake, a big one. This wasn’t clear to Shortie. If a monumental mistake wasn’t forthcoming, Ben would use the knowledge he’d gleaned from manipulating Shortie into throwing the combinations he did. It was like they’d played dozens of games of chess, and Shortie had learnt nothing. Ben continued to evade his blows with ease. He waited so long before striking that the hapless thug believed he was scared to let his hands go.

Ben was dumbfounded, Shortie slipped a right hand that was never intended to land by moving to his own right-hand side. He’d positioned himself perfectly for a left hook, set himself up for demolition in other words. Ben felt embarrassed for him as his boulder like fist cannoned into his ear drum, destroying his equilibrium. Why did he do that, the victor to be asked with a shake of his head. Shortie was on shaky legs but still a threat, until a barrage of punches sent him crashing into the shrubbery on the side of the track.

For decades, Ben had been thinking about what he’d say to Shortie Pinkerton if he ever saw him again. As he was approaching him, he’d begun to run through the words in his mind, but when he was close enough to make eye contact with the somewhat short-sighted Shortie, he felt too ill to speak. Not for the first time in his life, Ben found his path being blocked by Shortie Pinkerton in an isolated area. Before he was fully prepared for the violence destined to come his way, he’d been hit. He saw the punch coming, but not soon enough to evade it. Everything that followed was instinctive. Ben was as experienced a fighter as Michael Schumacher was a driver. Shortie was in no condition to get up without falling over again. Once he’d regained his senses, it was fear that stopped him from moving.

“You don’t recognise me do you, Shortie. I recognised you from over a hundred metres away. It was that overly impressed with yourself swagger that I recognised first. I was planning on talking to you. Then I changed my mind. The thought of talking to you made me feel sick. Despite who you are, I was prepared to let you go past, I was prepared to think of the twenty years you spent in the worst maximum security prison in Australia for other crimes as punishment enough for what you did twenty four years ago when you were fourteen and I was eight. I guess I must’ve been fucked in the head, but I was thinking about how you were just a kid yourself then, a much bigger kid, but a kid nonetheless. I was thinking maybe you’d changed for the better.”

“If I was like you Shortie, you’d be out cold right now, out cold at best. For twenty-two years I’ve been learning Brazilian Ju-jitsu, Japanese Judo and western wrestling techniques. Along the way, I’ve learnt a lot from professional boxers, Muay Thai fighters, kickboxers, karate experts, gymnasts and dancers who wanted to learn the art of grappling. The point is, I’ve only showed you a fraction of one per cent of what I can do. Escalate this situation down the track and you will die a slower, more painful death than any vermin I’ve ever shot, whether I’m still breathing or not. As sure as the sun is gonna set tonight, I can promise you that.”

“Ben, is it really you? How could it be you? How could you say those things man? I loved you.”

Upon hearing those words, Ben dry retched a few times. Somehow, he managed to avoid vomiting on the track between himself and the monster he could have easily slain there and then.


© Rodney Hunter, 2023

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Underwhelmed

Roland Gibbons, a workmate with all the discretion of a dog that wags its tail at serial killers,
the eloquence of an inebriated goat, and the decorum of a Grievous Bodily Harm injected feral pig, asked me what I did on the weekend.

‘Oh you wrote poetry’ he replied, with all the energy of an anaemic, chronic fatigue syndrome victim, whose just lost a lung. My attempts to articulate what’s so great about rhyme and alliteration were met with consternation. To say it was like trying to excite Genghis Khan with talk of peace is putting it mildly. Obviously, Gibbo’s weekend routine, which involves reading X rated Wonder Woman comics, while sucking down a six pack as forcefully as an irrigation pump, is so much more purposeful than honing one’s literary prowess, I may as well euthanize myself right now.

Gibbo says it’s the Riddler and Joker comics that he uses to “hone his flirting techniques.” He’s convinced I’ll never be able to compete with him in the womanising stakes unless I “learn to understand the world from the perspective of Batman’s arch enemies.” That makes sense to him apparently. I can’t say that Gibbo reminds me of the Riddler, or the Joker, in either an endearing or a villanous way, except for that ridiculous high-pitched laugh of his.

“He’s got a laugh like the Riddler,
but he’s never written any riddles,
he’s just a pocket pissing fiddler,
a slam dunked, debunked diddler.”

Don’t tell the Gibbon what I’ve been writing, or he might burn my house down without any of the Joker’s theatrical flair, or the Riddler’s penchant for puzzles expressed in the ashes. If Gibbo burns my house down, he’ll find a way to make the experience as boring as traumatic.

I’ve heard that the Gibbster is calling himself a pickup artist on YouTube now. Parents, there’s no need to worry about him being a bad influence on your sons, or sprouting rhetoric that is a danger to your daughters, not even the trolls can find the time to watch his videos.


© Rodney Hunter, 2023

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It Was I, DwiteDaSpriteKnight

‘I admit it, it was I, Dwite The Sprite Knight. I rolled the Pope Mobile because a keg of holy water failed to cure my sunburn. Then I decapitated one hundred and seventeen Ronald Macdonald statues. I smashed those smiling blood haired freaks. Who can justify those aberrations occupying public space? Four confectionary cafes, I bombed them, junk food is dangerous. On my way here, I turned Spice World into a firecracker. I mean that awful pop music movie, not the shop Father! I’d water down the blood of Christ if I were you.’

‘Sir this is an R.B.T unit, not a mobile confessional booth. You’ll be accompanying me to the station for a blood test.’

‘Why don’t you get your blood tested by Xavier and Bond like me Father? Besides you’re a big boy now aren’t you? Surely you don’t need me to hold your hand. Have health and safety fads robbed you of your gonads? If you were a boat, I doubt you could you cross a moat
guarded by the shadows of retreating tadpoles.‘

‘The blood test is for you sir!’

‘Come on now, I’ve never even been breathe tested. Father, if these police officer fantasies persist, I think you should seek professional help.‘

‘I doubt our mobile testing units can detect whatever it is your on. Are you going to get in the back of the patrol wagon, or do I need to drag you over there?’

‘Oh I love drag, drag racing, dressing in drag, drag racing in drag and drag racing dragons in drag, oh yeah.’

‘There will be no drag racing dragons in drag where you’re going.’

‘How can you be so sure?’

‘Sir, if you get in the back of the patrol wagon you can find out for yourself.’

‘Wow, life is so beautiful in its uncertainty isn’t it. This is such an interesting space. I love the minimalist design. Where can I rate and review it?’

‘In my fifteen years on the force, nobody has ever asked me that question before.’

‘I can’t imagine why not. Father, this room reminds me of one of the installations at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Oh, it’s so exciting.’

‘It all looks like pretty bland engineering to me, sturdy and fit for the purpose, but bland.’

‘It’s time you expanded your mind.’

‘I’d love to know more about your mind expansion techniques. Who is your supplier for instance? If you’d be kind enough to give me a few details before the testing gets underway you could save us both some time.’

‘The Lord is my supplier.’

‘What’s his real name?’

‘Jesus of course.’

‘Mexican is he, what’s his surname?’


© Rodney Hunter, 2023


‘It Was I, Dwite Da Sprite Knight’ is derived from a poem that I first published on WordPress in 2018. The earliest version of the poem dates back to the 1990’s. I recently decided that it works better as a short story.

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