Geelong Cereal Halloween Special – Mini Micro Fiction!
Silence Kills
By Jo Curtain
Darkness sweeps in unnoticed, and the cool air sighs heavily, thickening the figure of the lone woman into a silhouette. She’s been sitting on a bench for hours, writing, worrying. She puts the coat on. The weight of it—how it presses against her shoulders—feels like a hand holding her steady. She lifts her pale face towards the sky, counting the falling stars, waiting for your signal.
Uncertainty trembles on her lips, but she tells herself she is ready to sacrifice. Yes, she knows you’ve returned. An unmistakable warm breath presses against her ear, sliding down her cheek and leaving a sharp tingle along her skin. A wistful voice whispers: run.
She feels the coat tighten around her chest, blurring the softness. She fears betrayal. Confused eyes dart to your faceless outline. Pleading. But there is only silence. Realising too late that the coat belongs to you, her breath shakily retreats as her lungs fill with dust. The coat hangs limply from her crumpled body. Above, the stars keep descending, singeing the tips of the trees in Queens Park, piercing the ground, raining toxic terror down on Blackwood.
You watch the dust settle. Waiting.
Silence weaves along the trees and power lines, settles on the streets, and seeps through the cracks of the weatherboard houses and under the doors, extinguishing power to the town. Dust is everywhere now—frenzied, blinding, and terrifying. Blackwood has disappeared.
I carefully move around what used to be the streets and the houses where people lived. Now only delicate grey outlines remain. I breathe deeply into my mask, holding back tears. I am too late. The silence is absolute.
Through the goggles of my mask, I see you standing in the distance, watching me. You’ve taken everything.
I whisper into the dark, spreading the word as the air begins to shift. The wind picks up my warning, and I know others will catch on. Across the void, I see a flicker of something new. The dust settles on the page. It’s settling on you, isn’t it? You think you are safe out there, watching us from the dark, but we know who you are now—and we’re not staying silent.
Grey Man
There’s something peculiar that happens down at the point, just around from the lookout. It’s a bit of an urban legend, but one that only the really dedicated know about. And those that do know really don’t want anyone else to. It’s for our own good.
The local surfers call it the ‘Boneyards’, mainly because of the unforgiving rock shelf that lies deceptively under the break when the tide is in. When the tide is out it’s known by another name – Grey Man’s End.
It’s a strange phenomenon that only happens when the time is just right, for the Grey Man.
It has to happen when the tide is out, exposing the lethal rock shelf in its entirety. The weather has to be just right, too. The sky grey – of course – right before a storm is brewing. The sun setting, concealed by clouds, even the water is grey.
If you’re down there you’ll see him; he only appears when you’re on the beach.
A man in an ill-fitting grey suit, pant legs rolled up to the knees, exposing his scrawny white calves, and bare feet. He sits on a weather beaten Director’s chair, the canvas seat sagging so that his arse nearly touches the rocks beneath.
Beneath tangled, windswept, lank hair, his cold grey eyes weep. And yet beneath his Machiavellian goatee he laughs maniacally, a soundless cackle chased away by the wind. Silent screams directed at the clouds above.
Gripped in his right hand is a notepad, sodden from sea spray that crashes on the rocks before him. With each silent gasp of laughter, he tears a page and flings it to the sea, rocking back on his chair as the wind dashes it away.
On and on he continues this way.
Mouth twisted with laughter, eyes streaming with tears, hands busily tearing paper, heels rocking back and forth. All in utter, chaotic, silence.
It continues.
Until there are no more pages left to tear off.
And then, as his mouth closes, his eyes will open wide, and he will settle back on his rickety chair. Slowly his gaze will lower from the Heavens above, the wind will stop howling, and the waves will stop crashing.
Silence.
The Grey Man will look.
And you want to hope he doesn’t see you.
Normalising Routines
By Jo Curtain
Routine matters to Nora, the patterns that appear in the act of doing; every Sunday, she carefully washes the ink from her fingers before sitting down to dinner with her husband and son. She smiles warmly at her son’s account of his day and laughs at her husband’s jokes, knowing they have no idea that their luxury lifestyle is funded by a dead woman whose signature she spent the afternoon perfecting.
Last Moments
By Jo Curtain
An unseasonable chill in late spring sweeps fallen jasmine across the lawn as the glowing lanterns lining the pathway to her door slowly fade. Elizabeth’s breath quickens as she scrambles inside, but her relief vanishes as the last light is taken and a rising shadow of an axe momentarily pauses before rushing down.
Count 2 Ten: Part 5 - Wasabi Wednesdays
by Martin Smith
As the Count nervously fiddled with his collar and shuffled his silver cutlery whilst waiting to be served dinner, he dreaded spending yet another Wednesday evening at the in-laws, for though he loved his mother-in-law’s cooking, she—feigning politeness and with a wobbly turkey neck that killed off even the thought of him helping himself to a little entrée—always “implied” through her banal nasally conversation whilst masticating open-mouthed on a chunk of cow that her daughter could have “done better” than to marry “down” to an anaemic, liver-lipped, coffin-dwelling, night-shapeshifting “Eastern European” loser. But, alas, the Count screamed in horror for Val entered the dining room wielding not a raw, blood-red Wasabi steak but a rough-hewn Walmart stake, and all he could do was lie back, close his eyes and think of Transylvania.
Whine & Dine
by Brett J Cole
"Ahhh!" he sighed loudly, patting his belly at the table. "Stick a fork in me, I'm done!"
And so someone did. And it turned out that he wasn't cooked at all. He was just a raw, uncooked, goddamned liar.
"It's just a saying, for fuck's sake!" he cried, pulling the fork from his arm.
He was a raw, uncooked, goddamned liar that also wouldn't shut-up.
Marriage Counselling
by Brett J Cole
'I just... I feel so inadequate sometimes,' he said, that warble to his voice returning.
He wouldn't cry though. Not now, anyway. Any tears within him had been exhausted.
'I know I should be better than this...' he continued. 'For you, for myself. And when I try, I just... Damn it, Danielle,' he sighed, 'you deserve so much better than me.'
'Oh, Hudson,' she said, clasping his hands tight. 'I just wish you could see what I see when I look at you.'
'You're too kind to me, Danielle,' he told her. 'I honestly don't -'
'No, for real!' she interrupted. 'I wish you could see this thing. It's like a... ghost-creature or something, rubbing it's dingaling on the top of your head! You seriously can't feel that?'
'You do deserve better, though, Danielle,' the ghost-creature said, banging its bits on Hudson's head.
