ficlets » Deborah Kalin

turns out they're not just at the tram stops

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Oct 052009

First up, a brief announcement for the livejournal crowd: I've changed the settings in the crossposter, so now you should be able to leave a comment on the livejournal site, should you so desire. Previously I had it set so you could only comment on my website, mostly because that made my life a touch easier, having all the comments, and therefore the entire conversation, in the one spot. But it occurs to me impermanence and fragmented conversations are the foundations of the internet, and who am I to argue with that?

(Wasn't really all that brief, was it?)

And for those of you thinking the loonies were only out on the streets, think again. There's one in my apartment block.

This morning, after a wacky and hilarious misplacing of my keys, I decided to drive to work rather than run for (and still miss) the tram. So I headed for the back of the apartment block, where the poor filthy beast otherwise known as my car was parked, when all of a sudden —

"GOOD MORNING!"

It is a bright and cheery greeting, but it is also a very loud one. I manage not to stumble in surprise, but it's a close thing.

One of my neighbours is hanging over the balcony, earbuds in his ears, with this look on his face like he hasn't slept in days and he's never appreciated the beauty of the sun before now. His hair is unkempt, his eyes are wide, his grin is brighter than the breaking day.

"DID YOU SEE THE BALLOONS?"

I've reached the car by now, but I pause, because I'm polite like that. Although I pause with the car door open, because I'm late, after all.

"No," I say — mostly because I've not seen any balloons lately (I've been far too busy getting ready for work, which is not a task that normally requires my eyes to be open) and partly because from his manner "the balloons" apparently encompasses something remarkable and I've definitely not seen anything of that nature today.

Exuberant as a puppy who's just spotted his favourite human, he points and cries, "LOOK! THERE!"

There are a couple of hot air balloons hanging low in the sky.

As indeed there are… pretty much every morning.

Somehow I suspect he's never been up before 7am before.

saved (not)

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Sep 262009

"Excuse me, miss…"

He's proffering something, a small pamphlet barely larger than a business card, so I take it. It's a reflex, nothing more; I don't look at what he's given me.

It's in the same manner — a reflex, nothing more — that he adds, "You look like you've been miserable lately."

This, I think, is presumptuous, even for a standard marketing hook. I am, after all, sitting at a tram stop on Bourke St, temporarily alone, surrounded by strangers. Supine on the seat behind me is a resident loon of some description, gesticulating and ranting to whatever angels or demons happen to be keeping him company at this point. I rather suspect if anything is written across my face, it is boredom.

But he is young — I doubt he's old enough to shave, there's barely any fuzz let alone the stubble which (perhaps) lurks in his distant future. He has not yet learnt the language of nuance, and how to alter his pitch to his audience, otherwise he wouldn't be using a standard line, or at the very least he wouldn't be delivering it in such a hesitant manner.

So I say nothing. Although I do meet his gaze and lift an eyebrow, a challenge that makes him blush and stammer and hurry away.

At the next seat he hesitates, obviously questioning the wisdom of giving the booklet and spiel to the loon. Perhaps the loon looks too fierce — or I don't know, maybe the loon doesn't look like he's been miserable lately.

rain down on me

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Sep 242009

The blackbirds fall silent as I step out the front door.

There's three of them, one perched on the wall that hides the garbage bins, another on the low-hanging power lines, and the last is crouched inside his own fluffed feathers on the strangely purposeless arch that adorns the mouth of the driveway.

They hold their silence as I pass, three cocked black heads twisting to watch my progress, tiny black eyes tracking my every step. I watch them in turn, but if it's a staring contest they're winning, if only because I'm simply trespassing through the field of battle. I have a tram to catch, after all.

I've reached the next house up the street before they start with their melodies again.

What didn't they want me to overhear, I wonder?

Probably the fact that they were taking bets on who could make the best star-burst pattern when they crapped on my car.

you had and lost the one thing you kept in a safe place

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Sep 192009

The triptych window in my living room gives me a view of the sky, glancingly pinned to the earth at the bottom of the frame by an apartment block rooftop and the sparse canopy of a nearby gum tree. I forget, sometimes (because when I'm home it's mostly at night and the blind is invariably down) just how perfect it is to lie back and watch the clouds slip on by.

Right now, I'm watching the thick, grey rain clouds draw across the sky, marching the last of the day's light away. There's one that's hanging lower than the rest, a great reaching quadruped of a cloud, like a hungry dragon scouring the land below for sustenance as it passes by. Already it's crossed from the first window frame to the last — they're moving deceptively fast, these clouds.

I have action scenes to write in the faerie novel, and watching this sky is leaving me in a languorous mood entirely unsuited to writing them.

Dammit, she said half-heartedly.

are you two sisters? nah, you are, aren't you?

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Sep 192009

As a public service announcement to all the blokes:¹ asking a girl standing at the taxi rank "Where's home, though? I might be able to help you" is not (however much it might seem like it at the time) a particularly endearing way to earn said girl's trust. At best she's going to assume you're drunk and therefore largely useless to her, but either way, the very first thing she's going to do is cast a quick eye over you to see if you're an immediate physical threat. You won't see her glance behind her in search of the bouncers at the nearby bar, because she already knows exactly where they are; she's a girl alone on a street full of drunken idjits, of course she's already placed where the troublemakers and the sources of potential aid each stand. If she gives you an answer at all, and it's not some variant of "I'm not telling you where I live!", then rest assured she's not giving you her real address.

And if said girl politely declines your invitation to accompany you back to her place for a few more drinks, the best way to try to win her over is not some diatribe about how you're married but just hate being married.

You know. In case you were wondering.

the ones who need said public service announcement guaranteed never to make up any part of this website's readership [↩]

what's there to decide? and what's there to say?

ficlets, journal, writing life 2 Responses »

Sep 052009

Yesterday at the dayjob, sitting through a seminar on government programs to support innovation, and the presenter comes out with this:

"In this job, I've learnt that everyone in Australia has either written a novel, or invented something."

— and every head in the room swivelled my way, my dayjob colleagues laughing, the presenter following the direction of their gazes a beat later with mystification on his face. I guess his joke had never gone down quite so pointedly before.

I of course handled the attention with my normal tactic in such a situation: I blushed.

It's a little trick my ancestors obviously thought clever. Someone looking at you? Someone call your name? Someone directed even passing attention your way? BLUSH. You'll look ever so much more fetching if you're blood-red, donchaknow.¹ Presumably they learnt this trick concurrently with another one that actually presented some real evolutionary advantage — or else being pathologically incapable of surviving the focus of attention untouched presents some advantage I have yet to determine.² Either way, they bred successfully enough to pass it along to me.

And I simply can't tell you how grateful I am for that. No, really.

I am so good at this trick, thanks either to my inheritance or to my own ability to improve upon what I inherited, that even THINKING about being the focus of attention makes me blush. [↩]
Maybe it helps you stand out in the snow? If that's the case, not helpful here in desert country and my genetics should please to be adapting to my situation faster, kthxbai. [↩]

pain doesn't need words

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Aug 122009

I never saw her face.

I had my head bent over my book, reading away the tram ride home. I'd caught a glimpse of her boyfriend, lounging in the stairwell while he waited for the tram to pull up to their stop, but of her I saw only her back before turning back to my book.

Then the tram pulled to a halt, and the doors opened with their customary squeak and swoosh of rubber over wet treads. And hard on the heels of that a new sound, an unfamiliar one: a scrape and crump and thump in quick succession, all of it loud and echoing, and every head in the tram snaps up and around, fixing on the open doorway where she is sitting, landed on the bottom-most step, shoulders stiff with the tail-end of her attempt to catch her balance, neck flexed as she throws her head back and struggles to draw breath or speak or perhaps simply to survive the shock.

There is a single perfect moment of silence, following the clatter of her fall, and then she lets out a raw and primal bawl that stills the peak-hour traffic and brings the tram driver bolting out of his cabin, fast enough to make the stationary tram sway in his wake.

Then her boyfriend and the tram driver and the crowds swallow her, and she's gone.

the view from the tram

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Jun 232009

There's an old man I see on the trams, every couple of weeks or so, has the look of decay about him. Emaciated, with wisps of papery hair clinging to the back of his grey-skinned scalp, ears grown too large for his frame, and eyes sinking into their sockets. The flesh of his eye sockets is so heavy, so ancient and stretched, that they sag open, revealing their raw pink interior, in stark contrast with the yellowed eyes above, like a basset hound caught in the pallid grey throes of chemotherapy.

His suit is neat, and pressed, although it is probably as out of date as he is, and I've only ever seen the one suit on him.

There are stories in the creases of his skin, stories in the way he moves, the way he holds his shoulders as he waits. Stories in the quiet way he accepts everyone's furtive glances, and in the weave of his well-preserved suit. A thousand stories, carefully gathered and held against the ravages of time.

But he has the look of someone who's never asked to tell any of them.

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