Let’s have a cat through IVF?
The missing button by Joanna Beresford
The living room flashed like a summer thunderstorm. Cherie selected a song from the list in her phone. Billy Joel’s ‘Uptown Girl’ blasted out. Heaving, dancing bodies pressed in tight as laughter swirled above her head.
Tick by Samuel Pringle
There is a clock ticking beside you. It is an old clock, passed down through your family, solid and wooden and full of history. It could be a metaphor, depending on how pretentious you’re feeling, or maybe it’s just a clock. You are overthinking this..
Ticked Off by Marcus Rockstrom
The vociferously vegan Christie is forced to overhaul her life after a tick bite results in a rare disease that makes her deathly allergic to fruits and vegetables. Now living on an all-meat and supplements diet, Christie attempts to hide her condition from her all-vegan friends and family while coming to terms with her new lifestyle.
Good Warmth by Munira Tabassum Ahmed
Amilah returns, swollen-bellied and holy, to the room where she was born. Her mother’s house wails at the edges, calling memory back to her hands – she sits and rests in this archival body. When she was born, bloodied and honey-buttered, the wallpaper was a different colour; she could’ve sworn it was floral. Tonight, it is worn and red, a little younger than her and a little brighter.
Quicksand by Seetha Dodd
The box is palm sized. You wonder if you should open it, but you resist. You tuck it under your bed. Your sleep is troubled by a nightmare you’ve had before: You are alone in a large hall and, without warning, the floor becomes quicksand. You are sinking, slowly but undeniably. You try to call for help, but the words do not come. You are not one for symbolism, so you do not try to analyse your recurring nightmare for meaning.
Our New Neighbours by Christine Hand
The streets were neatly laced with elegant, well-maintained Queenslanders. This was a sought-after, prestigious suburb, close to Brisbane city centre. It was only after our move that we realised we were one of the very few young families amongst an overabundance of octogenarians. To our right resided a couple in their mid-eighties; they were true blue Aussies, he a former national cricket hero. To our left lived a marginally younger couple. They were first generation immigrants from the heartland of Sicily, fiery tempers still unmellowed. We were witnessing the end of a long-drawn-out soap opera, action to the left and eager observers to the right. I was soon enlisted to pass on what was occurring between Carmelita and Luigi, our boisterously noisy neighbours, to Mary and George, the quietly inquisitive occupants to our right.
Succulents by Kate Maxwell
You sat on the end of my single bed and read one of my poems aloud. Held your chin up, met my eyes at every pause, caressed my words with your charisma. Obviously, we then fell into each other’s faces, grasped, and ground into my lumpy mattress, short-breathed and sublime. Afterwards, you asked me to pass your jeans, lying on the floor. They smelt funky and I wondered when you’d washed them last as I watched you wriggle into the legs.
Finding Glory by Katharine Pollock
Whenever I go back home, I’m relegated to a blow-up mattress in the dining room. I’m hidden only by the couch, which is almost always occupied. With my dad recently retired, Netflix has become the third in my parents’ marriage. I find myself glued to the TV too, mired in self-indulgent inertia. My dad, a bourgeoisie socialist, says something about how America has it coming, and I suddenly can’t with the revolutionary rhetoric. Not today, Stalin. I drive down to a nature reserve, feeling smug that I’m switching off from the TV for the first time in days.
Spinifex by Kim Waters
An edifice of plastered chicken wire looming over the street like a genie’s shadow burst from a bottle three stories high; an attic attended by two square-plus windows with moth-laced curtains;