My Brother's Keeper: Book II of the Underwater God Trilogy

By Randal J. Junior

The Underwater God continues to haunt the characters of Australian-Gothic folklore in this exploration of antipodean identity. Sex, drugs and dirty deeds is a recipe that few narratives can sustain; and without characters who inhabit the landscape with the full depth of their conviction, there is no story to be told. 'If I were to sing out of tune I would lend you my ear' said a wise man to a fish, thinking him to be a knight in gilded armour, but there are no Knights of the realm in the Great South Land; for we are a mongrel breed of exiles and dissidents, intent on denying the hierarchy that would import itself above the common man. But what of those who were here already, and who watched the flood of European migrants sweep across the land in search of grass, gold and grain? Those men, women and children who were bashed, burned and buried in the name of a new culture that knew not the land that they would call their own? Have we the wisdom, the courage and the compassion to right the wrongs of the past? Or are we too caught up in the inane longing for a white-picket fence to realise that the land is big enough for all of us and that it mourns the loss of those who knew it best? And where would we look for the answers to these questions? If not within ourselves? This book asks all of these questions but no amount of pages can provide all of the answers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Randal J. Junior
• Release date: Feb 10, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311455109

Randal J. Junior

As a student of literature for the past eight years, the author has endeavoured to learn the art of compression; reducing the infinite into the barest minimum of words required to hook the reader’s interest, cast doubt within their mind and then dispel it with either an inconclusive twist or an enduring sense of finality. As a failed student of philosophy, Randal J. Junior has been beaten into the school of weary acceptance after finding that all human endeavour is fraught with either idealism or an opportunistic narcissism. But she/he still has faith in humanity and believes that we all learn something new every day.

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My Brother’s Keeper

Copyright 2015 Randal J. Junior

Published by Randal J. Junior at Smashwords

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

About the Author

Other books by Randal J. Junior

Connect with Randal J. Junior

Acknowledgements

This is not a tome of inestimable wisdom. These flights of supposition are based on the limited perception and flawed recollection of a single individual trying to encompass the truth of their existence; an existence that includes the legacy of a chaotic transition from the Iron Age to the present. Some of us have made the jump from Stone Age technology to that of the silicon microchip in less than two centuries and borne the burden of colonial occupation simultaneously. And here we are, locked into a cycle of dependency on fossil fuels and an archaic system of land-barony even as the secrets of sub-atomic particles are unraveling before our very eyes.

It would be most unwise of me not to acknowledge the benefits of the printing press, penicillin and contraceptive birth-control but were I not to also acknowledge the malevolence inherent in the sciences of war, economics and industry then the balance of this ledger would leave much of human suffering unaccounted for.

But I do acknowledge the traditional owners of this land; we all grieve for the loss of life, land and liberty suffered by Indigenous Australians. We also grieve for the loss of human understanding that led to the Prisoners of Her Majesty being forcibly evicted from their native lands and who endured bestial treatment from those of their own race who supposed themselves to be enlightened in knowledge and blessed with the grace of divinity.

We grieve for the pomposity of nationalist governments who laid waste to their own countries in the name of empire, under the guise of lawful conduct. We grieve for the chronic ignorance which drives the modern world to pollute our earth, air and water in the quest for material gain. We grieve the loss of humane ideals which became lost in political subversion even as the rights of man were being proclaimed in the absence of monarchy. And we grieve the loss of our youth which has been sold to us a product that we can ill-afford; even for our children.

But this book is not a eulogy for a world lost to opportunistic power-mongering; this book is a celebration of the individual and our capacity to learn from our mistakes. This book is an exploration of the choices we make and the way in which we help and hinder each other as we fall victim to the human condition. This book seeks to define that one thing we all crave and have lost through the reinvention of our society by industrialists who have still not learnt that war is not a legitimate business model.

This book is a reflection of us; man, woman and child; black, white and brindle. The future is ours, if we can only see ourselves in the mirror as we truly are. We are one and we are many, from all the lands on Earth we come.

Prologue

‘You can learn how to say no.’ (Courtney Love)

Pictures in the mirror are like postcards from tomorrow.

What was looming upon the horizon may be a taste of what's to come.

Maybe a stitch in time can save you from much sorrow.

But once the fateful steps are taken, the threads of life will be undone.

Pictures in the mirror and the ghosts of Christmas' past.

We never know which minute may be our very last.

Most don't dwell long upon it, when life gives pause for thought.

But when we start to panic, we breathe in much too fast.

Pictures in the mirror, stretching out forever, an endless road to take.

A hopeless task to ever attempt it, yet none can turn away.

When we fall, we curse the devil, blame him for our evil ways.

Still the blind man sits in darkness and leads the mute to better days.

Asha’s skin crawls with invisible ants; she writhes in agony, unable to escape the pain inside her body, her mind and the wretched carcass of her soul, struggling to elude the looming blackness that would engulf her, swallowing her in the liquefaction of a cold, dank nothingness that knows no beginning nor end, no here nor there, just a swim-twisting excretion of her dead and dying organs. Her mind is a haunted house of horror, the ghosts of Christmas past playing happily within her psyche, gleefully pulling on the fish hooks so deeply embedded in her nerve endings, her eyes wide open, not sightless but nevertheless unseeing; her optic nerves strung with hot wires that the ants use to crawl up and down, round and round and under and over, negating her apathetic defences time and time again. Time is not her friend; time is an insipid, refluxed pus that burns through her mind, pouring rivers of molten lava through her sinuses and thence down the back of her throat; ceaseless, but somehow never reaching the cold pit of her stomach. No here, no there, no beginning, no end. Oh god but she prays for an end.

The nurse has told the girl that her mum is here, and so she waits. Her mother has been waiting to see her for an hour; pacing up and down the waiting room floor, regularly accosting the nursing staff as to when she can see her daughter. She’s well known to the accident and emergency staff; the hospital often being the best place to score, just as long as your headache, back pain or stomach cramps are convincing enough.

Accompanied by the doctor and a tall male nurse, the middle-aged woman walks into the room where her daughter is sitting up on a big white bed, looking very small in her hospital gown, propped up with pillows behind her back.

‘What have you been up to you stupid little bitch?! You know what fucking time it is?! I’m supposed to be at fuckin’ work!!!’ she screeches, the words leaving her mouth like forked bolts of lightning. The young girl’s hair is falling over her face and her eyes are downcast so as not to meet those of her mother. She cannot run and there is no other place to hide.

‘How does this make me look, my daughter on fucken’ drugs, hey?!! You’ve been out fucking the whole town and now I have to embarrass me’self comin’ in here to answer these arrogant fucks’ questions! And now the fuckin’ cops want to talk to me!’ What she craves is some love and affection but this is what she gets. The way she sees it, she didn’t do anything nearly every other young person does on a night out on the weekend, but waking up in hospital has left her scared and confused. The doctor has been in to see her, no one else mentioned anything but the doctor was asking her about birth control and asking if she wants to see a counsellor. She doesn’t know what she knows but the threat of having been raped is very real upon her mind. She tries to block out the pain coming from her body, as everything inside her hurts but she just doesn’t want to know.

The male nurse and the doctor are exchanging glances, the nurse shuffling closer to the irate woman’s side.

‘What the fuck do you want? Get the fuck away from me!’ she yells at the nurse, pushing him with a pathetic show of violence. He’s been waiting for just this opportunity and with a barely perceptible nod of assent from the doctor, grabs the woman’s arm and escorts her firmly out the door, the young girl listening as her mother’s screams and foul curses slowly dwindle away. The doctor is still present when the girl looks up, somewhat cautiously. The expression in her eyes is one of pity but there is another message there; the doctor has seen parents murdered in front of their children in her distant homeland, but she has also seen the children of the murdered grow up to be murderers themselves, leaving other children as orphans in their wake.

After the doctor leaves, she looks around the room at the other patients in their beds, most trying to sleep. Behind a curtain, the light of a television screen brightens a corner of the room.

It is late. Though she tries to forget that the other patients are there, she fails, feeling totally alone in the world despite their unwelcome presence.

As she is.

Book II

Curled up on the tiled floor, Simon’s life flashes before his eyes. Firstly, he sees the laughing eyes of his mother- a pretty woman beset by the twin evils of depression and substance abuse, for as long as he could ever recall. And the laughing face of his father- that of a gambler and a drinker and a fighter. A face which could turn to rage in an instant, fueled by drink and a world