Eucalyptus Goth

By Brian Craddock

A full decade after Jello Biafra declared Brisbane a heavy junta police state, Dante Halloran navigates its streets aided only by his wits and a debilitating mental illness he has nicknamed The Inferno. Australia has just ushered in a change of Government, and is still reeling from the recession it "had to have," but for Dante these are hardly events that concern him: his is the pursuit of love, of somewhere to lay his head at night, of friendships that won't wane with the passing of the seasons.

With him on this journey are his so-called friends, equally lost: Twix, whose jealousies threaten to undermine their brotherhood; Alex, slowly spiralling out of control with the onset of her own condition; and Pixie, determined to find her individual, potentially fatal, way in life.

EUCALYPTUS GOTH explores a city now lost to time, where skinheads and punks clashed on the streets and a night at the Normanby Hotel was considered a rite of passage for the babybat goths.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brian Craddock
• Release date: Nov 17, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463216026

Brian Craddock

Brian Craddock is the author of Eucalyptus Goth (Oscillate Wildly Press, 2017). The Dalziel Files (Broken Puppet Books, 2018) is his first collection of short stories, many of which were originally published in Steve Dillon's Things in the Well anthologies (Between the Tracks, Below the Stairs, Behind the Mask, Beneath the Waves).He is also published in Midian Unmade: Tales of Clive Barker’s Nightbreed (Tor Books, 2015), and Book of the Tribes: a Tribute to Clive Barker's Nightbreed (OzHorrorCon, 2013). His essay on Clive Barker appears in The Body Horror Book (Oscillate Wildly Press, 2017).Brian has also written for the puppet webseries The Hobble & Snitch Show (2015/2016), wherein he directed and performed.In the late 1990s, under the pseudonym Dakanavar, Brian Craddock wrote and illustrated eleven underground comics centred on the Goth subculture in Australia (respectively titled "Crimson: Riot Goth" at 7 issues, "Grave Company", "Caduceus", "Dead/Dead", and "Alida: The Reluctant Goth"), and contributed to several zines and small-press publications.

Book preview

PROLOGUE: THE BEST CURE IS PREVENTION, NOT THE BAND

We didn’t know the jumper, but we knew he was a goth because there were a few people on the scene who said they knew him. The news on the idiot box and the Courier Mail next day just reported him as a suicide: young Caucasian male.

It’s a thirty metre drop from where he jumped, somewhere near the middle of the Story Bridge, after midnight on a Friday. Did anyone see him, a skinny boy with buck teeth and long black hair in his ratty clothes the colour of the night? Probably not. It’s doubtful he would have been too visible dressed entirely in black, fresh out of one of the clubs in the Valley.

There’s no safety barriers along the length of the bridge, unlike the Gateway further out. That bridge used to get its fair share of jumpers, too. Nine alone when it opened ten years ago in 1986, but they put three-metre high anti-jump barriers on it a few years ago and according to the Queensland Suicide Register there was initially nearly a ninety percent reduction in suicides out there, although that number has since been sullied by several successful attempts. I’ve been out that way, the Murarrie area, and there’re plenty of reasons to kill yourself. Fucking depressing place.

His friends were out clubbing a few nights later, trying to score free drinks and all the attention they could get. But we’re a fucking cruel lot, sometimes, and not all the attention they got was particularly nice. That’s what you get, I guess, for trying to capitalise on tragedy.

Up until six years ago, there had been in total forty-two suicides on the Story Bridge since the mid-Eighties, but in the six years since then there’ve been sixty-one suicides. We calculated that at about eight deaths a year. One every six weeks. The odds aren’t looking favourable for everyone’s favourite river-city!

Thank fuck the papers didn’t pick up on the fact he was a goth. Could you imagine the shit we’d have flung at us then? Talk of depression and mental illness and how wearing all-black leads to suicide. They’d get it all wrong and vilify us as Devil worshippers with a death-wish. There’d be sage shakings of heads and little kindergoths dragged into family discussions to try and avert their errant trajectories toward a damaged lifestyle.

Oh wait, we cop all that already, and there’s the rub.

PART ONE

UNCLE KEV

I fucking hate Brisbane sometimes. Especially on Sundays.

It can feel like life just grinds to a halt here, especially after five on a weekday when the city practically shuts down and you’re hard-pressed getting a coffee let alone a decent one. It’d be easier to skip out to the airport and catch a plane to Melbourne and snatch a coffee from an all-nighter and jump a plane back to Brissie again before the dawn sun breaks the horizon. Not that I drink coffee, mind.

People have started calling it ‘Brisvegas’ to take the piss out of just how uneventful it can be. They got the name from a CD that was released a couple of years ago, and it sums up our feelings perfectly. There’s no way you could mistake the scorn from a moniker like that.

My Uncle Kev used to say it was a nice place to live but you wouldn’t want to visit here. He travelled around a lot, hitch-hiking up and down the east coast of Oz mostly, moving from pub to pub and boozing away his dole checks. He’d been abused by my grandfather when he was a kid, so he’s got a few memories he’d like to try and drown out.

At the moment he’s holed up in a room at the Terminus, the backpacker place just next to the train overpass on Melbourne Street in South Brisbane. I passed him on the Victoria Bridge the other day, and he was carrying a case of Fosters back to the hotel with him. I tried a joke on about how he was having one for the road, on account of he was taking it for a walk along the bridge, but he got stroppy, grumbling about how the Terminus only sells on tap.

But I got him to agree to a catch-up, at least. At the backpacker pub he’s holed up at, naturally. Alcoholics don’t like to venture far from their nest.

The Terminus hasn’t changed a bit. Like Uncle Kev.

I stayed here once, in 1994. I was homeless at the time, and it was August so there was still a bite to the winter air, and I’d wandered into the Terminus one night unchallenged, this scruffy goth boy mingling with all the foreign travellers. I’d gone up onto the roof and found a banana lounge to sleep on, wrapping my cape around me. Cape’s were still kinda fashionable on the scene, then. A little less so now, especially for guys. During the night I’d been woken by some long-haired cunt standing next to me, blabbing some shit about it being as cold as a nun’s cunt, but I’d been too tired to stay lucid and had fallen asleep again with him still standing there. When I’d woken at daybreak I wasn’t happy with myself that I’d been so reckless about the potential danger I’d been in, and have since then managed to sleep safer when I’m living homeless.

The stairs of the Terminus haven’t changed much, either: still dark and creaky with worn and musty carpet on them. On the way up I pass a couple of tanned girls and a hairy cunt coming down, making room for the girls to pass but then deliberately forcing the guy to grumble and slide against the wall while I lumber my way to the top. Kev’s room is down the end of the corridor on the third floor where the single rooms are. The rest are share with bunk-beds in them.

When he opens the door, he’s holding an opened can of Fosters. The pong of Imperial Leather soap hits me like a wave, his preferred soap as far back as when I was a kid.

‘Getting stuck into the Holy Communion already, I see,’ arching my eyebrows in the direction of his can.

‘Nah, no church for me,’ he goes, missing the joke. ‘Just shift those papers,’ he instructs, waving his hand at a pile of newspapers on a rickety chair by the window. The dates on them go back two weeks.

‘You been here a while, then?’

‘Nah, not long at all, I gotta admit,’ he lies. ‘Got in just after the New Year, in fact.’

‘I’m staying over in Spring Hill at the moment,’ I offer. ‘Not too far away.’

Uncle Kev just nods. He’s not that much interested in the world outside of a bottle, to be honest.

‘How’s ya dad?’

‘He’s not bad,’ I say, aware he hasn’t seen his brother for a couple of years at least. ‘Mum, too. I haven’t seen them in a while, myself.’

He grimaces, the best at a smile he can offer. He gets really awkward in company other than his own. Or maybe it’s just me. My Nan drank heavily when Uncle Kevin was still in the womb, and as a result he was born with ocular hypertelorism, a condition whereby his eyes are further apart than they should be. More like gravitating toward the side of his head rather than staying central to his face. And they sorta bulge, like they’re being forced from their sockets from behind. When we were kids my brother Rory and I nicknamed him The Mongaloid and he once overheard us. He never snitched to our folks, though. Just clammed his emotions up and walked away, something he does very well and has been doing all his life.

A train rumbles past, so close I reckon I could almost lean out the window and touch it. We stare out at the people staring back in, then the train is gone and the view of the museum and the city return, shimmering under the summer heat.

‘Head downstairs for a pint?’ he goes.

The beer can sits unfinished on the side-table, but for the seasoned alcoholic any opportunity for a top-up is not to be sniffed at. Luck’s on his side because I’m feeling like a tipple.

‘Sure, but it’ll be wine for me. Something local. The French can get fucked if they think I’m touching their stuff while they bomb the shit out of those atolls in Polynesia, the cunts.’

He doesn’t react to this, outwardly, but I can see that subtle shift of nuance in his eyes like he thinks I’m a know-it-all fucker. He’s always felt that way about me. I’m probably only having a wine just to stick it up him and come off as a snotty cultured drinker. Family has that effect on me.

The bar staff are more than familiar with him, addressing him by name and pouring his choice of poison without even asking. Another give away that he’s been here longer than after the New Year. I order a glass of red, and they rummage around for a while until they finally find a cask and squeeze some out.

‘Farking hot, ay?’ says this guy along the bar.

‘Yep,’ nods Kev without looking at him, eyes only for the liquid amber that sits before him.

‘Pushin into the thirties today,’ the guy remarks, leaning on both his elbows but still managing to raise his glass to his lips.

‘It’s the humidity,’ I chime in. ‘From that cyclone up north. That’s making the heat worse.’

‘The humidity, eh?’ the guy goes, closing one eye and boggling the other at me while he leans back like he’s about to fall off his perch.

‘Yep,’ I go, unable to resist mimicking Uncle Kev.

And it’s true: January is proving to be especially warm this year and the humidity is starting to kill us all, no thanks to Cyclone Bazza ripping across the Cape York Peninsula, or Waypundun as my Murri mate Alan calls it. It seems unfair to have the humidity but not the rainfall, given we’ve had a drought going on for about five years now. It’s getting rough wearing black coats in this smothering heat. If we’re truly lucky, it’ll flood. Not some pissant one, either, but one of Biblical proportions, wiping out entire continents.

Kev’s feeling peckish so he asks the barwench for some peanuts, and she tosses him one of those thick-foil packets with the peanut in a top-hat wearing a monocle and carrying a cane.

‘Is there anything more capitalist,’ I ask the room, raising my glass of wine as if in toast, ‘than a fucking peanut with a monocle selling other peanuts to eat?’

The barwench has a wry smirk but otherwise it’s a tough crowd.

‘This is the nephew,’ goes Kev to the barwench, as if to explain an anomaly.

‘Funny sort,’ laughs this old cunt in the corner that they’ve been calling Snowy, ogling me with reserved menace.

‘Yep,’ says Kev, lifting his beer.

Fuck. What a sad place.

‘You should hitch a ride out west, Kev, and go see Dad. I reckon he’d be keen to see ya. Mum, too.’

‘Maybe,’ he muses. ‘I’m in town for a bit. Dole mob want to assess me again.’

‘What for? I thought you were already on the disability pension?’

‘Am,’ he grumbles. ‘This is for me eyes, but.’

That explains why he doesn’t make much eye-contact. Old fucker’s going blind!

‘Alright, so long as you’re around for a bit, I might see you again.’

I scull the rest of my wine, pulling a face at the taste. It’s fucking awful.

‘Another one?’ he quickly says, nodding at my empty glass.

‘Nah, gotta be off anyway,’ I reply. ‘Don’t wanna drink the place dry on you.’

‘Be doin me a favour, I admit,’ Kev goes, patting his pot-belly, finally cracking a joke. ‘You keep drinking like a fish, it’ll happen to you, too.’

‘Nah, not me,’ I go. ‘It’ll make me lean.’

He snorts in derision.

‘I’m serious,’ I insist. ‘Lean on walls, on tables, on my friends.’

My joke elicits nothing from him at all. Not even the hint of a smile. What a fucking dour cunt my uncle’s become.

I bid him a cheerio and get the fuck out of there, using a catch-up with my mate Twix as an excuse to leave, though I’ve no intention of catching up with any ol Joe Blo today. The heat might be stifling but I’m just glad to be airing off the stagnant ammonia smell of the old bar. I associate the smell with dead dreams and wasted lives.

I check my watch and see that I spent less than an hour with my uncle, and yet it feels like an interminable length of time. Some people are like that, they just drain your energy like they’ve tapped your soul direct and keep coming back for refills.

Coming across the Victoria Bridge in only a pair of old shorts is good old Ledrud, his long grey beard waving in the wind as his grotesque feet slap the tarmac. He’s got the longest and dirtiest toe-nails I’ve ever seen on man or woman, and his skin is leathery and brown from where he sunbakes on the riverbank outside the Art Gallery.

Ledrud nods to me as we pass each other, me up on the footpath and him on the road. I’ve never seen him walk on the footpath, not even when the buses go past him with inches to spare. They honk their horns, of course, but it’s no use: he won’t step up onto the footpath for no cunt. He’s adamant that the world must bend to him.

Some cunts romanticise the homeless, like we’re living vessels of arcane knowledge just because we’ve lived it rough, because we’ve seen life through the other end of the toy kaleidoscope, expecting us to drop pearls of wisdom like we’re Sufi’s on safari. During England’s Georgian era, it was fashionable for rich cunts to have depressed old men like Ledrud living in one’s garden. Ornamental hermitage, they called it. It’s where today’s common garden gnome comes from.

You know the last thing I ever heard Ledrud say before he apparently took up his vow of silence (we only assume it’s a vow of silence because he’s never actually told anyone it is)?

In his fractured Slavic accent he said to me: ‘Dante, I can feel the lice starting to build their homes just on the inside of my butt hole.’

THE SÉANCE

Raven parks the car in front of two impressive pillars with Celtic crosses on them, on a triangular patch of lawn at the top of Spook Hill, and we all pile out. Shame, cause ol Twixxie here had this cute lil kindergoth chickadee calling herself Ursula sitting on his lap the whole way here in order to fit all six of us in Raven’s bomb. I’d insisted, of course. A true gentleman would. It was all I could do not to crack a fat, though. I’ll continue my flirting with the little doll as the evening goes on and have her by midnight, I reckon.

‘Make sure the handbrake’s on,’ jibes Jess, who like me and Raven is tonight using her scene name – which is Xanthe – because it impresses the young ones, the three kindergoths Raven’s brought along. ‘We don’t need the sisters dragging the car away.’

‘Fuck, don’t say that,’ replies Raven with a shiver.

We make our way back around to the junction of Twelfth and Thirteenth Avenues, though in reality it’s actually the junction of Eleventh and Twelfth Avenues but no-one can tell because some joker keeps yanking the sign down. I know it’s Eleventh Avenue cause I’ve met the acting assistant sexton a few times and he told me Thirteenth Avenue’s actually down the hill a bit more near Eighth Avenue, pointing out that the streets inside Toowong Cemetery don’t look like they run numerically because of the way they wind around the hills.

Raven reckons at the junction of Twelfth and what is actually Eleventh we can raise the mega-spirit itself, the Angel of Death.

‘Back down there is The Grove that we passed,’ I tell the others, referring to an area devoid of tombstones where the council dumps old tree branches and landscaping supplies. ‘It’s so haunted that even during the day the hairs on your neck will stand up.’

‘Cool,’ says one of the two boys, Jeremy. ‘I wanna go down there.’

‘No you fucking don’t,’ I warn. ‘Seriously, lads, you do not wanna go down there. Especially on your own.’

‘Why not?’ one of them challenges.

Sod it.

‘Bad shit will happen, that’s why,’ I tell them in a way that says don’t ask any more questions.

‘What kind of shit?’

‘Don’t worry about that now,’ I say, getting annoyed. Don’t these kids give up?

Jess holds up the book: the Necronomicon. It gets everyone’s attention and stops the hundred and one sodding questions.

It’s the Avon Books version, a small paperback with an impressive cover and little information as to its true origins. This is the Peter Levenda version that he made anonymously for the occult shop The Magickal Childe in New York when people kept pestering the owner to track down Lovecraft’s fictional book. I know all this, of course, but I’m not telling any of the others this, not even Jess or Raven. Not when everyone thinks I can use the book to summon a spirit with, even if it is only myself that says I can. Malik got me this copy from a New Agey shop in the same building he studies in, but I’ve seen them in Archives on Charlotte Street all the time for only five bucks. He reckons his brother could get me something way more serious, but this one’s suitable enough for my needs.

One of the lads wants to have a look at the book, so I hold them back as if from a disaster.

‘No-one can touch the book except me or Xanthe.’

‘Or me,’ adds Raven, a bit peeved.

‘Me, Xanthe and Raven,’ I amend.

‘What for?’ asks Ursula.

‘If you’re lucky, I’ll let you touch it later,’ I wink at her, but she just frowns at me. She’s gonna need more buttering up or I’ll be resorting to rubbing one out later while I imagine her spread-eagled and starkers.

We’ve got capes for most of us because Jess brought spares thank fuck, and those that don’t have one we make stand back further from the chalk inscriptions drawn on the road. The tarmac is old and cracked, not very smooth, and the chalk gets destroyed quickly in our administrations. Raven keeps swearing as it snaps and crumbles, and at one point she accidently drags her knuckles across the bitumen and tells me to ‘fucking well do it myself’ after she catches me laughing.

Finally we get the seal drawn, a mandal of twenty one squares with various symbols in most of the squares.

‘Do not step near or on this mandal,’ I warn everybody in a dire tone, holding my hands out as if to stay them.

Ursula looks well impressed at last, to my satisfaction.

‘The dagger of Inanna, if you will, Xanthe,’ I intone, glancing to Jess.

We needed a copper dagger but couldn’t find one, so we’ve substituted it with a steel one from Jess’s kitchen and along the blade we’ve drawn the word INANNA with a Nikko pen.

She places the blade in the centre of our Work while Raven places four candles at each extremity and lights them with her Bic.

‘We will now call upon the Angel of Death,’ I declare solemnly.

‘Wait,’ goes one of the lads with a sense of urgency in his voice.

We all freeze and strain our ears for the sounds of Normals, ready to run. All of us, that is, except for the lad.

‘What is it, Craig?’ whispers Raven.

‘What do we do?’ he says, glancing at the other kindergoths.

‘For fuck’s sake,’ I blurt, as we all relax again.

Raven pretends to strangle him. ‘You bloody dork; you scared the shit out of us.’

‘Sorry,’ he says softly. ‘But I’ve never done this before. What are we three supposed to do?’

‘Just stand there and be collateral if all goes wrong,’ I snap.

‘Twix,’ Jess says in a parental tone.

‘You just witness,’ says Raven to the kindergoths.

Fuck, I like that! Witness.

‘Yep,’ I go, regaining my composure. ‘That’s why you guys are here. The Witness is an important role. Stay silent, and watch!’

‘Okay,’ goes Craig.

‘Silence!’

He glances at the other joker and Ursula as they all share a stifled snigger, like they’re in a highschool classroom still.

‘Let’s get on with it,’ pushes Jess, so we resume our places and begin the incantation anew.

I’m no further into it than the first time around when the trees across from us light up, shadows streaking across their canopies. They plunge back into darkness and then the gravestones to their left are illuminated.

‘The Angel of Death is here!’ shrieks Ursula.

‘Shut the fuck up,’ hisses Raven.

‘Run!’ I yell, realising it’s a car and making a bee-line straight for a wide tombstone behind me only several paces away, barrel-rolling behind it, the fucking cape getting tangled around my ankles and tripping me over before I can make cover.

Raven and Jess have scattered in different directions, but the other three are stumbling around like fucking drunks with one of them even trying to collect up the candles and nearly setting himself on fire because the stupid poonce didn’t blow them out first.

‘GET THE FUCK DOWN!’ I shout at them, finally crawling behind a tombstone myself.

They run and duck behind some marble monoliths on the other side of the road, getting caught in the beam of headlights as they do so. The car grumbles around the bend and squashes one of the candles that the lad dropped. It rolls to a stop in front of our seal, the headlights illuminating just how poorly drawn it is. Then as it guns away again along Eleventh Avenue, a window rolls down and this burly bloke’s voice calls out: ‘Go home, you fucking freaks!’ Boof-headed laughter comes from the car as it disappears around the hill.

‘I don’t want to stay here,’ quivers Craig like a pansy.

‘Yeah, we should probably move,’ says Raven.

‘What for?’ I ask. ‘Because of them? They’re not gonna come back.’

‘Let’s go further that way,’ Raven suggests, pointing beyond another crossroads where a gazebo sits. ‘There’s more trees over the hill. More cover.’

‘Fine,’ I sigh, and we pack up our stuff into Raven’s car. ‘Who wants to walk over?’

‘Me,’ Ursula pipes up, embracing my arm.

‘Right, me and Ursula will meet you guys over there,’ I go before anyone else gets a chance to volunteer for the walk.

I lead her away and smirk as one of the lads, not Craig but the other one, Jeremy, watches us with big sad puppy-dog eyes.

‘I’ve been writing a lot of poetry lately,’ I go, cause chicks love poetry. They think it makes a bloke seem more sensitive and shit.

‘Poems are stupid,’ she goes, the rude little wench.

‘Not mine,’ I retort. ‘But that’s alright, I won’t bore you with one.’

‘Thanks,’ she goes, but I was hoping my reverse-psychology would’ve meant she begged to hear it. ‘Why do they call you Twix?’

‘Glad you asked.’ I hold a thumb and a pinkie up. ‘One for the pink and one for the stink. Can’t tell you which is for which. You just have to pick a side and find out.’

She stares at me then cracks into a cute laugh.

‘That’s stupid,’ she goes, and I force myself to smile as if I don’t care what this little minx thinks. It’s just as well she’s got a nice pair of chesticles.

‘Well, they thought it was alright in Melbourne,’ I sniff.

‘You’ve been to Melbourne?’ she gasps, just as expected.

Finally, something that impresses the little chickadee!

‘Course. Loads of times,’ I say, even though the recent trip was my first time. ‘Way better clubs, although the Brisbane scene’s a lot stronger, strangely enough.’

‘I’m so jealous,’ she gushes.

‘Maybe I’ll take you one day,’ I say, imagining us in our own hotel room away from the distractions of her mates. ‘I might even move down there one day.’

Raven speeds past and Craig hangs out the window barking like a dog as they shoot down Third Avenue.

‘Bugger me, shut the fuck up!’ I call out to em.

Raven knows better than to be driving like a maniac through here, especially in that old rust-bucket. There’s enough dings all over it already, and the sodding wheels could fall off and crash into some graves. Then we’d be up shit creek.

I lead Ursula as we cut across between the graves and the trees and wait on the far avenue for the others to finally make their way around. When they get here we find a decent spot, far more secluded, and decide this time to set up our séance on the flat concrete of a gravesite where at least the chalk will yield better results. Jess unpacks the candles, the book and the chalk.

Raven’s not too keen on the idea, though, calling it sacrilegious. So while we debate the wrongs and rights of it, we don’t even notice this guy coming up the road in the dark until he’s about thirty feet away. Raven sees him first and nearly screams, making us all spin toward the figure in a mad panic.

‘Fuck, it’s just some bloke,’ I whisper hoarsely to the others.

‘Maybe he’s a serial killer,’ Ursula whispers back, and we make fun of her but secretly I’m hoping she’s not right. I get goosebumps thinking about the possibility.

He comes up, introducing himself as the onsite sexton, and like a complete poonce I drop that I know the assistant sexton, omitting that it’s barely a passing acquaintance.

‘Then you of all people know you’re not meant to be mucking around in here,’ the sexton says touchily. ‘Least of all at night.’

‘Oh yeah, we know that,’ I reply. ‘We’re just hanging out, is all.’

‘We’ve had some graves vandalised,’ he says matter-of-factly, like an accusation.

I flip open my wallet and flash him my security licence. ‘No worries, mate,’ I go with a wink. ‘I’ll keep this lot in line.’

He just sniffs and looks at Raven when she goes: ‘We’d never do that. We love cemeteries and respect them too much.’

The sexton gives her a puzzled look, glancing down at our séance paraphernalia on the gravesite and the spray-painted pentagram’s and stuff all over her car that she and Malik did just before Christmas as a drunken laugh.

‘Yeah, can see that,’ he says strangely and tells us that we need to be out by ten o’clock, then trudges back down the hill again.

‘That was creepy,’ murmurs Ursula quietly, as though the sexton might still hear her even from a great distance.

‘Nah, it’s all good,’ I say cheerily.

‘Let’s not do the séance,’ says Jess suddenly.

‘What? Why not?’

‘You know,’ she shrugs. ‘Just too busy, and the sexton’s probably keeping an eye on us now.’

‘I agree with Xanthe,’ says Raven.

Judging by the looks on the lads’ faces they do, too.

‘Fine,’ I sigh.

I was hoping to make out with Ursula on a grave, maybe even fuck her brains out if I can get us alone long enough without Raven or Jess poking their noses where they’re not wanted. Dante’s been crashing at my place for a while now and I don’t need him getting in the way of a good time, unless he’s decided to stay the night with his uncle.

I’d heard so often from chicks about how lads only have one thing on the brain that I’d grown up under the assumption they’re not interested in casual sex. This meant I was oblivious to their advances when all I wanted to do was root like a rabbit. Realising this simple error took so long that I’ve spent my early twenties trying to cram in as much fucking as possible, erasing the years of celibacy as though they never existed. This little cupcake would make a fine addition, if I can just get the chance.

‘What’re we going to do now?’ asks Craig.

As it is, I happen to know just the perfect thing, and it might still get me laid.

‘Crypts,’ I announce with an evil grin.

‘We’re not digging anything up, Twix,’ admonishes Raven. ‘We’re leaving.’

‘Not here,’ I respond, ‘in the Valley.’

‘Where in the Valley?’ goes Jess.

‘You know that vacant block of land across from All Hallows’ School? There.’

‘Junkies hang out there, Twix, you dork,’ says Raven, rolling her eyes.

‘There’s crypts in the Valley?’ asks Ursula, incredulously.

‘You bet,’ I go, hugging her tight to me. ‘I’ll take you.’

‘Okay,’ she yelps excitedly. That’s my girl.

‘I’ll drop you off, then,’ says Raven. ‘Because I’m going home.’

‘Party-pooper,’ teases Jess.

We get the car packed again, and Jess comes over to me and says quietly: ‘What’s goin on with you and Ursula?’

‘Not much,’ I lie.

‘Bullshit,’ she disputes. ‘I’ve seen you all night grooming her.’

‘Fuck off, Jess,’ I go. ‘I can do whatever I want.’

‘What about Karen?’

‘What about her? We broke up, remember?’

Jess shakes her head. ‘Jesus, Trav. You’re not even trying to get Karen back.’

‘We’re having a break,’ I explain, which is mostly true. In fact, truth is Karen dumped me last month. Kind of like an early Christmas pressie.

‘Yeah, fair enough,’ she hisses, ‘but that doesn’t mean you go around fucking every underage girl in the meantime.’

She storms off around the other side of the car, parking her arse in the passenger side seat. Raven raises an eyebrow at me and tilts her head as if to ask what’s up with her?

The trip back to the Valley is awkward, so Raven blasts some music. Her tape-player is busted so she tunes the radio to 4ZZZ and some black metal blasts from her crappy speakers. Jess reaches out and turns the volume up exceedingly loud, and to my relief the deafening music actually eases the tension in the car somewhat. The lads even start headbanging along.

To be expected, Jess doesn’t want to join us catacomb hunting so only me, Ursula, Craig and Jeremy get dropped off in the Valley. Who cares anyway? I’ve heard that Jess has genital warts and has passed it on to others.

‘Where are they?’ says Craig.

‘The warts?’

He looks puzzled. ‘What warts?’

‘You mean the catacombs?’ I correct myself.

‘Yeah,’ he says, his mouth open like a fish.

‘What warts?’ persists Ursula, her brow crinkled with worry.

‘I meant catacombs,’ I say, then add: ‘They’re right there.’ I point at the concrete wasteland in front of us that’s bordered by Wickam, Ann, Gotha and Gipps streets.

‘There’s nothing there,’ whines Jeremy.

‘Duh, it’s a crypt, so it’s underground, au naturel,’ I enlighten the dumb fuck, pleased as punch to be able put into practice the second language I’ve been learning. ‘Au naturel is French for of course.’

Ursula and Craig climb up onto the concrete flats and start walking off, so I scramble after them, careful not to trip over because the slabs of concrete are uneven.

‘Where’s these crypts, or catacombs, then?’ asks Craig, skimming a shard of smashed glass across the concrete.

‘Here somewhere,’ I boast, running ahead to have a look around. ‘The church were going to build a cathedral called the Holy Name here but they went bust and eventually sold the land in the 80s.’

‘How do you know all this?’ goes Craig.

‘I’ve been around,’ I say proudly. ‘Seen things come and go.’ I’d actually heard about the crypts from T-Rex Tony, who used to come here as a teenager back in the mid-80s.

‘You’re so fuckin old, man,’ laughs Craig, kinda contemptuously, and Ursula laughs too.

While I won’t respond to their taunts, it hurts a bit, I’ll admit.

We spend a while searching for the entrance, but come up empty-handed. We do, however, find the alcoves and a length of wall with decorative balustrades along Ann Street at least. Craig starts kicking at one of the balustrades to try and make it fall down onto the street.

‘Oi, stop it, ya motherfucker,’ I growl. ‘These were heritage-listed a few years ago.’

‘So?’

‘So I’ll break your face open if you wreck em,’ I threaten, unable to resist checking to see if Ursula’s awed by how I stand up to Craig. I think she is.

‘Did you find them?’ Jeremy yells from the middle of the concrete wasteland.

‘Nah, they don’t exist,’ Craig yells back, wandering over to him.

‘They do,’ I insist to Ursula.

‘Maybe they got filled in,’ she says sadly.

‘Maybe,’ I muse. ‘Stop vandals, or grave-robbers.’

‘What’s to rob from a grave anyway,’ she says. ‘Just dead bodies.’

‘Never underestimate the sexual desires of some people,’ I grin. ‘Necrophiliacs would love it down there.’

‘What’s necrophiliacs?’ she goes, legitimately in the dark as to it’s meaning. ‘Is that something to do with warts?’

‘Necrophilia is the sudden urge to crack open a cold one!’ I laugh, but Ursula still looks confused, so I add: ‘Sex with dead people.’

‘Oooh,’ she goes, and either still doesn’t get the joke or is still trying to work out how sex with corpses works, because she remains unamused.

The lads have wandered down near Wickham Street, and Ursula is walking ahead of me to join them.

‘Wait up, babe,’ I go, but she obviously doesn’t hear me because she starts walking a bit faster.

By the time I catch up they’ve gathered together under the sign for Gotha Street and are talking about how to tear it down for their bedroom wall. Ursula seems keen to have it, and before I can volunteer to get it for her Jeremy is shimming up the pole and tugging at it, complaining that it won’t come down without force.

‘I’ll go grab a brick or something,’ says Craig excitedly, running across the road to scrounge around an old shop front.

The much taller Telecom – or Telstra as it’s now called – building next door dwarfs the shop and there’s a drunk bloke passed out on the front steps. Craig kicks the bloke awake and runs back across to us, cackling like the fucking cretin he is. But Ursula is amused by his antics, cracking up and falling on the ground, barely able to contain herself.

Jeremy starts whooping up on his perch.

I don’t know what the hell I’m doing here. I should have just gone back with Jess and Raven.

I walk off without bidding them adieu, and when I glance back I notice the three kindergoth haven’t even realised I’ve left.

It’s not until I’m down the street that I remember I should’ve given Ursula my card so she can keep in contact. I got them made up at a vending machine in the Transit Centre when I went down to Melbourne. Twenty for five bucks. Didn’t get to hand that many out. Maybe putting STUD under TWIX was a mistake. It’s sort of meant as a joke, but the girls in Melbourne just laughed for some reason.

I reckon Ursula wouldn’t have laughed.

PIXIE FLIPS BURGERS

In a fucked up attempt to make us normal, and get us away from dressin in black all the time and hangin out with me friends (who Mum calls ‘losers’), Mum and Dad have joined forces and are makin us work at Dad’s sucky burger franchise while the school holidays are on. It’s pretty fucked that two people can hate each other so much that they normally devote all their energy into literally fuckin each other’s lives up, but then together they gang up on me who hasn’t done a single fuckin thing to them.

To make things worse, last night Dad brought over one of his poxy fucking uniforms that he makes everyone dress in and cheerfully went: ‘My daughter’s first job and first uniform.’

I just went back: ‘Looks like a prison uniform.’

They made us try it on to see if it fits.

‘It’s uncomfortable,’ I’d complained, to deaf ears, but.

‘Let me get a photo, Prue,’ Mum had gushed proudly, rummaging around for the camera while I just stood there like a fuckin mong.

The bus ride here was a fuckin nightmare. I was totally fuckin paranoid that I’d get recognised in this stupid fuckin uniform. I could never live that down. I still had me Pantera hoodie over it, and tried to hide the collar by hugging the neck of the hoodie tighter, but ya could still see the stupid thing pokin out. And if Dad thinks I’m wearin those god-awful pants, in bottle-green no fuckin less, he can go jump off a cliff! They’re still at home on the floor where I chucked em in disgust last night. He’ll have to be happy with torn stockings and cherry-red Doc’s.

The bus stops half way along Main Street in the middle of Kangaroo Point and I have to walk all the way back to Dad’s shop.

The dread I feel walkin up to the doors of this place is worse than any hangover, but. I can feel myself literally shrinking smaller as I get closer. For all these years the sweet smell of burgers and fries comin from these places has always made a stoked feelin in us, like if we’re driving past and I smell it all cookin, I gotta beg Mum to turn round and do the drive-through. Now I’m afraid that I’m gonna start connectin the smell with this shitty fuckin sensation of dread.

Inside is just as worse. Again, what used to feel like a welcoming, now feels like I’m literally facin the executioner. All these cunts with their fakeness that I used to make fun of are now going to start showin us how to be just like them. It’s killin me inside. Dad sees us from out back and comes out and hurries me past the counters out back to where they make the burgers.

‘Goddamit, Prudence, where the hell are the slacks?’

Slacks. Fuck I hate that word, as much as I hate my name. I hate seeing his lips form the word and spit it out at us. He’s rubbin his forehead like I’ve given him a headache already.

‘They’re stupid,’ I tell him, and feign boredom, crossing me arms defiantly. ‘And don’t call me Prudence.’

‘It’s part of the uniform,’ he snaps. ‘This isn’t hanging-around-with-your-loser-friends time, Prue. This is work. You need to take it seriously. Get that ridiculous jumper off.’

He calls over to this liddle blonde girlie as I pull me hoodie off, and asks if she can get him a spare pair of ‘slacks’ from the storeroom.

‘Now listen to me,’ he says sternly, raisin his finger for emphasis. ‘This is a test, if you like. I need you to buckle down and learn the ropes. You’re not getting any younger, Prudence.’

‘I’m fifteen,’ I remind him.

‘You’re on a slippery slope, is what you are,’ he says snootily, then thanks blondie for passin him the pants. She gives him a want-ya-cock-sucked-sir? smile and toddles back to her job, lookin us up and down and literally havin a liddle laugh behind her hand at the front counter with the other bitch there. I’m about to ask the fuckin slut what she thinks is so funny when Dad reaches for me tit and starts gropin us.

‘Fuck off, ya perve,’ I snap, slappin at his sausage-fingered hands. The fuck?

‘Your name badge, Prue,’ he goes, and looks at us like I’m the weird one, but he’s blushin bright red coz I called him a perve. Those sluts at front laugh and gape open-mouthed at one another, like they can’t believe I did that. Dad stammers: ‘I asked if you wanted me to put it on. You didn’t say anything.’

‘I didn’t hear ya,’ I go, takin the badge out of his fidgety hands, eyein him warily just to make him feel even more uneasy. If he thinks it’ll be a breeze forcin us to work here, he can think again.

The badge has my full name across it. PRUDENCE. Above it reads: IN TRAINING. How fuckin embarrassing is this?

‘I can’t wear this,’ I go.

Dad sighs dramatically. ‘What’s wrong now?’

‘Me name’s Pixie.’

‘I should know your name because I gave it to you right after you came out of your mother.’

‘For fuck’s sake!’ I spit, disgusted by the mental image of Mum’s twat pushin us out, except liddle baby version of me. Fucking gross!

But my cunt ova father stands there literally glarin at us until the name badge’s on, then he takes us over and pairs us up with that fuckin blonde bitch, who he introduces as Olivia. Of course that’s her stupid name. Like she’s fuckin all that.

Olivia ‘shows me the ropes’, as the old tosser keeps puttin it. She explains everythin like she’s talkin to a two year old. She’s wastin her breath, but, coz I’m literally not listenin to a word she’s sayin. Instead, I’m hummin The Beautiful People coz she’s exactly the kind of cunt I think Manson wrote the song about.

I notice Dad’s got his fuckin poxy plastic Jesus on a cross up on the wall above the deep fryer. The screw holding it up looks pretty loose. It’s only a matter of time before the Son of God gets another baptism, I reckon. When Olivia shows us how we squeeze the paper cup so that less fries can fit into it, I notice she sneaks a liddle peek at Jesus up there. It figures that she’s the religious type.

Once we’re at the end of the liddle tour, she literally leaves us on me own at a register. When there’s no-one linin up she’s chattin to the other girl, who doesn’t bother introducin herself, thank fuck. A couple of people try and line up in front of us, but I just hang back and play with the chipped polish on me nails instead. They get the hint pretty quickly and change to Olivia’s line, who gets shitty about havin to do all the work.

‘It’d be great if you could just do your job,’ she says to us with a smarmy smile, literally noddin her head repetitively.

‘Have ya got Parkinson’s disease,’ I ask in a deadpan voice. ‘Doin that thing with ya head makes it seem like ya do.’

She stops noddin and keeps servin, but when her queue’s finished she heads back through the burger prep area and snitches on us to Dad, who comes chargin up with a stupid scowl on his face. The sight of him puffin his chest out, swingin his arms like he was somethin ova fuckin big shot cracks us up somethin shockin. I’m sure the other two girls are impressed by his performance, but.

‘Okay, Prue, I’m starting you on drinks,’ he goes.

‘Look, I already agreed to help out in ya shop, didn’t I? So quit orderin me around all the time.’

‘Prudence, I’m telling you, not asking.’

‘You’re not the boss of me!’ I snap back.

‘In every sense of the word, I am,’ he goes, tryin to use his clever word play to trick us. He grabs us by the arm and pulls us over to the drinks machine.

‘You’re hurtin my arm,’ I complain, even though he isn’t, but he ignores us. Seems I’m not the only one learnin here.

He gives us a run-down on how the drink machine works, his voice shaky with anger. There’s three buttons that read S, M and L.

‘Customer wants a drink, you take the corresponding cup, fill it with ice.’ He demonstrates as though to a retard, fillin the cup with ice-cubes that tumble and rattle down noisily. This bit I actually like. I could literally just do the ice all day.

‘Then you place it under the dispenser, like so. S for small, M for medium, and L for large.’

‘Who’d have guessed?’ I joke.

He pushes the button and dramatically places his fist on hip, like he’s posin for a fashion magazine. This cunt takes the job way too seriously. It’s ice and Coke, for fuck’s sake. The black fluid gushes down over the ice cubes, meltin them a bit. They sink inside the cup a bit, and the machine stops automatically.

‘See how it goes down?’ He tips the cup so I can see that the drink only reaches three-quarters the way up. ‘The machine is designed to only fill part of the way. It won’t fill or overfill a cup designated for its function. Next, you top it up with some more ice so that the drink reaches the lip of the cup. Pop a top on it, pass it to the girls at front. Simple.’

When he says pop a top on it, there’s a hint of the theatrical in his voice. I imagine he would normally ponce like a fuckin fag if he was talkin to the mong liddle tarts that work for him, makin them giggle sweetly. Cunt knew I’d just take the piss and tried to downplay it, but.

‘Can you guess what we do if they don’t want ice?’ He literally pauses, probly actually convinced that I’m gonna warm to this fuckin game. He blinks, as if recoverin his memory of who he’s talkin to, then clears his throat. ‘Of course not. Why would you care? Anyhoo, we just add the small and medium buttons together and that’ll fill a large cup with no ice in it. There,’ he goes, pushin the cup into me hands, ‘now you try it.’

He stands back to watch us, doesn’t bother explainin what to do if someone wants a small or a medium drink with no ice in it. I go through the motions, which are fucking easy as, and at the end he claps his hands together once and declares all is good, spins on his heel and disappears back round to the burger prep area. He’s pretty annoyed by now. Whatever.

I keep me back to those two bitches on the registers, and just do the drinks. A piece of my soul disappears into every cup I pour, and I start to fantasise that if I keep this up long enough, eventually I can smuggle my entire soul outside, literally digested in the bodies of hundreds of people, spreadin like a virus through the world. I’d fuck everyone up from the inside, and there’d be fuck all anyone could do to stop me. Antibiotics wouldn’t work, coz I wouldn’t actually be a virus, which is an organism. They’d look, they’d get scientists and world fuckin leadin doctors to check everyone, but no-one would be looking for me soul, especially not pieces of my soul. I could pass into any one of those doctor cunts who checked out all the other cunts. I would be invincible.

‘How many times do I have to say it?’ Olivia’s voice jars us from me daydreamin. She’s right next to us, literally pullin a mightier-than-thou look, the stupid cunt.

‘What the fuck do ya want?’

She puts her hands on her hips and sighs, but there’s a nervous twitch in her eyes, like she’s a liddle bit scared of us. ‘Two large Cokes and small lemonade,’ she says, still talkin to us like I’m a child.

‘Righto, keep ya cotton panties on,’ I say over me shoulder for the benefit of the customers.

She stalks back to the counter and apologises to the family on the other side, then her and the other slut scoff and throw bitchy looks at us.

The guys workin on makin the burgers chuckle and rib each other, one noddin in my direction to the other. I death stare the cunts but they just snigger louder and put their heads down, continuing to flop the lettuce and pickles onto the buns.

It feels like high school all over again. I fuckin hate it here so much.

When Dad comes round and tells us it’s lunch break, he hands us some cash and says I can get something in-store if I want. I snatch a burger off the warming tray and Olivia gets uppity, loudly declaring that I can’t just take food out of the kitchen area and that I need to line up like everyone else, but me father puts out a hand to shush her. I storm out of the place pullin me Pantera hoodie down over this fuckin clown costume.

Gettin outside literally feels like freedom. It feels like every day when the last bell rang at school and ya jumped the fence and got the fuck as far away as possible from the place. I put as much distance as I can between meself and my newfound hell, and the sound of the traffic roaring past a few feet away becomes an immense comfort. I’m miserable, I suddenly realise. Really, really miserable.

I can’t go back, and I don’t need to. Straight up Main Road is the Story Bridge, so I head in that direction. I’ll spend the rest of the day in the Valley. That should cheer us up. I might see if Dee Dee is around and score something, just a liddle choof should do it.

Thanks to working for me Dad, the burger tastes like a fuckin disappointment now. Great, just fuckin great. I toss the fuckin thing into the traffic and see it splatter across some cunt’s windshield, but the traffic is too bumper to bumper for him to suddenly stop, so he’s just gonna have to accept that it’s a shitty day.

You and me both, cunt.

RUNNING TOWN

I’ve been in Brisbane for a total of two weeks and I’m already flyer dropping with Megan, who’s basically my new friend, running around the city and putting flyers up on noticeboards for the new club she’s running at the Land’s Office next Friday night. I love this city! We’re hitting the usual spots, apparently: Rocking Horse, Skinny’s, Record Market and Record Exchange, the Metro cinema down on Edward past Kent Records, and of course Velvet Web and Underworld Realm which are the goth shops.

She’s showing me the traps because, like, I only recently moved up from Melbourne and I’m still pretty unfamiliar with a lot of the shops here. I’m used to, like, Peril 305, Missing Link, Morticia’s, Atrocity, Space Age Books and Heartland Records. I still pine for them, even though a change of scene has been great. Basically, I was feeling stifled in Victoria, by the old crowd, and not least of all by my ex. I needed a fresh start, period.

Brisbane’s quite small compared to Melbourne. The buildings don’t quite reach as high and there’s, like, a lot more sunlight reaching street-level. I get why people refer to this as a big country town: I can walk from one end of the city to the other without breaking a sweat. Just jokes. It’s actually really bloody hot up here so I’m sweating like a pig! It’s crazy. Gotta laugh, though, right?

The other thing I like about up here is that accommodation is so easy to find. I stayed with my sister Lisa and her husband in Toombul for the first week, expecting to be there at least a month before I found my own place, right, but all I did was turn up to the real estate agent’s, grab a key and check some places out, and then pick one. Application approved next day, and I had my own flat on Gillingham Street in Buranda before the week was out! Absolutely no-one else was even vying for the property unlike in Melbourne where it feels like a competition to try and outbid other would-be tenants.

Lisa tried to talk me out of renting Southside, though. Apparently there’s this thing about South of the river versus North of the river here, and the rivalry gets crazy serious.

‘Go the tits on those two,’ this utter yobbo bloke says to his friend as they ogle us.

Megan rolls her eyes. ‘Pfft,’ she sniffs. ‘Boys will be boys.’

But they don’t have to be, do they? I just smile back at Megan, because, like, what can we even do about it?

I already knew of Megan through a mutual friend, Twix, who I met at Die Graft club at The Chamber in South Melbourne. He came down for New Year’s Eve, citing a desperate need for a change of scenery after he split up with his girlfriend; totally understandable. He wasn’t popular down there, though, because he came off as a bit arrogant. All froth and no beer, everyone thought. But I, like, gave him a chance anyway and swapped addys with him since I was already coming up here to live. I thought it’d be good to know someone in my new city besides my sis. So we hung out a bit before he left and became good friends, and he regaled me with stories about his friends here in Brisbane – including Megan – so I trust his judgement. Besides, Megan’s turned out pretty cool. Twix introduced me to her when he took me clubbing at the Normanby as soon as I got here. She was one of the few people I actually got to meet, because it kinda felt like he was keeping me to himself. Like, maybe he’s got a soft spot for me?

There’s a bunch of goths hanging in the middle of the terracotta mall that basically runs several blocks through the heart of the city, as they say. The Queen Street Mall, they call it, though it doesn’t look so regal.

Megan’s like: ‘That’s Malik,’ nodding towards the tallest of the throng, a guy almost six foot tall wearing a long black coat and, like, teashade glasses. The ones John Lennon used to sport. ‘The blonde girl next to him is Xanthe and I’m not sure who the other two are. Only seen em around.’

‘Hey Eggy-Meggie,’ grins Malik, and hugs her until she squeals.

Then she hits him on the arm. ‘You know I hate that name.’

‘Have a flyer,’ I pipe up nervously, thrusting one at him.

‘Okay, if you insist,’ Malik says charmingly. He reads aloud: ‘The Hanging Garden. Like the Cure song? Aw, yes! You did it, Megs!’

‘Creatures kiiissing in the rain...’ sings Xanthe, swaying on the spot and looking into space, like she’s lost in memory.

Megan beams and she’s like: ‘Yep! My first club. You coming?’

Malik’s like: ‘Fuck yeah! With bells on!’

‘Or spikes,’ laughs Xanthe, referring to the copious amounts of spikes and studs on Malik’s leather dog-collar and wristbands that, like, gets disapproving looks from the clueless yuppies giving us a wide berth as they do their window shopping.

‘Great,’ smiles Megs, then adds: ‘Won’t be any Marilyn Manson played, though. Fair warning.’

Malik pouts at this news, turning faux-sad eyes to me for moral support.

Megan formally introduces me to Malik and Xanthe, telling them that I know Twix.

‘Ah yeah,’ nods Xanthe with a knowing smile, ‘just don’t take him up on any offers to chase after the Angel of Death.’

‘Okay, I’ll keep that in mind,’ I chuckle, not sure what she actually means by it.

One of the strangers, a heavy-set girl like myself with naturally dark rings around her eyes, shakes my hand. ‘Hi Alex, I’m Abi and this is Erina. Welcome to Brisbane.’

‘Merry meet,’ I chime, and Xanthe says it’s cool to meet another pagan, even though there’s heaps of people on the goth scene that identify as such.

Erina just smiles at me while Abi introduces herself to Megan – since they don’t actually know each other, either – but I notice that neither Erina nor Megan acknowledge one another at all, almost like they’re deliberately trying to avoid each other even though, like, Megan said she doesn’t know her.

Everyone fusses over the flyers even though they’re, like, just photocopies. Goth clubs don’t make a lot of money, if any at all, and everything about the scene is so DIY as a result. When something new pops up there’s a level of interest in it that outweighs the production values. Everything goths do scene-wise in Australia basically comes from our own pockets, so we make-do.

‘Where have you been since moving up?’ asks Abi.

‘Only here, in the city,’ I admit. ‘And, like, Buranda, of course. That’s where my flat is. On Gillingham Street?’

She’s like: ‘You should check out the Valley markets on Saturday morning, then. It’s the ant’s pants. We could catch up.’

‘That’d be great. But I won’t be able to buy anything. I’m basically dead broke after the move.’

I haven’t got the phone connected yet, either, as that’s just another cost, so we arrange to meet outside the Valley McDonald’s come Saturday morning. She seems pretty nice.

Megan and I keep going with the flyer dropping, leaving the others to their thing. I’ve noticed the heat’s, like, picking up a bit now that we’re getting closer to midday. Megan steers us into the Myer Centre to cool down for a bit, where we get a bottle of juice each.

‘Finances are pretty tight, huh?’ says Megan, picking up on my comment to Abi about the markets.

‘Yeah, the dole only pays so much,’ I admit, taking a swig on the juice. ‘Damn, I needed that.’

‘If you need to put down places you’ve looked for work,’ offers Megan, ‘you can put down mine. It’s in the Valley, the pawn store in McWhirter’s.’

I raise my eyebrows in delight. ‘I’ve always wondered what it’s like to work in one of those.’

‘You know I mean P-A-W-N, right?’

‘Oh,’ I say and we both start giggling at my stupidity. Talk about laugh!

‘I hope you freaks didn’t steal that,’ this guy’s voice suddenly says.

He’s standing behind the palm fronds and staring at us, pointing at our juices. He looks like a homeless bum who was recently employed in, like, an office or something, because he’s got a business suit on. There’s basically something a bit off about it, though. And his hair’s scruffily hoiked into two short pigtails.

Megan asks what he’s gonna do about it if we didn’t pay for the juice, and the guy, like, stalks around and says he’s gonna go dob on us, then sits down with a smile. He’s obviously unhinged.

‘I’m surprised we haven’t bumped into you already,’ says Megan, and introduces him as Dante, one of her friends. If I remember rightly, Twix’s best friend is called Dante. This must be him.

Dante’s dropped the psycho act now and waves across the table at me.

I didn’t realise it but my heart’s been pounding fast, because I thought he was going to go all psycho on us. ‘Shit, sorry. Merry meet. I thought you were some crazy homeless bloke.’

‘I am,’ he grins.

‘Yeaaah, Dante sleeps on the streets a lot,’ Megan smirks playfully. He pinches her on the leg so she