Short Stories Not All Lies

By HEATHER BLACKSTOCK

About Short Stories, Not All Lies. This contribution of short stories was inspired by natural factors of human nature, crossing borders of beliefs as well as offering poignant truths and nuances from a diversity of life. The writings include adventurous travel, unusual events, love lost and found. In sharing unforgettable memories, they give ins

• Language: English
• Publisher: Heather Blackstock
• Release date: Feb 4, 2021
• ISBN: 9780648827085

HEATHER BLACKSTOCK

The author was born and raised at "Hucclecote" on a mixed farming property in Dorrigo N.S.W. It is where Heather Blackstock (nee Winkley) enjoyed a wonderful childhood and, from memory found inspiration to further her artistic talent from memory.

Book preview

A Raw Challenge

Distance and time were thought relevant for Natasha Brady as she took the time to go the distance. A place where wild things hide! She wondered if men were wild too. Her cravings for a new lifestyle couldn’t wait any longer. She needed a far away destination to break her tie with a business acquaintance, Barry Mortimer. Eventually, her life was turned up-side-down and left wanting.

Natasha’s mind had definitely been fuzzy for some time. She had sensed a feeling of disenchantment lying in bed, and it wasn’t her bed. How she knew she wasn’t quite sure. She opened her eyes, and at once realised she had slept with her business acquaintance, Barry Mortimer. It was his bed she was in and felt it wasn’t right to be there. They had brought their disagreement to the bedroom the night before. Now, Natasha recalled what Barry had suggested, You had always avoided getting too close to me. Now, what do you say!

You avoided it too, she had flung back at him. They didn’t dare touch each other for fear of what would follow. He had wanted to do what she had forbidden herself to think about. There was too much truth in what Barry had insinuated. She had turned her back on him and eventually fallen asleep. It was now morning. Barry had gone off to work and left her with her thoughts. She felt the strain of the situation and knew she had to take a break from Barry, who was many years her senior. She no longer needed a crutch, advice or criticism. He had supplied these things in abundance. She wasn’t in need of a watch-dog either; it was time to end the relationship. She could take care of herself and felt an urgent need to escape. She dressed quickly and caught a taxi home.

Being a part-time consultant for several business houses, Natasha was more or less her own boss, and able to periodically take time off at will. It suited her spur of the moment disposition. In gay abandon, she flung her arms up in the air and shouted, I’m going overseas on a trip, and I will soon find out where. She searched for an atlas and opened it to a world map. Then closed her eyes, and with a finger, outstretched pressed it onto the map at random. Feeling the adrenal thrill, she then opened her eyes to see where her finger had landed. Sarawak, Borneo! Well, that’s where I’m heading to, she firmly announced while feeling unbroken with effervescent pleasure. She contacted her best friend Pamela, Barry and other friends, to tell them she was going on a once in a lifetime holiday to Borneo. Then began conjuring up all kinds of feral and mysterious images, where wild things hide, like Gods, elephants and tigers. It’s where thousands of rare species of animals, plants, fungi, and other life forms exist. Errol Flynn made it famously exotic and considered it romantic enough to get married there.

Natasha sought a travel agent who congratulated her on her unique choice of destination. You’ll get to see mighty rivers, explore never sleeping rainforests and iconic wildlife. There are tribes with intriguing habits, even go frogging at night. All this is featured in the pamphlets, the agent said while designing a ten-day adventure trip. You’ll get the best out of what Sarawak has to offer: a true nature-based travel experience. You’ll stay at an enchanting Resort with accommodation in the Guning Mulu National Park.

Natasha had never considered herself anyone special but always dressed with feminine pride to her best advantage. She was average in looks with a buxom figure and wore clothes that hugged her curves. After a shorter, softer haircut, artful blond streaks were added to highlight her restyled hair-do. It emphasised the blush in her cheeks.

There was a buoyant lilt of anticipation in her step as she walked onto the tarmac. She felt ready for whatever moved in her path.

After a five hour flight, Natasha was transported by bus to her Resort-style lodging with fantastic guest facilities and service. The main feature was a swimming pool and bar, inviting one who arrives as a guest to leave as a family. The dark virgin rainforest background looked so stark yet impenetrable. Surely it was not so silly to attach any emotion to a geographical phenomenon.

She loved the smell of polished furniture, the glorious floral arrangement in the foyer, the dignified and gracious atmosphere that comes with tall ceilings and richly patterned carpet. Her eyes sparkled with pleasure. After her luggage was brought to her room, Natasha unpacked and took a refreshing shower. Then dressed for dinner in black, she quickly propelled herself out of the apartment and headed towards the bar for a pre-dinner drink.

He was leaning forward, apparently contemplating the drink in his hand or an unexpected visitor. Dressed in an impressive cream suit, tailor-made from the tropics, Natasha believed he looked like a White Rajah from a divine culture. Yes! He was as visible as a Pitcher plant and more deviously inconspicuous as a tiger. After spotting Natasha, his intent was to capture her with a glance of anticipation. There was an empty bar stool at arms length from where he sat. He stood, pulled it out, and slowly with a slight American drawl, confidently stated, I was expecting you. Name’s Jamil Van Husen. What is your poison?

Seeing an agony of desperate desire in his sparkling blue eyes, she gracefully accepted his offer and responded with a smile, How sweet of you Jamil… Natasha… Brandy, Lime, and Bitters, please… She wallowed in his lust for her, hovered in it, drowned in it, with wantonness pleasure she had not believed herself capable of. Perhaps it was incited by the release of restraint built up over the last five of her twenty-five years. Or the fear that she might have frittered her only chance, to know and feel all that a man was cut out to be.

In the two happy hours of getting to know each other, Jamil had proved to be charming and faultlessly polished in his advancement towards her. He looked at his watch and said, Dinner time, my dear! I’ll pick you up at 9 am to-morrow and take you for an elephant ride through the jungle. How about it? He took hold of her hands in his and gently kissed her on the cheek, then whispered, You touch my needs more deeply than anyone I have ever known.

Oh, Jamil I have never ridden on an elephant before. It would be such fun. He turned and walked away, leaving her wanting more. Her head swam with the intoxication of his charm. Why do I have to wait forever before seeing him again, Natasha mused.

The days that followed were full of brilliant sunshine, blissfully experiencing each other’s company. Feelings melded together during long and tempestuous lovemaking, which was intensely mutual. It was all overwhelming and different, starting a new life from the one she had hopelessly endured. He promised her the moon and stars to light up with, good times and exciting places to see. I want you to feel happy, my dear, he speculated.

You give me so much Jamil. How could I not be? No matter what, Natasha was determined to trust her feelings for him. She was showered with many gifts, and not surprised when an engagement ring appeared and was placed on her finger. They celebrated their togetherness with Champagne, and strawberries which Jamil fed her while she arranged little morsels for him. They shopped for a wedding dress. The wedding was planned to take place on the day before Natasha’s return to Brisbane, with a promise from Jamil he’d move to Australia soon after he had attended to some business.

It was when Natasha arrived back in Brisbane she felt so embittered, and phoned her friend Pamela, There was I in Sarawak… waiting at the church in my beautiful wedding dress… for three bloody hours. I phoned the police to tell them Jamil was missing. Much later the police were able to tell me that the fucking great Hornbill caught a flight out of Sarawak that morning, and it wasn’t with a return ticket.

Forget about him, Natasha. You know what? A Raw Challenge was advertised in my Gym Magazine last week. It is to be held at Numinbah Valley, next Saturday. Why don’t you enter so you can get your mind off him?

I sure need to expel some venom so I can close the door to the bloody memory of the endemic, fucking great ape. I will wear his bloody wedding dress and take a fucking plunge into the fucking mud, she roared as she gave a shudder.

I can guarantee you will feel much better for doing just that. Pamela sympathised.

Then I will shower and wash the mud away with his filthy memory. Then I will plunge his wedding dress into the bin… Hallelujah… It became a reality and satisfaction for Natasha when her threat materialised. Eventually, it became more about the journey than the destination.

Amorous Prince

Jill Davenport had done something shocking. In 1979 while working as an Australian war correspondent for two years, covering Pol Pot’s wicked regime in Cambodia, she had been involved with another man. She admitted her feelings were so intense when she first met the dark-eyed Vietnamese, and she had given her name to him as Gillian instead of Jill.

Her radical relationship to reality was knottier than an artichoke. Soon after returning to Australia, she was invited to be interviewed by Rebecca Cox for the ABC. Dressed in an all shrinking pair of black jeans and understated white T-shirt with disarranged hair, she looked as if she’d just arrived with refugee boat people.

Jill Davenport, pleased you could be with us today.

Thank you, Rebecca! Glad to be here.

For many of us, we see your reporting is done to our liking, delivering dangerous issues from the world’s hot spots: fresh, carefully packaged, digestible with seemingly no risk attached. Much better we say, you go there and tell us all about it, while we are comfortable at home out of dangers way. I realise it is part of your journey, following with powers of observation. You delved into the dark realm of killings, and violence in a murderous Cambodian Regime. Tell me! What gave you such dedication for reporting on Pol Pot’s addiction to death; knowing all foreigners in particular reporters, were his worst enemy? You carried on regardless.

I studied journalism at Adelaide University: psychology as well. I found no answer for anyone wanting to bludgeon to death, innocent children and babies. There was no question of whether I wanted to report. I didn’t think about much else. Pol Pot took root after the Vietnam war. It inspired me to share horrific stories with the world. I wanted to tell a universal story of loss and the absurdity of war. Stories that can, and do happen anywhere in the world. Public and political enemies keep on nagging at me to tell the truth about them.

What was Pol Pot’s purpose for persecution and destruction of his own people? Rebecca asked.

Jill answered with penetrating intelligence. In showing no mercy, he became known as the butcher of Cambodia, while attempting to engineer a classless peasant society, socially.

Have you figured out how the Khmer Rouge managed to kill all those people?

Pol Pot and his Communist Khmer Rouge movement led Cambodia from 1975-79. They were suspected of killing three million Cambodians through starvation, execution, torture, and disease. That’s about 25% of the Cambodian population of eight million. One detention centre held 20,000 people. Of those imprisoned, only seven survived. In his four-year reign of terror, he plotted a revolution controlling all aspects of a person’s life. He endeavoured to achieve a totalitarian dictatorship, in demanding that all foreigners be extinguished, closure of all businesses, and education stopped. Intellectuals, city residents, ethnic minorities that are Vietnamese, and Chinese civil servants, and religious groups were mostly clubbed to death. Others buried alive in mass graves, known as ‘killing fields’. Vietnamese men were ordered to kill their Cambodian wives. Peasants were forced to build dams and grow rice, but most of the rice was exported, leaving the peasants starving. His racial and political hatred made him eliminate all opposition. It was soul-destroying. He ranks beside Stalin and Hitler as a personification of evil.

I understand that for a time, 1975-77, you reported news of Pol Pot and his addiction to death, then you vanished from sight. Where were you?

Jill’s response was to dance lightly across this subject. "As time went by, I did live for a time in hibernation. I felt I had to run for cover, so I hid in the forest where I became quite ill. I was awake most nights, nerves taut and mind racing, knowing I was stuck in a vicious circle of violence, hundreds of kilometres from home. I became disillusioned, but there was a moment of grace in my life when a young Vietnamese named Kan, found me. Like a romantic prince, he sympathetically warned me of impending danger. I was captivated with his luminescence and tenderness, and our relationship blossomed. It became dangerous for me to stay in Phnom Penh, so he helped me escape. We travelled north to his home where I learned to speak Vietnamese, and casually work with his family until I was well enough to travel. Sadly, I had to say goodbye to him when I knew it was safe to return to Australia. My betrothed knows the full story."

Well! It has been interesting talking with you, Jill.

Smiling, she answered, Glad to be here and back home. Thank you, Rebecca.

Black Saturday

Two weeks after the bush fire I went back with my husband Stan to our 80-acre allotment in the foothills of Strathaven, to sift through memories of fateful Black Saturday. It was in a place where once our dreams gave us hope for a future of contentment but later dismantled by nature’s fury. The sight of the burnt-out landscape reactivated the trauma that we had endured.

Flames had been whipped up by strong winds that had ravished our home. Smoke now had drifted away, leaving an outlook of desolation. Stillness engulfed me as I searched the emptiness trying to understand, how a dream had been made to last a lifetime then quickly vanish; replaced with ghostly black tree stumps. It had been a sanctuary that had once been graced with ever-greens, and forest-gums, where bird songs signalled a day’s beginning. Now it was all reduced to a windswept, empty patch of ash and rubble. The strange, stark, and raw reality of it, left me feeling cold and naked.

No amount of technology can accurately predict what a fire will do. My mind flashed back to the big head of smoke that had pumped out of the hills—twenty-foot tongues of greedy-licking flames that had consumed tall gum trees, and drought-parched, combustible vegetation. I had thought the whole world was alight. When the fire reaches a critical mass, reinforced by heat and flames, a deadly path is created, and everything catches alight within its reach. The roar of the howling wind helped ignite bone-dry fuel with a deafening noise. Seeing a cauldron of smoke boiling up through the gully was frightening. At that moment Stan ran to free his prize stallion just as the out-shed burst into flames. He called to me, Helen! Quick! Let the dogs off their chains. Hunt the chooks into the garden and get a heap of wet towels for us! The fowls had already scattered into the orchard. Our tabby cat, Titbit, ran off with the dogs towards the dam. Stan then started the car but abandoned the thought of us escaping as the fire had already jumped the road.

A stranger drove into the front garden and called out that the fire had taken control of his house on the hill, and advised us to move out. When nature is at its worst, his action gave insight into compassion for others at his own high risk. He was later discovered to be one of the tragic statistics.

In a daze of confusion, I rushed inside the house and grabbed some large towels. I soaked them in water, then ran back to Stan, shouting, The porch has caught fire. Let’s get into the water tank!

Don’t be an idiot! he yelled back. People have suffocated inside water-tanks. You can cook in a metre of water, and that’s how much the drought has left us. Quick Helen! Give me a couple of those towels?

He turned, pointing to a patch of bare earth beyond the fence. Get over there and lay down in the dirt and wrap yourself in wet towels. Quick! Run for your life.

My thoughts were as I took off, so this is what is meant by running for your life, as I scrambled through the fence with dripping wet towels. I screamed out, Shit! After catching the thong off my foot. Without it, I raced to the red patch of dirt and collapsed on the ground so hard I tasted the dusty soil. My heart thumped and thumped against my chest. Then I heard the concrete explode from the sides of the water tower. I squirmed around to see it collapse and sighed in relief, Thank God we didn’t shelter there. I covered my body with a wet towel and then wrapped one around my head, leaving a space to breathe and fell back on the ground. Stan came shortly afterwards and did the same, lying close to me.

The noise of tree branches cracking and falling to the ground could be heard through my wet towel. Smoke and ashes continued to fill the hot air. It was a relief to raise my head briefly to get some air before covering it again. It felt weird and disorientating. We lay in silence for hours trying to breathe in excruciating heat. While enduring the intense experience, my utmost thoughts were for survival.

The tragic loss of friends, loved ones, animals, and belongings will remain in my memory forever. I’m sure Dante would agree; that hell-fire Black is the only colour to describe Black Saturday.

Caught In Cyclone Alby

The farming Hine family in W.A. had taken to raising pigs to diversify income after three years of unsuccessful grain harvests. Early rain had fallen at harvest time and damaged wheat crops, rendering the grain useless for human consumption, yet great food for pigs. Sean and his brother Darryl had loaded Sean’s truck with 50 pigs to be taken to the abattoirs at Midland, a little north of Perth. News of a cyclone warning had been issued on the radio, with the expectation it would cross between Geraldton and Carnarvon about 500 miles north of Perth. Being so far away, no one considered it to be of any consequence for farmers south of Perth and farming activities had to proceed as usual.

It was 5 pm on the third day of April 1978, when Sean ate a quick meal his mother had prepared for him before taking off on his long journey. He then climbed into his trusty pig laden, 1967 model ACCO, 1820, 8-ton, International truck. He wasn’t concerned that the truck had no radio. The noise from squealing pigs fighting, together with the roar of the truck’s engine situated between the front cabin seats, was familiar music to Sean’s ears. Besides, it reassured him all was going well.

It was 2 am after many hours of driving, when Sean pulled up on the side of the road for a nap, just outside of Perth. This was a general habit after such an arduous trip. Besides, he had made good time, and the abattoirs didn’t open until 6 am. Of course, ringing in his ears was his mother’s advice, ‘It always pays to be early’. It was no effort for Sean to fall into slumber land. While sleeping a passing truck tooted his horn. It was enough to wake him. Mongrel, he cursed, before trying to nod off again. A few minutes later, another passing truck tooted. This really stirred him up. He sat up blinking and cursing into the night. Confounded idiot! What’s up? he muttered.

Nevertheless, he thought it best to take a look and check around the truck. When he opened the door and stepped onto the road, he saw six pigs snuffling about at big gum-nuts laying about. A sharp breeze had blown them from the trees and scattered them over the road. He walked around the truck and discovered the pigs fought during the night. They smashed a hole in the side of the crate, allowing them to escape. They looked somewhat disorientated milling about on the highway in the full moon, not knowing where they were. Road-kill was the last thing Sean wanted for his pigs. They were too large to lift back onto the truck. He thought for a while, then remembered that a couple of miles further on down the road was a small farm with cattle yards. He smartly locked up his vehicle and herded the escapees along the road. They were hunted along without too much trouble, until he came to the farmer’s yards, and chased them into his driveway. He then walked over to the farm-house and knocked on the farmer’s door to ask for permission to use his cattle yards. The farmer was surprised to learn of Sean’s trouble, but was obliging and said as he rubbed his eyes, By all means young fella, go ahead!

Thanks, I do appreciate it, Sean replied. Then I have to go back and mend a hole in the crate before I can reload the pigs. The farmer nodded his understanding. Wire was found behind the driver’s seat of the truck, and the damaged crate was soon mended. He drove on to reload the penned pigs. As soon as that was done, he headed off to the