DIS & DAT

By Edwin J McBride

HAVE YOU EVER WONDERED ABOUT DIS & DAT AND WHAT IT MAY MEAN, AS IF IT WERE NOTHING AT ALL...?

Or everything we can recall...?

In a collection of tales from the mind of a self-confessed nutter, we uncover the entertaining value of pure fiction and indulgence...

First there was George, a decent enough

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shawline Publishing Group
• Release date: Dec 8, 2021
• ISBN: 9781922594945

Edwin J McBride

Edwin McBride was raised in Rural NSW on a large property, where many of his early years were spent alone in the vast landscape. Edwin has been writing since an early age with over 35 years of writing experience that includes fiction and Non-fiction, magazine articles, TV/radio and film screenplays, along with hundreds of blogs and website copy. A BA in Media Law and Marketing, he is a passionate creative who enjoys learning, dining out, wine appreciation and exploring the wonders of the spirit...

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Dis & Dat Copyright © 2021 Edwin J McBride.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author.

The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Printed in Australia

Cover design by Shawline Publishing Group Pty Ltd

First Printing: November 2021

Shawline Publishing Group Pty Ltd

www.shawlinepublishing.com.au

Paperback ISBN- 9781922594952

Ebook ISBN- 9781922594945

Contents

Who Dies First…?

GEORGE.

Pre-Production

Rolling

Lights, camera, action!

And Cut!

The Felled

Alienation

THE DEATH OF DOROTHY DUNHILL

ONE - April 2006

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE - Twelve years later.

SIX

SEVEN

The End of Dis collection…

Who Dies First…?

Robert Atherton was often burdened by intrusive thoughts. He scanned the dining room to confirm he hadn’t spoken to them aloud, a mistake that would summon another argument with the lady of the house. He didn’t have the time or effort to deal with the fresh aftermath of that derailed train. Not today because today he had to pretend his work was important enough to even get some of it done… maybe. A second nap did seem a more appealing option.

‘Do you want another coffee, babe?’ The derailing train hollered from the next room.

‘No thanks, honey. I’m on a roll,’ replied Robert. Lie. ‘I may get this chapter done today if I’m lucky.’ Pfft. Today? You’ll be lucky to finish it this week, or ever.

Jane glided into the room and not in the angelic swoosh she’d done many times before. No, on this occasion, she was heavier, as if anchored to the floor. She knew what had happened was all her fault. She could have prevented it if she’d tried; if she’d - acted with her instincts and not her fears, so the talk within reminded. She’d been right there.

Robert noted the heavy glide without comment. He didn’t want to talk about it and figured she didn’t want to either. Except, he knew she wanted to talk about it. He told himself that lie so he wouldn’t have to wear the guilt for not giving her the chance to unload her emotional luggage being tossed about during the derailment. Talking appeased Jane, where it unnerved Robert. Was he wrong choosing to clasp the crumbling pieces of himself together rather than to free them as shattering shards of contempt at his wife?

Suffering was a good description of the affliction they shared day in, day out. It was because the disgusting black gunk encasing his heart never allowed fresh air to enter and clear his membranes of disfunction. Its’ sticky residue couldn’t be scraped away, no matter how much therapy, meditation or–God forbid- essential oils they caressed and shared on each other in consolation. He hated the bloody oils; they gave him a headache, and he was sick of smelling like lavender. Robert wasn’t always this way, shrouded in bitterness and cynicism adopted to protect and deflect emotional cavities.

‘That’s great, babe,’ Jane enthused. ‘The publisher will be glad to hear you’re making some progress. What was that editor’s name again?’ Robert had told her a hundred times, but there wasn’t much Jane could do these days to influence an actual conversation. Repetition–thanks to the silence and lacking effort- was welcomed. Talking–about anything- gave the illusion of a connection the two had lost long ago.

‘Montgomery…’ Robert might as well have grunted it but adjusted his tone to avoid the strain of frustration held for the woman he had married. He was as aware of that strain caused to Jane as she knew she made him irritable. Her attempts to rekindle the flame of their black coal marriage added to the emotions he didn’t have the energy to fight any longer. ‘I am trying to like him for the sake of the stupid contract,’ he griped to make Jane think he was indulging her false interest in his work. ‘But I can’t believe Talon sold me out to these… useless idiots.’

Says a useless idiot, his brain retorted.

‘Shut up,’ he snapped.

‘What...?’ Jane asked, pottering in the kitchen and half-listening to the narrative of her husband, as she often did.

Robert shook his head. ‘I was just saying those idiots should try shutting up every once in a while.’

And what about you? He flushed red with remorse. That was uncalled for, jerk.

‘They had the right to do that, honey,’ Jane contributed with her voice composed, even dismissive to the concern he had, and it was this which made Robert feel his anger. ‘Let’s not get into this now, ok, dear. Today has been beautiful with the sun out, my garden flourishing, and you making progress. All the drama with your contract is because your last book didn’t go so well. We all want this one to do better, of course. You know I loved your first book, everyone did… I was a fan of the first draft, of the first pitch, even. Do you remember?’

‘The first draft was awful.’ He muttered as he stared at his computer screen, staring back in a white glow.

Jane swallowed the nostalgia she had almost been stupid enough to share. ‘As all first drafts are… but I knew from that day, your concept would take you far, and you would become everything you desired...’

Robert adjusted the dining chair he’d claimed as his writing perch and pretended to type something; he sipped on his empty coffee cup. He didn’t get the feeling he was a writer anymore. It had gone.

‘Flukes don’t happen twice. The miracle of the first book can’t be repeated.’

‘The others did well also,’ Jane offered in mild support. ‘There is no reason for this one not to, once you finish it.’

Robert scoffed with the insult to her dig at his work practise, or lack thereof.

‘You haven’t really shared with me much about this one. Maybe bouncing some ideas with your awesome wife might help...?’ Jane suggested, hoping to relieve pressure beneath the surface of the conversation. Robert remained silent, so she continued to fold a tea towel four times before scrunching it in her hands. He was a bastard.

‘I know you have struggled with Emily’s death.’ She cried, tossing the tea towel aside. Her eyes pooled with tears she knew she was not supposed to shed, out of some respect for her husband’s frailty. Fuck this. When was it her turn for the respect, for being treated how she needed after Emily’s passing? For the hugs and crying and the promises of it’ll be ok, and the healing discussions about their baby girl dying, when was it her turn? Jane sniffed and straightened.

‘It has been hard on us both, but it’s time to live again. Emily would be very disappointed in us if we did not at least try for some kind of happiness in our lives.’

Emily had been a riveting sunflower, a golden speck of joy. Her first word had been ‘yay’, and her favourite colour was yellow. From the moment she could walk, she would dance. She had that glint in her eyes, a child who cared not for the judgment of others and made all things appear like she knew what was happening because she wanted it to happen. In the biased eyes of her parents, Emily was perfect. She was their gorgeous little Em. She used to sing them to sleep and tuck them in. She’d say, ‘you look pooped. Let me do bedtime tonight. Go on, hop in.’ She would kiss Jane on the forehead, stretching up on her little tippy-toes to reach the bed head, then she’d rush around to the bed to smooch dad. She was the kid who played with those who had nobody to play with and to free bugs rather than kill them; listen when other kids talked instead of just waiting to speak. It may have been biased of them to deem her perfect, but the opinion was pretty much unanimous from everybody who had known her. Perfect was just about the only word that could describe their beautiful daughter. Perhaps such flawlessness had been the envy of angels, so they took her from this world so young to enjoy her dancing in the clouds.

Jane stepped across the line between the kitchen and the dining room to be closer to her husband. Perhaps physical proximity might re-align their emotional distances for a moment. A moment was all she desired. All she got, though, was icy nothing.

‘What on earth are you doing with this out here?’ she lifted the gun. A replica revolver six-shooter Robert had purchased for his deceased father, and that now lay on the table beside him as if it had a purpose. Jane was accustomed to Robert’s props and prompts being used to help in his creative influence, but this one made her uneasy, given Rob hadn’t been the most stable man for a while. Jane, regardless of their tired emotions and strained relationship, wanted him to be safe. He had been neither of these of late, which frightened her enough without a gruesome piece of décor taking up space in her home, turning a room that she’d worked to create positive energy in, into a fictional murder scene. Robert didn’t bat an eye from his screen, which was still blank and had been, she surmised, the whole time he’d been sitting in here staring at it.

‘You know that I like to have props about me when I write; gives me the feelings I need for scenes….’ Robert defended, waving Jane away and snatching the pistol. ‘Now, please go… you’re in my space.’ Infecting it.

Jane flattened her skirt and didn’t dare step in close again. She couldn’t have cared less if he wiped out the lot of his miserable characters with a nuclear bomb if it helped him be something of the writer he used to be… and if it brought him back to her.

‘Oh, please,’ Jane groaned, returning to the kitchen in muted frustration. ‘Don’t start with the victim act again. I get it. You think the world sucks, and it hates you, and everybody is awful, and the sun never shines, but I don’t hate you, and things won’t be bad forever if you give the world a chance again, you will see. I wonder if that therapist is getting through to you at all because I know I don’t.’

‘Well, she helps me deal with you….’ Robert muttered.

‘I mean…’ Jane was talking more to herself than to Robert, a man she didn’t recognise when he behaved like this, though she tried… it might be her fault. ‘Is she even worth the money? I would pay thousands for a different shrink if it meant you might find the happiness within again instead of living as though the world has forsaken you.’

Robert mumbled some retort she had no chance of understanding. ‘Please don’t mumble under your breath with smart ass comments. You know I hate it when you do that.’

‘Sorry, love…’ Robert sighed. ‘May I please have some quiet to finish this?’

He was tired of talking, tired of listening to her, his thoughts and the silence of the world around him, tired of everything.

Jane felt the pit of blue in her stomach expand and tears pricking her eyes with the salty assault of her emotional fatigue. She retreated to the bathroom for a shower, knowing this was where the pain and tears would not affect anybody but her.

Robert pleaded with his characters to help him find the words. To bring him comfort and to ease his mind. These characters were more a part of him than anything or anyone; they would often appear from his imagination. They would be alive and emotional, just as he wrote them. Sometimes, they visited when he wasn’t expecting them or when he needed silence. They weren’t always welcome, but they were always there. They couldn’t abandon him, but he also couldn’t escape them. He was sure it was normal, just another writing tool that he had mastered in his art of creating his character’s. Perhaps a segment of his creative brain had been unlocked when he needed it. Maybe he had gained a special talent that only those blessed or cursed at times were able to access. That comfort didn’t erase the unease at the sudden sense of another presence in the room. It was always a little eerie, piercing his nerves and raising the hair along his arms. It was bloody Melanie coming to visit him, whinging as per usual. He had written her character during a phase of his life when he still might empathise with other people. Now all he wanted to do was make her shut up.

‘You’re thinking about killing me off? After all I’ve been through, all we’ve been through? You think I deserve that?’ she proclaimed. He saw her shimmering silhouette appear before him like out of a mystic tunnel. She was dressed in her 1930s white, red dotted dress and pigtails as he had first written her in the novel, All’s away when he arrives…. Her lips were plump and reddened with thick lipstick, blending into her over expressed make-up as it covered her bee-bop face and hair sprayed hair-do.

‘What do you mean all we’ve been through?’ Robert detested her. ‘You’re made to soak up a reader’s sympathy. You’re just the ditz I created to embellish those who’ll cry for your miserable backstory.’

‘That’s not true. You wrote me with more depth, more love, than that. You’ve just become too cold and awful now to appreciate me.’ She sobbed in her over-expressive manner of a pigmented imaginative character.

‘You’re the best candidate for the book’s kill-off. Besides, I don’t care what you say. You don’t get to have a say in who lives and who dies. That job’s mine.’

‘But I’m not alone, or have you forgotten? I have a baby, you know, a little boy. Don’t you remember baby William?’ she held a crisp white linen handkerchief to her nose and dabbed her eyes to stop the tears running the thick mascara down her face. ‘He was born in the third book. You can’t take me away from him. He has nobody else to look out for him.’

‘Perfect. That opens up so many avenues and chances for his character growth as he grows abused in an orphanage and gets on drugs or something dark and painful...’

‘No, you can’t do that to my sweet boy. You brought him into this world. You can’t just take him away.’

‘I believe I can.’

‘You can’t do that to me. I can’t even believe you would think it!’

‘You’re not real, and William is not a real baby.’

‘No, you can’t take him away from me! I beg you.’

Robert’s eyes rolled in their sockets so far that they almost fell out of his head.

‘Stop with your judgment…You’re the one who wrote me this way.’

‘For goodness’ sake, Melanie. I know you have a baby, and that’s the reason it would be so powerful to the reader if you’re the one to go. Drastic happenings make for shocked fans, and shocked fans make for sales, which makes for-’

‘Fans? I thought the point of this next book was to gain fans because you no longer have any.’ Melanie had a way about her. She could say the rudest, harshest thing yet still be polite and concerned. She would watch rather than take action. ‘It seems more to me like you just want to make people sad. Just because you’re sad doesn’t mean everybody else has to be, you know? My character needs some light at the end of the tunnel. It’s so dark at the moment. Please, think of my little boy.’

Joy invited herself into the conversation next. She was fetching in her slicker hair, without make-up, rolled sleeves of a white tee and denim jeans. She had small pert breasts and a slender build with tattoos on her arms. She was the 30s tomboy rebel, her eyes expressed her attitude, and she flaunted her arrogance with joy, hence her name… If sooky Melanie was the abhorrent angel on Robert’s shoulder, Joy was the devil on his other. ‘Don’t even think about sparing her because of a stupid child. She is a sicko. Man, like, we didn’t know her brother was the father until the fifth book, but that’s gotta earn her a place in Hell, and we can’t relish in her sins if she’s still walking around...’

‘I didn’t know Rodriguez was my brother either,’ Melanie snapped in defence. ‘How was I supposed to know this hot guy I struck a fling with was going to be my long lost half relative? I don’t even know if it’s true or not. It was all just a bunch of gossip and paranoia. Robert only wrote it that way to shock his alleged fans. He just told me that’s all I’m good for.’ She spun to look at Robert. ‘Is Rodriguez my half-brother?’

Robert’s face was concrete. ‘No, he isn’t.’

‘Oh, thank the Lord.’ Melanie felt her breath relax.

Joy eyed Robert with one of her favourite looks that said, ‘kill her now. She’s so dramatic.’ ‘Melanie is a tart and acts all nice and girl-next-door, but man, she is a tramp… I say cut the bitch’s throat...!’

‘Hey,’ Melanie exclaimed in hurt. ‘I haven’t slept around with anyone. You made that up to spite me back in book four, you… you… meanie.’

‘Meanie? Ouch, I’m gutted.’ Joy grinned and returned to Robert with narrowed eyes. ‘She has to die. Don’t you see? Can’t you see it, Robert? She is a pointless element of our amazing series….’

‘Oh, right, and you get to live? The emotional cripple who sells her body for drugs and lives on the streets. It’s no wonder you’re trying to paint me the slut, too close to your own truth. And what is with your clothing… are you a guy or a girl? Oh wait, you are a lesbian…!’ Melanie burst into laughter. ‘And you claim I’m the one with the pointlessness in this series. Get a mirror, babe.’

‘At least I don’t do drugs, Mel.’

‘What are you insinuating?’

‘That maybe you had pharmaceutical help coping with the unexpected birth of that bastard son of yours….’ Joy moved into an attack stance, facing Melanie square on with hands balled into tight fists at the ready. Her cold blue eyes steeled to Melanie.

‘Ladies, you’re hurting my brain,’ Robert whispered. ‘Withdraw the claws. For starters, Joy is too easy to kill off. She’s hateful and repulsive.’

‘Thanks,’ Joy cheered in pride.

‘Without her, the drama wouldn’t thrive. Melanie, you are a young girl, chewed up and spit out by the world; the readers love you and your growing pains. Joy, you stirred the crap up about Melanie, if you recall, which you should, since I wrote you an eidetic memory, envied by the characters who might use it for good, like Melanie, who could do with a better education. Makes for frustration in the reader, and any emotion–if written well- just sucks them in further.’

‘I feel I have to say that Melanie deserved the gossip,’ Joy deflected, crossing her arms like a grumpy child, acting more childish than Melanie’s William ever had

Most people might claim that every death is impactful enough, but Robert had grown up learning most people cried at funerals to keep up a respectful appearance of mourning the deceased, when secretly they cried in dread of the day their turn would come. He had been to three funerals and hadn’t bothered to cry at one of them if it did not feel like he should. If there were no tears, why cry them? He decided everybody must just be faking. ‘That’s sick,’ Jane would tell him. ‘Just because you’ve lost the emotions to cry doesn’t mean the rest of the world is as hopeless….’

He didn’t believe it, and when Robert decided something, there was no convincing him otherwise. This shallow spirited world was full of fakers, and he’d come to the party too late… but now he was here. Now he knew the truth. Nobody cared for anything or anyone unless it served them best.

‘Why not kill her off?’ Joy kept pushing. ‘What reason is there for it to be me? What, because I’m the so-called trash, and that’s what happens to us? Boring. Predictable. Why not write my arse out of this pickle rather than kill me; give me that hope thing you give to that mean old bugger you seem to love writing.’

‘I don’t have any hope left to give anyone,’ Robert sighed.

‘Were you referring to me, Joy, dear?’ came a gruff elderly voice that carried