Welcome to Story Club

by Zoe Norton Lodge

  I convulsed through racked, heaving, hyperventilating tears.

  ‘N-o y-o-u d-o-n-’t,’ I haemorrhaged. ‘I-f y-o-u d-i-d y-o-u wo-u-l-d-n-’t b-e l-e-a-v-i-n-g m-e!’

  After two hours, like some Liam Neeson hostage flick, I finally willed myself to prick my vein with the knife. And as I saw one single, slow drop of blood trickle from my vein onto my Beanie Baby lizard, Winky Two, I fainted. When I came to, my mom was on my bed, having broken into my bedroom lock using a penny. I was grateful the child molester van man didn’t know this trick.

  ‘Caitie, we love you very much,’ my mom said, as she gently stroked my hair. ‘And I am never, ever going to leave you.’

  And she never did.

  My sweet dad ended up moving out.

  First, Dad moved next door. Then, he moved into a house down the street. And then, ironically, my dad moved into a van, so that he could always live relatively close to his kids.

  My family’s splintering left a really sad yearning deep within me. But, a few years ago, on the last afternoon of my visit home before returning to Sydney, my parents and I were on a cliff watching my brother surf off the beach below. And as we turned to head back to the car, my parents walked on either side of me a few steps behind – I was walking quicker due to my fear of flying: I wanted to get to the airport on time for the plane to crash. And when we had almost reached the car, my mom turned to my dad.

  ‘Well,’ Mom said with such warmth and a sweet smile. ‘Let’s go see our girl off.’ And at that ‘our girl’ I was filled with so much love from the both of them. And I didn’t even have to play dead to get it.

  ALEX LEE

  Alex started her career as a writer from a very young age, inspired by a teacher who told her she wasn’t very good at maths. Since then, she has carved out a career as a journalist, comedian, presenter and actor, which has mostly just culminated in her becoming very flustered whenever she is at an airport and has to fill out the ‘occupation’ section of travel documents. Her television credits include Saturday Night, The Feed, The Checkout, The Chaser’s Election Desk, The Roast and The Letdown. She has written for ABC News and BuzzFeed and starred in Michelle Law’s hit play Single Asian Female. Story Club has been one of Alex’s favourite comedy nights ever since performing in the very first one.

  ‘Original Prankster’ copyright © Alex Lee 2018

  Original Prankster

  by ALEX LEE

  This story was originally performed at the event The Old Switcheroo

  It’s November 1999, and I’m pretty worried about the millennium bug. I don’t really understand computers, but I guess nobody else does either. Hence, the millennium bug. All I know is that people are buying up big on water and canned food, and I don’t really like water, and I hate baked beans, so I’m pretty worried.

  I’m also worried about spending another New Year’s Eve at home, because Mum’s birthday is on New Year’s Eve, which means all my parents’ friends will come around, and me and my sister will have to be waitresses and carry around trays of capers and smoked salmon on little squares of white bread, while they drink lots of champagne and push each other into the pool.

  I’m twelve years old and eight months, and there are some things I am not so good at and some things I am good at.

  I am not so good at talking to people, playing hockey, dancing (any type) and playing the recorder.

  I am good at English, hurdles, poems and nature. I am the best at nature. I can identify most native Australian birds, including birds of prey and birds of the wetlands.

  A lot of people when they start high school have trouble fitting in. Not me. I am great at fitting in. After nature, it is probably my best skill. I don’t even know why some people find it hard; you just watch the popular girls and say and do what they say and do. It’s super easy. I’m so good at it, most of the time people don’t even know I’m there, and when I’m standing behind them in the locker room or in the line for the canteen, when they turn around and see me they get a fright.

  Yes, I am getting the reputation of being quite the prankster.

  But it’s nearly the end of the school year and it’s time to make an impression. Not only did Daniella Weston’s parents let her get her ears pierced on the top bit of her ear AND it was a rose-coloured diamond that matched the pink colour of her braces BUT they are letting her have a party for New Year’s Eve and I need an invite so bad so I don’t have to watch Mum’s tennis friends flirt with each other’s fat husbands.

  For some of the girls, our Geography trip to Mount Keira on the south coast is just a heaps lame reason to miss the Destiny’s Child concert, but I know it’s my chance to show off my nature skills and get me that invitation to Daniella’s party. On the bus, I tell everyone how the best Destiny’s Child is Michelle, and some of them laugh. I don’t really get why that’s funny but sometimes when you’re as naturally funny as me you just get a couple of free jokes in every now and then, so I feel pretty good.

  There were other things to look forward to, of course. A subtropical rainforest ecosystem, which is something you don’t see every day. For lunch, there would be salad rolls on floury bread, then we’d be able to eat apples and just toss away the core LITERALLY ANYWHERE BECAUSE IT’S ALL NATURE, and maybe even, if we were lucky, a drop toilet.

  What’s not to like? The quiet, the stillness, the comforting sawdusty smell, the satisfying thunk – how deep was it? You would strain to hear where it fell, but it seemed to go down, down, down into the very depths of the earth. For all you know, you could be pooing on the Devil’s head.

  Turns out Mount Keira is a subtropical rainforest in the sense that it’s like a tropical rainforest but shithouse. Instead of jungle cats and creeper vines and carnivorous plants there’s just gum trees and rocks and sticks, and they’re all just a bit wet because it’s been raining that week.

  Our Geography teacher, Mrs Probyn, is the only one dressed appropriately. She is so old I think she might be half ghost. Her hair is improbably black and it doesn’t so much grow out of her head as much as it loiters around it. She trails behind us, humming to herself and stopping every now and then to take a clipping for her garden, as her soggy herd of thirteen-year-olds in ironic pigtails and puffer vests makes its way up Mount Keira’s face.

  I’m power-walking my way up the front to get a go of the compass. I’m ticking off sedimentary rocks and bird’s-nest ferns as I go, when a scream that would freeze your marrow cuts through the thick hot air.

  ‘What’s going on here girls?’ I say with all the authority of a self-appointed nature captain.

  It’s Daniella. Bet she’s twisted her ankle or something. I knew those Baby Spice sneakers were not designed for this terrain.

  But she’s jumping up and down, flapping her arms like a baby bird that’s fallen out of its nest and is trying to get back up.

  ‘THERE’S A WORM ON MY ARM! THERE’S A WORM ON MY —’

  ‘Yeah, that’s right princess, just a little worm,’ says the leech, its slimy black body engorged with her blood, as it rolls off her skin with a satisfied belch.

  She stumbles back in panic and her heel comes down hard on the leech. It explodes blood all over her Baby Spice sneakers. We look at the pool of blood and, at the same time, we remember that screaming is a thing that we can all do, and so we do it. United, we are Screaming Spice.

  Suddenly the leeches are everywhere. Every second girl is getting hit. Sometimes we see the leech, sometimes it’s just the spatter of blood it leaves behind, but either way, this piss-weak rainforest has suddenly become a wet slithering blood bank. As I walk along quietly trying to find a sedimentary rock for the assignment, I swear I can hear them gnashing their teeth.

  I told you I liked nature but when you’re facing a creature that INJECTS ANAESTHETIC INTO YOU SO YOU CAN’T FEEL IT SUCK OUT ALL OF YOUR BLOOD you realise that you are dealing with some pretty dark powers.

  Word must have got out in the leech community that we tasted like Lip Smac
kers and LCMs, because they just kept coming and we just kept getting cured of a disease in the eighteenth century.

  Soon, I develop a system of leech protection. Walk in a line and watch for leeches on the person in front of you. Daniella is even grateful that she has me watching her back.

  The system works. We calm down. It’s the day we stop being girls and start being slightly braver girls. And we are on the home stretch. As I pass a drop toilet, suddenly an idea pops into my head from the deep. Wouldn’t this be an excellent opportunity for a prankening?

  I quietly pick up a young green twig and ever so gently brush it against the back of Daniella’s earlobe. In my head, this is how it would have gone.

  Daniella: What’s that? Hey, Alex, you trickster! I thought for a second that was a leech! Well, you got me good. Hey, why don’t you come to my New Year’s Eve party?

  This is what did happen:

  She screamed.

  She screamed and then she kept screaming and as she madly brushed her hands against her ears, a pink sparkling diamond looped up and up through the air, finally nestling in the undergrowth, where a passing bush rat found it, took it home and proposed to his girlfriend.

  And that was it for me. Exile. We finish the walk in a silence worse than screaming. Missing her earring, Daniella spent the next few weeks looking like a slightly camp disgruntled pirate.

  When I get on the bus, there’s no seat for me anywhere. I slump into the seat next to Mrs Probyn, who seems to be dozing quietly with her head against the windowpane, saying softly to herself, ‘Girls, stop making such a fuss.’

  Then, once we’re on the highway, I notice a patch of dark red blood on Mrs P’s jeans, just above her knee. As I watch the pool of blood grow I realise like Neve Campbell in Scream that the blood was coming from inside the jeans. And the leech was still there.

  ‘Alex, I’m afraid you’ll have to help me get it,’ she says.

  ‘Me? No. Please, no.’

  I undress my Geography teacher and get the jeans down to her knees. There it was, the king of the leeches, holding five times its weight in blood, well dug in, looking at me with an expression of ‘What?’ I envision pulling it off and pulling off Mrs P’s ancient skin with it.

  ‘Salt,’ she says.

  ‘No. No.’ I shake my head. The bus driver tosses over a sachet of salt.

  I’d heard that this would work – people who would grow up to be serial killers and stand-up comedians would do this to snails for fun. I rip open the packet, pour it on the leech and wait for it to say, ‘Well that’s my cue to leave,’ hop off and catch the next bus home. It does not do this. It promptly vomits a sackful of my Geography teacher’s blood onto my hands.

  There is nothing to say, she is too embarrassed to thank me.

  And I am a tiny Lady Macbeth, staring out the window all the way back home.

  BENEDICT HARDIE

  Benedict is an actor and writer. He did childhood in the Blue Mountains, high school in Greater Western Sydney, and then done also more learnings at fancy universities in Sydney and Melbourne. With independent theatre company The Hayloft Project, he has written, adapted or co-created numerous plays including The Boat People, By Their Own Hands, The Nest, Delectable Shelter and 3xSisters. For major theatre companies, he co-adapted Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, and fiddled with Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. On stage, he appeared in The Drover’s Wife, The Dog/The Cat and The Harp in the South. His film and television work includes Upgrade, Hacksaw Ridge, The Light Between Oceans, The Water Diviner, Mr Inbetween, Deadline Gallipoli and Molly.

  ‘It’s Rare’ copyright © Benedict Hardie 2018

  It’s Rare

  by BENEDICT HARDIE

  This story was originally performed at the event Hopelessly Devoted

  I think I’m finally ready to talk about my first love. After hiding it from the world for twenty-four years, it feels OK now to blow off the dust and cobwebs and bring it out into the light.

  My dad was once an avid cyclist.

  I’m a nine-year-old boy-child in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, and the evidence before me leads me to the conclusion that my dad is the only grown-up in the world who rides a bike. Bikes are for kids, grown-ups drive cars, it has ever been thus. My dad, however, is the keeper of a mysterious, nigh-on mythical beast. A grown-up bike. And not a mountain bike: his bike has the skinny wheels. The fast ones. My dad says on the big cog he can go as fast as a car. Sometimes faster.

  Dad was always resourceful and good with tools. When the time comes for us bloody kids to get new bikes, we drive to the Blaxland Tip for one of the best days out I could possibly hope for. The stated task is foraging for discarded bicycles, wheels, parts and frames, but the extra-curricular activities include scaling mountains of discarded couches, throwing things that were never intended to be airborne (like a microwave!), hiding in abandoned cars, looking for treasure, and generally hitting things with sticks.

  When it is time to go home my dad whistles and we bloody kids trundle in like ill-trained farm dogs and bundle into the station wagon, the boot now weighed down with a ripe-smelling tangle of rusting geometry.

  Dad gets to work on our Frankenstein bikes. My big sister gets a practical step-through three-speed with a comfortable seat, and my brother gets an eight-speed racer which will be perfectly sized for him four years later. Both bikes have new-ish brakepads and grips, have been greased and tuned, and sprayed with a compelling if slightly unusual forest-green matte-finish paint. They’re beautiful machines.

  ‘Where’s mine?’ I ask.

  ‘Need to source some parts for yours,’ Dad says.

  That means waiting till next weekend. I’m not great at maths, but a whole week feels like half my lifetime. I’m too small to ride my brother’s and sister’s bikes, and Dad has cannibalised my old bike for parts for the other two, so I have to endure an excruciating week of recreating on my stupid dumb legs.

  Wednesday night, Dad’s very late coming home because he has to go visit a specialist bike shop in the city. Mum tells me he’s getting some special grips because my handlebars are a rare size.

  I like that. ‘Rare’.

  Friday, Dad’s up the shed at night time. Frankenbiking. Mum tells me he went and got a special spray paint. It’s white, but wait for it, it’s pearl white. I’ve never seen a pearl-white bike before. This is all feeling very ‘rare’.

  Saturday morning, Mum takes me to soccer and Dad stays home to finish my bike.

  When we return at lunchtime I’m positively peaking.

  And there it is. My first love.

  I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s imposing, it’s dynamic, its pearl-white skin seems to be glowing. Dad says: ‘It’s a racing bike. It’s a classic.’

  It’s so bloody rare.

  Instead of the boring, straight triangles of a normal bike, this bike has curves, and it’s long. The tubular tendrils of the frame intertwine sumptuously like Medusa’s dread serpents.

  And up front, a daunting set of horns like those of the Labyrinth’s Minotaur. The handlebars are in the ‘Chopper’ or ‘Harley’ style: a broad pair of chrome sabres that fend back the world while embracing the rider.

  I’m not done describing this bike.

  Because, friends: baby got back. There is no standard little black bike seat to be seen here; rather the seat is three times as long, has a curved back support bar (‘Your girlfriend would hold onto that,’ winks Dad) and the fabric is a high-gloss vinyl in galactic purple.

  It is the realisation of a dream I didn’t know I’d always had.

  My eyes could not have been wider.

  ‘Careful,’ says Dad. ‘It’ll be faster than your old bike.’

  Anything else that is said to me is obscured by the clicking of my stack-hat clasp and the rushing of blood in my veins.

  I ride that bike non-stop till sundown. On gravel roads and fire trails I fang it all around, I jump it off the corrugations carved in clay and rock by vehicles
and rain, I set it up for long skids on loose ground and am thrilled when the bike turns sideways and slides to a dramatic conclusion like a downhill skier after a gold medal run.

  Sunday morning I wake up and do it all again, but this time I go further, deeper down the fire trails, faster on the straights, I figure out how to ride with no hands. I commune with the apparatus, I bond with the bike, I feel truly free, I feel truly me.

  That night I put it to Mum and Dad that I could ride to school the next morning.

  Now this is no small feat. It’s six-and-a-half kilometres of hilly roads and soft shoulders, no paths or bike lanes, and this is not something I, or any of our neighbours, have attempted before.

  Again, I’m nine years old.

  Dad wishes me luck.

  The next morning. Perfect weather. I ride out in the welcoming sunshine on my pearly mount. Just a boy and his bike and the birds and the sky and the occasional passing trainload of fools who wish they were me. The hills are a little harder to tackle than I expected, and I do have to get off and push a few times, but it never dampens my spirits.

  The very best part is the last leg of the trip before I reach the school. It’s on that long downhill stretch beside the fresh-cut grass of the local golf course that my love truly blossoms. The bike effortlessly picks up speed, and I stand up, tall on the pedals, my wingspan wide to straddle the prodigious handlebars, the morning’s bright beams and the warm air on my face as I roll triumphant into school.

  Arriving at the gate at the same time are Michael Malloy and Mitchell Cayless. They know how far away from school I live and seem amazed to see me arriving on my bike. I do one of my now trademark sideways skids as I approach.