The Glass Kingdom

by Chris Flynn

  Shit, here comes Mudgee now, slow down, slow down, Mikey, can’t get pulled over now or attract attention. Keep to the speed limit and look for a place with the lights still on, far side of town next to the road. They’s good people in these small towns, someone’ll do the right thing. Oh Christ, I’m sorry, Deb, I really am, me and my big mouth and all this talk, always talking I am and it’s shit, it’s all shit, why’d you have to listen to me? Look at you, girl, look at you there with your head lollin’ all over the seat like you is tryin’ to find your way back to your body, please don’t die, please don’t die. I’m sorry to have to leave you like this, no skirt, no panties, I mean knickers, no knickers, everyone’ll think you got raped—oh man, can this night get any worse? What a fuck-up, what a total fucken fuck-up, but don’t worry they’ll take care of you, someone will take care of you and I’m sorry it can’t be me—just hold on baby, hold on. Look, here’s a place, nice-looking house, garden and everything, lights burning in the lounge, watching CSI Miami or somethin’, shit’s ’bout to get real for them.

  A’ight, just pull over real easy there, Mikey, throw ’er in neutral and keep the engine running, that’s it, no dramas. Crack the passenger door and sneak on round there, nobody’s looking, oh man, this is fucken horrible—what I’m doing—maybes I should just hand myself in but no, no, I can’t, I can’t do ten or twenty years for this, just for having some fun, it ain’t my fault what’s happened to you, not really, it’s your brain, your brain can’t handle the crystal.

  I wish I’d not left your skirt behind—makes this look so much worse than it is. But I can’t think about that now, I’ve gotta go, Deb, gotta bounce. An’ I promise I won’t steal your inventions an’ I’ll stand on the horn when I leave so’s they’ll come out an’ find you. I hope you don’t hate me. I’m sorry, I’m sorry and that’s it, baby, I’m in the wind.

  Hand me one of those controllers, move the fuck over bitches and prepare to have your asses whupped. Playa, playa, multiplaya. Mekong Delta is in da house. Lemme just select my character here. What do I needs to know, control wise? Word me up, dawg. Anything weird?

  You played Call of Duty?

  Fo’ shiz. I clocked that shit in a weekend, bra.

  This is the latest in the series. Black Ops. Same thing, only we’re in Vietnam and Cuba.

  Beast. Mekong Delta be right at home. Be warned, though, I’s gonna wreck you guys instead of the locals. Them’s my people, dawg.

  You got fucken slope blood in ya, mate?

  Lock that racist shit down, motherfucker, ’fore I snatch you out that chair. Ain’t no need for that kinda talk. Didn’t nobody tell you more Australians got Asian heritage now than European?

  Bullshit.

  Nuh-uh—look it up, homes, that be the triple truth. This an Asian country you living in now, so suck it up, brother. White folks is a dyin’ breed, and good riddance too, I says. Motherfuckers is holding this country back.

  You fucken little arsehole.

  So you playing or talking, Eminem?

  Chillax, dawg, I’s just familiarising myself with the controls here an’ having a discussion about multiculturalism with your racist-arse friend.

  Calling me racist in my own fucken country? Un-fucken-believable. My granddad fought for this country and now it’s overrun with fucken Lebbos and wogs and slopes. I’m not racist, mate, no fucken way, but all these people don’t belong in Australia.

  Yeah? Identify as Indigenous, do you bra?

  What? Course I fucken don’t.

  So do I gots to spell it out for you?

  Eh? What’s this little prick talking about, Tommo? He doesn’t even speak plain fucken English.

  Fuck sake, Lachy, stop shouting, we’re trying to play here. Your family’s Scottish and Dutch, right?

  Yeah? So?

  Well, then, you came to Australia on a fucken boat just like every other cunt—that’s what he’s saying.

  Youse two are the cunts. That’s a very offensive accusation.

  Fuck off outside and cry then, and while you’re at it text Matt and see if he’s on his way. I want to get this deal done before our guest here takes his business elsewhere because of your fucken prejudices.

  All right, I know when I’m not wanted. Pricks.

  Sorry about that, mate, he’s really into all that stop-the-boats shit. Fucken ice blackened his brain as well as his teeth.

  It’s a’ight, dawg, they’s all the same in these piss-ant towns. Present company excepted, course.

  Funny thing is, every time he sees a hot Asian chick he practically jizzes his boardies.

  I hear that. Who doesn’t, am I right? So you think Matt’s gonna give me a good price? I gots some mad merch to offload on you guys.

  Totally. Lucky you turned up, actually. There’s a serious drought round here at the moment. Matt’s cook got sick so he hasn’t been able to produce much lately. Good job you came to us first too, instead of trying to sell it directly to the tweakers yourself. Matt’s got a bit of a temper on him and this is sort of his patch, you know?

  You gots to respect a playa’s territory. Me, I’m just looking to cash out of this game. I seen too much already. This life ain’t for me, homes, you feel me?

  Totally, totally. Hey, you’re pretty good at this. Pick up the crossbow, pick up the crossbow!

  *

  You didn’t tell me this cunt was a Dockers fan.

  Hold up, you don’t barrack for West Coast, do you? Don’t know if I could do bidness with no Eagle.

  Nah, mate, fuck those wooden spooners, I’m Freo all the way.

  Fo’ reals? A’ight, that’s fucken great news! How d’ya think we’ll do this year? Woulda had us a grand final if it weren’t for those bitches from St Kilda.

  Yeah, least they got done on the big day.

  Did you watch the derby?

  Did I? Wouldn’t fucken miss it, mate. What a day, that’s the most we ever beat those Eagle cunts by. I reckon we’ll be right this year, maybe take it a step further, eh?

  Kick it up a notch, Dockers! Give ’em the old heave ho!

  Ha ha, you’re all right, mate, don’t hear many singing that round here.

  Man, this is awesome. Make me a good offer and the glass is yours, my friend. I’d be stoked to have a Dockers fan take it off my hands.

  Oh, I’ll take it, no worries there, mate. How much you got exactly? The boys here told me you reckon you’ve got quite the stash.

  Shit yeah, homes. I got, let’s see, ’bout six grand’s worth left, that’s wholesale price, of course, being as that’s what I paid. But I ain’t greedy, you know? I’ll take ten for it. I mean, I could sell that shit for fifty a point and make myself thirty large but I’s kinda in a rush and besides, I wouldn’t wanna be sellin’ on your corners, right?

  That’s good business, showing respect like that.

  S’what I’m all about, brother. You take care of me and I’ll drop thirty gees of fucken awesome glass in yo’ lap. Sweet as a honey-roasted nut.

  I’ll most definitely take care of you, don’t you worry about that. Come on then, show us the gear. You got it hid somewhere?

  Nah, it’s in that Coles bag if you want to check it. It’s good product, plenty of satisfied customers.

  You brought it in here with you? In that bag?

  Fo’ sho. We’s all good here.

  What the fuck makes you think that?

  Well, I…wait, what you mean? I haveta bring the product in with me to show you so’s you know what you’s buying.

  Buying? Who said anything about buying? Tommo, quit playing games for a fucken minute and grab a hold of that bag, will ya?

  Yo, hold up, motherfuckers, that shit be mine, mine.

  You think? Lachy, step in here a minute, mate.

  My fucken pleasure, boss. Call me a racist, will ya, ya fucken slope-lovin’ little cunt.

  Here, show me that bag, Tommo. Ho ho ho, fucken jackpot! Hoy, watch what you’re doing there, Lachy. He’s bleeding all over the
fucken rug. Don’t fucken beat him to death neither—I need a new cook and I want him to be able to walk out of here tonight.

  Hold on, just one more. Righto, that’ll do it. And fucken think twice in future before you call someone a racist, you little prick.

  Is that his Commodore outside? Tommo, get the keys out of his pocket and it’s yours, mate. Nice work tonight, we’ve scored big time here.

  How come Tommo gets the car? What do I get?

  Fuck sake, Lachy, you’re such a whinger. Here, take a couple of points of this and smoke it up tonight. Let me know if it’s any good. But before you do, drag this piece of shit out to my car. I don’t want to get blood on me. Oh and Tommy, I meant to tell you, I got a new game but I forgot to bring it. It’s the latest Assassin’s Creed. Graphics on it are fucken sick, mate.

  What do I know about cooking meth? Sweet fuck all but I ain’t about to tell this guy that. Gots to play along with what’s happening, act like I’m done, I’m beat, then flit on out of this fucken town first chance I gets. Can’t believe they took the keys to the C-dore. That ain’t right. The glass, a’ight, I sees now I should’ve been more careful, I don’t know what I was thinking rockin’ up there and presentin’ them with a golden fucken Willy Wonka ticket. I weren’t thinking, that was the problem. Too fucked up by what happened to that girl Deb to see straight. Too eager to ditch the glass and get paid. Shoulda drove straight on through to Brisbane and sold it to someone who wouldn’t rip me off, someone who knew how to conduct business. But no, you couldn’t wait, could you, Mikey? Had to get it sorted now, right fucken now. Shoulda waited, dawg. Shoulda thought things through.

  Now this snake-eyed motherfucker got my glass and my ride, and me. My nose is fucken bleeding too where that motherfucker kicked me in the face. Asshole gonna pay for that, fo’ reals. Maybes I can turn this situation to my advantage. They’s just small-time tweaker scumbags, it ain’t like at Freddy’s joint with a couple of bikies locking the place down with pitbulls and shotguns. First time they’s all out their heads I’ll walk on out of there with my glass, my car keys and all their fucken money, maybe throw a match into their lab and do the world a favour at the same time. Can’t do this shit on your own, homes. Needs me a gat or a fucken mate or something so’s I got some back-up. No honour in this world no more. What’s it come to when you can’t even conduct a simple business transaction without gettin’ boned?

  Listen to him lording it over me there like he be some kinda meth king. Doin’ me a favour, he says, ’cos we both barrack for Freo. Coulda had me disappeared, he says—but no, he thinks I got potential and that I just needs some schoolin’ in the game. Start at the bottom, ’stead of tryin’ to be a gangsta straight out the gate. Shit, I gots to get away from these small towns, they is a major irritation to my dome. Everyone think they know where it’s at but they don’t know jack shit. Plus they all talk like they’s Aussie crims from the friggen seventies. Watched too much Underbelly. They be all ya farken cunt this, ya farken cunt that, farken wogs and Lebbos—I mean, seriously, dawg? Who talks like that in the second motherfucking decade of the twenty-first century? Ain’t you watched a movie or turned on the box in the last thirty years? An’ what, you got a thing against the Lebanese? What the fuck is that all about? Gots to be less than a hunnerd thousand of the motherfuckers in the whole damn country an’ like, so what? Probs more Germans in Australia than there is Lebanese an’ you don’t hear nobody bitchin’ about them, do ya? Ain’t no white folk whining about how the Huns should go back to their own country an’ shit.

  Course I’m the bad guy for pointing this out. I’m real sick of this shit, man. Sick of gettin’ my ass handed to me by low-lifes still livin’ in the past, an’ not the good past neither, like the one with free love and jazz clubs and steam trains an’ shit. What about the future, dawg? Why can’t we be lookin’ to the motherfucking future? Born in the wrong fucken time, I was.

  Damn, can’t stop this bleeding. Think maybe that bitch done broke my nose or somethin’. Just keep nodding at whatever this motherfucker be sayin’. Yessir, right sir, absolutely, I agree with you, thanks for the opportunity an’ all—I really appreciate it, you thievin’ crankhead piece of shit. Oh man, would you just look at this town—they really got it going on here don’t they, the joint is jumpin’, ’spose the Friday night bingo game is going off right about now. Shit, even if I can’t get my hands on my property maybes I’ll just leap on the next bus north anyhow and leave this whole sorry situation behind. Fucked if I’s stayin’ here to cook up meth for this punk-ass motherfucker. Plenty of other things I can do to make some paper. I got mad skills, dawg, don’t know why I be wastin’ them slummin’ it with all these two-bit wannabe gangsters and tweakers eking out a livin’ at the bottom of society’s barrel. No more foolin’ around with crank or any other dirty fucken substance that fucks people up just to increase the size of your roll. I mean, just listen to this asshole layin’ down the rules for me like I be his slave now or somethin’. Yessum, massa, tote that barge, lift that bale, you want I should cook you up some grits with that batch of meth, suh? Ow ow ow fuuuck, my face hurts and my back hurts and my nut sack hurts where that ferret-faced fuck sunk the boot in, though thank almighty fuck he weren’t wearin’ no actual boots, they was just a dirty old pair of Asics runners. Dumb fuck ain’t even got no style. Surprised he didn’t strip the Nikes off my feet when he was takin’ everythin’ else I owned.

  Yeah, yeah, blah blah blah motherfucker, look at you all pleased with yourself ’cos you got one over on a homeboy. Damn, you got swag now an’ is lovin’ every minute you gets to put me in my place. Well, enjoy your moment of glory, Matthew, thinkin’ you is the end-of-level guardian. Soon as your stinky ass is turned I be ghostin’ right on out of Gilgandra or whatever the fuck you calls this sinkhole, an’ maybes slippin’ somethin’ sharp ’tween your ribs just so’s you bleed out on the floor of your dirty fucking hovel—see how your rug looks then, motherfucker.

  This your street? Fo’ reals? Shit, what a streak of misery. An’ don’t be sayin’ home sweet home to me, motherfucker. Ain’t gonna be my home for long an’ that’s the triple truth, you can be sure of that. Uh-huh, I am done. Checked out. Finished. Gonna steal your money just like I done with that damn fool solja boy an’ start me a new life in the colonies, ’cept this time I won’t make the same mistake by thinking I can use the chedda to ante up to the big time. Nuh-uh, this time I be takin’ a right turn off the glass highway.

  Don’t look back, don’t look back, maybe I can make those trees ’fore he sees me, maybe I can find somewhere to hide, cover myself in leaves or something. Just keep going, Mikey, keep those legs pumping and don’t think about him, don’t think about what he’ll do if he catches you. Oh fuck, he’s going to catch me, isn’t he, he’s going to catch me and he’s going to fuck me up so bad. Watch where you’re going, watch…ah, fucking hell, I can’t see for shit out here. Get up, get up and keep going. Maybe there’s a road out past those trees, maybe I can flag someone down before he finds me. Gots to get some distance between us.

  Fuuuck, he had a gun, an honest-to-God nine millimetre and he was waiting for us, just sitting there in the dark waiting for us. How did he know I’d be there? He didn’t know, he couldn’t know, there was no way for him to know. The look on his face, though—oh Jesus, the look on his face when he saw me. Whatever business he had with Matt went straight out the window when he clocked my sorry ass. The solja boy, return of the solja boy.

  What the fuck was he doing there? Matt didn’t work for him, obviously, not the way he reacted when that lamp came on like in some fucken cheesy thriller where the bad guy’s in your house, he’s in the fucken house, how did he get in the fucken house and why, why?

  Shit, it don’t matter why, and it don’t matter how. He was there. The big bad wolf, the fucken east-coast meth lord with the map of scars on his face and he couldn’t hardly believe what he was seeing, he couldn’t believe his own luck. I fell right in his lap and all M
att had to do was keep his head and hand me over, probs would have got a fucken reward but no, that dumb fucken crankhead wannabe-gangsta flipped out when he saw Corporal Wallace sitting there in his lounge room, cool as you fucken like.

  As you would, I guess, as you would. Started rantin’ and ravin’, shoutin’ who the fuck are you an’ what the fuck you doing in my crib, don’t you know who I am, you’ve no fucken idea who you’re dealing with, ya cunt. ’Tween that and Ben not believin’ his eyes at me stood there holding my bleeding nose I knowed I had about two seconds to bolt ’fore it all went pear-shaped.

  Took to my heels out the front door and all I saw was Ben jumping up so fast his gat slid off his knee. Matt took his shot and lunged at him while he fumbled to pick it up. Didn’t seem like an even tussle but Matt had smoked a point ’fore we left the other place an’ thought he was fucken invincible. Can’t say what happened after that and don’t really give a fuck—all I know is whatever’s going on back there is keeping Ben occupied, maybes Matt is giving him a run for his money after all. Buying me time, that’s all I care about. Maybe I can make it. Shit, I think I’m going to make it.

  Stop. Wait. Stop. Was that a…there it is again. That’s two. Two shots. Someone got their paws on that nine and loosed off a couple of rounds. Oh man, that ain’t good. I got a bad feeling that was Matt going down. If it’d been him picked up the nine he’d of emptied the clip for sure. But it was just two shots. Two shots. One to put Matt down, maybe another to the dome. Kill shot. Double tap. Had to be the solja boy.

  The light at the door. The silhouette. The head turning, lookin’ my way. Here he comes. Oh Jesus suffering fuck, here he comes. Move, Mikey, move, just run.

  The trees the branches the darkness the moon. My legs, oh my legs. I can’t breathe, I can’t get a breath. Can’t stop. Can’t stop. He’s big. He’s so big and fast and fit and strong and he’s coming, he’s coming, he’s in the trees, he’s coming. How can he be in the trees already? Which way, which way do I go? Don’t shoot me, man, I hope he doesn’t shoot me—not in the back, not in the legs, please not in the legs.