by Sally Breen
Review of Australian Fiction
Volume Eleven: Issue Four
Zutiste, Inc.
Review of Australian Fiction Copyright © 2014 by Authors.
Contents
Imprint
Sarah and the Man Eater Sally Breen
Monster Loren Clarke
Published by Review of Australian Fiction
“Sarah and the Man Eater” Copyright © 2014 by Sally Breen
“Monster” Copyright © 2014 by Loren Clarke
www.reviewofaustralianfiction.com
Sarah and the Man Eater
Sally Breen
The first thing Sarah wanted to do after she died was swim with sharks. Not overfed theme-park fatties or placid grey nurses or benevolent floaty whale sharks but large, brutal, fly-out-of-the-water-to-eat-seals white pointers, Jaws thoroughbreds, killers. Such are the voice overs she has heard—fast cut images of great whites rearing out of the water synched to hard rock soundtracks, the enormous amount of propulsion required to break the surface, the thick muscles in the shark’s trunk clenching and unclenching, the gaping jaw shifting forward as the rows of teeth dislocate to take a bite.
As a young girl Jaws had frightened Sarah so much she sometimes believed, swimming alone in her backyard pool in suburbia, that Jaws would be unleashed from behind a retaining wall made up of the slate steps and eat her in three quick bites from the toes up while she trained for the school swimming carnival. Lapping freestyle Sarah would glance under the full loop of her right tricep expecting the bite; the huge fleshy, blood-caked mouth; the cavalcade of water and bubbles as Jaws came at her and got her, just like he got old Quint the sea captain in the movie, sliding down the gangplank of the sinking boat right into Jaws, the teeth slicing him open chunk by chunk—the blood pouring out of his middle and his mouth.
‘Swallowed whole,’ just like he’d prophesied, ‘after a little shakin’ and tenderisin’’.
When she was seven Sarah didn’t notice the fake flapping teeth and the mechanical bits people talked about later. When she was seven Jaws was something you thought about even in the bath.
Sarah did not think about Jaws when she was at the beach. She was too distracted, too happy to think about movies, hoisting herself up on her board, ready for tummy rash and the big pull of a Southerly surf. Sarah and her brother Sunny knew the ocean was a goddess that deserved worship and mostly this happened all the time. People came waddling down to bake like slick offerings at her edges but not many of them knew the ocean liked to be spoken to. On flat days, legs dangling either side of their boards, Sarah and Sunny would lean forward until their mouths touched the salt water whispering their incantations and made up psalms saying, ‘You are the big ocean, you are the giant ocean, send us the biggest, widest, meanest set you’ve got.’
Sarah and Sunny were ready to go.
In those unmatched moments when it felt as if the ocean had answered their call and the sea swelled so high and thick their feet were a long way from the seafloor and the waves were monsters of their own—green rolling walls, breaking once and if they were lucky, twice all the way into shore—in those moments Sarah and Sunny would have died happy because they did not notice how close to death they actually were. Falling off the sides of waves as tall as buildings into the brutal undertow, mashed into the whitewash, dunked, slammed and tumbling through the turbulence until all they thought about was exactly when the pressure on their chests would cease and they were up—free—leg ropes snapped, their boards tossed around gently on the bank like a small taunt; Sarah and Sunny were nearly dead but they were laughing, staggering in the shallows like zombies, faces full of foam and a wide-eyed beauty, gasping in a language no one else could understand unless they’d been in exactly this moment too, pushing and falling against each other going, ‘Man, oh man, oh sweet fucking man that was epic, that was beyond epic, ha ha. Oh man. Fucking sick.’
Only when Sarah was much older, out on boats or in the big deep, did she think about Jaws again. Sailing, champagne in hand on the deck of a richer person’s vessel so frightened of being in an ocean where she couldn’t touch the bottom or be throttled against it. All day she’d willed low visibility, poor weather, high wind. None came. And no one noticed how quiet Sarah had become, how still, before she slid into the water like a table knife trying to escape a meal. Immediately, she noticed how the water felt different, like entering a diving pool when you were used to an Olympic—the tile too far away, the water heavier, the open sea too full of pressure and massive tide. Sarah watched as her fellow divers leapt off an underwater cliff face (what the most excited and gung-ho among them had declared ‘a shelf’), wincing as they dangled out there in nothingness like the silhouettes of water puppets, thinking there could be nothing worse than getting to a place where the world bottomed out and giant, boneless things made up of flesh and cartridge slivered somewhere below you for kilometres in the blue-grey, the space beyond so thick and hazy and wondrous and then so suddenly black—caught in the midnight zone, in the place where the light absolutely ended.
Now that Sarah is dead, cliffs and edges and endlessness and a lack of light no longer scare her: people do. On the marina not far from the break where she and Sunny used to surf Sarah hovers around a bunch of tourists leaving their shoes in neat pairs on the dock, struggling to fit into their full suits. They don’t really need them in this heat, and most leave the zips undone, but when you’re swimming with sharks a full suit is more reassuring. Sarah notices two anti-shark cages winched up on either side of the stern—how strange they look now that she no longer has a body to protect, how gruesome. Old Quint had called them monkey cages.
The trip to the islands takes two hours; half way there the boat pulls up alongside a sea lion colony for photo ops, the slippery black bodies a model for the rubber lures the crew will drag through the water later on steel poles, teasing the sharks with the doppelganger of their usual diet before they drop in the big hunks of tuna. Sarah watches the guests: athletic looking middle-agers, couples, backpackers and a group of young men all juiced up, chests puffed out to disguise the nervous laughter and clasping hands. The sharks are already near the boat before the cages are dropped and the berley hits the water.
When the action starts Sarah wishes she could close her eyes and not feel the vibration in everything. The images hurt. A dark mass appearing in the hazy blue, advancing, the lightening quick flash of mouth and hooked tail when a tiger shark becomes impatient. Then a great white attracted and confused by the slight electromagnetic signals given off by the cage thrusts its pointed snout into the gap, unable to open its jaw wide enough to bite properly, feeling around, running its teeth and gums up and down the metal and finding it unlike anything it has ever known. Sarah cringes as the people in the cage thrust back, thrilled by being somewhere they’re not supposed to, somewhere they’re not made for and do not belong. All of this disruption: the clacking sonar of motors, the anomaly of cages, the dead chunks of fish that don’t move or thrash or even look like fish, the fake seals, the human voices whooping, screaming in delight, groaning in the same quality of sound heard on rollercoasters, in terrorist attacks caught on tape, in dirty sex—oh my god, oh no, oh yes—the thrill of seeing something in motion that brings the spectre of death real close and then the awful final conquering of the threat, the enactment of revenge.
When Sarah sees the sharks moving she notices only their grace and their confusion and she wants the misunderstanding of what they are and what is happening to finish, to subside. In the end the guests on the boat leave ‘amazed’ and say they will think ‘heaps of sharks’ and that they’re ‘awesome�
�. And when they get home some of them will post hazy videos on YouTube of a ‘man-eater chomping on my cage,’ and tomorrow will be a different story. Tomorrow Sarah will follow the line of a shark net to watch one of these creatures die.
Far from shore, in the failing day Sarah follows the line: the gaps between the fluorescent orange buoys holding up the shark nets are her markers. What she misses most of all is how the salt water used to feel on her skin. The first splash on her toes, then the slow wade in, the tiny hops and futile jumps, the exaggerated shivers she’d make as the waves splashed up on her stomach and washed over her thighs. The relief when she dived through the break, her whole body immersed, the water rushing over her face, opening her eyes and watching the sand shift with the pull, the rush of bubbles and haze, the fluid curl of sand lifting in an arc and clearing back into the blue or green or smoky grey.
For Sarah the edge of the sea had always meant abandon. A place where she could float, slide through the current and fall into the unexpected thrill of another cold patch as if a thin shroud had been thrown over her. Being in the sea was more than just a moment. But when Sarah left the beach she would think the connection was over. She didn’t realise she’d left traces: a hair, the residue of her sweat, the buffered skin of her toes. Footprints. How the fish had felt her vibration and the pipis and crabs had retreated from the pressure of her feet. How traces had been left on her too. The blubbery touch of a jellyfish felt again much later and the sand caught between the folds in her ears and in the salty strands of her hair, dragged across her bathroom floor and washed down the drain. The ceaseless return.
The shark is almost in the centre of what is left of the net. Nearly four metres long, hanging at a vertical angle that looks unnatural, surreal, like an installation. This is how a shark dies—drowning with a glassy eye, the thin membrane drawn over in an effort to protect itself; the slow opening and closing of the mouth, the resistance to stillness, the lack of movement something akin to disbelief.
The net is an opponent the shark has no instinct for, the lines of the nylon so tight they have scraped right through the rough placoid scales, the tiny knives that make a up a shark’s skin thick like sandpaper and then finally, mercifully, Sarah watches the life drain away, thinking of all the people on the beach not knowing all these creatures, all these sharks, turtles, dolphins and stingrays go on dying out here, in the nets rigged up to protect them. And more sharks will come, attracted by the distress vibrations, fins breaking the surface of the water as they try to detect and hone in on the source and some of these sharks will be caught and some of them won’t. This shark, like nearly half of those snared, was caught on the beachside of the net. Leaving.
The shark has the grace only water has ever given Sarah and its slow death reminds her of the thousands of small, striped chub fish in the lakes of Vietnam where she had gone on holiday, their shiny bodies desperately still and perched at a ninety degree angle, their oblong mouths opening and closing in perfect circles trying to gather oxygen from the surface. Sarah didn’t know if chub fish always did this or if their eerie breathing ritual was more about survival—the lake by the hotel so polluted, up close it looked like thick grey soup or, in bad weather, a toxic iridescent green, slicks of grease and clumps of black shit congealing in the dead ends; the cloying smell so filthy it sometimes made her retch. And one morning hundreds of little white bellies upturned like streaks of lard in the dirty water. So many places on the planet where you couldn’t swim even if you wanted to, where the water and what people put in it killed more people than a shark ever could.
Sarah has no more cause to be afraid of sharks whether she’s in the big blue or not. There are no more influences, no more noise; everything is just what it is. She’s only afraid now for those who are left. The sharks or the humans, she’s not sure which.
In the stern of the fisheries boat the dead shark lies in a pool of detritus—bits of net, opaque flesh, old blood. No one knows about the gaps left in the net after they cut out the dead sharks. The skipper of this ship won’t call the newspaper people when he comes back in to dock, won’t winch the dead shark up on a hook. He won’t donate the carcasses to science or sell it off to make shark fin soup. People won’t gather and reach out to pat the carcass like it’s their pet dog. No one can tell you where one hundred million shark carcasses go every year. Why would they ever want to?
Monster
Loren Clarke
There was a monster at breakfast one morning. She wore a skirt matching a jacket matching a bag, all stripes. She blurred from the car to reception to a table, surrounded by men in tight t-shirts and reflective sunglasses. She put two sugars in a cup of tea then edged round a curve of rockmelon with her teeth. Small, smiley bites.
We served her like kids poking at a dead animal. My brother topped up her water after every sip. My sister overfilled her bread basket. I stared from the kitchen, watching her arm go back and forth with a cigarette. My brother laughed at my sister, saying she didn’t know who The Monster was. He spelled her name out wide and wet with his mouth. Marrreeee Caaampbellll. My sister said fuck off, course she knew, and threw a bread roll at his chest. My Dad turned round from the grill and stared at all of us, bacon spitting up behind him. My brother said how the hell can’t anyone know who The Monster is. Then he said The Monster was hot. My sister said she knew he would want to fuck Maree Campbell, in disgust. Keeping her voice under the whistle of fat on the hotplate.
Mum finished flying around the place shaking doonas and dusting televisions, and Dad put The Monster and her bodyguards in the back rooms, in the old Motel. I heard The Monster ask for no television and a mini bar, I heard her ask for somewhere dark, and quiet.
It was early December, so three thousand kids got drunk on our beach. Dad marched around, shirt tucked in, socks pulled up, shooing people off the lawn. He told Mum he’d be calm this year. She said it’s only one week Geoff. But the night the music started Dad yelled and pointed to the roster because my brother was already at Schoolies even though he was at Uni and my sister refused to take room service to The Monster. Mum told me to just be nice and handed me the tray. She’d put a yellow flower in a tiny vase on the side and so my sister called her a racist. Dad yelled again about the roster and Mum turned the radio up and ushered me out to deliver The Monster her steak sandwich.
Thick trees draped over the back rooms like velvet curtains. Hardly anyone stayed back there, except this older couple who said they were saving to move to Melbourne, but never left. They lived in the end room because it was the cheapest. I heard them drop their keys and tell each other to fuck off when they came back from the pub at night.
It was quiet except for faint beats of music coming from the beach. My feet crunched dry on the gravel. Honey panted up alongside me, following me up the side steps to the thin concrete landing. The Monster’s door was one next to the end, wedged between the red-headed bouncer who was talking on his phone the most and the older couple.
Everything about The Monster was smaller than on TV. Her eyes and lips were dark with make-up. She kept her head down until the door was closed. I put the tray on the bed and tucked my hair behind my ears even though it was already there. She looked at me everywhere.
A voice growled suddenly from the room next door, deep and full like waves at night. Another voice, high and crackling, attacked back. The Monster looked startled, realising how thin the walls were maybe. The voices continued back and forth, echoes and thumps against the wall. We stood in silence, staring at the stained cream paint.
‘They basically live here,’ I finally said.
She moved over to the small laminex table in the corner and lit a cigarette. She kept staring at the wall while she sucked so hard her cheeks hollowed in. Then something thumped sharply and she tensed and finally looked over at me. I noticed she had a tattoo on her ankle, a small star. I wondered who else had seen it.
‘Wanna move rooms?’
I thought it would come out quieter, sof
ter. She sucked the last bit of cigarette and let it fall in her empty beer bottle.
‘’ts OK… just feel bad for her.’ She stared hard at the wall again.
‘… They’re bad as each other but,’ and again it seemed loud in the room, like it didn’t belong to me. She looked at the dinner tray.
‘Smells good.’
Her denim shorts had bits fraying down her thighs like she’d cut them herself. She took the plastic lid off dinner and picked at some cucumber. Her red singlet hung on one shoulder. She stared right at me and I knew I should leave. I stared at bits of her dyed blonde hair coming loose from the ponytail, at the giant silver rings on her skinny fingers, at the bright blue veins running patterned up her arms. The bangs and yelling from next door became louder.
‘I don’t normally look this… casual,’ She looked down at herself. ‘But it’s so hot…’
The door swung open and the red-headed bouncer stood just outside.
‘Geez it’s louder than Schoolies in ’ere,’ he barked, looking at the wall. He moved forward into the doorway, leaning on it like he owned it.
‘Should probably keep this door locked, Maree,’ he said, staring at me. His tongue lolled about in his mouth, grinning. He’d fucked her before, you could tell. I put my hands in my pockets, slow, then I walked out. Red Head moved just enough and I thought our shoulders were gonna rough against each other but they didn’t. I slipped straight through and out into the heat. I traced the metal railing with my hand, and heard the music from the beach. It sounded like it was getting closer.
The Monster ordered room service the next four nights. I took it up to her, knowing that my sister and Mum and Dad and Red Head were watching me go in, and talking about me until I came out. In the day I dozed on the hammock or on the top bunk, watching for her towel hanging over the railing, or for when she walked past the window on the phone.
