by Cate Kennedy
When the déjà vu started this time it brought with it the phrase Studiously Aloof and the words Perils of Paradise he’d seen on the toilet door. Déjà vu about kissing Nadia and the feeling of suffocation, like both of them were stuffed in a long airtight glass tube. Déjà vu about being in this alleyway surrounded by the bottles. Déjà vu in the taste of tears and tobacco. Devon thought about pain in paradise being a pleasure in hell, and didn’t know where Nadia’s kiss came from.
*
He walked to Flinders Street Station. Let two trains go before he caught one. He listened to Primal Scream. He got to Brighton station on the last train. Got off and walked home slowly. Turned up the volume on his iPod until he could barely think. Unlocked the front door. The air in the house seemed vast and dead. Like it had been a tomb for a decade instead of a day. Everything perfectly placed and immaculately clean. As always. As though Roland and Devon Beckett had been living in a museum instead of a home.
He walked to the phone and plugged it into the wall. He turned his iPod off and pulled out the white plugs. He dialled the number for the police. He hung up. Took a breath and tried again. He told them he’d found the body of his father on the kitchen floor. That Roland Beckett was dead. He said it a few times before they accepted the information and asked him for his name and address and then told him they were sending a car over. They would have continued talking to him but Devon hung up and pulled the phone out of the wall again. He picked up his iPod. Put it down again. The light was still on in the kitchen from the morning.
Devon walked towards the kitchen and its body. When he got there he sucked in a hiss of air. The two perfect white buttons from his father’s shirt were still on the pristine off-white tiles. One with thread in it and the other without thread. But the body wasn’t where it had fallen. The body wasn’t there.
Devon couldn’t think. He looked around like it might materialise suddenly. He listened to the house and couldn’t hear a thing. He wasn’t sure if it was silent. His ears were roaring with sound. He wasn’t sure his eyes were working properly either. He kept blinking, trying to see the body of his father. But it wasn’t there and now he thought he could hear the sound of footsteps climbing down the stairs.
Overland
Publication Details
Antonia Baldo’s ‘Get Well Soon’ was first published in Island, issue 117, Winter 2009.
Sherryl Clark’s ‘The Other Side of the World’ was first published in Griffith Review 26: Stories for Today, Text Publishing, November 2009.
Louise D’Arcy’s ‘The Wife and the Child’ was first published in The Sleepers Almanac No. 6, Sleepers Publishing, Melbourne, 2010.
Robert Drewe’s ‘Paleface and the Panther’ was first published in Brothers and Sisters, edited by Charlotte Wood, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2009. Reprinted by permission.
David Francis’s ‘Once Removed’ was first published in Harvard Review, issue 38, Spring/Summer 2010.
Karen Hitchcock’s ‘Little White Slip’ was first published in Little White Slips, Picador, Sydney, 2009. Reprinted by permission of Pan MacMillan Australia Pty Ltd.
John Kinsella’s ‘Bats’ was published in Agni Online in November 2010.
Anna Krien’s ‘Still Here’ was first published in Griffith Review 28: Still the Lucky Country?, Text Publishing, May 2010.
Mike Ladd’s ‘A Neighbour’s Photo’ was first published in the Adelaide Review, issue 360, February 2010.
Nam Le’s ‘The Yarra’ was first published in Brothers and Sisters, edited by Charlotte Wood, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2009. Reprinted by permission.
Joshua Lobb’s ‘I Forgot My Programme So I Went to Get It Back’ was first published in The Bridport Prize 2009: Poetry and Short Stories, edited by Jackie Kay and Ali Smith, Redcliffe Press, Bristol, 2009.
Michael McGirr’s ‘The Great Philosophers’ was first published in Readings and Writings: Forty Years of Books, edited by Jason Cotter and Michael Williams, Readings, Melbourne, 2009.
Suvi Mahonen’s ‘Bobby’ was first published in Island, issue 118, Spring 2009. It has since been reprinted in Shalla Magazine (USA) and in All Rights Reserved (Canada). It was the winner of the 2009 Laura Literary Awards, Open Section.
Ryan O’Neill’s ‘The Eunuch in the Harem’ was first published in Harvest, issue 5, Winter 2010.
Paddy O’Reilly’s ‘Salesman’ was first published in Griffith Review 29: Prosper or Perish, Text Publishing, August 2010.
A.S. Patric’s ‘Beckett & Son’ was first published in Overland 199, Winter 2010.
Joanne Riccioni’s ‘Can’t Take the Country Out of the Boy’ was first published in the Age, 9 January 2010.
Josephine Rowe’s ‘Brisbane’ was first published in Small Room, issue 1, November 2009.
Michael Sala’s ‘Outside’ was first published in Harvest, issue 4, Summer 2009–2010.
Cory Taylor’s ‘Wildlife’ was first published in One Book Many Brisbanes 5, Brisbane City Council, 2010.
Chris Womersley’s ‘The Age of Terror’ was first published in Readings and Writings: Forty Years of Books, edited by Jason Cotter and Michael Williams, Readings, Melbourne, 2009.
Notes on Contributors
THE EDITOR:
Cate Kennedy is the author of the critically acclaimed short-story collection Dark Roots and the novel The World Beneath (both published by Scribe), as well as poetry collections and a travel memoir. Her work has appeared in many publications and anthologies, including The Best Australian Stories, the Harvard Review and the New Yorker. She works as a mentor, editor and judge when not at work on her own writing. She lives in north-east Victoria.
THE AUTHORS:
Antonia Baldo is a writer of screenplays and fiction. Her short stories have appeared in Southerly, Ulitarra, Island and New Writer (UK). She is working on her first novel.
Stephanie Buckle lives in Canberra, where she works as a counsellor. Her writing has won numerous awards and several of her short stories have appeared in the literary journal Island. She has written two novels and is currently working on a third.
Sherryl Clark’s poetry and short fiction have appeared in many Australian magazines and journals. She has published over forty children’s and young-adult books and two collections of poetry. She teaches in the Diploma of Professional Writing and Editing at Victoria University TAFE, and is a co-editor of Poetrix magazine. (www.sherrylclark.com)
Louise D’Arcy is a writer from Yackandandah in north-east Victoria. She has had more than thirty stories published in magazines and anthologies including The Sleepers Almanac, Overland and Imago. She won the Age Short Story Competition in 2010.
Robert Drewe was born in Melbourne and grew up on the West Australian coast. His many novels and short stories and his prize-winning memoir, The Shark Net, have been widely translated, won national and international awards, and been adapted for film, television, radio and theatre around the world.
Gillian Essex has been a teacher, a principal, an educational consultant, an author and a bureaucrat. She now freelances as a writer and editor and teaches corporate writing at the Centre for Adult Education. She is also working on a novel and two non-fiction books. ‘One of the Girls’ won the local section of the 2010 Alan Marshall Short Story Award.
David Francis is the author of two novels, Agapanthus Tango (published in the USA as The Great Inland Sea) and Stray Dog Winter. Stray Dog Winter was named Australian Novel of the Year in the Australian Literary Review, and won the 2010 American Library Association Award for Fiction. His short stories have appeared in the Harvard Review, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Age, Wet Ink and elsewhere. David currently lives in Los Angeles but spends part of each year on his family’s farm in West Gippsland, Victoria.
Tim Herbert is the author of Angel Tails and co-editor of the collection Love Cries. His work has appeared in The Oxford Australian Love Stories, The Best Australian Essays 2005 and most recently at gay-ebooks.com.au in the anthology Catching On.
Karen Hitchc
ock is a writer and doctor. Her collection of short stories, Little White Slips, won the 2010 Queensland Premier’s Steele-Rudd Award and was shortlisted for the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards and the Dobbie Award for women writers. Her first novel, Read My Lips, will be published by Picador in 2012.
David Kelly studies and teaches creative writing at the University of Newcastle. His first novel, Fantastic Street, was published by Picador in 2003.
John Kinsella’s most recent volume of poetry is Divine Comedy: Journeys Through a Regional Geography (UQP, 2008). His Activist Poetics: Anarchy in the Avon Valley (ed. Lucy Niall) was recently published by the University of Liverpool Press. He has just completed a new collection of stories.
Anna Krien is a writer of journalism, essays, fiction and poetry. She has been published in the Big Issue, the Monthly, the Age, The Best Australian Essays 2005 and 2006, The Best Australian Stories 2008, The Best Australian Poems 2010, Griffith Review, Going Down Swinging, COLORS and frankie magazine. Her poem ‘The Last Broadcasters’ won the 2008 Val Vallis Poetry Award. Her first book, Into the Woods: The Battle for Tasmania’s Forests, was published by Black Inc. in 2010.
Mike Ladd lives and writes in Adelaide. He presents Poetica each week on ABC Radio National. His most recent book of poems is Transit, published by Five Islands Press. His stories have appeared in Famous Reporter, Island and the Adelaide Review.
Nam Le is the author of The Boat, which won over a dozen major awards and was selected for over thirty ‘best books of the year’ lists internationally. He is the fiction editor of the Harvard Review and divides his time between Melbourne and overseas. (www.namleonline.com)
Joshua Lobb’s writing has primarily been for the theatre. Between 2003 and 2007 he was writer-in-residence for State of Play Theatre Company. This produced the plays Still at Aulis and Wilde Tales, which was selected as part of the Belvoir B Sharp season in 2004 and toured New South Wales in 2007. Joshua is a lecturer in creative writing at the University of Wollongong.
Fiona McFarlane was born in Sydney. Her work has been published in Southerly, Zoetrope: All-Story and the Missouri Review, and she has received fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and Phillips Exeter Academy. Fiona is currently a student at the Michener Center for Writers in Austin, Texas.
Michael McGirr is the author of three books of non-fiction: The Lost Art of Sleep, Bypass: The Story of a Road and Things You Get for Free, all published by Picador. His short fiction has appeared in numerous periodicals, books and anthologies, both in Australia and overseas. He was formerly the fiction editor of Meanjin and publisher of Eureka Street. He teaches at St Kevin’s College in Melbourne, where he lives with his wife and their three children.
Suvi Mahonen is completing a Master of Arts in writing and literature at Deakin University. She has previously been employed as a journalist in Australia and Canada but her focus is now on fiction. She has published short stories in various literary magazines in Australia and overseas and is currently concentrating on a longer work.
David Mence is a writer, director and dramaturge. As artistic director of White Whale Theatre his credits include Macbeth Re-Arisen, Convict 002, Melburnalia, Melburnalia No. 2, Othello (Bell Shakespeare) and Blackbird (MTC). David has been a creative fellow at the State Library of Victoria and is currently completing a PhD at the University of Melbourne.
Meg Mundell was born in New Zealand and lives in Melbourne. She has published journalism in the Age, the Monthly, the Big Issue and the Sydney Morning Herald, and creative writing in Meanjin, The Sleepers Almanac, Harvest and New Australian Stories. She is now working on a PhD about sense of place in literature. Her first novel, Black Glass, will be published in March 2011 by Scribe.
Ryan O’Neill’s work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. His short-story collections Six Tenses and A Famine in Newcastle are published by Ginninderra Press. The latter was short-listed for the 2007 Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards. He lives in Newcastle, New South Wales with his wife and daughters.
Paddy O’Reilly is the author of a short-story collection, The End of the World, a novel, The Factory, and a novella, ‘Deep Water.’ Her stories have won national and international awards and been widely published and broadcast.
Alec (A.S.) Patric writes in Melbourne and is a St Kilda bookseller. His Music for Broken Instruments was recently published by Black Rider Press. He was shortlisted in the Lord Mayor’s Awards, and his poetry and prose have appeared in literary journals such as Going Down Swinging, Wet Ink, Etchings, Quadrant, Blue Dog and Overland.
Joanne Riccioni’s stories have won the Yeovil Prize (UK), the Banjo Paterson Award, the Wells Prize (UK), the Katherine Susannah Pritchard Award and the E.J. Brady Award, and have been published in Stylus, Taralla, Westerly, the Momaya Review and the anthology Her Story (ed. Indi Zeleny, Adams Media, USA). ‘Can’t Take the Country Out of the Boy’ received second prize in the Age Short Story Competition in 2010. Joanne lives in Sydney and is working on a collection of short stories.
Josephine Rowe’s poetry and short fiction have been widely published and broadcast. She is the poetry editor for the independent literary magazine Harvest, and her collection of short stories, How a Moth Becomes a Boat, was published earlier this year by Hunter Publishers. (www.josephinerowe.com)
Michael Sala spent his childhood moving between Holland and Australia. He currently teaches and studies in the creative writing department at the University of Newcastle, and is working on a novel and short-story collection. He was shortlisted for the 2007 Australian/Vogel Literary Award and has been published in HEAT, Brothers and Sisters (Allen & Unwin, 2009), Harvest and The Best Australian Stories 2009.
Dorothy (Dotti) Simmons grew up in Northern Ireland and came to Australia after graduating from Edinburgh University. She is an English teacher and the author of a play, Night Exercise, and four young-adult novels (published by Lothian books), and has had various short stories and poems published in literary journals. She is currently studying for a PhD in creative writing at the University of Melbourne.
Cory Taylor was born in Queensland in 1955 and grew up in various places including Fiji and Kenya. She is an award-winning screenwriter, and her non-fiction has appeared in Griffith Review and the Courier-Mail. She is married to the artist Shin Koyama and divides her time between Brisbane and Fukuoka, Japan. Her first novel, Me and Mr Booker, is scheduled for release in March 2011.
Chris Womersley is a Melbourne-based author. He won the 2007 Josephine Ulrick Prize for Literature for his short story ‘The Possibility of Water,’ and the 2008 Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction for his novel The Low Road. His second novel, Bereft, was published by Scribe in October 2010. (www.chriswomersley.com)
