The Flat
Here they come, congregating in the dust. Their feet crunch on the mica. As the air darkens it draws them out in twos and in threes. The foil-bright flash of their photographs are so sudden that many of them drop their cameras. They tie their shoelaces, flick their torches, check their zip-locked bags of dried fruit, antiseptic cream, knives and string. A sub-audible hum of object accounting.
From behind the blinds Anna watches them. Notes the men with withering hearts, the teenagers who know their blood sugar numerically. There are some who will be here to find the 'bigger thing', who presume they'll see an omen or a mud-God rise up from their retreating footprints. They are expectant. Latent. She imagines the lacework of their origins. Their empty townhouses and units, security lights on a timer, a neighbour to watch the garden ruin and legal documents in the custody of a relative. Some will not have a home to return to. Kicked out of the family residence or having sold-up before leaving. An illusion of complete mobility.
Anna recalls the words of an American writer looking out over the Mojave desert; There is some sinister hysteria in the air out here tonight. Sinister hysteria. Those words lift like invisible fumes off the crowd, who are now introducing one another. Well wouldn't you know, that's my name too. And my husband here is, The potential for breakdowns and burnouts. All the bright atoms scattered. It's Anna's job to keep them intact, to make sure they don't crack up.
Casey and Mal are moving through the crowd, distributing name tags and bottled water. In Casey's top pocket is a list of phone numbers; the priest, the psychiatrist, an obstetrician, a lawyer and a cop. Her contribution to the object accounting. Sometimes all you need to do is bring out the list and shine a torch on it to make panic evaporate. Anna's known people spun out in the dirt, people chewing their own tongues off who will still react to the words I'm making a call. Normally they want to add their own numbers to the list - an accountant, an auctioneer or a dentist they suddenly must make contact with. Or a teenage lover. Occasionally it's a teenage lover in some seamy Thai bedsit who they once paid to suck their toes.
Dark tours. It was Mal's great business idea when they first moved up to the Golspie peninsula. He had plans to lead chain-gangs of tourists across the flat at nighttime, scaring them with old ghost-stories. Stringing up bed-sheets on the trees to flap in the wind. Anna had a job lined up working in the doctor's rooms, taking blood samples and cutting out moles, visiting the old-peoples' home to fill screw-top containers with bodily fluids. She had been looking forward to this work; where people knew your name and paid you some modicum of respect. In the city it was junkies with veins like over-cooked spaghetti and the riddled cancer biopsies that proved impeding ruin. Here there would be long, warm evenings, chooks clucking over the back fence and the radio playing. A glass of cold wine on the porch. But then the dark tours took off more than either of them had anticipated.
The scarp begins to turn the colour of good marmalade and the sun is low. They gather to be led across the desert in the silty dark. Their feet will crack through the thin crust of the earth, releasing marrowy underground smells. They will believe themselves to be polished up by the sand, worn down by the wind, until their true self emerges.
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