Cirrus@Austlit

'In my last year of school I spent a solid day of my holidays learning how to shuffle cards properly. Prior to this, my technique fluctuated between the classic “grab chunks of the deck and smush them in between other chunks of the deck,” and the surprisingly effective, yet ungainly “fling them all on the table, move them all around, then reassemble”. Now, when I shuffle cards, I divide them in to two stacks and neatly fan them together, creating a pleasant rippling noise as the two piles elegantly become one. Everyone is appropriately impressed (read: not impressed at all) and then expects me to be good at poker. I’m not.' (Introduction)

'It was 2009 and I was standing in front of the Monash Creative Writers’ Group as their newly-elected and hardly-despotic-at-all President. I’d been talking about that weeks’ theme and then I’d told them to start writing. In a book that I’d read a few years earlier, a boy who wants to be a spy is told in order to prove himself he has to kill a chicken with a biro. The kids in my university writing group that I’d just handed pens to looked just as afraid. I cajoled them to get started, but even after being given a theme, a lot of them just looked around the room awkwardly, or simply stared into the distance.' (Introduction)

My best friend has this habit of talking to strangers. Wherever we go, he will strike up a conversation with the first person to cross our path, no matter how reluctant they may be to engage with us. It vexes my mind. Having grown up with my parents' constant reminders that all strangers are rapists and murderers, I tend to hang out on the fringes of these exchanges, hoping that my smile doesn't come across as a grimace.' (Publication abstract)

'I travel a lot, a real lot, and sometimes I wish I didn't have to. It's because I get too excited too quickly. Sometimes I climax within seconds, on a good try a minute, and then what I'm left with in my hands, often twitching, is all limp and spongy. It's starting to become a problem. I suppose in one way it's okay because no-one ever sees me do it, or if I'm truthful nobody it happens with is around to repeat it. But I know and I worry about it. I repeatedly obsess over it, trying to steel myself for my next performance but thinking about it just makes things worse...' 

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'Evening is eating the sky. Twilight hovers in the trees, lingers around rooftops, and slowly tumbles down onto the couple on the sidewalk. It's a narrow street. She is walking in front with her head turned to the side, listening, and he is walking behind with his head facing forwards, speaking. Rain puddles from earlier in the day are shimmering on the porch when they arrive at her house. They are not uncomfortable together, but they still inhabit space carefully, with more precision than is needed...' 

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'There is a thing about me which you might not know. It's an invisible, enormous pain in the pussy. I'm flippant about this strange and uninvited companion of mine in the same way you might snub someone who used to bully you, or laugh about a lover who long ago jilted you. Mine too is a relationship of resentment and frustration. It's not a secret, exactly, but I have spent a sizeable amount of the last few years trying to beat it into submission. Like so many unpleasant things, I hoped that disallowing it time and thought could diminish its impact, but I am beginning to see that the best way out of this mess is to square my chin at my ghoul and describe what it is doing. The truth of it is something intangible, as chronic pain essentially is. My particular friend is a shifting, agonising pain between my legs; not caused by trauma or tissue damage, signifying nothing, but ringing all the bells of anguish it can hold in its tiny, nerve-ending hands. Described like this it's rather insidious and my desperate attempts to end this pain have created an ambivalence, a toughness and a vulnerability. This weird pain has been both a terrorist and fodder for many inappropriate jokes, but please don't be scandalised by my poor manners - the act of laughing at something which threatens me has been the best therapy of all.' (Publication abstract)

'The classroom was a mess of noise. Our relief teacher was Mr O'Brien, the notorious eighty-something-year-old talker. Dave Reily had baited him, asking him about his time in the war, and Mr O'Brien's control had unravelled like a knitted jumper snagged on a nail. The next forty minutes were doomed to sleeping, gossiping, thrown objects and yelling...'

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'You stride purposefully down the vaulted stone corridors of Poseidon's castle. Your muscles ripple impressively in the torchlight. You have fought all manner of demons and gods up to this point, and none have proven a match to your legendary strength. You are Kratos, and you will have your revenge.'  (Publication abstract)

'The ghosts met at the end of the broken pier. The Council had once paid to have it mended in an attempt to halt the ghost infestation, but the next storm tore it down again. Then the ghosts just took over completely. It wasn't safe there. Not just because the wood was rotting and the ramp sagged. Mostly it was because of the ghosts. They trailed their muddy fingers in the soft blue of the water. They called "coo-ee" to each other across the banks. They gobbled up any creature that wandered too close. Not birds though; they liked birds...'

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'We were learning about narrative. We always learnt about narrative on Friday lunchtimes. As usual, Creative Writing Group finished about fifteen minutes before the bell, so that us erudite Year 8s and 9s could afford some playtime with other kids as well as words. I wasn't used to lunchtimes unoccupied by extracurricular activities - I'd learnt about narrative, but not the chronic side-effects of being busy - so I trundled instead towards my next class.' (Publication abstract)

'I estimate that I have visited 312 houses since the first invited me in. People are stupid, you know. They pretty much all keep their keys in the same place. It's usually in, around or under the letterbox, mat or pot plant. It's not breaking and entering if the residents practically let you in. Also, I never broke anything really important. Never ripped up passports or birth certificates or anything like that. I could have, if I had wanted to...'

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'At around 9 pm on a September evening in 1993, four men in balaclavas entered via the kitchen of a farmhouse property in Warraville. Holding various firearms, they demanded cash and illegal drugs. The homeowner was no stranger to what they were after. This was no random home invasion. The intruders knew him; they knew him well enough to know about his hidden weapons, his marijuana plantation and the barrels buried beneath the earth not far from where his family slept.' (Publication abstract)