The Year's Best Australian SF & Fantasy - vol 05 Read online

  And, for the umpteenth time, stops herself at the very last second.

  It might only make things worse.

  No idea who her neighbours are, after all. A single woman, the agent’s assurance during inspection, quiet and tidy, you’ll have no trouble there - and with that now so obviously a lie, who the hell knows what she’s moved in next door to on a fucking twelve month lease?

  The shouting ceases, gives way to sobbing. Soft, feminine cries that Faith almost can’t hear and somehow that only makes it worse. So: two more RelaxaTabs before curling tight beneath the blanket with her chin tucked close to her chest and no matter that it’s harder to breath through her congestion like that.

  Harder still to sleep with what she can hear - and imagine - beyond that wall.

  Between the opening screech of her neighbour’s security door and the brash metallic clatter as it slams shut again, Faith shrugs into her dressing gown. Cinches the faded terrycloth belt around her waist and hop-foots it down the hall wearing just the single ugg boot slipper because god only knows where the other one’s hiding and there sure isn’t any time to mount a search party. White-trash Cinderella half tripping out her own front door and, “Hey,” she calls to the woman already turning away from the letterboxes. “Hey, wait up.”

  Whatever she might have expected, it isn’t this. Tall, much taller than Faith herself but certainly not much older, early thirties at most and even that would be pushing it. A sun-dress of faded sky-blue clothing the sort of slim-hipped androgyny Faith might once have killed to possess, and something so ... solid in the way she pauses, tiger-in-the-grass motionless with her face half turned away and hidden beneath a wave of blood-bright hair.

  “Can I help you?” the woman asks, blade-sharp voice with an accent too vague to place.

  Faith blinks in the morning glare, one hand raised to shield her eyes. “Sorry, just wanted a word. About the ... um, the ... look, I’m feeling pretty crap right now and I really need to get some sleep, so ...”

  “I’m making too much noise.”

  “Well, yeah. I mean, normally -”

  “Normally you wouldn’t be here.” The woman looks up then, looks right at her with dark eyes surrounded by even darker flesh, fist-sized bruises and a scabby-swollen cut on her lower lip, and Faith swallows, tries to find some words, any words, but the woman waves them away. “My apologies. I assumed you worked during the day. I didn’t realize you were ill.”

  Forget about it, Faith wants to tells her, wants to ask if there is anything she needs like maybe a hospital or several shots of morphine maybe, but all at once it’s so damn hot out here and the sunlight really is too bright, searing-white-bright like the unmarred skin on the woman’s face, what little there is of it, and, how rude, when she doesn’t even know me from Adam.

  So: “I’m Faith.” Right hand stuck out and trembling, and the woman regards it like a dead thing for a moment, dead or near enough. Looks at her that way too with oil-slick eyes impossibly black and shot with colours like Faith has never seen before, colours she can’t even name. “Mara,” the woman says.

  Mara, a bassline thrumming through the sparks that jump and scratch behind her eyelids and Faith holds onto it, clutches it tighter than she clutches the frost-cold hand now closed around her own. Do you hear that, she says or maybe she doesn’t after all.

  The birds, do you hear their wings?

  ~ * ~

  If ice could boil, and still stay frozen, this is how it might burn:

  The seething shiver of skin on skin, on cloth, on the bare bathroom floor as she lies spreadeagled in an effort to touch absolutely nothing, or as much of it as she can. The water that ebbs around her chattering teeth, slips into her mouth despite the cool strong hands that hold up her head, long fingers curved firm around her chin when all she wants to do is slip beneath the surface and sink, sink, sink. The light that swells her skull, her bones, her guts; seeking to split her wide and spill itself into the world.

  blood-fever

  Barely a whisper from no one she cares to know.

  ~ * ~

  Here, drink this.

  Can’t, I’ll throw up.

  You won’t. Drink it.

  The taste too strange, ginger and chamomile and something else that just doesn’t belong, and - oh god, oh christ - the red plastic bucket still smelling of vomit from last time and this only makes her puke more, spasms so violent it hurts, until finally she rolls back onto the couch with a groan.

  Told you I’d throw up.

  The woman’s smile so subtle it’s almost not there at all.

  Yes, and don’t you feel much better for it?

  ~ * ~

  Three days, Mara tells her, perched stray cat cautious on the edge of the bed. Three days since that morning when she’d passed out by the mailbox, and Faith feels nauseous all over again. Three days, which would make today what then, Saturday?

  “Sunday,” Mara says. “Your work called on Friday. I told them it was highly doubtful you’d be in next week but you would let them know once you were conscious again. Frankly, they didn’t sound too concerned.”

  Unsurprising. Newbie telemarketers being more dispensable than used Kleenex, especially newbie telemarketers who were barely scratching at the lowest rung of their daily quota levels; if EzyEzcape bothered to even keep her shifts alive it would be no minor miracle. Never mind that, after almost a week without pay, if she manages to scrape together next month’s rent in time, it will be the loaves and fucking fishes all over again.

  “Shit.” Faith tries to sit up, fails. There isn’t a part of her that doesn’t ache.

  “I don’t think you’re ready for vertical,” Mara observes.

  “I have to go back to work tomorrow. I can’t afford to be sick anymore.”

  Mara shrugs, do-what-you-have-to-do sort of shrug, and rises to her feet in a motion that is at once elegant and utterly final. Jaundice-faint shadow of a bruise on her cheekbone as she tucks her hair behind her ear, and only now does Faith remember.

  “Hey, you said three days? That’s how long I was out of it?” Frowning as the other woman nods because that can’t be right, can it? Faith has had coffee table bumps take longer to fade than that and, sorry, she insists, but that can’t be right.

  Not three days, not only three.

  “Why would I lie?” Mara seems amused, as though this is all some elaborate game, a prank or maybe some sick-day surprise. Like maybe everyone Faith knows is huddled out in the loungeroom with party hats and sparklers and a huge handpainted banner strung across the window: welcome back to the world.

  “But your face ...”

  Words failing as Mara lifts a hand to her own cheek, fingers falling across model-smooth lips that look as though they’ve never even been chapped let alone left split and bleeding. “I heal fast. It has been three days.” Said as though that were an eternity in itself, and her eyes are equally desolate.

  Leave it alone, girl; you have no business with it.

  Faith swallows, throat too dry for more than a muttered apology, and the smile Mara returns is only tooth-deep. “You seem compos mentis now. I’ll be home all day if you need something.” The square set of her jaw an unspoken challenge - but you won’t need anything - holding Faith’s gaze for a full three seconds before walking away, three long paces to the bedroom door.

  Only three days.

  “Wait.” The woman pauses but doesn’t turn round, only angles her head a little and Faith takes this acknowledgement as all she’s going to get. “Thanks, okay? Thanks for taking care of me.”

  “There’s multivitamin juice in the fridge,” Mara says. “You’re dehydrated and you’re probably ravenous, but I wouldn’t recommend solid food until tomorrow. Otherwise, you know.”

  A curt nod toward the red bucket in the corner, then the bedroom door closes and Mara is gone.

  ~ * ~

  Friday night, and Faith sits at the kitchen table with a bottle of red wine, unopened. The same kind she left
on Mara’s front step a few days ago with a thank you note scribbled in haste after her knocks went unheeded, the kind she’d once again planned to present in person, with more thanks, tonight. She’d hoped her neighbour would invite her in, that they’d crack open the bottle and drown whatever collective sorrows they managed to scrape together - which had to be quite a few - and maybe lay the foundations of something that might one day be called a friendship.

  New city, new job, and Faith is lonely. Not that she would ever admit as much with a clear head, a clean bloodstream; hence the wine.

  That had been the plan, anyway.

  But mice and men and smothered, broken blondes, Mara isn’t alone.

  Faith can’t hear the sounds all the way out here in the kitchen. Those same whimpers and thumps she remembers from when she was ill, sounds she’d later decided - hoped? - had been amplified by delirium, fever-swollen and exaggerated beyond all measure of reality. Until now. She picks up the cordless phone for the second time that night, index finger hovering above the 0 on the keypad.

  What if Mara hates her for calling the police?

  What if the boyfriend? lover? (rapist?) takes it out on Mara herself?

  What if the police don’t arrive in time, or even at all?

  Damn it. She places the undialled phone on the table, creeps instead down the hall to the bedroom and listens by the door. Nothing, no sound at all from beyond the wall and is that a good thing or does it mean that something much worse is happening next door? Or has happened?

  Bitch!

  The jagged masculine snarl so loud it might be in the next room and Faith near jumps out of her skin, hands quickly at her mouth to stop the cry that rises in her throat.

  But it’s what comes after that finally kicks her indecisive arse into gear. The muffled sobs for him to stop, to please just stop, echoing in her head as she races back through the townhouse. Grabbing the wine bottle on her way - weapon? appeasement? excuse? - and then straight outside, bare feet smarting on the gravel path that joins her place with Mara’s, running so fast that by the time she’s pounding on the woman’s front door, Faith is breathless.

  A small eternity until, just as she thinks no one is ever going to answer and she’s going to need that phone after all, there’s a flicker of shadow over the peephole and the door opens a couple guarded inches.

  “What do you want, Faith?”

  Mara’s eye is near-shut swollen, she’s bleeding from two nasty cuts on her cheek that seem in dire need of stitches, and that’s just the side of her face that Faith can see. “Are you ... are you okay?”

  Only the most stupid question she could have possibly asked but Mara actually smiles, thin icicle smirk accompanied by a shake of her head, that glossy red hair rippling over her face and Faith wonders how much of that colour tastes like iron right now. “I’m fine. Go home.”

  “You don’t look fine. You look like you need help.”

  Mara closes her eyes and sighs, a blood-smeared hand rubbing hard against her forehead. “Faith,” she says, and “listen,” and then there is some scuffling behind her and the door is jerked all the way open.

  He’s shorter than Mara, shorter even than Faith whose eye he refuses to meet as he pushes narrow-shouldered between them, shrugging into a grey suitjacket with a peacock blue tie hanging from its pocket. Faith can see the red wedged beneath his manicured nails, the flecks of crimson on his creased white shirt.

  “Phillip, wait,” Mara calls out but the man doesn’t even pause. Just half turns his head to mutter something which might have been forget it or fuck it or something else entirely before scuttling through the little front gate like a cockroach surprised at midnight. The hazard lights on a silver Audi flash twice as he crosses the road towards it, and within seconds the man is inside and speeding away.

  “Great,” Mara says. “That’s just great.” Sounding more resigned than angry, even though she’s standing there with both hands on her hips and eyebrows drawn together in a frown that just about freezes Faith’s heart. As does the blood runnelling down both her cheeks, and the sticky-wet way that black satin robe wrinkles against her ribs.

  Faith swallows. “He won’t be back tonight, will he?”

  “God no,” Mara snorts, “he won’t be back.” Then her gaze drops to the bottle of wine hanging uselessly at Faith’s side and she sighs once again. Bitterdeep breath that holds all the cares of the world and then some.”Come inside,” she says, stepping back from the door. “You and me, we need to talk.”

  ~ * ~

  Of course she’s going to look around. Mara having excused herself for a quick shower, leaving Faith to open the wine and wander through to the loungeroom, glasses in hand and bottle tucked awkward beneath her arm, and surely it doesn’t hurt to look. Not that there’s much to see; Spartans lived larger than this.

  Big navy blue sofa along the far wall, bare-topped coffee table and two mismatched chairs - one with a grey pinstripe fabric, and the other the kind of patchy brownish velvet you only find in the most desperate op shops or the trendiest of retro-funk cafe bars. Small television in one corner and a lamp standing sentry opposite, its shade almost - but not quite - the same deep blue as the sofa. But no DVDs, no CDs, no books. No little knick-knacks or photos in frames, no junk mail or shoes or shopping lists left lying around.

  The only remotely personal touch, the only hint that a human being might actually inhabit this space, is the large unframed canvas hanging adjacent to the window. A stemless, scarlet rose blooming against a near black background, petals open and weeping viscous red tears onto the once-white feather floating below it. Blood tears, bloodflowers; how did that song go again, that Cure song she’d left behind in Sydney along with her night-cast wardrobe and the rest of her angst-ridden trappings? Bittersad lyrics about trust, about never really knowing who you can. The feather is soaked, bedraggled, but still curves resiliently upwards, its tip pure and unsullied, so bright against the darkness that it almost glows.

  Faith runs a finger across one of the glistening droplets, and is almost surprised to find the canvas rough and dry, her skin unstained.

  “A friend painted that for me. Do you like it?”

  The question quietly asked, but Faith still jumps, fights the urge to hide her hand behind her back like a schoolgirl caught with cigarettes or something much worse. Yeah, she tells Mara, who has reappeared with showerdamp hair and a flock of bright-white butterfly stitches on both cheeks, black satin robe swapped for jeans and a sleek grey jumper. “Yeah, I like it a lot. Might have wanted to arm-wrestle you for it once upon a time.”

  Once upon a time, not so long ago.

  “Not now?” Mara smiles, or almost smiles, as she crosses the room to claim her glass of wine from the coffee table. She sits down carefully, right in the middle of the sofa, one leg curled beneath her.

  “I’m sort of starting over. You know, leaving the past behind me.”

  “Hmm, mysterious.”

  “It really isn’t,” Faith explains. “It’s just that the people I used to hang with, my friends or whatever you want to call them, the whole goth scene” - bobbing air quotes with both hands around that word - “they got to be a little ... poisonous.”

  “Goth scene?” Mara arches an exquisitely plucked eyebrow.

  “You know: black clothes, eyeliner, swanning around like they invented depression. Like it’s fucking profound or something.”

  “I know. There are goths in Melbourne too, you realize.”

  “Yeah, but it’s not my scene down here. And anyway, I’m ...”

  “Over it?”

  “I’m over me.” Faith slumps into the brown velvet chair, licks the resulting splash of wine from her wrist. “I’m over who I was back there. I’m over feeling shitty every damn day, and liking the fact that I’m feeling shitty, and then really hating the fact that I like it, if any of that makes any fucking sense at all.”

  “Perfect sense.”

  Mara is good, Faith will give her that. S
itting there sipping wine and encouraging Faith to babble on about nothing like this is just some cozy girls’ night in after all, like she hasn’t been cut to pieces by her arsehole boyfriend or whatever variety of pondscum he happens to be.

  “Listen, Mara, are you okay? Really?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Maybe I should drive you to hospital. Get someone to check you over, just to make sure there isn’t - “

  “I’m fine.”