After you left, I found the tape reel in your belongings.
I should have mailed it to you, or at least thrown it out. Instead, I threaded it through my 16 track recorder and pressed play.
Your voice floated out from the speakers, warm and close. The fidelity was breathtaking. It sounded as if you were standing right next to me. The hairs stood up on my arms. I could almost smell you.
You used to sing to me, late at night, sitting on the studio floor with half-drunk bottles of wine in our hands. It was your private gift to me.
And then you left.
I stop the tape. Rewind. Play the tape again, dubbing your voice to a second track. Rewind. Dub. Rewind. Dub. The tape warps. Static leaks in.
I repeat the process over and over until there’s nothing left of you but white noise.
~
image: Angelica East
text: David Witteveen
He crosses the wide beach furtively. Foggy days like this are a gift - he can forage during daylight rather than at night - but he still needs to take care. He doesn’t want to be seen.
He stretches his hearing to the limit, but fog muffles sound as well as vision. Finding food will mean taking chances, but then, it always does.
It’s been decades since the waters of Cheviot made him their own, but the price of discovery remains the same: he can live forever beneath the waves, emerging only when he will not be seen; or he can be Harold Holt.
~
image: Angelica East
text: Loki Carbis
Bound on the Ledge
Long ago, sorcerers cast spells to capture the mysteries of the world… Mysteries so deep that only the detectives trapped within them could ever hope to solve them. The sorcerers bound these mysteries into mere words and paper, to prove their mastery over them.
Over time, archivists collected the mysteries and placed them on this ledge. Each mystery waits only for a curious and incautious mind to come by, that will open and release the bindings. The mystery will then sneak into this mind, filling it with imaginings that take up no space but still fill a world.
The mystery will confuse and confound, in the hopes of making its escape. But then the detective within will wake from his long slumber, and battle the mystery, learning its secrets, solving and taming it once more. The mystery subdued, the wiser mind will cage it once more, returning it to the ledge.
The mystery will wait for another incautious mind to come by, to set it loose again. The mystery hopes, perhaps futilely, that next time it will properly confuse and confound, win the battle, and finally escape its prison forever.
All the mysteries on this ledge dream of such freedom.
~
image: Angelica East
text: Mike Walker
Lost in the Library
Despite our best efforts, vandals got into the library once again. While some were satisfied merely to stencil graffiti onto the Information Desk, others were more subtle.
A single arm broken off a letter and glued back on, an F become a T, and for two months, crime fiction loving Melbournians read only those works that had been placed aside for removal from the collection due to their faults.
~
image: Angelica East
text: Loki Carbis
“Those Dewey Decimal System-loving fuckers!”
Errol read The Librarians’ Scroll again.
Yes, the clue about the location was wry but unmistakable.
The 412 books? Yes, he seemed to have the required texts. Besides, these had been triple-checked by Lucy yesterday, which seemed already months ago.
Perhaps a little hesitation really was to blame, he thought as he pulled the books back onto the trolley. He checked his watch. The kiosk would open in 18 minutes - time for one last attempt.
He took a sip of his OJ and then picked up the first book.
Working steadily along the empty shelves, Errol shelved each book in its place, in turn from top-left. Imagining himself some kind of shelving machine, he adopted fluid but very deliberate movements. He stumbled briefly on the folio items, but readopted the same spine-up convention, afraid deliberation would break the spell.
In just over three minutes, only a handful of books remained. Careful not to break his rhythm, Errol looked up and down the aisle and then slipped the last book into place.
A gap appeared. At first it seemed too small, but then clearly large enough to pass through.
Errol grabbed his satchel, took a deep breath and stepped through.
And woke in his bed.
Last Thursday. Again. And the phone was ringing. Again.
“Crapsticks!”
~
image: Angelica East
text: Cameron Mann
Dürer had never seen a rhinoceros when he made his famous woodcut. He based his drawing on rumour, and other people’s art.
He got it wrong, of course.
His rhino features hard plates across its body like armour, and a horn protruding from its back. The differences between a real rhinoceros and the one that he imagined are obvious.
You know about magic. You know what happens next.
The first Rhinoceros dürerii was caught roaming wild through the streets outside the National Gallery of Victoria, where a copy of Dürer’s print is held.
Within a week, a dozen more had been sighted. Rangers rounded them up and transported them out to Werribee Zoo, where the great beasts lumbered around next to their non-fictional cousins.
The imaginary rhinos were solid creatures. They lasted two months before they dissipated back into the collective unconscious.
A theatre company offered to mark their passing with a performance of Ionesco’s play. But the city council banned it on the grounds of public safety.
~
image: Angelica East
text: David Witteveen
Rhino puppet by Snuff Puppets
Mate! No! That’s a ghost taxi. Don’t catch that one.
Seriously? You never heard of ghost taxis?
Take a look. See? The light’s on, but there’s no one inside. Not even a driver.
Who knows where they’d take you if you got in? Well, my mate Billy reckons he caught one once, and it took him to this secret party full of supermodels and cocaine. But Billy is full of shit.
You only see them late at night, drifting through the city like wolves hunting for prey.
Mate! Hey! What are you doing? Don’t get in that cab…
~
image: Angelica East
text: David Witteveen
Careful
The children are warned against reaching into drains: “You’ll lose a finger down there if you’re not careful.” She has always been careful. Sometimes, she hears them moving within the culvert; blindly reaching out with long arms and many-fingered hands - fingers stolen from the children who did not listen.
~
image: Angelica East
text: Ben Leong
