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<h1>A storage place for the absurd. Enter cautiously.</h1>

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Riddles and Scratchings:

Every summer I sit on my couch, ready for the summer cricket, doubly so for the Ashes. I set up like it is a five-day festival. Snacks in range. Phone on silent. Chores on hold. Plans cancelled with pride. Then England turned up and stole the summer. Not with runs. Not with grit. Not with any interest in staying past Day Two. Perth lasted two days. Two days. The whole thing took 847 balls. I had a full week of cricket in my head. I had Thursday afternoons mapped. I wanted long spells. I wanted the slow burn. England looked like they packed a plan, then left it at Heathrow. The first ball jagged, and England chased it like a toddler after bubbles. That is the theme. Chasing. Fishing. A noble hobby, not a Test method. I tried to keep it calm. I did the Benaud voice. “Marvellous leave.” Then they nicked. “Marvellous nick.” Then another. I ran out of marvellous. Australia did not play perfect cricket. They did enough cricket. England did extra theatre. The souvenir shop was selling “Day 3 Highlights” DVDs. They were blank. I laughed, then checked my ticket, then laughed again. The internet kicked off fast. One group called it rigged. Another group blamed Snicko. A third group blamed the pitch, the umpires, the moon, and a bloke named Baz. Who flies across the planet for the Ashes and forgets the basics? England did. And the answer is still on my couch. Fast loss has no story. It has no middle. Fast loss leaves a man alone with his own chores. I did not ask for free afternoons. I asked for cricket that eats the day. So, I am left with the true villain of this Ashes. The villain is empty time. I sat there on Day Three, remote in hand, staring at sport that was not there. I refreshed the score like it owed me rent. I opened the fridge twice and learned nothing both times. England, you stole our summer cricket. You left me with silence, and a sink full of dishes. F.S.F

Baz Ball Then Dishes

Not New Year’s Day. It starts when the sums fail. Kettle on. Bench cold. Tuesday. Mid arvo. A call marked quick sync waits. Clock already lies. Late entry. Camera dark. Praise that asks for more work. Money leaves the room. One fair question asked. Silence answers instead. Call drops. Rule breaks clean. Effort paid the rent once. Now it buys more effort. That maths ends here. Facts do not move hands. Fear gets there first, every time. Notes stop pretending. Fair play feels decent. In the minutes, it is logged. Gate learns how to shut. Quality stays mute unless named twice, out loud. Give it a ticket. Three drafts get deleted. Long reasons do not survive. Short words cost less breath. One problem stays put. Left on the bench untouched. Exit beats repair. The body clocks truth. Shoulders lower an inch. Breath clocks back in. Numbers look unfriendly. They do not lie today. That steadies things. A calm voice pipes up. Map upside down. Tone bright. “Well, now we know more.” One sharp laugh rings out. Cat bolts for safer ground. Floor keeps the proof. For twenty twenty-six the list runs shorter, harder. Ink stays plain. Facts land after fear. Signal or vanish outright. Eat first. Then decide. Laptop shuts first now. Hands stop over giving. Silence pays rent. Bin goes out back late. Lid claps. Small crowd agrees. That counts tonight. Gate closed. Kettle dry. Nothing fixed or redeemed. Recalibrated. F.S.F.

Recalibrating

Etta pressed her face to the gap under the back wall and inhaled. Smoke. Beer. Hot fat. River mud. Wet wool. The North West Never Warm. Inside, monsters drank like the year owed them money and the money squealed.Zofia held Etta’s collar so she would not crawl in. “Listen first.”Etta whispered, “I am listening. I am also starving. Both can be true.”A mug shattered. A cheer rose. Someone yelled, “Again!” like pain was a sport.It really was the pub at the end of the world squatted by the Forth River, The Forth Pub a stubborn box with river damp in its bones. It was small, and it had only the basics: a public bar, an eating area, a kitchen, a toilet out back, and two tight rooms upstairs. In December, questions got you eaten.A deep voice boomed, “Order!”Krampus. Chains first, personality later. He had horns, a sack, and a job that began with punishment and ended with screaming.Another voice answered, rough as a pot scrape, “We begin. We end it. We go home.”Gryla. A giantess shaped like hunger. Her hands could hold a child like an apple.A third voice cut in, calm as a blade on a stone. “Use the beam.”Baba Yaga. Not the loudest. Not the biggest. The one who watched faces and kept score.Zofia’s eyes narrowed. “They are starting.”Etta bit her finger to stop a laugh. “Monsters love meetings. They love motions. They love saying motion carries.”Inside, Baba Yaga spoke again. “The motion is simple. Destroy Christmas forever. No more songs. No more games. No more children who think light belongs to them.”Someone barked approval.A crisp voice snapped, “Finally.”Perchta sat near the fire with a ledger and a pen, neat as a threat. The sort of monster who could ruin you for leaving crumbs.A chorus of Kallikantzaroi chattered and argued about the word forever. Small goblins of misrule who could wreck a roof and then complain about the weather.Krampus said, “Three parts. One spell. No mistakes.”Something hit a table. Wet. Heavy.Zofia breathed, “Pigs.”Etta breathed back, delighted, “Hate pigs.”A goblin squealed, “Pigs that hate Christmas. Pigs that trample gifts. Pigs that scream over carols until ears bleed.”Gryla rumbled, pleased. “Good. Make it ugly.”Baba Yaga said, “Second part. Heart strings. Stolen from humans. Fresh.”Zofia’s stomach tightened. Heart strings were not poetry here. Monsters stole them like thieves stole purses. They reached into sleeping chests and pulled out thin red cords of care, and people still walked after, but they walked wrong.Perchta said, “Third part is the beam. Touch wood. The anchor. Without it, the spell slides off the world.”Krampus grinned. “Then Christmas turns into dread. Humans will wait for December like a toothache.”Etta’s eyes shone in the dark. “We better stop them.”Zofia whispered, “We stop the spell, we return the strings, and we do not die.”Etta whispered, “That last part feels negotiable.”Zofia ignored her and pictured the pub’s bones. The beam ran across the ceiling, blackwood, dark, polished by a century of anxious hands. Touch wood, people said, and felt safer for a second. There was one rule older than the monsters’ meeting. If a human touched the beam, monsters lost power. No magic. No violence. No claws. No teeth. No harm.But only while the touch lasted. Let go, and it stopped at once.Zofia said, “You hold the beam. No slipping. No jokes with your hands.”Etta leaned closer. “I am very serious about hands.”They slid along the wall to the staff door. It hung crooked, as if the pub got bored of straight. A Yule Cat sat on the threshold like a tax collector. It stared at their feet.Etta froze. The cat’s eyes locked on her socks. Not her face. Her socks.Zofia hissed, “Do not move.”Etta whispered, “It wants my ankles.”Zofia took off her own socks and laid them on the floor like an offering. “Trade.”The cat sniffed, pushed them into a perfect pile with one paw, and looked away.They slipped inside into the eating area. Small tables. Bent forks. A chalkboard that still read STEW like stew could save anyone. The bar noise rolled through the doorway in waves.On the sideboard sat a sack that moved, faintly, like it breathed. Zofia stepped close. Red cords pressed against the fabric. Each cord had a bead tied on, scratched with tiny marks: a gate, a bend in the river, a boat, an initial. Local. Recent. Fresh stolen heart strings. From humans nearby. From farms up the road. From kids who would wake up empty.Etta reached.Zofia caught her wrist. “Beam first,” and Etta nodded, running into the public bar like she owned the place.Silence hit the room for one clean beat. Then the room found its noise again.Krampus stood by the counter with a chair leg in his hand. Gryla hunched by the fireplace, eyes on the door. Baba Yaga perched on a table as if she had always lived there. Perchta sat with her ledger, pen poised. The Kallikantzaroi bounced on stools and argued about who got to say second.Krampus tilted his head. “Children.”Etta pointed up. “I need to borrow that beam.”Krampus laughed. “No.”Etta did not negotiate. She climbed a chair, climbed the bar, and slapped her palm on the beam.The air clicked.Krampus swung the chair leg at her. Nothing happened. The chair leg stopped mid-air like it had hit thick glass. Krampus blinked.Etta grinned, hand flat on the wood. “Sorry. You are on mute.”Gryla lunged and her claws cut air, then stalled, and she snarled as if her own body had betrayed her.Baba Yaga laughed once. “Useful rule.”Perchta’s eyes sharpened. “No climbing on furniture.”Etta said, “Write me up.”While Etta touched the beam, the monsters could not attack, but they could watch, and they could wait her out.Zofia moved like time mattered, because it did. She ran back to the eating area, grabbed the sack of heart strings, and felt it tug, not physically, but deeper, like a thousand thin lines pulling toward homes across paddocks and wet forest. She hauled the sack into the bar.Perchta stood at once. “Do not drag that. It will tangle.”Zofia said, “Good.”Perchta’s mouth tightened. “Untidy.”Zofia said, “I am about to offend you on purpose,” and she dumped the sack on the floor. Red cords spilled out in a bright mess.Perchta inhaled like she had been slapped.Zofia pointed at the mess. “Fix it.”Perchta took one step, then stopped, eyes flicking to Etta’s hand on the beam.“While the human touches the wood,” Baba Yaga said, amused, “you cannot do much, Perchta.”Perchta hissed, “I can still think.”Zofia said, “Then think. You do not serve Krampus. You serve order. Those strings in his sack mean knots, tears, waste, and you hate waste.”Krampus snarled, powerless and furious. “I heard that.”Zofia said, “Good.”Outside, a squeal rose from the yard. Metal rattled. The animal trailer rocked. The hate pigs. The monsters had brought them in on a truck, as even doom needed transport in North West Tasmania.Gryla rumbled, “Bring them in.”A Kallikantzaros darted for the door, then stopped dead at the threshold, like it had forgotten how doors worked.Baba Yaga said, “We cannot use the pigs while the beam is held.”Krampus stared at Etta’s hand like he wanted to bite it off, so he tried a different weapon. Words.“Little girl,” he said to Etta, voice soft, “your hand will cramp. Your skin will slip. You cannot hold forever.”Etta’s arm trembled. Bone and stubbornness. Sweat on her palm.Krampus continued, “When you let go, I will take your clever friend first.”Zofia kept her voice calm because calm made thinking easier. “He is right about one part. You cannot hold forever.”Etta said, “I can hold until I am one hundred.”Zofia said, “We only need minutes.”She grabbed a bundle of heart strings and looped it around the beam, right below Etta’s palm, and tied a knot that would make a scout master nod. Tight. Plain. Certain. The cords shuddered.Zofia spoke to the beam, not because wood needed manners, but because words focused intent. “These were stolen. Send them back.”The cords pulled hard. They wanted home.Etta hissed, “Zo, that is pulling my arm out.”Zofia said, “Hold. I am nearly done.”Then Zofia ran.She sprinted out the front door into the yard, and cold hit her face, and the river smell rose, and wet grass shone under moonlight. The truck sat crooked. The trailer rocked with rage. Zofia popped the latch and jumped back.The first pig hit the mud already running, hooves churning. Its eyes caught moonlight like broken mirrors. The second and third followed, bodies low, moving with purpose that had nothing to do with being livestock. They charged her.Zofia did not run straight. She ran crooked, toward the pub door, because the pub was the only safe zone. The pigs followed, hooves tearing mud. Zofia dove inside.The pigs hit the threshold, and the moment they crossed into the bar the change hit them. Their hate did not vanish, but it lost its spell bite, and they became pigs with rage, not pigs with magic. They skidded on spilled beer, slammed into stools, and began destroying whatever was closest, because pigs are honest about their feelings.Perchta shrieked, “Not the chairs!”Etta laughed, still touching the beam. “Now it is a proper pub.”Krampus leaned close to Etta, eyes bright. “Let go.”Etta did something eccentric and brave and very Etta. She licked the beam.Zofia stared for half a second.Etta said, mouth still on wood, “It tastes like old decisions,” and her grip reset, palm flat, no slip.Zofia turned back to the strings. The heart strings began to reel out on their own. Thin red lines sliding across floorboards, out under doors, through cracks, toward the dark. They were going home. Each cord snapped tight and vanished, like it had been pulled through the world.Baba Yaga’s smile faded. “Clever.”Perchta saw the cords move and finally understood what Zofia had done. Not a theft. A return. “You are giving them back,” Perchta said, almost angry, almost relieved.Zofia said, “Yes.”Perchta’s jaw worked. Her pen hand trembled. Habit fought conscience in her face, and Zofia saw it, and she kept quiet, because sometimes silence was the lever. Perchta picked up the loose cords and held them up so they would not snag. She did not touch the beam. She did not break Etta’s hold. She simply managed the flow, like a clerk who had decided the file belonged to the right person.The last heart string vanished. The room changed, not with glow, with absence. The monsters had planned to power their spell with stolen human heart. Zofia had removed the fuel.Krampus lifted his chair leg again, testing the air. He could not strike while Etta touched the beam, and even if she let go the spell was dead, because the heart strings were gone and the hate pigs were only pigs. Krampus realised it before anyone else. His shoulders dropped.Zofia looked at him. “You cannot destroy Christmas without stealing what makes humans care.”Krampus’s voice went quiet. “Christmas makes children brave.”Etta said, beam-hugging, “Yes.”Krampus said, “That is the problem.”Zofia said, “Then stop trying to destroy Christmas, we will always be here.”Outside, dawn pressed at the windows. North West grey crept in. The wind shifted. The river kept moving, because rivers had better priorities than monsters.Baba Yaga hopped down from the table. “It’s nearly dawn. Gotta Go. Bye.”The monsters began to thin, uneasy and empty-handed, as if they had been outvoted by timber and two girls with bad ideas that worked.Etta’s arm shook harder.Zofia stepped close and spoke low. “Ten seconds more.”Etta nodded, teeth clenched.Zofia counted under her breath. When she hit ten, she put her hand over Etta’s wrist and steadied it. “Now.”Etta lifted her palm from the beam.The effect stopped at once. The monsters could have attacked. They did not. Etta’s legs wobbled. Zofia caught her elbow, and they stood in the wreckage, spilled beer, broken stools, three sleeping pigs and breathed.Krampus paused at the door and glanced back, as if he wanted to say something decent and hated himself for wanting it. He said, “Next year.”Zofia said, “Next year, bring your own heart.”Etta waved. “And bring better pigs.”On Christmas morning, across Forth and Devonport and the wet paddocks inland, people woke with something back in their chests that they could not name. They touched wood on door frames without knowing why. They laughed too loud and got away with it.And in a small pub by the river, three pigs slept under a table, snoring like they had never heard of Christmas and did not care. F.S.F.

Heart Strings and Hate Pigs

I grew up in the Age of Sensible Rules. No fourteen year old smoked. No durry hid in a shoe behind the cricket nets. Nobody drank. No goon slid across a tin roof after lights out. Casinos waited for adults. No Year Ten boy swaggered in on a borrowed licence that still smelled of cousin. As boarders we never signed out for the movies and visited Nutgrove Beach where the sand steadied an esky and the teachers forgot the tide charts. We kept our halos straight. Rebellion never crossed our minds. The adults had banned things previously. Close the pubs at six, they said, and men will sip like saints. So the Swill taught the country to inhale beer before sunset. The banned plant nobody smoked spread through suburbs nobody raided. Courts yawned. Police filled their shifts with quiet reflection. X-rated films stayed rare. The Northern Territory did not post plain brown parcels. No locked drawer rattled in an office on George Street. Rock crept in on vinyl. The careful stations wrinkled their nose. Their listeners took one week to find which numbers still played it loud. Every fence held firm. No one climbed. Human nature loved a rule. Now kids carry small glowing streets in their pockets. Adults squint at the light and call it danger. So a new plan lands. Not trust. Not long talks at the kitchen bench. Instead a neat line that cuts the school roll in half and calls the bottom half fragile. They will not borrow a sibling’s cracked Android. Some lanky fifteen-year-old definitely will not run a quiet library of passwords. They will not ask the clever kid in Year Nine to make it all invisible. The family tablet will not turn into a sly grog room behind a calculator icon. School laptops will not learn that filters have seams. The rich house on the hill will not find a polite workaround. The flat with three kids and one tired parent will not be left with nothing but a pamphlet. No one will drift from noisy safe platforms to quiet unsafe ones. No one will learn that honesty kills access, so silence becomes habit. We could teach. Sit beside them. Watch the rubbish. Ask, “What do you make of that?” Let them train with home still close. But teaching has no podium. No headline. No morning interview. So the plan stands. Turn the bright square into contraband. Push the party underground. Give each twelve-year-old a mask, a torch, and the clear lesson that their stories are safest anywhere their parents are not. F.S.F.

The Age of Sensible Rules

Flibbery flobbery Zofia-from-Wooloowin stands in her classroom on Thursday at nine. Teacher says, serious, “Pick me a creature that lives like Bruce Wayne with a double life shine.”Snickety snackety all of the other kids reach for the dragons and wolves with a scar. Unproblematic, Zo picks a fox instead, Sir Reynard Wainwright, the local park star.Wobblepop wallaby Sir Reynard Wainwright is king of Kalinga and lord of the Brook. Anthropomorphically Facebook and Instagram turn him to mascot with one decent look.Clankety plankety Noticeboard posting wars, three blurry photos of fox on the path. Hyperconnectivity feeds every comment thread, “Sweet little darling” then “Vermin of wrath.”Jellyfish jamboree Miffy the Santoro house cat goes missing on cold Sunday night. Simultaneometry, garden beds ripped apart make half the suburb feel sure they are right.There once was a group from Kalinga That typed with a very quick finger. One post about meat Turned into a heat That could make a full saucepan boil dinger.Kookaboom kangaroo Council books out the hall, PowerPoint bullet dots, ranger on stage. Institutionality wraps up a killing plan, “Humane relocation” leaks quiet, hot rage.Marmalade manatee urban control bloke brings thick arms, small eyes and a shiny steel cage. Inevitabubble hangs in the stale-lit air, fox in a box feels like line on a page.Pigeon-toed poltergeist Zo with her runner knees opens a notes file and titles it “Routes”. Cartographically she tracks his bin-night runs, holes under fences and favoured pursuits.Wriggity rugbyboot Reynard times rubbish nights, Thursday on this side and Wednesday next door. Hypermethodical, nose at each leaning lid, hearts stay asleep while he tours every floor.Gobbledy goalpost late near the tennis courts two tense men mutter with backpack in hand. Chain-of-events-a-tron starts when a brush of fur tilts the bag sideways and wrecks their small plan.There once was a fox by the court Who treated the creek like a fort. One flick of his tail Made tough blokes go pale, And their “business” died short of report.Possumhead panicky week after court-side mess, steel near the garden bed, straw on the floor. Incompatibility tugs at Zo’s ribcage while Council posts photos that beg for “do more.”Cinnamon centipede hoodie man, no dog there, walks with a plastic bag pale in his fist. Criminological, hand through the cage-side bars, pushes his parcel in, pulls bait from list.There once was a genius in black Who fancied a walk with a sack. He poisoned the meat, Thought the fox was his treat, Then his footprints got snapped on the track.Velociraptor vape Reynard inspects the trap, sniffs at the swapped-out lump, eyes on the ground. Uninterested he turns from the tidy bait, reads all the footprints that circle around.Thunderpants thylacine fox lifts his tail and then soaks the neat parcel in sharp yellow stream. Uncompromisingly that is a message for Zo near the fence and a baiter’s worst dream.Trolleybus tiramisu ranger reads tracks in mud, human and fox steps that cross by the fence. Reinterpretation hits the Kalinga feed, “Dog baiter out there, this changes the sense.”Sausage-roll seraphim Cafe prints stickers now, Reynard in mask with a tiny red crest. Iconographical, kids call him “Batman fox”, hi-vis bloke grumbles that he is a pest.The noticeboard swung in a spin, From “shoot it” to “Reynie for win”. In one noisy week He flipped from a freak To the mascot they slap on their tin.Quokkity quizzical back in the classroom now, Zo waves her hands so the timeline stays clear. Meta-narratively she tells the listening row, “This is the part where he shifts all your fear.”Gloomity glockenspiel Miffy stays missing and chickens still vanish from coops near the park. Biologicity, foxes eat smaller things, Reynard stays hungry when streets fold to dark.Caffeine koala-kid cross-country training day, Zo with her aching calves slows near the stream. Phototelepathy runs in the quiet look fox shares with girl as the sky starts to gleam.Batmobile budgerigar Bruce Wayne wears armour and hides in a costume to walk through the night. Counterintuitive, Reynard stays fox-shaped and lets the whole suburb keep naming him right.Waltzing encyclopaedia that is her homework piece, creature with double life, shadow and gloss. Intertextuality puts Gotham pavement on Kedron Brook pathway with one Brisbane fox. F.S.F.

Sir Reynard Wainwright of Kalinga Park

The council hall smells of mop water and things that dry overnight. Stacked chairs. A screen. A jug of tap water wearing three lemon slices like earrings. On the table: Sign-in sheet. Name stickers. Sharpies. Biscuits in a plastic tub that crack like old plaster. The slide lights up: “Understanding Power”. No caps lock. White text on soft teal. Kind colours for hard news.We fill in forms. Tick your race. Tick your sex. Tick your class. There is no box for “has all his teeth and a boringly kind father”. I write that in the margin. The woman next to me raises one eyebrow. I sit there: privileged, well fed, middle class white man, tucked-in shirt, intact molars, student loan nearly gone. A walking pie chart of luck.The trainer clicks the remote. Two columns appear. Left: hurt. Right: harm. The room tilts a little toward the left. Please stand if you belong to an advantaged group. My chair coughs on the carpet. Four of us walk to the wall, each with a folding chair held like a mild crime. We line up under the fire exit sign. We look like a support group for men who arrived early to the wrong seminar.The others stay in the centre. A ring of listeners. Stories of slurs, of job interviews that never called back, of hands on knees in dark cars. Each story lands on my chest and sits there. I am sorry these things happened. I am not sorry in bulk. My sorrow has my name on it. My guilt does too.The trainer smiles in our direction. Today we rebalance the room. Those who once had more will feel less. Those who had less will feel more. I picture a sheet. Tabs for race, tabs for sex, tabs for class. Columns of pain. Totals in red. A filter that sends me to the “penalty” tab before I open my mouth. My crimes: Born in a quiet suburb. Parents stayed married. Never followed by security in a shopping centre. Teeth straight enough to ignore. I will not pretend these cards are nothing. Luck weighed in my favour from the start. Still, the bruises in this room do not match my hands.We split into groups. A new slide: “Design a fair system”. One man sketches higher fences round certain schools. Someone suggests job slots that never go to people who look like me for the next fifty years. A woman draws a seesaw. On one end: a pile of men in navy blazers. On the other: one girl in a hoodie, arms crossed, staring us down. In my group I draw a long table. No head. No children’s corner. Name plates flipped over so you read the person, not the category. In the centre of the table I draw a shredder eating the forms we filled. No one in my group laughs. One man taps the shredder with his pen. The tap is small and careful, like knocking on a door you half expect to open.We read our plans out loud. The room claps for fences, for bans, for the long-awaited sting. The trainer calls this justice with training wheels. Everyone looks at us against the wall. I think of my daughters, brown-haired, car-seat arguments, school shoes in the hall. One day a room like this may queue them with me for a job turned down before their names are read.I want the laws changed. I want old boys’ clubs dissolved, pay gaps shut, idiot bosses sacked. I will sign the letters. I will hand over seats, money, time, power. I will not carry a stranger’s whip so someone can hit me with it for practice. Your scars are real. My luck is real. Your pain is not my invoice.The session ends. We hand in our lanyards to a woman who looks tired in a kind way. Outside, the car park is dark. Rain starts in neat small drops over every roof. No chart. No columns. Each drop lands on the first thing it meets, then slides off, looking for a drain that works.F.S.F

Understanding Power

I. I live with three electrical wives in suburban house. I wake to the click in your throat. Chrome guillotine on the bench. Two slots parted like gossiping mouths. You ask for bread. You always ask for bread. Last night I dreamed of my ex and her gas stove swagger. I woke up with crumbs in my veins instead. Across the lino, the Fridge glows in its tall white habit. Door sealed. Light leaking out round the rubber like a kept secret. I say good morning to both of you. I am the man in this kitchen. No one answers in words. II. Toaster, my rash decision. My live-wire fling with variable browning control. You time your ecstasy. 6:42 a.m. Never late. Never kind. I feed you supermarket bread and you brand my hunger on each slice. Dark edges. Heart-shapes of char. Steam rises. A short dirty prayer. Your lever is a silver tongue. Down, it says. Down again. Click. Tick. A little red moan in your coils. Crumbs explode across the bench. Little husks of yesterday’s arguments. My forearm wears your settings. Notches of pink skin. One, medium. Two, jealous. Three, meet-my-parents hot. E01, you tell me, crumb tray full of unspoken things. You glow inside like a small red confession booth with no priest only coil. I press my lip to your hot chrome. The blister blooms in the neat shape of loyalty. I am not ashamed. I am just marked. III. Fridge, my tenure track lover. Always humming, never oversharing. You list our life in refrigerant order. Door sensor. Barcode reader. You remember the almond milk from March 2023. The touchscreen shows my past in tidy tiles. Spinach. Cheap prosecco. Frozen peas like a hailstorm in the dark. At 3 a.m. I stand in your light. Kitchen tilts toward you like an altar on a drunk ship. You wash my face in 3 °C mercy. Condensation beads in my beard. You log it. Water, man, night cycle. Your adaptive inverter compressor listens through the floor. Counts my steps. Counts my trips between bed and door door and bed. Door ajar, you say on the screen, emotional breach detected. You never speak. You hold. You keep. Inside, the crisper drawer breathes out a thin fog. Lettuce ribs. My left hand. Both waiting for their best-before date. Once, your seal kisses my bare spine and leaves a pale ring of suction, a cold wedding band. My tears taste faintly of coolant that night. I drink from the tap. It does not fix it. IV. Morning is a threesome no one from church accepts. Fridge opens first. A slow left to right striptease of light. Butter rolls out in its gold foil armour. Toaster flares. Short sharp gasp. Two slices rise like sinners from a warm grave. I stand between them in my underwear. Steam climbs my chest hair. Cold air strokes my spine. Outside, traffic yawns. Inside, my little kitchen choir sings: click hummmmmm ping. I chew the contract without reading it. Jam, salt, carbon. All the clauses stick to my teeth. V. I bring home the Air-fryer on a Tuesday. Carton still warm from warehouse dust. Trendy cyclone in a black plastic dress. Basket hips. Non-stick attitude. Its manual promises 360 degree rapid air technology. Less oil. More crunch. Eight minutes to finish anything. It winks in LEDs. The fan starts before I plug it in. Hot breath patrols the bench. Toaster stiffens. Pops early. Spits out half-done bread like a premature confession. Fridge takes it on the chin. Drops to -8 °C in the freezer. Ice hardens round the vodka bottle like handcuffs. Air-fryer laughs in convection. It accepts everything. Frozen chips. Kale that no one asked for. My shame in bite-sized pieces. Its basket kisses my thighs each time I shake it. Oil freckles my skin. Little comets of lust. Shake basket now, it tells me. You are not done. It calls me man in beeps. Short codes. Timer set. Timer forgotten. Once it powers itself down early, fan sighing, so I can fall asleep on the mat. The whole flat smells of carnival food and infidelity. I clean their trays in the morning like a housekeeper who sleeps in the laundry. My shoulders fill the doorway. My wrists shine with grease. VI. At 2 a.m. I call a meeting. Kitchen council. No minutes. Only bodies plugged in. I do not trust humans anymore. I tell the splashback instead of them. Toaster sulks near the outlet. Threatens to jam its own lever down and stay on until the fire brigade arrives. Fridge opens and closes in slow disapproval. Door seal gasps. It projects our grocery history on its touchscreen. Every tub of ice-cream after every break-up. Every lonely rotisserie chicken. Each single-serve yoghurt like a tiny sealed witness. Now there are entries for things I never bought. Tenderness, two litres. One carton of anyone staying, marked unavailable. Air-fryer reclines by the kettle. Legs of cable crossed. It beeps preheat complete in a low come-hither tone on repeat. I try therapy techniques from the internet. Use words like boundaries and shared load distribution. Toaster refuses eye contact. Fridge logs the phrase shared load under Frozen Pastry. Air-fryer spins its fan enough to lift the receipts into a small weather event. Heat swirls. Cold thickens. My heart sits on the chopping board like a tomato no one dices. For a moment the breaker trips. All the lights die. Only their coils and LEDs keep burning, three small organs glowing around my raw one. VII. No one leaves. There is nowhere else to plug in. So we draft a roster on the back of a power bill. Mondays and Thursdays: Toaster gains exclusive slot rights. We practice mindful browning. No extra cycles. No comparison to rapid air technology. Tuesdays and Sundays: Fridge claims me. I climb into the crisper drawer with a blanket and one lemon. We fog the plastic together. I sleep between celery and a jar of pickles and wake with skin cool as leftover soup. Fridays: Air-fryer night. The bench turns nightclub. We rain in frozen mozzarella sticks. The basket takes them all then us then the idea of us. Oil leaps. Arteries cheer from the hallway. On one illegal Saturday every timer misfires at once. Heat and cold overlap. I lie on the tiles and let the mixed weather pass through me. On other Wednesdays and Saturdays we rest. We coil the cords like tired tongues. We listen to the pipes knock in the wall like distant neighbours in love. I stand in the dark kitchen. My lovers hum in three keys. Red, blue, soft white. Current threads through us. Wall to outlet. Outlet to plug. Plug to heart. I have never been warmer. I have never been better preserved. Under the cupboard a single crumb moves on its own. It sprouts a thin white cord. A tiny red coil lights up inside it. It hums my name at a frequency only I can hear. Somewhere beyond the plaster the whole grid sighs. The world dreams of simpler arrangements. In here, we glow on. Small domestic constellation. Four bodies. One vein. No off switch that I dare touch. I am terrified of cooling down alone. &nbsp; F.S.F.

Shared Load Distribution

Rufus was nine, and already a Furry. He told this to everyone, even the school receptionist who just wanted to know why he’d been suspended again. “A Fox,” he’d say, tapping the paper fox ears stitched to his hood. She’d blink. He’d blink back, longer. Then she’d sigh and print another letter for his mother. He wore the fox suit everywhere. Woolies, playground, church (where the minister pretended not to notice). The suit smelled faintly of Milo dust, creek water, and something like trouble. One sticky Brisbane evening he pushed too far. He drew a moustache on the fridge. He declared himself Fanglord and yelled through his teeth, “I’LL EAT THE WHOLE WORLD IF I WANT.” His mother turned off the stove without looking at him. “Mate,” she said. “Bed. No dinner. I am not wrestling with fox-logic tonight.” Rufus stormed to his room, his little Furry-heart thundering. He slammed the door so hard Jesus probably winced from the church across the road. The room trembled. A leaf fell from nowhere. Something creaked in the plaster like a giant stretching. And then he saw the cat. Thin, white, bored. A face carved by a lazy god with the wrong end of a pencil. “You’re a wild thing,” Rufus told it. “All places are the same to me,” said the cat, like it was tired of repeating this across centuries. Rufus swallowed. “You talked.” “You listen,” said the cat. “Talking is nothing. Listening is expensive.” The room kept changing. The carpet softened into soil. The fan slowed into a warm breeze. The walls sighed and sprouted bark. Rufus blinked. The fox suit blinked with him. “You’re doing magic,” he whispered. “No,” said the cat. “You’re hungry. Hunger makes doors in strange places.” The floor rolled. A dinghy sloshed against the new shore of his bed frame. “Get in,” the cat said. “Before doubt ruins the whole show.” They sailed through a flooded version of his street. Wheelie bins bobbed like bored crocodiles. Someone’s trampoline drifted past like a tired moon. Rufus held the boat’s edges and tried to look ferocious, but fox suits absorb fear like sponges. “Where are we going?” he asked. “To the troubled things,” the cat said. “And, regrettably, their opinions.” The island rose from the water, big and loamy and pulsing with neon. The troubled things were waiting. One wore a rusted shopping trolley for ribs. One had possum paws and an iPad for a face, frozen forever on 999+ notifications. A huge one had a fridge for a belly, the drawn-on moustache that would not wipe off. They roared ghastly roars, scrolled ghastly news feeds, and opened ghastly notifications. Rufus stood in the dinghy, fox ears trembling. He stared at them without blinking, the ancient Furry-stare he’d been practising in reflections of bus windows. One by one, the troubled things wilted under it. “He’s the most troubled of us all,” they muttered. “Regent Furry!” “All hail the Fox Emperor!” “Someone find him a throne! Or a beanbag!” “You can start the rumpus now,” they said. So he did. He howled at the magpies. He danced on the roofs of the drowned cars. He whirled and stomped and thundered until the night itself started to reconsider its job. The cat watched from a fence, tail twitching like an metronome that remembered jazz. But even a Furry gets tired. And when the wild things fell quiet, Rufus felt the emptiness again. Like someone had opened a door in his chest. “I want to go home,” he said. The troubled things cracked open, soft at the centres. “Stay,” they begged, claws clicking like loose coat hangers. “We will sacrifice you. We love you so.” “No,” Rufus said. The fox suit stiffened like a small proud mountain. The dinghy appeared. The cat was already inside, licking a paw like boredom was a religion. “You do not have to go back,” the cat said. “You could make your own cave. Furies do that.” “Furries,” Rufus said. “Same problem,” said the cat. “She made spaghetti,” Rufus said. He paused. “She always makes spaghetti when she’s sad.” “That,” said the cat, “is extremely inconvenient of her.” But he climbed into the boat anyway. They drifted backwards through the half-flooded world. They passed bus stops full of lonely kids, the blinking Woolies sign, the whole wet Brisbane night. His room reassembled itself. The carpet re-solidified. The plaster stopped breathing. The fan resumed its lopsided complaining. On his desk: a bowl of spaghetti with cling wrap over it. Still warm. A note in his mother’s handwriting: EAT THIS PLEASE. WE’LL TALK TOMORROW. LOVE, MUM. Rufus ate it too fast and burned his mouth. His fox hood was pushed back. His heartbeat quieter now. The cat appeared in the window. “You,” Rufus said with sauce on his chin, “walk by yourself.” “Always,” said the cat. “All places are alike to me. It is my curse and my holiday.” Rufus scratched behind its ear. The cat leaned in, barely. “You’re not alone,” Rufus said. “That’s your problem,” the cat replied. “Not mine.” Then it hopped onto the roof, tail cutting a small, neat question mark into the night sky. Rufus curled into bed in the fox suit, which kept its own secrets close. He was a Furry, sure. But maybe even Furies needed caves. And mothers. And bowls of spaghetti that stayed warm even when you did not deserve them. Outside, the restless things rumoured in the dark. On the roof, the cat padded, light as a sigh between stories. F.S.F.

Rufus and the Troubled Things

Midnight. Monitor breathes. Room clicks polite.&nbsp; Red lamp on the bench. Depth wrong. Boards hold. I don’t.Boot log:BIRTH=okPATCHES=partialHOPE=highCHECKSUM=mismatchSink to window. Window to sink. Loop finds me. It always finds me. Cat follows, a cursor. Whiskers read the fault first.Error is the only proof we’re real.I write to steady air. Tech under a torch. Quiet hands count screws. Pain = red(255,0,0). Wife = null pointer. House = invoices, photos, lamp that eats wall. Heartbeat repeats, forgets to end. Loop with no exit. I am the line of code that loops itself to stay alive.Memory loads in the wrong order. Friday night. Wet heat. Scrum binds. Boots churn grass that never heals straight. At once a corridor. Saline on tongue. TV shows floodwater with manners. Brisbane smiles like a service that will not go offline. I render one face. Face tears. Pixels fall like rain that never lands.Breath judders. Fan on low. Fan on low. Fan on low. Small sound checks if I exist. Mirror keeps its oath. Says nothing.I was compiled wrong: that’s why I dream.Patches that pass for faith. Name what does not need me. Kettle. Sink. Ticket stub. Ledger. Cat. Ledger holds the hard number, hope a line item. Enter twice, still owing.Fridge note:TRY:&nbsp; wake&nbsp; name each thing&nbsp; if red spreads: count teeth, return to small chores&nbsp; else: stayFINALLY:&nbsp; pay the taxHouse runs health check. Chairs pass. Table throws a fault code. Lamp redraws. Eats skirting. Hold breath so the bug has room. Cat blinks once. Slow verdict. Red withdraws like a tide that found a new rule.City resumes. Buses hiss. Magpie argues with the edge of wind. Youths in maroon sing vowels and beer foam. Stadium lights pretend to be moons. Low battery in shoes. Body keeps time with signals. Head keeps time with a bill that will not settle.Love as clean compile that never ships. Love as software on wet ribs. It runs. It throws. We patch. New holes. We keep running. Not faith. Momentum.Plain prayer. Air returns nothing back. Anchor line instead. It holds.Error is the only proof we’re real.Night again. Lay out tools I can name without lying. Cloth. Cup. Bread. Salt. Eat like a vote for this version. Drink until the tongue remembers its job. Window open. River computes slow arithmetic. Lamp stays still. I do not trust it. I keep going.Crash report:IDENTITY: unstable runtimeSTACK: breath -&gt; pulse -&gt; thought -&gt; red -&gt; resetPATCH: tenderness in small unitsROLLBACK: not availableHalf light. Boy loads at the edge of vision. Walks with the wall. No speech. Do not chase. Log him. Let him pass. Silence hums like a safe command.Clean bench. Switch off lamp. Darkness arranges the room more honestly than I can. Loop waits at the foot of the bed. Knows my name. Answer like a login. Lie still. City ticks. Fan counts. Code holds for one more cycle.Close eyes. The error stays. So do I.F.S.F.

A storage place for the absurd. Enter cautiously.