Figments and Fragments: Dark Stories
by Deborah Sheldon
Genre: Dark Horror, Crime Stories
Publication Date: November 18, 2019
Brutal. Compelling. Sinister.
From wheat farms, roadhouses, caravan parks and beaches to quiet suburban streets and inner-city apartments, award-winning author Deborah Sheldon tells distinctly Australian stories about violence, loss, betrayal and revenge.
Figments and Fragments includes three new stories written especially for the collection.
FIGMENTS AND FRAGMENTS: DARK STORIES
By Deborah Sheldon
EXCERPT OF A SINGLE STORY
Blue Light Taxi
You stumble from the bar, giggling. The street is a blur of
tram tracks, shop fronts and parked cars. There must be stars overhead, but the
streetlights are too bright for you to see them.
“Wait,” you shout, and laugh, doubling up.
Far ahead, the two detectives, striding to a Holden sedan,
stop and look around. You turn to the couple behind you. What are their names
again? They are talking, not making sense, every syllable floating off like a
balloon. The earth tilts beneath your stilettos. One of the detectives, the
chubby-cheeked one, suddenly has his arm pressed around your waist, his
sweating hand on your hip. You smell whisky and cigarettes.
“Come on, you can’t call it a night,” he says. “We’ve got
that party, remember?”
You say, “Just help me to the car, Hedgehog.”
The chubby-cheeked detective sniggers. Hedgehog is your name
for him; you came up with it during your fifth or sixth or whatever champagne.
His short hair is gelled into needles, and he’s pear-shaped, a waddler, a stout
little hedgehog on hind legs. You giggle again.
He says, “Can you walk? Do you want me to carry you?”
“Oh, no, I hope she’s not sick,” a female voice says.
You glance at the couple: the greasy-faced girl with her
scruffy coat shedding nylon faux-fur from its lapels; the skinny boy with his
straight-leg jeans, long fringe and cardigan. They are very young. Older than
you, of course, but so cloistered and middle-class that when you and the
detectives used them for laughs they didn’t even know it. But they bought
drinks too, so what the hell.
“I think she needs coffee,” the chubby-cheeked detective
says.
You push away from him and dash along the footpath towards
the other detective, who has his hands on his hips, his suit jacket pushed back
to reveal his crumpled shirt, his paunch, his shoulder holster, the butt of a
.45. Your stiletto heels clack and smack against concrete. Each footfall sends
shock waves up your legs. The world is sliding. The detective catches you by
your elbows, straightens you up.
“Know what you look like?” he says. “A baby horse, all legs
and no balance. I was waiting for you to face-plant.”
“Oh yeah? What would you have done?”
“Left you there.”
Under the streetlight, he’s a lot older than you thought,
maybe fifty. He wears his thinning brown hair to his collar in a style too
youthful for the lines around his eyes and the yellow of his long teeth.
You say, “If I’m Baby Horse and he’s Hedgehog, then you’re
Mister Fox.” You laugh but he doesn’t.
He looks over your head and says, “What about them?” and lets
go of you.
You turn. The couple is right there, staring at you. The girl
especially seems fascinated, like she’s never seen anything like you before.
It’s a look you already know from high school, you with your sneer and your
piercings, those scars along your arms. Cliques of girls look at you that same
way every lunchtime and recess when they walk on by.
“Hurry up, let’s go,” says the chubby-cheeked detective,
standing at the Holden sedan. Then he snatches a parking ticket from under the
windscreen wiper and flips it to the gutter without even looking at it, without
even commenting. A warm thrill diffuses through you.
A V8 packed with teenagers and thumping rap music ploughs
past. A bottle smashes against the footpath.
“Arrest them,” you shout, and lean against the Holden,
closing your eyes.
You’re bundled into the back of the car. You crawl along the
seat and slump against the window on the far side. The boy gets in next to you,
the girl takes the other window seat, and the detectives are in front with the
older one behind the wheel. The sedan pulls away from the kerb.
“Oh my God,” you say, peering around the driver’s seat to
point at the two-way radio and handset recessed into the dashboard. “Is this an
unmarked cop car?”
“Aw, don’t tell me this is your first ride in a blue light
taxi,” says the chubby-cheeked detective. “A fine, upstanding girl like you.”
“Wow,” you say, “have you got lights and sirens?”
“It’s a frigging cop car, isn’t it?” he says, and snorts
through his nose. “How many have you had tonight, honey? Bottles, not glasses.
You’re way past counting glasses.”
Yes, I am,
you think. I’m way past counting anything
anymore. For a few seconds, thoughts of home come to you, but staccato,
each one quickly lost, beads on an open-ended string. It doesn’t matter. You
don’t want to think about your family.
“What’s the fastest you can drive?” you say.
“Depends on the traffic,” the older detective says.
“Well, I can’t see much traffic right now.”
The older detective turns his head to catch your eye. He
smirks. The chubby-cheeked detective gapes at you joyfully and slaps his thigh.
The older detective says, “She’s a bit of a firecracker,
isn’t she? We’re gonna have to watch her, mate, what do you reckon?”
“Oh yeah,” the chubby-cheeked detective says. “Oh, shit
yeah.”
“Come on,” you say. “Come
on.”
They glance at each other. You become aware that you’re
holding your breath. A small male voice says, “I don’t think we should.”
Startled, you look around. It is the couple. You forgot about them, yet here
they are, two church mice.
The acceleration slams you off balance. The siren and
strobing lights almost stop your heart. Then you grab the back of the driver’s
seat and hang on, whooping.
The car takes a corner, tyres screaming on the bitumen. You
point at the red light up ahead and yell, “Don’t stop.” The car blows through
the intersection. You point again, yelling, “Drive on the wrong side,” and the
car fishtails over the line. The posted limit is sixty, but the speedometer
quivers over one-twenty-five.
The chubby-cheeked detective, his eyes bright, murmurs, “Oh,
honey, you’re loving this, right?”
You point at a one-way sign and yell, “Turn into that
street,” and the car does. You are god of this machine. The rush threatens to
take off the top of your skull.
There is a sudden dazzle of headlights.
The older detective leans on the horn and the headlights slew
out of the way. You blast past a hatchback, a shocked face at the window, and
your laugh is wild. The detectives are laughing too. You remember Mister and
Missus Church Mouse and how much you hated their white-bread sensibilities but
you’re expansive now, all forgiving, gracious, and you turn to them, a
benevolent deity.
It’s a scene from another movie. The girl appears to be
crying. The boy’s lips are pulled back from his teeth. The couple is shrunk
into the seat, clutching at each other.
The car lurches to a halt. It is a red light. A semi-trailer
is lumbering across the intersection.
The girl flings open the door. The couple tumbles from the
car and sprints down the footpath, coat tails and cardigan flapping. Their
animal panic makes you understand that you should be bailing right along with
them, that these detectives should be watching the pitching frills of your
polyester dress as you also run to safety.
“I guess they’ve changed their mind about the party,” the
older detective says, and turns off the siren.
“Aw, stuff ’em, so what.” The chubby-cheeked detective gets
out of the car, shuts the back door, and climbs into the front passenger seat
again.
The older detective turns off the spinning blue and red
lights. The car has pulled in its teeth and claws. Now it’s just another
vehicle on the road, a plain Holden sedan. Your heart rate drops, your eyes
fill. You’ve had enough but the night isn’t over yet.
“Ready, honey?” the chubby-cheeked detective says.
You nod.
The light turns green.
I'm an award-winning author from Melbourne, Australia. I write short stories, novellas and novels across the darker spectrum.
My latest releases, through several publishing houses, include the horror novels "Body Farm Z", "Contrition", and "Devil Dragon"; the horror novella "Thylacines"; the crime-noir novellas "Dark Waters" and "Ronnie and Rita"; and the dark fantasy and horror collection "Perfect Little Stitches and Other Stories" (winner of the Australian Shadows Best Collected Work 2017).
My short fiction has appeared in many well-respected magazines such as Quadrant, Island, Aurealis, SQ Mag, and Midnight Echo. My fiction has been shortlisted for numerous Australian Shadows Awards and Aurealis Awards, long-listed for a Bram Stoker Award, and included in various "best of" anthologies. I'm also guest editor of this year's edition of Midnight Echo.
Other credits include TV scripts such as Neighbours and Australia's Most Wanted, feature articles for national magazines, non-fiction books published by Reed Books and Random House, and award-winning medical writing.
Publisher: Severed Press Facebook: @SeveredPress Twitter: @severedpress
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