I waited a few heartbeats for the lighthouse’s beam to glide over the top of the water, then leapt into the waves, quickly diving so I could disappear before it came back around again. I swam for I don’t even know how long, until my arms were burning with the strain and my lungs ached …
Harvey and Bucket continued following their guide, the trusted friend and ally to all plumbers around Melbourne, for some time longer, creeping closer to the business agency where the narrator worked. With the ladder up to the street just up ahead, Bucket wasn’t sure what to do anymore. It figured they might as well press …
I wish I was a speedy worker. I wish I could be one of those people who smash out their work in the first two hours of the day and then pretends to work for the rest of the day. But unfortunately for me, I am not. I am too much of a goody-two-shoes. If …
‘Oi!’ my mother’s voice rang out through the hallway. ‘Who tracked mud into the kitchen?’ ‘Sorry mum,’ all three of us – her very adult children – called out in chorus from the lounge room. She appeared in the doorway, an exasperated frown plastered on her tough features. She’d grown up on a cattle farm, …
How do I always manage to fall behind? I’m behind in everything and I always have been. I started primary school a year later than the rest of the kids born in my year. I didn’t have my first boyfriend until I was in my mid-twenties. I am only just starting my first year of …
‘You’re sure this time?’ ‘Of course I’m sure!’ ‘Yeah, but… you said that last time.’ ‘Jamie!’ my brother wheeled around to look at me, almost blinding me with his torch. ‘Trust me – if we’re ever going to find the treasure in these woods, it’ll be here.’ ‘What makes you so certain?’ I asked once …
I yawned and glanced at the clock, slowly ticking above the mantelpiece: one-thirty in the afternoon. ‘Much too early to be awake,’ I grumbled to myself. With a sigh, I slid the tape into the VHS player and stood back from the TV as the static took shape. ‘Oh, hi there!’ came a greeting from …
‘I just don’t see it,’ I frowned. ‘Is it like one of those… what’s the thing?’ ‘The what?’ my assistant, Julie asked, poised like an Olympic sprinter to finish my thought. ‘Yes, yes,’ I snapped, ‘the thing. The squinty thing, with the book and the magic and the eye—’ ‘Oh!’ she smiled, visibly relaxing. ‘You …
“Hey, Harvey,” said the bucket. “Pick me up and take me on all your adventures!” Ordinarily, Harvey would have questioned how a bucket could possibly be talking to him, but at this point, he’d decided not to wonder anymore. After all, it was probably just the will of the narrator to make a sentient bucket, …
‘Janet!’ I called out into the office hallway, whipping off my glasses and rubbing the bridge of my nose. ‘Janet, where the hell are the Peterson memos?’ ‘Peterson?’ Janet asked with a frown, stepping into my office with her trust clipboard. ‘Yes, yes, Peterson,’ I repeated, annoyed. ‘We need them for the deposition on Thursday …