While everything was still orange, and the birds were screaming, Jodie checked that no invaders had sneaked into her cave overnight and she took the axe from the kitchen wall and put it on the passenger seat and fired up the Jeep and rumbled past the horrible Tenants Wanted sign which she couldn’t get rid of and joggled down the stones of the driveway and plunged into the highway.  She hated, hated, hated the half mile of driveway – that was where Tommy had disappeared. His doggy house had been stolen not long after He had left her. One of those monsters in town knew something and wasn’t saying.

She parked on the paving stones in the plaza, read the opening hours on the realtor’s office in the morning glow. The sun was about to sizzle the world. Numbers she could read without worry, and she could recognise some letters, and logos. Words were harder – words had to be trusted before she let them in behind her eyes.

Jodie decided that nobody would show up to collect their Town Cryer for another two hours. She heard a chip packet rustle across the cobblestones, and turned around, and stuffed her claws in her ears and began singing, and pulled one hand out of her ear and hauled really hard and managed to lift the heavy thick plastic lid of the newsletter box and began snatching out the nasty shiny newsletters, pinching their corners so she didn’t leave any fingerprints, and she rushed to the rumbling Jeep to dump the pages on the passenger seat. She may as well empty the whole box. With one arm, and still singing la-la-ha-ha, she strapped the seatbelt on them so that they wouldn’t fly out of the window. The newsletters were still warm– she supposed they had been printed at three in the morning and trucked here as summer burst open and leaked its yolk on the land. With her last armful of newsletters, she knocked the bin on its side and the lid cracked and she was already in the Jeep and some of her hair was caught in the seatbelt because it was so long that it touched her hips, and she drove right over a tussock and went through unending flaxes, squirting bark, and over a big stone island in the middle of the road, and someone was screaming and she realised it was her, and she kept her foot down hard on the pedal until she recognised the tan stones of her driveway and she could take her shoulders out of her ears.

Sammy cried and she yelled Sorry as she scuttled inside her home with an armload of paper and the axe fell out of her arms and she forgot it and ran harder. He was on her back.

When the door was locked and Jodie had a serving fork safely in front of her, to stab Them, she tried to read her printed letter in the Town Cryer, the letter warning about the invaders coming, the ones she’d seen fiddling with the phone lines, the ones in the spaceships. The letter was in a little frilly box with a picture of a round man. It was hard to stop the words and headings on the edges of her vision dancing, but she managed to focus enough that she could recognise her own words. She didn’t know if they’d changed her words, she’d have to phone the Reading Boy. They had put her letter in a little square on the corner of the last page. The boy had helped her write it, the boy she paid. She’d ring him up when she was feeling hunched and scratchy about something, and he’d come over and write what she was trying to say. He always sat as close to the door as he could.

She retreated to His study, panting. Her ears were whistling. There were still some of His things in here, but He would break her if she touched His things. He was away in the Philippines selling the Films with the Carrots. If he heard her touching his things, he would reach through the phone and get her. He had the best hearing.

She brought the newsletters in and lined them up, every awful Town Cryer, and began to tear them into even strips. She was ripping the editor’s intestines out, she knew they hadn’t listened to her warning letter, she could feel it.

She stopped tearing when she saw something, and phoned the Reading Boy. It took him a long time to cycle over. He helped her turn the words into sounds.

The photo that was looking at her was an introduction from Dr Andrew P-A-L-O-C-Z-Y-K. That was a funny word, spiny, strange: Pa…lo… Czyk. Something wrong with those letters. She couldn’t even say it, only look at it. There were letters missing! Funny word! But Andrew – the writing called him Andrew – had been working on something called the Indo… cheese? Pen-in…sula for the past fourteen years and he had returned to proof his notes and publish a new book while enjoying a little R and R. It was good to be back. He couldn’t farm, he said, laughing, his lips chapped with dust, his teeth white, wiping his Gaultier glasses on the tail of his cuffed shirt, but he could share the wonderful wealth of the area.

Andrew.

His friend was from here, the words said, his friend had showed him the Hill People when he was attached to the Service.

Research, he said.

Can I go now? the boy said, My mum said I have to stop helping you soon.

What do them letters say?

Nutter’s Corner.

Why is there a round man?

It’s a peanut. That’s where they stuck your letter, in Nutter’s Corner.

Why?

Can I just go now?

*

Jodie checked the bushes for snipers but they were impossible to spot, anyway. She picked some grass for Sammy while she was inside the hedge. There used to be snipers when she was growing up in the palms with the soldiers all around. That was when she was Ju-Che. When she tried to see it now, everything looked melty. She wriggled over to the hose and unfurled it then crawled on her elbows back to the cave and fed the hose in. The stones turned her elbows yellow with dust.

She checked for intruders on her property, and she especially checked for Line Men because they were fiddling with the phone lines all the time, playing in the spiderweb power lines, and she let Marky and Sammy out of their pen and led them across the rocky driveway to the cellar door, tied them, kissed inside their ears and whispered, “I’m going to marry you,” took the hose and sprayed the Yucky from under their tails, and asked them to watch over her while she dug. Marky’s pretty tiara fell off, so she had to fix it back on again.

She wheezed and a pink circle bloomed in the centre of her forehead as she hauled the cellar doors open. When each door hit the driveway, a cloud of dust exploded and she knew she was being shot at and she ducked and covered her head. The cellar hadn’t had any wine for a hundred seasons, it was just a dark cold blue pit with steel and wood doors that wouldn’t let a tornado rip them away. The cellar used to have a ladder, because it was straight down, buried in the earth, but water had rotted the ladder and the corks in every bottle. 

Marky and Sammy nibbled a few spare flowers which snaked out of the driveway toward the sun. They didn’t paw or snort or be naughty. Whenever Jodie was in the cellar, she could hear the tramp of each hoof, even from metres away. She couldn’t hear any cars coming: they could be in Invisible Mode.

She sprinted back inside.  

*

She chipped away for two weeks to make the cellar bigger and squarer, from frost to fry each day. She hardly ate, it was good for her figure, His voice kept saying. Don’t let ‘em know you’re a old lady.

The tornado doors looked like they would cave in if somebody stood on the dry, crumbly, splintery wood. She had to have it tested before They arrived, but there was no one around to test it. Sometimes the invaders winked and flashed from planes; sometimes Jodie would spot small mounds in the brown fields the shape and size of an invader’s head. Big pink men inside her cave.

Wearing swimming goggles and a dust mask, carrying a battery torch and a kerosene lamp, she went into His garage, peering through two years of dried moths and brown haze, and dragged heavy bags of cement out, gritting her teeth, hurting her back, until the bottoms ripped open and little hills of cement powder littered the driveway.

The little arrowhead picture on the cement packet meant that something was on the internet, the Boy had showed her, coz the internet was mostly pictures, and the funny pictures with hands and trowels showed her how to mix it.

She pulled the oozing hose down and fed water to the scoops of cement mix, raked it flat and even. Where she had been cutting the dirt away from the wall, showing the bricks, the wall was ragged and the cement had brown hunks in it like chocolate chips, but the oldest layers of cement had already dried and she decided she wouldn’t get in trouble. She stirred the stony soup with a broom handle, wetting it every four minutes, until the broom handle refused to turn. She mixed and spread the cement and kept an eye on the wine crates which she had stacked into stairs. She couldn’t get out without the crates. They’d begun to squeak when she stood on them. If they shattered underneath her, she would be trapped down here, and it would be so easy for Them to invade then.

*

Jodie returned the next day after her pussy-stretching exercises and her Junior Jumbo Puzzle Book and dropped onto the stack of crates, and tried to wrench the broom handle out of the new stone floor, and the handle snapped and pricked the underside of her arm. She stood there watching the soft brown flesh under her arm leak little red needles which pooled into a red blob. She stacked the crates and popped open a door and scanned the horizon, blinking a million times, picking a seed out of her eye. She crept out of the cave and showed her boo-boo to Marky, and Marky licked it. Then she held Sammy’s top lip up and scratched his gums until he shivered, and gave him a carrot and told him to put his thing away and calm down. She said Sorry about the films, and Marky blew a raspberry at her.

She shovelled Marky’s Yucky into a pile. Some of it had to be piled beside the cave, there were little mountains everywhere already. She said hello to the pig as she passed him. The pig didn’t have a name any more since the Film. She pulled the blue plastic thing off the wood pile and, one at a time, carried the flat boards to the cave and – checking that there were no dust clouds coming– dropped the boards into the cave. Sneezing and saying ‘Sorry,’ she dropped back into the cave, landing on the crates, which fell over as she stepped off them. There were six wine crates and, when stacked, they were as tall as Jodie was. It was easy to fall in without them, hard to get out without them. They would hold her weight, though.

She put a base of dirty, flat Town Cryers under the boards – it would be sticky, and she laid boards on top of the cement gunk, retreating from it as she went.

The base of the cave was becoming flat and even. When she pulled the doors down, they let in only a blade of light, and when the blade pointed the opposite way to the way it had been in the morning, and her throat was a dry leaf and she needed to go pee-pee but she didn’t wanna coz it stung so bad, she stacked the crates again, checked for people coming to split her open, hauled herself out of the cave, patted Marky and Sammy on the bum until they clomped back to their room. She went into the kitchen, slid the deadbolt and the chain in place, drew the curtains, checked between a crack in the curtains for attackers, and then made three sandwiches and ate one herself and gave Marky his favourite and Sammy too.

She felt bad when she peed, she was supposed to save it for the Films, but she couldn’t. She was being bad, and it felt red and hot and tiny little stones tinkled into the potty.

*

The sun was meanest between noon and three o’clock, but at least it made the spy planes wink and flash as they travelled overhead. They were looking for her, looking for a way into her cave, to invade her. The sunny season had gone on longer than it should have and her thighs were always sticky even if no one had been in her. It felt funny having shorts on, Jodie hadn’t worn clothes that much and she was still getting used to the feeling of warm fabric on her, like His hands on her all the time, and she kept having to turn around and say, ‘Who is it?’ and all that was there was a hot shiny crust of road.

Jodie wanted Tommy to guard the cave while she worked, but the village monsters had killed Tommy without even being seen. She never found Tommy’s body, but it was definitely the monsters. Some of the mean little people had spraypainted their names on the wooden poles at the end of the driveway where the highway flowed past the stupid Tenants Wanted sign. The ones whose cars had the low, gargly engines weren’t as bad as their dads, though, some of the dads had come out here to record that film, and the day was so hot that the edge of the world rippled like the black rings on top of the stove and He had given the dads six cans each and they dropped cans on Sammy’s straw and their handshakes were complicated and they all kept their caps pulled low and black glasses on their eyes and she knew some of them were supposed to be at work, putting out bushfires, and Tommy and all the dads stuck her with their glowing pink sticks and when he was making salad out of the footage, He kept saying, ‘We hit the jackpot, Jode, this shit’s big time.’ And the men were afraid of Tommy even though he was never allowed off his chain, and He scratched the back of his neck and said, ‘Oh I concur, your Staffordshire’s a scrappy fighter, but arks me again in six months,’ and then He left for Manila to get the DVDs pressed, and he told her to sell the bull, they were done with it, and he wasn’t here when Tommy disappeared, and her pinkness was too full of dirt and dust for her to even walk.

*

     Jodie was gossiping about Sammy’s black new bridle when there was a burst of insects and the ripping of gravel and Jodie’s legs turned to wood and she told the horses to get back. The dragon of puffy dust stretched along the entire driveway before the car stopped. Jodie untied the horses’ leads and slapped their bums, Go, Go! and sprinted for her cave and hit the crates, kicked the crates away and pulled shadow over her head.

Some of the concrete was still squishy and cold on her toes and she had to crouch in it. She could only block out the light-sword by putting both hands over her eyes. THEY’RE COMING, THEY’RE HERE, she whispered to the Town Cryer, and her heart slowed down just enough that the invader couldn’t hear it.

There was a CLONK and a sound like Him munching cereal loud.

I’m looking for Ju Che, the intruder asked the cellar doors.

No one but Him called her that so she didn’t say anything and tried not to shiver too loudly.

Sprechen sie Deutsch? Ha-ha, but of course you don’t.

A rectangle of his face appeared where the lips of the cellar doors met.

He asked her if she was taking a bath. Something sloshed and ice spread up her leg.

He asked her if she was siphoning the water out.

She didn’t know what that meant, so she didn’t say anything.

The intruder man said that her horses hadn’t gone far, they must really love her. He said she must be a good mum to them. You should tie them up, less you want to lose $3000 worth of Danish Warmblood.

He asked her how much she really loved them, out of ten.

There was a thud and a gasp as her back touched the wall.

It’s okay, he said. Innumberable cultures have rituals in which women and men lay with animals. He laughed, I tell you, ‘tis hard to retire when there is so much work to do!

His words were laughing. He said that she had a sign saying that there was a room for rent, Tenants Wanted. He asked her to come out, Pretty Please With Sugar On Top, but Jodie closed her eyes and her breathing stopped forever and she merged with the wall and let the sky turn the colour of grapes and the sun shrink down to a glowing cigarette. She could see in the dark by now. She didn’t hear the gravel crunch and pop but the invader must’ve gone, he must’ve.  She couldn’t breathe any more quietly.

*

            He caught her as soon as she surfaced.

She tried to draw the cellar doors back down over her head, and his fingers got hold of her singlet just for a second before she dropped out of the world and hit the crates and pulled the cellar door down but the door caught on his foot and he hauled it harder than she could pull but she still held on and she began to rise in the air. Then he let go, and she fell into the wet porridge floor and scrabbled away from the freezing water and the cement that would set if only she would let the air and sunlight onto it.  

You should fix your gate. You’re practically inviting strange men in, haw haw.

She stacked the crates as loudly as she could and opened the cellar doors and screamed that the gates SHOULD NOT be open and she blinked furiously and couldn’t stop her eyes watering. She was going to put cans of beans and bottles of water down there, but the invader would know where they were and try to take them from her.

Why’d you put the sign up if you didn’t want me to come here? You wanted me to come.

The man dropped the name of her husband and Jodie stuck her fingers in her ears.

He said he’d seen some of her films.

She said, You buy the movies from the internet. Not here.

Oh yes, I’m familiar with your site.

He sells them. Not me. I don’t know where he is, let me go.

He said, No one’s holding you here.

There was a long silence, and then he said that her horses needed her, and he was going to go make her a cup of tea, and pour it through the doors.

Just as the kettle screamed and steamed, the cave doors hit the driveway and Jodie walked around his stupid smirking face and shoved the screen door open and grabbed the axe from the kitchen wall and tried to rub his head out, and her arms were chopsticks and the axe was heavier than her arms and it pulled her to the ground and the blade cut a crescent moon in the lino and she fell into the jumbo bag of carrots. He tried to pull her up and she screamed at him and snatched the kettle from off the stove and sloshed steaming water at him and he stepped aside and when she had dropped the kettle and put her bum and her hands against the bench, he pulled a small book from his pocket and opened a page and began writing in it, and he was smiling so wide that his nostrils stretched. He snuffled until his breath had caught up with him.

     He boiled a whole new jug full of water. He said she could call him Andrew. The open door cooled their cups of tea very quickly, and she stood with her back against the wall and said he had to leave, He’ll get you, she said she’d get Tommy on him but she didn’t tell him that Tommy had been turned into money.

He took off his glasses and his eyes were even rounder than before, drinking her in.

He said, But there was a dog in one of your films – “Doing Dr Dolittle,” correct? Are you quite sure you haven’t misplaced your dog? Or has he become a canine gladiator, hm?

She had had people laughing at her in the farm store when she had been to buy supplies. When those people had laughed, it hadn’t been funny laughter, like when Tommy had got stuck inside her and He had laughed so hard He couldn’t even work the camera no more and had to fix it in Editing coz his hands were shaking.

The Intruder took a whole shift of the sun to get out of her face, and she never turned her back on him, she always kept the fork in front of her. Eventually he backed out the door, saying Thank you for your time, one hand behind his back, pulling out the small book and a little pen, and his shiny dark green car booped and he got inside it and when he plopped his bottom into the driver’s seat, the car booped again and locked the windows and he stared inside her house and wrote things.

*

He said her letter to the Town Cryer had made her famous in the town.

She told him she was already famous. I even got a internet thing.

He said, Of Course You Do, and then, The boy who’s been assisting you, in terms of literacy – you may tell him his services aren’t required any further. Let me help you.

He went away in the car and she raced to the window and pressed her fingertips against the glass, but it was okay, he came back soon, and he opened the end of his car and took the Tenant Wanted sign and broke it over his knee and patted his hands together.

You were asking for trouble.

 From behind the door, where she was crouching, she said she couldn’t move the sign.

He told her that she actually wanted him to be there for her. Was he wrong?

But he had already started writing in his little book before she even said anything back.

*

            He was there watching and scribbling notes when she filled Marky’s and Sammy’s waters, and stirred more pellets into the split drums the pigs ate from, and cleaned Tommy’s kennel in case he wanted to come back, and raked the soil and sprinkled grass seed in case they gave Booger the Bull back.

            Oh don’t mind me, he said. Pretend I’m not even here.

He said that the rent had been in her bank account from Day One, and to please tell him if she needed some more money, money was no object, and she was allowed to ring His accountant, and she did, even though the phone shivered in her hand coz she wasn’t sposed to, and the voice said that the bond and rent money were coming through whether she liked it or not, he couldn’t stop money coming in, and there was no legal reason that Dr Andrew Paloczyk could not be her tenant. If she hated the sign then she should have taken it down sooner. The phone was shouting at her, it was like holding a scorpion against her ear.

*

He never ate until after she had eaten, he just watched her eat while she listened to his pencil scratching, he watched her stretch and clean her pussy, rolling a carrot back and forth across the table, and gave her interesting things to put up her pussy, watched her pile yucky doo-doo beside the cave and keep the horses off her back. He only ever went to town for three hours at a time, and she would watch the baking road until the humps of dust rose out of the ground again and a car wobbled towards her and she put her back against the wall of the cool, damp cave and keep her arms on the crumbly cave doors and she only came out when he said everything was okay and it was just Him, only Him.

He asked her if the cave was still wet. He didn’t tell her to put more cement in, but when she loaded bags of cement onto Sammy’s back and brought them over and took a whole day sprinkling the grey dust into the hole, Andrew nodded and scribbled something in his small book. There was also a little black stick which he whispered into and sometimes held up to his ear and listened to his own voice coming out of.

Now the leaves of the turnips began to collect dew in the morning, and the dust stuck to the ground, and the midges didn’t batter her head as she trudged through the doo-doo to say goodnight to her special, snorting, snuffling boys.

The sunsets became more sudden, and she would still take the axe to bed, but she stopped hugging it because it was too cool, and he stopped sleeping in his car and started lying on the bed and watching her sleep, and then she woke up under a white moon and he was under the sheets, then he was heavy on her back and his breath sounded like a gale, and when she woke up, all the covers were wrapped around him, and he was writing notes while she shivered, then he rolled over and pinned her and pushed her ankles up into her eyes and he dropped his notebook, and wrapped her hair around his knuckles.

Don’t even think it, he grunted, Someone needs to stay here to look after your horses.

*

She wasn’t allowed to eat out of a pot with her fingers, but she did it anyway one morning and he didn’t tell her off. She didn’t want him to go to town again, except that he probably needed a new notebook, this one was almost full. And he’d been talking into his voice stick so much. She shifted her seat closer to him and tugged on the cuff of his jersey. He looked down his nose and pulled his elbow away and stared at where she had touched him.

What were you writing?

You wouldn’t be able to read it, anyway.

I been learning.

No, I’ve seen enough of your writing.

Enough for what?

     He folded his notebook closed, nodded and rubbed his eyes and said, They’re born vicious, even the bitches. That Staffordshire of Jeremy’s? Probably long departed. You can never take the fight out of them.

Then he brushed his teeth and flopped onto the bed, but she leapt off it and stormed into the Spare House, kicking his suitcase with its infuriating long handle and little wheels and threw his clothes around the room and crawled into his bed and wrapped her arms around herself the way the black leather felt and she shivered until he came over and rubbed her back and said, Are you finished?

She told him to be nice to her.

Are you FINISHED?

She put her knees into her armpits to make him happy. She could cross her legs behind her head, if that was what he needed.

No, the Cave, I mean – have you finished the cave?

*

     She only went on the first Monday of every month. If she didn’t clear the fan mail, the post office man got really mean on her. A man came one day and tried to give her a package and he didn’t even want anything for it, just tried to put the wrapped box in her hands, but Andrew scared him off and she closed her eyes and gripped him around his middle, thick as a tree.

She always forgot where the key was and it always felt alien to drive the truck – He had always done the driving, before he went to Asia. He had nailed up the Tenant Wanted sign and told her he wanted her to keep the income up while he was overseas selling the Petting Zoo trilogy, Jodie Feels A Little Horse and Jodie: Full of Bull and Jodie’s Dog Days.

She ducked into the mail room and stuck her key into the box and turned it and the overstuffed post box spewed letters into her sack. The letters had postmarks from parts of the world with weird colours and some of the letters had money in them, she could just feel it, and everything was always handwritten, and usually there were smelly powdery globs on the letters.

She bumped into a local and he said, The Cavewoman’s out and about! and she hurried out of the small room. Andrew had parked beside her Jeep and was talking to an evil man who sold lawnmowers and Andrew saw her and said, Exhibit A.

At the end of the driveway, he pulled up behind her and left his car doors open and followed her into the lounge and she punched him in the chest and locked herself in the potty room. She heard noise, voices, a donkey braying, and came out to find him with his arms spread wide over the back of the couch like a giant bird. He was watching Animal Farm.

He told her to take a seat and kicked the foot rest towards her.

He asked her how did she feel, doing these things for Jeremy? His pen was ready, hovering over the paper like a wasp. There was one white page left before he hit the back cover.

She sprinted out of the room and dashed across the dust and stones and threw herself into her cave and slid the iron bolt into place.

After a long time, he came and stood, blocking the last light, and then he said that she couldn’t stay down there forever: the cement would set around her ankles.

I can hear you smiling, you know.

When her teeth began to clatter, she slid back the bar and went floppy and let him haul her out of there, with his pen clenched in his jaw. She couldn’t believe that he alone could lift her up.

I told Him I wouldn’t, but very well, he said. I shall endeavour to teach you how to read and write.

But how do I know?

I’ll tell you when.

*

It began to rain even in the day time now, and some days the sun didn’t get out of bed, and Marky and Sammy needed tarps over their backs. There were too many weeds coming up through the dirt clods and the boys had to eat that up. She had used to hope that all of the crops would fail so that she would die more quickly, but she couldn’t get rid of the crops and the cave was too safe for her to die.

She heard the door creak as he pushed it open and he said, I do apologise, and she closed her eyes and when she opened them, her face as stiff as the floorboards in the soggy cement of the cave, he was pulling the bed covers back. He said he needed to stay close to the subject, he was almost finished, he just had to type up his notes. He cut her sealed legs apart with the edge of his hand and then there were two and he said Hmm, This is a tad difficult.

He used his belt to tie her legs to the headboard and said Ahh. She was so dry that she could hear him scraping into her, like a boat grinding and groaning against a wharf. She hoped she didn’t have dirt in her, still.

Afterwards he said, You wanted me to come, and he opened up a computer even thinner than her and tickled its letters and checked his notebook and tickled some more letters before he slept and she pulled his arm off his keyboard and wrapped it around her and it was warm and smelled like dry towels, like it had never got dirt on it.

She decided to ask him to read her some of the books he had written. He could teach her about anthropology, she knew how to say the word now, she’d been practicing.

An-thro-pollo-jist.

And she wanted to ask about all the pits and scars and scrapes in his arm. Were they from Nam, or had he been seeing other countries?

*

One morning at breakfast, he cleared his throat and took the notebook away from his eyes and said, I can’t do this. You’re completely inept. The cement is too runny – you’ll simply have to mix it thicker. It simply doesn’t look right.

But it’s mine.

Then he pulled her long black hair until she left her seat and he showed her how to mix it and when she had got it right, he pulled her back to her seat and she carried on eating.

Don’t ruin this for me. It’s unprecedented. It’s unparalleled. If you don’t finish that cave… You know, it’s quite remarkable, he said. The majority of them aren’t as sensitive as you.

Them what?

Prostitutes.

I aren’t a prostitute.

He said, I see, and asked her if she was more comfortable being called a courtesan. His fingers were hovering on the keyboard. She hadn’t noticed the computer being opened, its back to her.

She looked at the hands squeezing each other in her lap, then shifted down the table and stared out at Marky and Sammy.

IT WAS ASKED OF YOU what you would do if your horses weren’t there one morning. Would you… draw pictures of them? On the wall of your cave?

He slid a rock of charcoal across the tabletop to her and she tucked it into the boob holder with straps he had made her wear.

Later, when the volcano had erupted within her ears, she sprinted back across the farm and caught him tickling his laptop and banged her fists on his chest and he flipped her over and held her until he had stopped laughing, and his belt buckle tinkled and his face went red and it took him longer than it used to, and a single drop of sweat pooled on his brow and she licked it off and he pushed her away and said, Predictable.

*

What he had made her do with the cement was right. He was right about everything. She spread it the same thickness and left the doors open when it wasn’t raining and some of it was a little bit dry, and she’d used up all the cement and it was too deep to go in there and there were a couple of days when she didn’t go into the cave, and then five days.

 As she listened to the rain and mashed her food with her fingers, he closed the lid of the laptop and ripped her out of her seat and threw her onto the bed and sighed as he undid his belt buckle and tied her up, and then he went out of the door and she heard him calling to Sammy, but he was calling Sammy like a cat and she didn’t think it would work, but he came inside and took a huge carrot from the bag and she heard the squeak of latches opening and Sammy clopped inside the house and Jodie was so slippery with sweat that it wasn’t that bad when Andrew jammed the carrot inside her but Sammy was naughty coz he got muddy hoof prints and bits of hay all over the bed.

Afterwards they lay there, Jodie’s heart still hammering. The curls on his chest shook, and then he rolled over and opened the lid of his laptop and rattled a few keys and said, That answers that.

He wrapped his fingers around her waist and squeezed. How does he keep you so tiny?

What did you write?

You couldn’t read it, anyway, he said, and closed the lid.

But you teached me.

*

 She swallowed an entire bucketful of air and surfaced and she knew half of the bed was suddenly empty and she burst out of the bedroom, grey in the moonlight, her saggy breasts flapping, her thighs clapping. He was closing the trunk of his car and he glanced over his shoulder at her as he slid into the driver seat and pulled the door closed and he locked the door and wound down the window and said, ‘I’ll acknowledge you, don’t you worry about that,’ and pulled his sunglasses onto his eyes, even in the blackness. She held up the little notebook and backed away and he opened his car door and stepped slowly out.   

How on earth did you get that? You don’t need that.

She stepped back until she heard a creaking, and realised there was a bar of black beneath her feet, and he ran at her, ‘Give it to me!’

She stepped backwards and Andrew’s foot fell flatly on the cellar door and there was a snap and a wet thud.

     It was difficult figuring out how to operate his fancy car, but at least he’d left the key in it. It took a few minutes to find which button opened the trunk of the car, coz it was dark in there, and it took two armloads to haul his laptop and suitcase out, because they were buried amongst DVDs and video tapes and copies of his published books about cave dwellers and trog…lo…dytes. Troglodytes. There was a picture of a caveman and a cavewoman doing it.

She had to go inside and haul two chairs out and it took her a while to lower them down into the cave, where Andrew was lying on little broken pieces of wood and trying to get the broom handle out of his leg. Then it took her another trip inside to get the carrots. When she had lowered the chairs in, she stepped down into the cool dark blue cave and yanked Andrew’s torn pants off around his ankles, and he said Thank Goodness you came, Oh Thank you thank you, but he stopped being nice when she shoved the carrots into his crack, slicked with cement, and stood upon the chairs and called to her boys, and when they moseyed over she took Sammy’s bridle, and Marky’s, and they gently stepped onto the chairs and came into the cave with her, Good boys, and she showed them where the carrot was, and she reached for the shovel and went to begin shovelling doo-doo in the cave, but then she didn’t. Not yet.  

She stepped down into the cave where her boys were, and took the charcoal out of her bra and drew pretty pictures of Marky and Sammy on the wall. 

Phoebe didn’t even say thanks for the foot rub, just went back towards the stage stepping into her shoe and she was going ‘Where is he?’ and I was like, How the fuck should I know? but I didn’t say it, obviously. She’s the star, bro, not me. It was black-as in the pub, it’s only lit by one bulb that’s over the gents, but even in the moonlight you could only see beer boxes and tipped-over stools, and a bit of smoke still dancing when Phoebe breathed out. No Andie.

Phoebe wanted to start her poetry set now that she’d got her massage and there was no good reason why she couldn’t eh but, like I said, I ain’t the star, I ain’t the famous one, the one the exploded. I told Mr Tomlinson to head over to the bar and fetch Phoebe her drink and he gave it to her and all she said was, Don’t spill it, and all he brought back to me was shrapnel and I was like Where the fuck’s MY beer and he was like, I do apologise, Willy, the Malibu Mouthmelt is a rather dear cocktail, and he gave me the shrapnel and I put it in Phoebe’s tip hat and handed it round. I shoulda roundhoused the dude but I was busy, lotta blokes in the pub I had to keep my eye on. Besides, we needed Mr Tomlinson for later, he wouldn’t’ve been no good with a broken arm. He kept touching the pocket of his jacket, the prick. I could see the lip of a bitta paper sticking out.

There was this line of nerdy little student types and I was like, Start the hat with a fiver why dontcha and the lead nerd got the shits up him and put a tenner in and I stood there til they each chucked a note in. A few of the old poet geezers tried to make excuses but they knew what’d happen to ‘em if they piked, Phoebe would publicly in front of the whole poetry audience call them out and put them to shame. That’s Phoebe for ya, big round mouth on her. One minute she’ll be suckin’ ya off in the handicap toilets, next she’ll be using them same lips to cuss you out in fronta everyone.

Phoebe works in darkness and yup, the stage sure was dark except for the spotlight in her face. The blackness crept into the rings around her gut, it wormed into her hair. She started out by thankin the Poetry Constellation and saying how the other poetry gig was racist and white-minded and all that usual talk. Phoebe’s heavy into her black power shit but when you get her clothes off, she’s not actually black, it’s just that she’s got her thick curly black hair in cornrows and coz she’s so pissed-off all the time, people think she’s some crazy warrior woman, she’s got these big luscious fat lips and a round face. Aw and coz she’s always going on about My people this and My people that and she likes calling out the white dudes in the audience and giving them shit if she catches them texting while she’s performing.

I didn’t sit down – you don’t EVER sit down in a room when you’re bodyguarding, got it? – now, Mr Tomlinson, HE tried to sit his lanky arse down, and you know what he did? Grabbed a two legged stool – I think I broke the other leg when I hit some punter with it one time – and Mr Tomlinson fell over! Served him right, the clumsy old dweeb, honestly: a stool don’t stand up less it’s got three legs on it. He’s straight up retarded for a intellectual sometimes.

‘One of our friends is at the conservative right wing honky poetry show tonight,’ Phoebe was yelling into the microphone, not even sipping her cocktail that cost 18 quid. When her lips opened, you could see how black it was inside her. ‘What do we think of THAT?’

I booed, coz that’s what Phoebs was wanting. I think she meant that Andie was at the other poetry crew. Andie’s been bloody weird the last two weeks, we hardly been seeing her, I mean him. Andie usually comes dumpster-diving every Tuesday coz Phoebe made us all Freegan and Andie just laughs when she gets custard and slime all in her fingernails while me and Mr Tomlinson are just about puking and Phoebe’s watching out for pigs – I know a secret door at the back of the Royal Police College kitchen, see, I know what time they biff the scraps. Last time we dived, Phoebe had a big psycho at Mr Tomlinson and me and we kept looking at the ground, Mr Tomlinson gasping and sucking his inhaler, coz none of us would go right down the bottom of the dumpster where there was this giant box that obviously still had sausage rolls in it, we really needed Andie on that. And our funds were a bit low, you know?

     Now, the deal is that Mr Tomlinson goes round and takes the names of folks who want to read poems – hard to do when you’ve gotcha hands behind your back, that’s how the prick walks, and he always gasps and sucks his lip before he says his fancy Queen’s English words. He takes the names of dudes who wanna read poems coz I can’t spell for shit. He’ll talk to someone from like Poland or whatever and he’ll know how to spell their name just from one listen, whereas I’m not good at that which is why I didn’t last that long as a constable. And coz I was tapping one of the suspects on that burglary up at the college, Phoebe, I nicked her at a sit-in, see, and when the Chief Inspector at our branch stuck his nose in, I had to give a drug test and the police union didn’t back me up, gutless buncha rabbits, so I’m still on Administrative Leave. I still get to protect Phoebe, mind you. They can’t take that from ya.  

     Yeah so what she done next was the bit about the sacrifice. There’s this National Geographic Andie got out of the dumpster one time, right, and Phoebe got all worked up about it, to be honest I didn’t reckon the African chick in it looked that much like Phoebe but she had Phoebe’s black curls and those rings around her like Phoebe’s got. It makes her heavier, if you know what I mean, gives a lot of weight to her voice. Like, just then she was stepping off the stage and having a go at one of the regulars for practising his poem while she was talking.

‘STEP UP! STEP UP AND BE SACRIFICED!’

You don’t want Phoebe givin you a smack in the chops, believe you me. I looked over at Mr Tomlinson and he was looking at me and his mouth was literally hangin open, pal, but he shut it and moved to the door.

Phoebe was circlin round something new already.

‘Where is she? Willy? Someone knows something.’

‘Haven’t seen her,’ I called out. ‘Oughta send the Professor, eh?’

‘On with it,’ said someone in the audience and I went over and picked his drink up.

‘Want this in your face, bro? Didn’t think so.’ I drank it for the cunt and he left. That made one, two… eight people left in the joint, including Phoebe and Mr Tomlinson and me. Some people can’t handle open mic with Phoebs. Woulda been nine if Andie’d fuckin’ showed up.

‘ANDIE?’

‘Shall I check the Galaxy?’ Mr Tomlinson sounds like a English Prime Minister, he does, bro. Phoebe said to him, ‘Hell yeah go and scope the Galaxy, not without me though,’ and Mr Tomlinson was like, ‘Absolutely, my star.’ He calls Phoebe that coz he thinks they got somethin more spesh goin on that Phoebe’n me don’t but he’s out of his tree if he thinks that. I saw her first. It’s like how if you spot a comet or whatever, it gets named after ya. Mr Tomlinson knows he gets her Mondays and Thursdays, and Tuesday/Friday’s my days, Wednesday she has to eat with her old man, and Andie’s been licking her pussy Saturdays and Sundays but not last weekend, dunno where Andie’d got to.

     So even though you could hear the bloody toilets flushing, Phoebe went on with the show, not much lighting, the hat not very heavy with coins, and one person was leaving every ten minutes, even the alkies, sneaking out in the shadows, they were all heading up to the glowing Galaxy, it’s the rival poetry scene you know, but I said to one that tried to go out the door, If you think you’re walkin out while Phoebe’s in the middle of performing, you got another think coming, and me and the leaver, we both stood at the pub door watching Phoebs swirl under the spotlight, her hands like liquid in the black at the back of the stage, then she done the sacrifice.

She pulled off her top and there ya go, her tits were on full view for any cunt to peep. Beautiful nipples, she’s got, big purple teacups. She took the red marker and clicked her fingers, grumpy-lookin, and Mr Tomlinson scampered over to her, good dog, fuckin idiot bumped his shin on a chair though and limped up onto the stage, wincing, and he took the lid off the red marker pen and drew a target on Phoebe’s tit. She told me when we were practising it in her Dad’s basement that it represents how white fellas are wiping out all the nature and natives and that, like that meteor that KO’d the dinosaurs. Right-o. It’s actually a miniature statue that she uses in the sacrifice bit, her old man bought it for her when she went to space camp as a lass, this model of a comet with all this fiery shit trailing out the back of it, it’s harder than pewter, reckon it might even have some steel in it, and that’s what she poked herself in the heart with.

It was a good show and stuff, but you try telling Phoebe that. Andie was supposed to have done the heart-stabbing bit, not Professor Tomlinson.
            Phoebe was gonna have a supernova when she got aholda Andie. It’s just blokes that revolve around Phoebe, she’s always got at least three going, tell ya the truth, but everyone else is straight up deluded in the head if they reckon they’ve got something more special than me. Tell ya what though, if there was another chicky pie around, Phoebe might chill out a bit. There’s Andie, but… Andie just winds Phoebs up worse. I mean, yeah, obviously, you know what Phoebe’s like, she’ll suck anything with a dick, you don’t need to call attention to it, but a bitta sucky-sucky’s never worked proper on Andie, you know, seeing as Andie’s, well…

But don’t tell Phoebs I said that.

*

‘What is the cost?’ I asked the lass holding the bucket which read Koha. It really was exceedingly bright inside. Garish, compared to my usual spot. Our spot.

‘Just pay whatever you can afford, doc. Just yaself?’

I glanced behind me to see if I had been spotted entering Galaxy. I put two new twenties in the bucket and the girl’s eyes bulged and I asked, ‘Is that not enough?’ and I was so agitated that I marched on past anyway. I must admit, I thought of quite a zinger after that, I could have said, ‘Here’s your green back,’ haw haw, as I’d placed American currency in the “koha” bucket (my foreign cash reserves had been proving fruitful of late. My redundancy funds have been suffering what one can only call entropy.)

The place reeked to high heaven of coffee, aggravating my allergies. I stood in the throng blowing my nose, contemplating holding my breath until I’d achieved my mission. If I’m to be quite honest with you, I’d’ve rather been turned away at the door, but unfortunately a sign had been chalked with the legend, All Welcome.

Can’t win ‘em all, eh?

There were a large number of my students – well, former students – in the audience at the Galaxy, but of course I maintained a professional distance and pretended not to recognise them. I’m six foot three in height and so I found myself peering down into the spacey eyes of more than one former pupil as I attempted to wade through the youngsters.

‘Alright, Mr Tomlinson?’ one remarked.

‘You have the wrong person.’

 ‘Why you got a handkerchief over your mouth, Mr Tomlinson? Germophobe! You might catch the poetry bug!’

The Galaxy was positively infested with oodles of young poets, rather like the Black Hole used to be. The stage barely had space reserved for the performers, everything was so dreadfully crowded, twas an ungodly sea of cardigans and tight black t-shirts and sunglasses even this deep into the night. Undoubtedly Phoebe would have raised quite a fuss about the abundance of white English kids but… well, I’d rather you didn’t tell her I said that if you wouldn’t mind, please.

‘Professor T? I know everyone, who ya lookin for?’

‘Leave me alone, please.’

‘Jeez, ruuu-uude. Didn’t they fire your arse for, like, shoplifting some dumb old manuscript from the gallery?’

‘I don’t know what you’re on about,’ I said, and slipped past the girl, whose name escapes me. I was forced to keep my arms about the head-level of the youngsters and it was rather unbecoming, having my elbows level with my shoulders, rather like wading into a Yorkshire fen, one would imagine.

The tall boy, whom I recognised – he used to be a regular reader at the Black Hole until William assaulted him in the Gent’s – a former boyfriend of Phoebe’s in a past life, too, if I’m not mistaken – the tall boy, I could see him with his nose in Andie’s neck. Andrew.

Well, AndreA, depending on which night you catch him/her. Andie, you see, had been having something of an identity crisis. S/he used to read his/her poetry at The Black Hole and Phoebe would celebrate and encourage her. You wouldn’t see other women there, really, not that Andie represents herself as a woman – well, womyn, as Phoebe has instructed me to pronounce it – anyway, yes. I’ve never been impressed with Andie’s posturing. We’ve never needed another female. It upsets the balance.

The tall boy had his nose in the dark nook of Andie’s neck. Andie, I dare say, was enjoying her feminine side.

‘Three’s a crowd,’ said the boy.

‘Hallo. Andie – will you come?’

Andie looked up and his big blue painted eyes began to blur at their edges. ‘Come along, Andie,’ I said.

Andie closed his eyes and put his fingers in his ears. The boy licked one of Andie’s tears away and susurrated, ‘Don’t worry,’ and his long arm squeezed Andie’s shoulders.

Andie grabbed his scarf off the beer-soggy table and sucked on it.

I blew my nose to relieve the warm coffee-stink. ‘Mother of Mercy, it’s bright in here. You didn’t – you didn’t read, did you?’

 ‘Don’t tell. You can read a poem if you want.’

‘Absolutely!’ the tall boy said, irritatingly jolly, ‘I’ll get your name on my list, blood!’

‘Why are you… is that chocolate milk?’

‘I felt like it is all.’ Andie was looking all around me, to my side. Hustle, jostle. Smoke, flickering tea lights. ‘You get a free drink if you do a poem.’

Certainly I wasn’t going to engage in fisticuffs with any of the young hipsters within the café, thus it struck me that I would be standing there for quite some time, at least until… well.

She said, ‘You didn’t bring them, did you?’

And then a meteorite struck Andie. The snakes of Phoebe’s braids were sloshing this way and that, her belly was shaking with anger, and a crater of empty café floor had bloomed around her. I took a step back and patted my breast pocket. I didn’t want the sonnet to fall out. Another fist struck Andie, and the circle grew wider, and I wondered why silly William was standing up on Andie’s table, lacking grace, but when Willy’s shoe made Andie’s teeth disappear into the back of his throat, it made some sense, in its own way.

*

     Willy flagged the taxi with his muscles and Phoebe told me to pay but I honestly didn’t have no money left, for real, so Mr Tomlinson had to pay for it and he went, ‘Little Moonbeam, I would spend a million dollars on a million chariots to ferry you across the sky,’ and I giggled coz that was all lovey dovey. Siiiiick! We all love Phoebe, even if she is mean to me :o( But she makes you feel like a star if you stick with her.

Mr Tomlinson sat up front coz it didn’t matter if the CabCam got his face, only Phoebe. Did you know her dad gets in trouble if she gets in trouble too? At least I got to sit in the middle back seat of the taxi – yay! Cool spot! – More viewy on the bump seat! – but my mouth real hurt. The taxi even went past a all night dentist 24 hour and Mr Tomlinson coulda fixed my teeth, he’s got all this money coz he was a professor before he started going out with his student – that was Phoebe – she was even on a scholarship coz she used to be a real Study Buddy – but the taxi didn’t stop for the dentist, it went over the bridge and wriggled through all these streets like a eel and down the hill where all the cars had those silver stars on them and all the houses were twice as big with real high fences and the trees were big and old and you could see a beautiful view of the twinkling city lights. They show up better when everything else is black. You can’t even see them when you’re on stage.

But my gums still hurt and I asked Willy if he had any bubblegum coz my breath probly stunk but he told me to shut it. And I said, ‘Aren’t you colb?’ and I was trying to say cold but I couldn’t coz of my sore mouth. I thought he’d be cold coz he was only wearing a singlet. He had a new tattoo, two ones, real scary ones, they were of Phoebe’s hands around his neck. Did you know that’s how it feels in space if you don’t have your helmet on? Like you’re being choked. Did you?

‘The fuck are you doing?’

‘I’m ipchy.’

‘Quit touching your cock. Don’t tie it back if you’re just gonna scratch it in front of everybody.’

Phoebe looked over and went, ‘Tie his hands,’ and Willy went, ‘Her hands, you mean,’ but he ducked back like she was gonna hit him so instead he went ‘I don’t have nothing,’ and Mr Tomlinson sighed and you could hear this jinkling and Mr Tomlinson passed his belt back to Willy and Willy tied my hands with it and Phoebe put her phone in my mouth and I saw the taxi driver’s eyes in the mirror and Willy slapped him in the back of the head.

Coz we were beside the beach, the gooey smog cleared out of the way and you could see the moon real good. I thought about how we’re all moons, and Phoebe’s a planet, or maybe a star, and we all move around Phoebs. What’s that pressure that holds it all together?

     When we got down into Phoebe’s basement – aw, Phoebe’s Dad’s basement – they couldn’t find anything to tie my legs with and I was giggling coz I was so nervous and Willy punched me in the stummy and it wasn’t funny, coz my wrappers got unwrapped and started wavvling off me and they had my shirt off and it was cold coz Phoebe didn’t have any money for gas that week. My nipples were hard peanuts and Phoebe squeezed one and sucked it til she got blood on her lips and ‘IP NOP FUNNY ANY MORE’ I went as loud as I could, then I started coughing coz my sore gums tasted like hot salty seaweed.

‘GET IT,’ Phoebe was going.

‘No, nop ip,’ I went, ‘Aww, dome.’ I was trying to say… never mind.

Willy kept going over to the curtains and pulling them apart and looking outside for pigs, and Mr Tomlinson found the thing in Phoebs’s handbag, the shooting star that her dad got her. Phoebe’s dad teaches at the varsity, same as Mr Tomlinson used to, before Mr Tomlinson was in the newspaper, before he got in trouble for stealing from the supermarket, before Phoebe and him made a little baby together, before Phoebe got it vacuumed out of her.   

Phoebe hefted the thing in her hands. I think they were mad at me coz I wasn’t texting them back coz I didn’t give them my invalid benefit this week, but I honestly needed it for my oestrogen pills, it’s not fair. Willy closed the curtains and came over and Phoebe put the shooting star in his hands and Willy went out to the garage and came back with one of those things my brother uses.

‘Wop that?’ I went. I could hardly see him coz all the lights were just about out. Did you know Phoebe has to pay for her own power?  

‘It’s a oilstone. Shut up.’

‘Wops it for?’

‘Sharpening.’ He pushed me down on the bed and I had to wriggle like a worm to get my head up so I could breathe.

‘I don’p think you’re spothda use it on a thtatue. Who mabe it?’

‘Fuck should I know.’

‘Nah bup who made the stars, I meab. Gob?’

 ‘Shut up, Andie. You want me to waste you?’

‘No.’ I just thunk that he was being a Silly Willy for sharpening a statue.

Phoebe grabbed me around the throat. ‘I AM KALI, DESTROYER OF WORLDS,’ and I could see out of this little bitty corner of my eye she was ripping open that packet with the picture of the horse on it and cracking the tablet into her pipe and Willy flicked his Zippo for her and he was smoking it too.

Naughty!

Mr Tomlinson sat down beside me on the mattress and my head dipped and Phoebe’s medication rattled as it rolled down and bumped my ear. His hand hovered and I thought he was gonna pat my hair, but he sighed and breathed on his glasses and squeaked them clean with the corner of his waistcoat. Man he’s tall. He always hasta bow down for Phoebe. Did you know his kids won’t even talk to him anymore I heard?

I whispered, ‘Rethcue me,’ and swallowed some gross blood.

Then he got up, and I couldn’t tell who was where coz I was all tied up, and someone sniffed my hair. Honest they did, and I rolled towards them but I fell off the bed and hurt my ribs and under Phoebe’s bed there was an old crusty album but it had sticky alcohol spilled on it, and there was all these photos of her mum and Phoebe as a little baby girl in the school play, but she wasn’t the lead girl.

What was there before the galaxy? Have you ever thought?

     I squirmed to ask Mr Tomlinson but my nose started getting twitchy-itchy from all the dust bunnies so Willy grabbed my middle and he yelled at Mr Tomlinson to help lift me, and Mr Tomlinson stumbled on the rug almost tripping up – ha, butterfingers! – but he got me round the shoulders and they took me out onto the damp grass, and the black air was wet like a flannel. Phoebe’s dad musta been away in the Philippines, else he would’ve seen and I would’ve told on ALL of them, specially Phoebe.

I was humming a real bouncy tune I’d heard that night, hmm hmm heeeeeem hm hmhm hmmm. The Galaxy has a house band, did you know that? It’s sooo warm and nice and friendly there. And it’s got paninis. Do you know what a panini is?

 ‘GO GO GO GO GO,’ Phoebe was going, rubbing her hands together, then she started crying and puffing on the pipe and blowing her nose in Mr Tomlinson’s shirt, and I watched to see if he sniffed her hair.  

On my back, I was still giggling, coz I could feel worms nibbling my bum! But the cold felt okay on my gums and it was just funny. I was gonna look like such a twat without my two front teeth!!! I probably wouldn’t be able to be the special poet again next week at Galaxy. Hmm hmm hmmmmm –

‘I’M WARNING YOU.’

On my back, the moon was right above me. I saw Phoebe’s big round head leaning over me like a whole planet, and Willy a bit, but I couldn’t see Prof T. I could hear him suck on his inhaler, though.

Then Mr Tomlinson yelled at me. I’ve never heard him yell at anyone before. ‘CEASE HUMMING, FOR YOUR OWN SAKE IF NOT MINE!’

Why doesn’t the moon have its own baby moon going round it? It wouldn’t be that good to be the Moon. Did you know at the Galaxy, everyone’s like the moon there? They were so nice to me, that’s the only reason I went, is coz the candlelight made it like I was swimming in sunlight, and they didn’t laugh at my poem or tell me to get off the stage, I was the star! And they even clapped! They were all moons and they didn’t need anyone to orbit them, they just liked orbiting other people.

Did you know some planets have like ten moons? They do, honest. We learned that in Mr Professor T’s class.

     Willy stepped on my arms and brought the sharp arm of the statue down to where they’d pulled out my tit and drawn the bullseye on it, and I was thinking: It’d be better to be the Sun, and have everything revolve around you.

‘STOP!’ I screamed, ‘ABORT!’

I hoped I’d screamed loud enough for her dad to hear. Was he home? I couldn’t move my head, so I couldn’t see what anyone was doing.

‘I… haven’t a spare shirt,’ Mr Tomlinson went, and coughed.

Did you know the further away from the sun you are, the colder you get?

‘STOP, YOU GUYS! STOP! I MEAN IT!’

Everyone stopped panting.

 ‘I wanna be her,’ I screamed, ‘No fair. I wanna swap.’

Did you know Professor T used to mark her poems? She was pretty good but her English wasn’t that flash, like she didn’t know the difference between explode and implode.

*