Jolley Prize Story

Later, Katherine seemed to remember a run of light around the box, the way desert air shimmers on the horizon. What she did remember clearly were the two women walking, flat-footed and rolling-hipped, dark limbs like animated hieroglyphs inscribing the space through which they moved, an inflated plastic bag capering at their heels like a family pet. It was one ...

I walk in the door and Gran tells me that a month ago Leslie Mulligan was taken by a shark while trying to save a stranger. Imagine, a national hero. She actually says that. As though dying in a world of pain in an ocean filled with his own blood was a heroic choice.

1. You are going to die

Malcolm has every reason to believe that he’ll be fine. The word ‘fine’ laps gently in his mind like the outgoing tide in a sheltered bay. From resting heartbeat to penile erecti ...

My sister watched the river drink me, and offered not a finger to pull me free. She was a colder creature than the water on my skin, and I should have known there was no turning her once her words were thinned, and her eyes dusk-rimmed. She watched me bob and nod to the river, her skirts clotted in her fists, and I don’t think she cared if I became wood or stone, ...

The first time she came was remarkably with someone else. He had been doing more or less the same thing for about a week when it happened and she was glad but as is the nature of such thresholds it became a due before she could remember it being any different. Few things blow you away. Though it was mysterious at first she soon had it in her own power. Once years la ...

In the weeks and months after his Moira died he’d whittled off the callers, one by one, until even gentle Dave O’Donnell, his oldest friend, felt like a stranger when he came by to drop off a family-size pie. This was an unlikely turn of behaviour. In the resolute stare he gave Dave at the side door of the house, there was a grief that could brook no niceties, d ...

Before he left the family, my father worked as a sales representative for a pharmaceutical company. He travelled from chemist to chemist with samples of pills and lotions and pastes in the back of his Valiant station wagon. The best sales representatives visited modern chemists in the city and suburbs. My father had to drive long distances to country chemists who ha ...

This is to say I didn’t take the old lady’s things for myself, I was only looking after them. I wanted to leave the chocolate box in her garden so when she lifted the lid she’d find her ruby rings and diamonds and pearls each tucked in their own dark nest. It was nearly ready, only two more to go – Turkish Delight and Peppermint Crème. She would have unders ...

In the middle of their love-making, he said, suddenly – ‘Wait.’ He reached over to his wallet beside the bed and took out what was obviously a condom. He opened the packet, held up the condom and said, ‘Put it on.’