Afterbirth – by Payton Hogan
Fiction Payton Hogan Fiction Payton Hogan

Afterbirth – by Payton Hogan

It comes out writhing and smelling like meat. It abuses the midwives with its surprisingly strong fists, fighting against the ejection.

I know, I know, we all coo to it.

Our nostrils widen to capture more of that pure animal stench. I lean towards the baby, inhaling greedily of the odour. A familiar pang of jealousy and mourning strikes me momentarily senseless. I've turned the scissors around in my hand, the points facing my own skin. The other midwife is busy, but the anaesthetist recaptures my attention, brings me back to the present.

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The miracle – by Nadia Mahjouri
Fiction Nadia Mahjouri Fiction Nadia Mahjouri

The miracle – by Nadia Mahjouri

Lori believed in miracles. But not the sort them God-botherers bang on about – Dad told her they were all just a bunch of hippa–critts, all fancy hats and hell fire. And anyways, Lori didn’t want their sort of miracles - the type you had to beg for, and wait for, and hope for, and deserve. No, the miracles Lori believed in were the ones she saw every day: the pink soft blossom that swelled and swelled until it was a red ripe apple, the insides of the egg that turned from breakfast to a fluffy chick simply by waiting warm under its mother’s wings.

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Chrysalis – by Lachlan Plain
Fiction Lachlan Plain Fiction Lachlan Plain

Chrysalis – by Lachlan Plain

I was raised on an island of rock surrounded by a sea of sand. Every evening a fine dust blew in from the coast, down the city streets, entering our homes through chinks in our curtains and settling on our tablecloths. Our skin was caked in it. Our lungs were lined with the grit of it.

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The mystery of the lost hours – by Sue Brennan
Fiction Sue Brennan Fiction Sue Brennan

The mystery of the lost hours – by Sue Brennan

How far is it between me and the barn? How many steps? Will my spittle reach that rock? If I walk towards it with my eyes closed, will I stumble? How far will my voice travel? Will it reach Dad in his office? Will he look up from his writing and say, ‘What’s that stupid girl up to now?’ and go back to work?

‘Joey,’ he calls out the window after some time. ‘Get in here now.’

If I cry one of those open-mouth sobs, will I even hear myself?

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Masters – by Andrei Seleznev
Fiction Andrei Seleznev Fiction Andrei Seleznev

Masters – by Andrei Seleznev

The novel was in Russian, that was the problem. Everyone else in my book club had a translation, but I’d wanted to show off, not realising my mother tongue had atrophied. I wasn’t even halfway through. The other problem was that reading Russian on the train felt suspect. What if passengers clocked on to the Cyrillic? I imagined absurd scenes: is that really and how dare you, angry calls to my employer. Only my train crush, two seats ahead in impeccable slacks, wouldn’t care. She’d be unflappable.

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Paan – by Josefina Huq
Fiction Josefina Huq Fiction Josefina Huq

Paan – by Josefina Huq

Our mother is bursting through doors, breathlessly dropping pieces of jewellery across the floor whenever they are not working with her shalwar kameez. She has changed three times, has settled on a blue one that doesn’t suit her at all. To tell her would be fatal. Years later she will wear one again, for a solemn occasion , and it will remind her of nights like this. She will trick herself into missing these nights.

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A major theft – by Emma Rosetta
Fiction Emma Rosetta Fiction Emma Rosetta

A major theft – by Emma Rosetta

Sarge says come back to station right away. Been a major theft. And he says bring him a bacon-and-egg sandwich from Rosa’s.’ Nathan frowned at the radio. ‘What about the theft?’

‘Oh, yeah. It’s not urgent.’

‘The sandwich isn’t urgent?’

‘The theft. Make sure you bring the sandwich.’ Maureen’s bored, staticky voice signed off and the line went dead.

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Devotion – by RT Wenzel
Fiction RT Wenzel Fiction RT Wenzel

Devotion – by RT Wenzel

Mary had tried everything for her broken heart over the years. She dragged herself to individual therapy where she cried at people, and group therapy where people cried at her. She’d tried seventeen types of medication. Some helped her sleep, but none of them put her heart back together. Her son offered an ongoing cannabis supply that dulled the ache, but after a few weeks the anguish returned twofold, along with an ashen mouth and stabbing headache. Mary read books, watched webinars, journalled, and visited a spirit medium who was possessed by a Kiwi accent halfway through their session.

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He is the candle – by Lucy Norton
Fiction Lucy Norton Fiction Lucy Norton

He is the candle – by Lucy Norton

I am lying on a grey-blue vinyl couch in the ICU visitor’s room. I wonder why they don’t have rooms with beds for family members awaiting the inevitable. It is difficult to think of sleeping, but I am so tired. An hour ago, my sister Jessie and I scurried out of the hospital entrance with two hand-rolled joints like a couple of sneaky teenagers. We smoked in the bushes beside the stairs. It was well past midnight, but the fluorescent lights could’ve fooled you.

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These are no clear directions – by Lars Rogers
Fiction Lars Rogers Fiction Lars Rogers

These are no clear directions – by Lars Rogers

You turn left at that old shop. There used to be a man who lived inside it. Every time I saw him he had a cigarette slotted in his mouth – poking through a giant beard. I remember hearing something about a hand surgery. Or was it a heart surgery? I suppose it doesn’t matter now. I am pretty sure he was the Dad of one of my mates. We used to smoke out the back of the science lab. That was what we did. My mate was always concerned – either by the fact that we were smoking, or that a teacher might catch us. I didn’t know. I could never figure it out. I’ve been having a little bit of trouble lately.

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Bound – by Liz Evans
Fiction Liz Evans Fiction Liz Evans

Bound – by Liz Evans

She arrived early to register for class, this frothy little thing, squeezed tight into bamboo and Lycra, blowing into my Sunday session with the first snap of spring. New to yoga, clearly a stranger to self-discipline with her chatting and chirruping and lack of condition, her needs were obvious: containment, order, flexibility, strength. But when she gave me her name, I buckled. The pure white shock of it, after all these years, blinding me for a second; the knot of grief, loss and fury tightening.

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Prelude to a flight – by Joel Keith
Fiction Joel Keith Fiction Joel Keith

Prelude to a flight – by Joel Keith

For years Becka had awaited her life, as if it were a friend late to a bar for whom she had already saved a seat. Do you really need this spot? inquired the glances of strangers. We could use it. Obstinately she clung on. Sometimes a girlfriend would call to complain about the bequiffed men they would soon marry and become mothers to, or about the houses they had been bought by their parents who worked well-paying jobs cleaning blood from household items and the machinery of state, and Becka would nod along, a sensed but unprovable consolation, like God.

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Dear life – by Susan Francis
Fiction Susan Francis Fiction Susan Francis

Dear life – by Susan Francis

For one hundred days we lived inside my father’s house. We lived in near silence, neither of us inclined towards cramming still space with pointless chatter. We lived with the kind of mortification that makes the sweat stick your hair to your forehead, a mortification that every morning – after I stripped him of his green-striped flannelette pyjamas – arranged us into unpleasant and painful configurations. My father’s dry, sandpapered arms, reaching childlike, straight above his head. Veins distending from his neck, the exposed roots of an ancient tree trunk.

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Refuse – by Hei Gou
Fiction Hei Gou Fiction Hei Gou

Refuse – by Hei Gou

The detritus of our civilisation preceded us: children’s dolls, an empty toolbox, shards of coloured glass: we found them in the camp’s smouldering firepit, charred and singed but not wholly burned: objects acquired through trade with other tribes, with whom we’d already made contact: we speculated that they’d been submitted to the flames as part of a ritual, perhaps to exorcise foul spirits, but our native guide claimed they’d been jettisoned because they were useless and burned to remove the tribe’s scent, which hunters – he didn’t have to add like us - might try to exploit.

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bodytruth – by Orlando Silver
Fiction Orlando Silver Fiction Orlando Silver

bodytruth – by Orlando Silver

My therapist says, why not try finding ordinary love // less like an avalanche

I want to say, why not try shutting the fuck up // but instead I say, yes, I guess love can be that way but where’s the power in that, the majesty, the learning // where’s the bonfire of wonderment // where’s the story of carnage and release and healing

I know everything about love leads to loss // but it’s the price I paid

Even though // I knew // I would never recover from you

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Lux – by Linden Hyatt
Fiction Linden Hyatt Fiction Linden Hyatt

Lux – by Linden Hyatt

The last rays of daylight pulse in cloud as a memory of sun, faintly lighting turrets and flutes of silvered dolerite, turning rock to castles, which, to the seven-year-old gazing skyward seem as if they are falling. She reaches for her father’s hand to steady herself, but, distracted, he doesn’t take it. Nightfall will soon come, with colder air in grounded cloud, and devils and possums will snarl in hunger out there, but now in this clear space, watched by his daughter, with a little old camera from his boyhood, he tries to capture an elusive light.

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Gristle and bone – by Jade Doyle
Fiction Jade Doyle Fiction Jade Doyle

Gristle and bone – by Jade Doyle

Here is how Jack’s story begins: once upon a time there suffered a family of four. They lived in an old weatherboard house with floorboards that creaked and a tin roof that sounded like gunfire in the pressing heat. The ever-stretching landscape was doused in red dirt and brown grass, the earth cracked and veined. And perhaps you’ve heard all of this before, a child’s life turned to darkness before the age of 15, but here it is again in the shape of a father with a failing cattle business, a large man who finds ghosts and fists in the bottom of brown bottles; the shape of a mother turned quiet and rake-like by a bellowing voice; the shape of a baby sister, cause of death undetermined.

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Kevin – by Sarah Langfield
Fiction Sarah Langfield Fiction Sarah Langfield

Kevin – by Sarah Langfield

Eulogies are exceptionally difficult to write.

They aren’t like narratives, with fanciful characters that only exist in Times New Roman (sometimes Calibri, never Courier). Stories are easier. So, when tasked with writing a eulogy, I wrote a story instead.

This one.

It isn’t very good.

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Start where you are – by Jenny Sinclair
Fiction Jenny Sinclair Fiction Jenny Sinclair

Start where you are – by Jenny Sinclair

Start where you are, Uncle Vance says. Said.

The which I never, you know, got before, even though I’d heard it seven thousand, nine hundred and fifty-two times.

Start where you are, he said, when I had to change schools that time because of nothing I did wrong. It was Luke and his fighting, but Mum couldn’t do two schools in opposite directions, could she? So I started – all over again.

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Light hazard – by Sophie Overett
Fiction Sophie Overett Fiction Sophie Overett

Light hazard – by Sophie Overett

When he asks Miss Pris what it’s like, she tells him it’s strange. Like someone’s pulled the back of her head off and is messing about with her wiring, trying to fix a computer that was never broken in the first place. An itch turned a discomfort turned a sharp, relentless pain. A cable grabbed, yanked, and finally pulled loose – its casing peeled off to leave the tender thing inside exposed. ‘Gnarly,’ Matt replies, because it is. He dumps a bundle of weeds – nutgrass and lamb’s tongue – into one of the tubs Kevin had put out, and Miss Pris laughs. It makes the crow’s feet by her eyes stark, like corvid talons kneading in the softer flesh of her.

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