Gravity – by Morgan Kelly
ISLAND | ONLINE ONLYFROM THE UTAS ‘LOVED STORIES’ PROJECT
2025’s UTAS third-year creative writing students were challenged not to ‘write what you know’ but to ‘write what you love’. What they produced were stories that range from horror to rom com, lyrical writing to memoir, comedy to absurdism, social commentary to fantasy. We’ve featured excerpts from seven stories on Island Online: read all the excerpts here.
He finished his fourth Coke and slumped onto an elbow and a palm. There was nothing new to look at on Countenance – he’d checked. Six times. In the last half hour. Anyone he might have complained to was in bed, go figure. The guys who had dragged him out here had long ago vanished into different corners of the bar. He called them his ‘mates’ in the same sense you might say ‘thanks, mate’ to a stranger. They were the people he saw most often, certainly, but they weren’t his friends.
‘Let’s go pick up uni chicks,’ they’d said. ‘It’ll be fun,’ they’d said. And yeah, normally Dylen would agree, but tonight he just wasn’t feeling it for some reason. To be honest, he blamed the guys. Despite them all being older than him, their attitudes about sex – and anything related to sex – stank of a grade nine classroom. It made him nauseous, and he’d struggled all night to look anybody in the face, female or otherwise. As the stark-sober hours dragged on, he began theorising that the righteous self-loathing his mates were too oblivious to feel had manifested in him instead. It was his karma, probably, for agreeing to drive them.
Well, fuck ’em. He was clocking out early. It was after midnight – surely he’d socialised enough to get them off his back another month or so. Less than a week in their ranks had taught him tradies were diabolical gossips; if you gave them a reason to be curious they wouldn’t rest until they’d dug up something juicy. He’d put in his obligatory off-the-clock appearance; he was leaving. Just as soon as feeling returned to his legs.
One of the pub’s many student occupants barrelled into the bar beside him, cheeks pink and chubby arms draped across the countertop. ‘I’m so bad at pool,’ she said with a grin, and a soft smile remained as she waited to order. Dylen watched the graceful sweep of her hand as she brushed dark hair behind her ear. A purple crystal hung in delicate silver fastenings from the lobe.
Looking at her snapped him out of the night’s haze like a camera shifting abruptly into focus. He couldn’t drag his eyes away – wouldn’t want to: they were comfortable here. The girl seemed fully aware of the attention, her eyes clear, brown and cheeky. Brightness fizzed between Dylen’s lungs. The smile that curled the corners of his mouth felt nice. Easy.
‘I was just about to head out for a smoke,’ he said.
The girl’s eyes and teeth glittered. ‘I think I might join you.’
*
Her name was Tabitha (‘Call me Tabby.’). Surnames Mason and Takahashi – which one she went by changed with the country. She majored in world history, and since she was seventeen had been a practicing member of the Queen’s Plains witches’ coven. Dylen learned this on Sunday the week they met.
Tabby took him to her favourite cafe (quite the gamble for a first date, he thought, flattered), and over brunch they swapped family trivia. Dylen had one sibling, Tabby had none. His parents were a teacher and a nurse. Her mum and dad were witches of Celtic and Shinto traditions respectively, ‘though obviously they don’t use the word “witch” in Japan.’ Dylen gave himself props for managing to keep his jaw hinged.
‘They never got married or anything.’ Tabby popped a forkful of omelette casually into her mouth. ‘Dad moved back home when I was little, but he was always visiting. Him and Mum are, like, friends.
‘When I was old enough to take my Oath – well. Sometimes I’d portal-hop over there when he wasn’t even home and just hang out at his place for a few hours, go through his bookshelves. I took my gap year over there.’ She pouted to herself, sighed wistfully. ‘Feels like so long ago.’
Portal-hop? Dylen’s brain was echoing. He tried to sound composed, but his voice came out high and thin as he said, ‘You can just – pop over to Japan whenever you feel like it?’
‘Yeah, basically! Japan, Italy, the British Isles… there’s a portal in pretty much every major city in the world. Interested?’
Was it that obvious? ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘I’ll keep travelling by plane. Gotta support small businesses.’
Tabby laughed. ‘Fair enough. But if you have questions I’m happy to answer. Not to imply you’d betray Qantas, of course.’
‘I’m a Jetstar boy,’ said Dylen with a smirk. ‘So, about these portals…’
He spent the rest of the meal interrogating her on every question that had ever occurred to him about witches. There were a lot, it surprised him to discover. His curiosity was a hydra: for each question Tabby answered two more grew in its place. Luckily for both of them, she seemed to delight in talking about magick. The first time he visited her place, she led him by the hand straight through to her room, glancing back all the while with an almost feverish light in her eyes. Dylen began to wonder what he was walking into, but when they entered her sunlit bedroom Tabby turned to him with a grandiose gesture and said, ‘This! Is my personal shrine to Hecate.’
A small table stood by her window festooned with candles, plants and ornate little objects. She explained to him what each and every one of them did, or represented, or both, all the while positively glowing with enthusiasm and inexplicable nerves. Dylen listened with as much amusement as interest, until it occurred to him that she may not have gotten to share this with anyone who cared before. From then on, he made an effort to show her he was paying real attention.
Five dates later he’d had the equivalent of an intro uni course on modern day Western witchcraft. Tabby was particularly proud of her wards: spells attached to a place or object that would protect them from harmful influence. He woke her up hours before dawn one night when dream-induced terror sent him spasming halfway out of bed. Tabby sat up and looked at him, dark eyes liquid with sympathy. ‘You have nightmares a lot, huh?’
The very next afternoon she’d showed up with pizza, a satchel full of dried herbs, and a handmade broom of twigs and branch under her arm. After dinner she’d gone into his room, burned the herbs in the flames of four tall candles, and swept the carpeted floor from corner to corner. ‘It’s symbolic,’ she’d pouted when she caught him smirking. Then she took a stick of charcoal, scratched some runes onto his door and bedframe, and declared her work complete. He never had another dream the whole time they were together. ▼
Image: Neal E Johnson - Unsplash
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