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Animal Life of Penang – by Claire Aman
Fiction Claire Aman Fiction Claire Aman

Animal Life of Penang – by Claire Aman

It is lovely to have Claire back in Island again! Long before 'Animal Life of Penang', Claire's very first published short story, 'Sustenance', appeared in Island issue 109 in 2007.

Penang used to be interesting. Back then, young, you could pay to let a swallow escape from a wicker cage. You could choose a crab from a tank in a laneway. You could wake up on the beach at dawn. The tide could be out, your clothes slightly damp. You would remember nothing. Afterwards, you could live your whole life …

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Butter – by Daniel Ray
Fiction Daniel Ray Fiction Daniel Ray

Butter – by Daniel Ray

It’s that time of morning when everything’s clean with cold and I can smell Dad’s aftershave spilling with gold light from the bathroom. My mouth is dry. I’m still shrugging off sleep and dark misshapen dreams. I focus on the yellow cut of light, imagining sheafs of steam, and Dad, face red with razor burn, looming in the mirror, clipping his fingernails while Mum ties back her hair and leans in to spit foaming toothpaste into the sink. For a moment their images converge in the mirror as if they are one person. Then they split apart like anagrams into body parts—ears, hair, noses, eyes—before they resolidify. I know little about them apart from this: their routines, their tiny ministrations. It’s as if they both died when they married …

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Not Gone, Just Different – by Rae White
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Not Gone, Just Different – by Rae White

Our neighbour’s latest pandemic purchase lounges on the front porch, brown fur glistening in the sun and big limbs stretching across the stairs.

‘Babe!’ I holler to my wife, as I stare out our finger-smudged window. ‘Looks like next door’s got a dog.’

In the backyard sit more of our neighbour’s recently acquired bargains: a shiny new barbecue, a blow-up kids’ pool (now deflated) and a crashed drone lolling on the highest branch of a tree.

Brooke comes over and wraps her arms around me, her old woollen jumper scratching at my upper arms. She peers over me, leaning her chin on my head. ‘Looks like a good dog,’ she comments …

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Rigel and Betelgeuse – by A E Macleod
Fiction A E Macleod Fiction A E Macleod

Rigel and Betelgeuse – by A E Macleod

R looks at their ball of thread on the floor. They are never sure when they pull the first thread where it is coming from. Is the beginning really blissfully unaware of the end? … R has been marking their movements with thread for years to thwart the loss of time; letting it out, taking it in. R is not sure who recommended this …

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Get Joy from GetJoy – by Alex Cothren
Fiction Alex Cothren Fiction Alex Cothren

Get Joy from GetJoy – by Alex Cothren

Your neighbours all have one. Your work colleagues never talk about anything else. Celebrities, star athletes and even the Pope have gotten in on the action. Yep, it’s official: GetJoy fever is sweeping the globe! But while obtaining your very own GetJoy is just a click away, being a host with the most can be trickier business. So, if you find your jubilation turning to frustration, more despondency than joie de vivre, well we’re here to help with our top tips to get joy from GetJoy …

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No Tomorrow – by Catherine Deery
Fiction Catherine Deery Fiction Catherine Deery

No Tomorrow – by Catherine Deery

On the day Josephine our sow escapes her pen and trots off across the flat paddocks in search of love, Timmy from town is at ours and me and him are trying to hurdle the creek on our BMXs using empty drench drums and sleepers stolen from Mum’s garden as a ramp. When Mum gets the call from old Mr Taylor on the farm next door about that goddamn pig rooting around in his house garden again, she puts her hand over the receiver and sticks her head out the back door and clocks the sleepers and drums and me and Timmy and the BMXs in one sharp eyeful but doesn’t say anything, just beckons me over and makes the shape JOSEPHINE with her mouth then TAYLOR’S, so I know it’s bad …

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The Great Aviary of Love – by Kathryn Goldie
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The Great Aviary of Love – by Kathryn Goldie

MYTH - We fell in love at the Phoenix, a dingy pub opposite a bus stop. We joked about the graffiti in the toilets. She wanted to know everything about me. She put her hand on my leg.

REALITY - She has my toucan wind chime, the one I bought with my good ex. My good ex haggled it down from $15 to $12.50. Now the toucan perches silently on her balcony, watching me with its wooden eye. It has watched my every move for more than a year. She was supposed to be just minding it …

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Moss – by Jane Rawson
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Moss – by Jane Rawson

… She remembered it cold and damp. She remembered it dark and green. Her first days in a nest beneath the snow, then those brief, bright moments before she stretched new limbs and took cover in a close, green cavern. A life of icy winds, sleet that pricked her skin into life. / Then David’s hands around her his lips on her damp breathing skin and now every day is hot and dry …

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Bombera – by Josefina Huq
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Bombera – by Josefina Huq

… Somebody asks her how it felt having her birthday on the day of the fire. What’s it matter? she says. Even starting a fire couldn’t get people to come. They laugh, and she tries to laugh hard enough so as not to feel hurt, thinking about that night. How she was across town and saw the firetrucks zoom down the main road, headed straight towards her wooden spot in the corner. The sirens cutting through the lyrics of Happy Birthday …

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One Man’s Trash – by Piri Eddy
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One Man’s Trash – by Piri Eddy

… He had taught her everything he knew. How to secure the hook and sinker, what knots to use. How to feel the tension in the line – to work with your catch, not against it. He showed her how to cut the skin, to separate the good from the bad. On the table, he laid out his catch from the lake: a bed spring, two cigarette butts, a crumpled-up bottle. ‘Where’d they come from?’ she asked. ‘From people,’ he said. ‘Back when there was always more.’ …

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Geometry of Lament – by Alicia Sometimes
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Geometry of Lament – by Alicia Sometimes

Excavations of Viking sites have uncovered razors, combs and ear cleaners constructed from animal bones and antlers. The Vikings buried the dead with their personal belongings and marked the graves with stones. These hallowed sites hid a trove of clues about how they once lived. Which is why it was so perplexing to see around thirty Barbie doll legs protruding from the ground in front of me like a giant toy memorial …

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Interiors – by Zac Picker
Fiction Zac Picker Fiction Zac Picker

Interiors – by Zac Picker

Back in the old days, Shad used to look up at night and think about how it all seemed so big. It was a kind of secret psalm, he thought. Layers of learning stacked on top of each other like an upside-down pyramid projected from his head, stretched into the foggy distance of the firmament. Lying on the cool evening grass, he could feel it in the fuzzy spots behind his eyes …

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Phantom Menace Hours – by Victoria Manifold
Fiction Victoria Manifold Fiction Victoria Manifold

Phantom Menace Hours – by Victoria Manifold

It’s real Phantom Menace hours down at the motel. I’m waiting for Adam. We’re having an affair but haven’t consummated it yet. I’m vaguely worried that if we have sex it’ll be terrible, ‘not because of me,’ I’d told him, ‘I’m really good at it.’ And it’s true. I have a great track record with lots of positive feedback …

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Sea Legs – by Sophie Overett
Fiction Sophie Overett Fiction Sophie Overett

Sea Legs – by Sophie Overett

‘Okay,’ he says, knocking a sand-covered knee against hers. ‘You have to tell me why.’

And she gives him that look. The one she knows will burrow under his skin, feasting on any wriggling uncertainty, an emerita in the beach of him.

‘I don’t have to tell you anything.’

He laughs like he gets it, which he doesn’t, because if he did, he wouldn’t have asked in the first place …

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Celebrity – by Chris McTrustry
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Celebrity – by Chris McTrustry

… “Well, yeah, acting. What’s that all about? Remember a few lines and don’t walk into the props.” … John Markham is a children's literature veteran with more than fifty titles to his name. He’s recently embarked on a soap opera acting career at the age of fifty-seven. “Yeah, it’s a bit of fun. You rock up, knock off a couple of scenes and hit somewhere trendy for a long lunch. Nothing to it.” …

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Fisher Girls – by Barry Lee Thompson
Fiction Barry Lee Thompson Fiction Barry Lee Thompson

Fisher Girls – by Barry Lee Thompson

Over time we’ve come to call them the fisher girls. There were three of them that day, whip-thin and dressed head to toe in black, with jet-black hair scraped off their faces and secured into tails at their necks. Long, those tails, swinging this way and that as the girls walked in measured steps to the river’s edge.

We watched as they unzipped their narrow bags and deftly assembled short, sturdy rods. I thought they must have come to the river to fish, and how unlike the usual fishermen they were. But when it looked as if they might be about to cast, they turned their backs on the water and stood still and silent in a line, facing us. Expressions impassive, rods held steady …

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Cake Flat - by Marion May Campbell
Fiction Marion May Campbell Fiction Marion May Campbell

Cake Flat - by Marion May Campbell

Cake Flat. The finality of the spondee – stressed syllable plus stressed syllable. Flat-footed, no pretence. With her low salary and her boy to support she heads for Cake Flat, the dormitory suburb on the coastal plain where she, as they say, can get a foot in the door, a state-subsidised mortgage deposit. Then the interest rates shoot up. Real cake is spongey moist succour and chocolate-dark. Not Cake Flat …

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An Encounter - by Katerina Gibson
Fiction Katerina Gibson Fiction Katerina Gibson

An Encounter - by Katerina Gibson

One day in a foreign country in a district you did not know existed until the year previous, you will run into someone you know, or used to know, from your childhood. Seeing you first, they will be so shocked as to stop short, which, when the moment of recognition hits — after the mental arithmetic required to identify a face you know in a place you don’t and age it, applying wrinkles, receding hairlines — you do also …

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Captain Boner - by Alex Cothren
Fiction Alex Cothren Fiction Alex Cothren

Captain Boner - by Alex Cothren

Captain Honor: Brooklyn-based superhero who is capable of flight and superhuman strength. Known as the ‘Guardian of the Bridge’ due to the high number of suicide attempts he has prevented from the Brooklyn Bridge. Captain Honor is currently under review for acceptance into Manhattan’s Hall of Justice supergroup …

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Into the Clear Blue - by Susan McCreery
Fiction Susan McCreery Fiction Susan McCreery

Into the Clear Blue - by Susan McCreery

… Here’s my theory: you can tell a lot about a man and his opinion of women by his lap-lane etiquette. Men who shift to one side at the wall, nod off you go, are allies. Fast women swimmers are no threat to these men. Then there are those who refuse to give way, no matter how obvious it is they’re being out-swum, who, according to my theory, expect you to do everything except take out the bins, who get the shits when your salary outstrips theirs, and who rage whenever you’re curled up in sorrow about your grandmother, who is interstate and dying …

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