Begin The Madness: The Straitjacket Blues Trilogy: Straitjacket Blues, #4

Shelter

‘Tell me you love me.’

Liz turned in the bed, propped her chin on a palm and reached across to stroke his hair.

‘I know you won’t mean it, but I just wanna hear you say it.’

Nick stared at the ceiling fan, massaging his temples. He breathed slowly as the wind picked up again and started buffeting the house. Liz had stolen into the spare bedroom almost an hour ago and he’d watched her remove her clothes as if a shop mannequin were undressing itself. Then she’d slipped into bed alongside him and tried her best before he’d batted her hands away. For a good thirty minutes no words had passed, sleep eluding both of them, as the ear-popping weather and a weird sense of foreboding grew.

He removed her hand from his chest and patted it. ‘I’m gonna make a toasted sandwich.’ He threw off the damp sheet as she groaned and collapsed onto the mattress. He put on some shorts and turned. ‘Want one?’

When she pulled the sheet over her face he padded down the long hallway, pausing to touch the crucifix on the wall. Last week he’d turned it upside down, her response suggesting she’d well and truly caught her parents’ disease. He entered the kitchen, listening to the wind moaning strangely as it whipped round the open laundry and storage room beneath his feet.

Through the huge horseshoe-shaped window he was confronted by a solid bank of black cloud towering over the port as people scurried to and fro securing boats on the churning sea. Suddenly he was back on board the Pearl Queen, lashed to the gunwale to prevent him from being washed overboard after a routine fourteen-hour trip back from Port Essington had disintegrated into the worst twenty-four hours of his life. So dark it had been impossible to judge the distance between the swells, the skipper had steered down and across the massive waves in a bid to keep the bow out of the troughs. A real rollercoaster ride from hell that had left him so seasick he’d sometimes wished for death.

Amazingly they’d managed to return to Darwin without any loss of crew or major damage but in the month he’d been ‘home’ he hadn’t even considered putting his name down for another deckhand stint. Sure, the money was great, he loved the carefree life and his sea legs were better than most but that voyage had just... broken something.

For weeks he hadn’t mentioned it to Liz but after sinking a few cold ones and actually feeling like sex it had all come out one night in bed. She’d fussed over him as he did his best to get annoyed with her delight that he’d finally started to ‘open up’, but in truth being cocooned within her arms had seemed like the safest place on Earth, as if she had some sort of power of protection.

Nick’s eyes flicked down from the malevolent sky as a rubbish bin toppled over and spilled a pizza box onto the garden’s immaculate lawn. It had contained last night’s meatball special which Liz, of course, had turned her vegetarian nose up at. Then a gust whisked the box out of sight. Trees were starting to strain under the weight of their unseen assailant. Large, heavy drops of rain spattered the diamond-shaped panes of glass.

He looked at his watch. Five pm. It was getting dark a good hour earlier.

Unease slithered down his spine. Beforehand in town he’d heard people talking of a cyclone as he wandered through the sticky drizzle but he’d pushed the scenario away. He’d just survived one mother of a storm and the chances of getting caught in another surely bordered on the non-existent.

Then he snorted. What did he care? He was on land. In a fucking house.

He turned from the big window to use the sandwich toaster, irked by the tell-tale bare space alongside the kettle. Less than four hours ago he’d used the thing but Liz’s ever vigilant hands had already spirited it away. Everything in its right place, she liked to say. He yanked open a lower cupboard, pulled the toaster out once again and plugged it in.

En route to the fridge her cockatiel Ozzie whistled and hopped around. He stared at it, still surprised the bird was allowed into the kitchen – the epicentre of her neuroses – but her desire to give it a sea view apparently outweighed her otherwise obsessive hygiene standards. The hateful thing had never warmed to him, always snapping at his fingers through the bars of its cage as if he were some sort of intruder.

Then again, it didn’t seem any keener on Liz and he was always amused by the way it bit and struggled whenever she handled it as if trying to get a bit of payback for being cooped up all the time.

He lowered his face to the beloved pet, causing it to hiss and flatten its crest. ‘One day, little birdie, one day…’

Nick turned to the fridge and hunted through a mini-mountain of veggies for the tomatoes and cheese. He buttered the bread, sliced a tomato and tossed on chunks of Cheddar as his vision drifted back to the port cowering beneath the sullen clouds. He stared at a navy patrol boat berthed inside Stokes Hill Wharf while idly scratching his groin rash, the third attack he’d suffered this year since the onslaught of The Wet.

He placed the crudely assembled sandwich onto the hot plate and slumped over the sink. As he splashed cold water on his face he knew he should’ve run for the hills weeks ago or at least checked into a hotel.

Then again, how could he have done that with no cash to hand? Boredom up in Port Essington had resulted in his poker getting a bit out of control and he’d lost most of his wages to the other deckhands. He’d returned with pockets almost as empty as his stomach. If only he hadn’t had that stupid bust-up with Rod during a drunken all-nighter just before that bloody trip. Could’ve been there right now sinking piss and laughing about old times…

Instead he’d been forced to accept Liz’s longstanding offer of shelter, a girl who’d been barking up the wrong tree for more than three years despite their complete lack of things in common and his long absences. The truth was he didn’t really fancy her, having only ever slept with her because he could, but there was no denying her usefulness. Her devotion remained a source of great puzzlement though, especially whenever she twittered some guff about opposites attracting. She might get turned on by his rough hands, weather-beaten face and seafaring ways, but he most definitely wasn’t into her familial cosiness and safe indoors life at the estate agents.

Sure, he’d half-known before moving in that she wanted marriage, kids and the whole shebang but he’d figured that once she grasped there wasn’t a cat in hell’s chance of that happening they’d be able to settle down into cordial housemates. He’d sized her up as a nice, predictable girl who’d let him stay rent-free and provide some easy-going warmth while he worked out his next move.

Jesus, how wrong had he been?

Up close she was a petty controlling monster hell-bent on provoking a reaction, her latest one being to drop none-too-subtle hints about a well-built guy at work. Too late Nick had grasped his unspoken insistence on separate bedrooms was his biggest mistake – living under the same roof but failing to do the business had seemingly sent her a bit nuts.

He should’ve just got on with it; it’s not as if she were some old dog but it was such an effort. A couple of weeks ago she’d asked if he’d wanted an ice tea and had brought it to him wearing a French Maid’s outfit and high heels before retreating with a pronounced wiggle to the bedroom. He’d sat on the living room sofa in silence, sipping the drink and relishing his inertia, until she’d cried out a few minutes later: ‘I can’t believe you’re drinking your tea!’

He now knew such denials weren’t helping anyone but despite his belated attempts to improve bedroom relations, they still hadn’t managed more than one night in a row together. The last time she’d insisted on him showering after sex, even though it was gone three in the morning.

Now he was completely out of ideas. He’d become stuck, a lack of money and options effectively placing him under Liz’s control, like a fly in a jam jar.

He unplugged the toaster and bit into the hot sandwich, the wild weather intensifying as a dull pressure grew between his eyes. If he weren’t returning to sea, what the hell was he going to do? A few days ago he’d seen a Darwin Times ad for an abattoir worker. He might lack qualifications but he had plenty of experience hacking up roos after a night’s spotlighting with Rod.

Whatever the case, he needed some cash fast and a fresh start away from Liz. Having to smile and make polite chat every day was becoming insufferable. Christ, he hated her conservative opinions borne from never leaving the town, her relentless trips to the Hills Hoist to peg out her padded bras and her stupid fondness for making hats. Her idea of excitement was saving up for a colour TV.

The aggravation always deepened with her attempts to get him into church on Sunday mornings or the way she’d start vacuuming the moment he put on a bit of Led Zep or Sabbath to liven the place up. (‘Will you please turn that down? I don’t want the neighbours complaining. This is a very nice house and a very nice area.’)

And then there were the weekly get-togethers with her unbearably silly younger sister as they gabbed about fashion over buttered scones or the vegetarian dinners with her gay high school friend who wouldn’t say boo to a goose.

But it was her behaviour in the kitchen, especially around the dishwasher, which really made him want to scream. She’d only just bought the thing and couldn’t have been any prouder. Every pan, utensil, piece of crockery and sliver of cutlery now had to be put through it because using a cloth and a bit of elbow grease apparently left an invisible layer of filth.

The nadir was reached yesterday afternoon when he’d made a coffee and she’d accused him of bypassing the wretched machine after no doubt counting the number of cups within it. The missing one had quickly been located on his bedroom table, prompting a little ‘oh’ as her hand fell from a hip in a deeply satisfying moment when even she must have understood the depth of her irrationality.

And to top everything off a stilted Boxing Day and New Year’s Eve with her full-on Christian parents loomed. They were loaded, causing him to occasionally fantasise about sticking the course with Liz, but he knew it was only a fantasy. One Christmas would be too much, let alone a string of them. Much better to call Rod, sort things out, fill up the 4WD with snags and VB and head off into Arnhem Land for a spot of camping and barra fishing.

He finished the sandwich, his stomach tightening as he heard Liz coming down the hallway. Another volley of rain pellets rattled the window.

She switched on the light. ‘Did you tie down all those things in the garden?’

He watched the trees bend as debris rolled across the lawn. No bloody way was he going out there. It wasn’t even his stuff.

‘Did you hear me? I asked if you’d tied down all those things.’

A hot, heavy feeling of electricity filled the air. She knew he’d just spent the last few hours in bed. ‘No.’

‘Well, will you please do it now? I asked you hours ago. I’m going to take down the pictures, tape the windows and put some water in the bath. We’re clearly in for bit of a blow.’

He kept his back to her, hating how she’d come to say ‘please’. It wasn’t quite a full-on pur-leese but she always seemed to stress the word and place it in the middle of the sentence. Coppers and bouncers tended to talk the same way – polite but with that undercurrent of contempt that dared you to up the ante.

‘And you didn’t make your bed yesterday morning.’

‘What?’ He spun to see her leaning against the kitchen’s doorframe with reddened eyes, arms folded across her turquoise Kimono bathrobe. She was still modelling the Olivia Newton-John hairdo that he said he’d liked after seeing a Countdown performance.

‘You heard me. I had to make your bed. Are you trying to rebel or something?’

He glanced at her mouth to see if she were taking the piss, only to find it downturned. No point looking for a twinkle in her eye, either. Nick opened the dishwasher and bundled in the plate, wincing as it slipped and clattered against a casserole dish.

‘And will you please take care with that? That casserole dish was a present from mummy.’

He didn’t reply, one hand holding the knife as he shut the dishwasher and began wiping the sandwich toaster clean with firm strokes from a damp dishcloth. Liz tutted loudly, grabbed the washing up liquid and squirted it onto the hot plate. The thick green liquid writhed and bubbled as if in pain. His grip on the knife tightened. The temperature suddenly dropped and he shivered.

‘And when you use the sandwich toaster, will you please clean – ’

‘SHUT UP! JUST FUCKING SHUT UP!’

Rain erupted onto the corrugated iron roof as he slammed her against a cupboard and drove the knife into her midriff. He stepped away, allowing her to stagger into the table and slump onto the floor, taking the tablecloth and a vase of yellow flowers with her. He stood over her, knife poised.

‘Now you’ve got a reaction. Are you happy? Huh? Are you fucking happy now?’

Her mouth moved and she might have moaned but the noise from the hammering rain blotted everything out. A frantic Ozzie flapped around as she held her hands across her stomach and curled up on her side, eyes level with his bare feet. He stepped back and took a few deep breaths, running the blood-streaked knife under the cold tap. He placed it on the drainage rack. The afternoon’s remaining light was being sucked into a black sky as the wind beat hard against the walls and began talking under the house.

He turned and looked at Ozzie. The bird was a puffed-up shivering bundle of feathers with eyes like saucers.

On the floor, one of Liz’s hands reached slowly for something, coming to rest against the overturned vase in a small pool. Blood mingled with the water, turning it pink. Her robe had fallen open, revealing a boyish tit. He pulled out a chair and sat looking at her but she didn’t move again. After a while he glanced at the knife drying on the rack.

He turned back to Liz, not quite knowing what to do. He felt cold, twitchy and a bit feverish, as if he were about to start floating around the kitchen. Surely he hadn’t just killed her? Maybe he should call an ambulance.

‘Hey, Liz.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Hey, what about this weather, eh?’

He scratched his head, bent down on one knee and wriggled both hands under her. She wasn’t that heavy and he only gave a small grunt as he straightened. She dangled limply in his arms, her pop star hairdo all askew. He was amazed by how quickly she’d died; he must have pierced her liver or something. As he moved toward the bathroom her lolling head smacked into Ozzie’s cage and sent it to the floor. Amid the rain’s relentless din a savage peel of thunder seemed to explode right over the house, causing him to duck and swear. Then he grinned and turned to see a sustained flash of such bright sheet lightning that he was struck by the oddest notion God was taking a photo of the port and open sea.

He carried Liz into the bathroom and tipped her face down into the tub. Her left arm half-hung over the rim. He studied the silver butterfly-shaped ring on her hand, a gift he’d brought back from Port Essington to ease his way into her house. He sat beside the splayed arm, trying to think things through. The next few hours would be crucial. Liz had to disappear without a trace while he covered his tracks.

But how?

He propped his chin on his hands, trying to blot out the storm’s growing din as he considered one possibility after another and rejected them all. Then the answer hit him. Chop her up. Sure, it’d be grim but it had to be the best solution. Just pretend she was a piece of meat. A roo after a night’s spotlighting. He looked at Liz in her turquoise bathrobe, reached down and patted her back.

‘Sorry, girl. I didn’t mean for it to turn out this way. Really.’ His fingers lingered, stroking the cotton. ‘But you were so fucking annoying.’

There was one immediate problem: a lack of power tools. He tried to picture the storeroom beneath the house. Liz obviously wasn’t the sort of girl into DIY but he was pretty sure daddy’s chainsaw lurked down there somewhere. Only last week he’d popped round to trim some overhanging branches away from the eaves and power lines. And in this storm the noise from a busy chainsaw would easily be swallowed. There was also a large picnic hamper in one of the storeroom’s corners. The pieces could be transported in that.

Afterwards, everything could be dumped at East Point.

He knew a great spot where he used to rock fish with Rod, who’d once fallen in and been swept thirty metres out before he’d been able to swim across the current and back to shore. Rod had always joked about it but Nick knew he’d been really shaken by the rip’s ferocity. Liz would be sucked out deep into the Timor Sea in no time. The sharks would gobble everything up as the storm provided perfect cover – the roads were likely to be deserted during the short drive north while the chances of bumping into someone on foot remained miniscule. That would leave the rest of the night to clean up the house.

And in the days to come he could tearfully tell the cops they’d had a fight before she’d packed her bags and taken off for her mum’s or sister’s place. No, no fight. That would only make them suspicious. Just say she hadn’t been there when he’d got home. With no body, no witnesses and no signs of a struggle they wouldn’t be able to do a bloody thing.

Now he had a plan, he tried to attack its weak points, finding it hard to think in any sort of linear manner with the house under such ferocious assault. Rain had begun squirting through the glass louvres and soaking the carpet, prompting him to jam a towel into some of the slots.

Time to do it.

He dashed into the hallway and switched on the storeroom light. As he ran down the poorly lit steps, a newly washed pink bed sheet blew into his face. For a few comical seconds he became entangled and had to fight blindly through before reaching the bottom and stubbing a toe against a wheel of her Datsun Bluebird. He swore, recalling her big sulk the day she’d shown off the vehicle and he’d told her that brand new cars devalued by fifteen percent a year, even if they just sat in the garage. He stared at the car, unsure whether to use it to move the body and get shot of both at the same time.

But if he dumped the car, how would he get back to the house? He didn’t want to get stuck outside. This storm looked like the real thing. All sorts of things were being knocked over and even picked up during the swirling gusts. No, he’d take his Kingswood. Getting rid of the body remained the priority. He’d worry about her Bluebird later. He began looking for what was needed.

He found the hamper overturned next to the lawnmower but the chainsaw remained missing, his only clue to its whereabouts being an empty plastic carton of two-stroke. He rifled through drawers, yanking open cupboards and jumping up to see what was on the higher shelves. He found a metal toolbox, cursing as he cut a finger on a jagged corner, but at least it revealed a junior hacksaw and a heavy-duty rubber torch. He switched it on and examined the rust-spotted blade’s small teeth, doubting it would be robust enough to cope with the demands of dismemberment. He stuffed it into a back pocket, unable to find anything else apart from a pair of pliers if he decided to remove her teeth.

He shoved the toolbox away, cursing the swinging light bulb as it popped against the ceiling. Now his only sources of illumination were the torch and lightning bursts. He strode around kicking things aside, the wind bringing him snatches of next door’s dogs barking dementedly. Where the bloody hell was that chainsaw? Maybe her old man had taken it back to do some work at his place. A flying pillowcase wrapped itself around his face, causing him to misjudge a step and lose his footing. His shoulder thumped into a concrete pillar and he landed face down by the Bluebird.

Cursing and rubbing his ribs he got to his knees and retrieved the precious torch, which had rolled away but thankfully hadn’t broken. Almost on a whim he shone it into the car, yelping as he spotted the small chainsaw lying on magazines on the backseat. She must’ve been getting ready to return it for the planned Boxing Day lunch with her folks in Nightcliff. He opened the driver’s door and unlocked the rear door, holding the chainsaw aloft with something approaching triumph.

He made his way back up the stairs, descending again after he realised he’d forgotten the hamper. It wasn’t in the same place, having shifted about three metres away. He dumped the chainsaw inside and tried unsuccessfully to fit the torch’s thick handle in his mouth; instead he rested it on top of the hamper, a reasonably successful solution that enabled him to navigate through the swirling darkness.

Halfway up the stairs he froze as the whole house groaned and moved on its steel piers. Spooked, he returned to the kitchen and grabbed some plastic bags. He turned and headed toward the rectangular pool of light being thrown from the bathroom against the hallway wall, stopping dead as a human shadow crossed it. He sucked in breath; all the hairs on the back of his neck stood up.

What the fuck…?

Liz was dead. He was sure of it. Not half an hour ago, he’d picked her up and felt firsthand that utter absence of life. She was dead, she was dead, she was dead.

But now someone was in the bathroom.

He licked his lips and swallowed, unable to stop himself from calling out. ‘Liz…?’

Nothing. Not that she’d be able to hear in this bloody racket anyway. Perhaps someone had slipped into the house while he’d been downstairs. No, that was impossible unless... someone with a key had come up the front steps and let themselves in. Maybe her dad, worried about his little girl in the storm...

Nick put down the basket, eyes trained on the doorway for any signs of further life, and approached the bathroom with the hacksaw held ready. What the hell was he going to do if her dad was in there? Nick poked his head round the door, relieved to see the place empty and Liz still face down in the tub with her left arm splayed behind.

Well, what had he been expecting?

He shook his head, trying to convince himself it was a stupid trick of the light. Christ, in this storm it could’ve been anything.

He double backed for the hamper and placed it on the bathroom floor, trying to return his mind to more practical matters. His feet squelched on the sodden carpet and he shivered violently. Christ, he was only wearing a pair of shorts. He tried not to notice the red streaks down his legs. In the bedroom he threw on some warmer clothes before returning to the small bathroom.

Then he lifted the hamper lid and fished out the chainsaw. The teeth were well-lubricated and in good shape, although the reservoir suggested it would be running on fumes. Well, maybe there was enough fuel for the job.

Only one way to find out.

After two pulls, the chainsaw throbbed into life, its roar almost muted by the maelstrom outside. He let it idle on a dry patch of floor, removed Liz’s robe and pushed and pulled her torso until she faced the side of the bath. Then he took a breath, positioned himself alongside and held up her left arm.

He began slicing through the armpit, relieved that the bath caught most of the spatter. It was awkward crouching over her with only one hand controlling the machine but after five seconds or so her arm came away.

Easy.

He looked at the white bone amid the gore of the stump, felt strangely hot and cold, and puked into the sink. During the dry heaves he managed to hold onto the severed arm, but lost control of the blade. It jumped around in the bath as he retched again, snarling against the sides and chewing up Liz’s back. When the gut spasms passed he grabbed its handle and put it back on the floor. He splashed some water over his head and rinsed his mouth, unnerved by the gaunt, staring face in the mirror. He pulled Liz’s butterfly ring off and stuffed it into his pocket before wrapping the severed limb in a plastic bag and placing it in the hamper.

One down, four bits to go.

Then his stomach lurched again as the idling machine sputtered twice and stalled.

‘No! No! No!’

Six attempts at a restart only resulted in a silent blade and an impulse to slam it into the wall. He had to dispose of the body tonight. By tomorrow morning, Liz’s relatives and friends would phone or come knocking. Plus, he still had to clean up the house and that was going to take time.

But where the hell was he going to get a can of two-stroke at this time of night? The neighbours? No, it’d be stupid to turn up wild-eyed in the middle of a storm. Maybe he could say a tree had fallen down. No, too risky. The bastards might want to help or something. At the very least they were bound to remember a stranger knocking doors asking for fuel. Rod had just about every power tool known to man but again it would be a mistake to show up on his doorstep. Too awkward.

That left the town centre, but it was gone six pm on Christmas Eve and pretty much everywhere was shut. A servo might be open but he was desperate to avoid contact with people. He felt different – one glance in the mirror had told him that – and he knew he was giving off a manic intensity that people would remember. Best to just do everything himself.

He tried to think, side-tracked when the bathroom light flickered as something large banged into the house. The rain had started gushing through the glass louvres, the wind so strong it was impossible to keep them shut. His teeth chattered despite the jeans and jacket. Things were getting really scary. He grabbed the towel rail to steady himself and shut his eyes, desperately trying to push aside snatches of the Port Essington voyage flaring behind his eyelids – the lurching boat surfing down enormous waves; the back deck awash as the spotlights picked out nothing but sheer walls of black water; and the paralysing knowledge that both he and the ship’s seventy-eight tonnes could be swallowed whole at any moment.

He opened his eyes and leaned across the bath to look through the glass slats. The street lighting was still working but seemed pathetically weak, forcing him to rely on the lightning for a better idea of what was going on. An incredible array of objects was hurtling through the air as any remaining vegetation was stripped bare.

He turned away and sat on the rim of the bath, sucking at the stinging cut on his finger that had been inflicted by the corner of the toolbox. Maybe the hacksaw would do the trick.

Had to be worth a try.

He shifted Liz onto her left side, the flesh cold and clammy under his straining fingers, and slipped the blade into her right armpit. He began sawing. Thick, dark blood oozed out over his fingers, causing him to retch and look away. He closed his eyes, fought hard to get his churning stomach under control, and tried again. Then the small teeth met bone and progress became a lot harder. After a few minutes of furious sawing he began panting. He threw the blade down and rocked back on his heels. He’d be there all bloody night with that toy.

The wind began shrieking, causing him to again hold his breath as the house’s superstructure strained and seemed to lift. Was a cyclone really about to hit? Only a few weeks ago there’d been just such a warning on the radio but it had petered out into the usual pissy wind and rain. The Mets struck him as a pretty useless bunch with their duff forecasts. And anyhow, the last time a cyclone had hit was forty odd years ago. No one took them too seriously. Besides, there couldn’t be one coming in now. It was Christmas fucking Eve.

Maybe he should just dump the body whole. What difference would it make anyway? None, although she might not fit into the basket. The main thing was to get to East Point before the storm worsened. He ducked into the bedroom for his car keys, turning the place upside down and shouting obscenities as their whereabouts eluded him.

Then he remembered Liz’s insistence on hanging them on a cutesy kitchen plaque her dad had made. He rushed to it and grabbed them before returning to the bath and hauling her body out. Her flesh squirmed against him. Despite lacking a limb she seemed heavier. Twice he almost fell on the wet carpet before managing to tumble her headfirst into the basket. He looked at her doubled in half with her pale arse in the air.

‘Everything in its right place,’ he giggled, gnawing at a hangnail. He threw her robe over her and flipped the lid shut. Pain flared in his side and back as if he’d pulled a muscle or damaged a rib. He sat on top of the hamper, trying to get his breathing under control. He was sweating like a pig, not fancying the task of carrying her to the car in the dark. He’d have to drag the basket down one step at a time.

He heaved her out of the bathroom. The saturated, squelching carpet pretty much provided a friction-free passage, although it meant he also had difficulty in keeping his footing. He pushed open the upstairs door, backed into the darkness and bumped the basket down the first couple of steps. Somehow it was raining indoors. Heavier objects had started to take flight. Halfway down, a gust caught him and he almost tumbled backwards, saved when his right hand locked onto the banister at the last possible moment.

At the bottom of the stairs he paused before pulling the basket around to the Kingswood’s rear and bundling it in, just about managing to force shut the yo-yoing boot. Stinging rain lashed his face as he headed for the main gates, causing him to lean forward, hunch his shoulders and peer through slits. It was impossible to look into the teeth of the wind and he had to keep a hand over his eyes as he was peppered with mud and gravel. One of the garage’s gates had already disappeared which was just as well as it turned into quite a battle to fix the remaining gate into its concrete bolt hole.

Another gust shoved him sideways into a workbench as he turned back toward his car. He jumped in and tried to stave off panic, shivering as he watched the tempest from behind the relative safety of the windscreen. Stroboscopic bursts of lightning were turning night into day, enabling him to pick out an enormous amount of debris strewn across the road. Torrential rain was falling at a thirty degree angle; no doubt it would soon be horizontal. Every fibre of his body was screaming at him to stay put in the stationary vehicle. Anything might happen out on the roads. An accident. A police cordon. Again he thought about delaying Liz’s disposal until first light or at least until the storm had died down. No, he had to act now. Tomorrow would be too late. At least the street lighting was still on.

He turned the ignition, having no idea whether it had caught; the only way to tell if the engine was running was to engage the clutch. He drove bumpily out, amazed by the wind’s resistance; it felt like a giant invisible hand was intent on pushing him back underneath the house. The vehicle lost traction on the dirt path and slid a couple of metres. He cursed and tried again; this time the hand let go and he shot forward onto the street.

For a kilometre or so he drove at a crawl, barely able to see anything, the wipers unable to cope with the sheer volume of water cascading down the windscreen. The Kingswood was being continually buffeted – for a few moments he felt as if he were a pinball – until a violent shove lifted the wheels and sent him careening toward the pavement. Just missing a car travelling in the opposite direction that had materialised out of the whirling gloom, he smacked into a tree trunk and shuddered to a halt.

He sat there, trying to get his nerve back as he shouted and banged the steering wheel until his fists throbbed. East Point was only ten clicks away but he’d never make it. Out here in this tempest he could get turned into mince in the blink of an eye. Anything could take him out – a tree, power lines, another vehicle. Then he groaned as the true stupidity of his mission struck home. Liz wouldn’t be taken out to sea in this weather; the goddamn storm was blowing everything inland. What the hell had he been thinking?

He rubbed his eyes, needing information fast. He flicked on the ABC, unable to hear anything. He turned the volume right up and lowered an ear to the speaker. After a few minutes he heard severe tropical Cyclone Tracy was centred eighty kilometres west-northwest of Darwin and moving toward the city at about seven kilometres an hour with winds of up to one hundred and fifty kilometres an hour.

Christ, the cyclone wasn’t even here yet. He tried to do some basic maths by dividing seven into eighty. His brain wouldn’t work; an absurd amount of time later he guessed that he must have at least a few hours’ grace before things turned catastrophic. His immediate instinct was to hurtle down The Track to Humpty Doo but every second he spent on the road screamed danger. It would be madness to spend hours behind the wheel with a corpse in the boot. The car must have already sustained damage when it smacked into the tree, giving any traffic cop fair reason to pull it over.

Up ahead a spectacular lightning show revealed a tree toppling into some power lines before bouncing off a parked car and falling across the road. A moment later the power pole followed suit. Fascinated, he watched showers of blue sparks being spat across the bitumen by the snaking cables. The whole town was falling apart. He desperately needed shelter, to get underneath something solid.

He gunned the stalled car and nosed back onto the left-hand side of the road, following the white lines at a crawl. Basic control was bordering on impossible, as if driving on ice in a wind tunnel. Missiles were flying past the windscreen or slamming into the car’s side. A rear window disintegrated with a loud bang, causing him to yell and swivel to see a wet coconut rolling around the back seat. To his left he heard the screech of corrugated iron tearing free before glimpsing a flapping roof.

Finally he got back onto his home street. As he approached the house the car refused to enter the garage. It moved sideways, backwards and sideways again. Miraculously a gust shoved him forward so hard he feared whiplash as the car took out some fencing and ricocheted inside.

Gasping, he pushed open the driver’s door only for it to be wrenched away and rebound viciously onto his arm. He shrieked and half-fell onto the concrete floor. Rainwater ran off his face in rivulets as he nursed the throbbing limb. He stayed on his knees and gingerly flexed it. It wasn’t broken. Probably just badly bruised. He got to his feet and staggered round to the boot but his frozen fingers couldn’t open it. He banged the car with a fist, threw his head back and screamed. Finally he popped the boot, somehow finding the strength to manhandle the wicker basket onto the ground with one hand.

Where the hell was the torch?

It was probably upstairs but instead of going to get it he waited for another burst of lightning to illuminate the storeroom’s steps. A few seconds later night became day, enabling him to make his way toward the foot of the stairs.

He turned with his back to them, dragging the basket up by a side handle. It was hard-going but after a couple of minutes he hadn’t got anywhere, as if the number of steps had somehow multiplied in his absence. He half-turned to try to count the number of stairs left; a moment later something pushed against his ribs and he was tumbling over the basket. His good hand kept hold of the handle, flipping it onto its end until it twisted out of his grasp and he landed on his back. Air whooshed out of him as lightning lit up the basket lid swinging open and a naked upright Liz towering over him. Her eyes locked onto his, someone seemed to whisper his name, and her one arm reached for him as she toppled downward. Unable to make a noise, he could only writhe on the ground and wait for the thud of her final embrace.

****

Last year he’d caught the flu for the first time in his life, a miserable debilitating sickness which left him in no doubt why such viruses killed the weak and old. He’d barely been able to get up, shivering violently in bed, until things had got so bad he’d staggered into the bathroom for a bath. It hadn’t done any good, no matter how much he increased the temperature, and his grasp on reality had become alarmingly faint. Getting out of the bath had taken several attempts and his arms had been shaking so hard he’d been unable to dry himself. He’d dropped the towel, desperate to get back under the doona, but unsure if he could even make it across the bedroom floor.

Then the doorbell had rung. It was Liz, the sight of her concerned face causing a wave of relief so intense it had occasionally puzzled him for months afterward. She’d come in and helped him return to bed before wrapping her fully clothed body around him in the heat of a Darwin night. He’d stared into her brown eyes, watching the sweat bead on her forehead, until he sneezed wetly into her face.

‘Sorry,’ he said.

She’d just smiled and pulled him closer. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she replied, not even bothering to wipe the splatter away.

****

He opened his eyes. Or at least he thought he did. For a moment he believed he’d gone blind. He squeezed his eyes shut and slowly re-opened them.

Same result.

He swallowed, trying to control his quickening breathing as he became aware of a cold, hard pressure on both sides of his face. Unable to move his head, he found he couldn’t lift his hands to investigate either. Something clammy was pinning him down but he lacked the strength to move whatever it was.

He took a breath and concentrated on the limited information available, all the time trying to picture himself and his whereabouts. Tremors were shooting through him, enabling him to understand that he was on his back with his right cheek against a concrete floor and it was vibrating.

No more details materialised.

What was on top of him? How had he got this way? The storm. Driving in the storm. After that...? And how...?

He mewled. Nothing made any sense.

Then everything flared and in an instant he understood he was underneath Liz, her naked chest flush against his left cheek. Gasping, he repeatedly bucked until her dead weight shifted and he was able to wriggle free. He scrambled to his feet but the force of the wind shoved him straight over, compelling him to hang onto the bottom of the banisters. In the time he’d been out the storm had intensified to an unbelievable degree. Now he was in the middle of a howling maelstrom. The wicker basket had vanished, meaning he would have to rely on brute strength to haul Liz up the stairs. He got behind her and crouched, hooking both hands under her armpits. Three times he tried to lift her only to fall backwards as his grip slid off her body.

Then he almost laughed as he realised why he couldn’t get a proper hold – he’d already hacked off one of her arms. At the thought of it he looked around but there was no way he’d find the missing limb in this chaos. Grunting he grabbed a leg instead and began dragging her up the solitary flight, his body sweating, straining and cramping. At the top he collapsed into the house and never wanted to move again.

Moaning, he picked himself up and hauled Liz back into the bathroom. Drained of strength, he studied her nude body on the bathmat. All he’d managed to achieve was to drag her down to the car, take her for a drive and lug her back upstairs again. He fought the urge to giggle, instead giving into a violent need to urinate. He yanked down his fly and peed long and hard as the low water level sloshed in the bowl and made sucking noises.

The jet engine roar of the storm had become incredible. With both hands pressed against his ears, he dashed into the living room. The main window was plastered with leaves and bulging inward on its aluminium frame leaving him unable to do anything but gape; there was no way glass could bend that much. Then the curtains were sucked through the gap at the top and flapped crazily on the other side of the pane before being torn away.

The street lighting had stopped working, leaving him reliant on the astronomical amount of sheet lightning that made the night almost as bright as the middle of a winter afternoon. The air was thick with debris – fridge doors, lampshades, bricks, pot plants and chairs were all banging into the house.

Across the road sheets of corrugated iron were tearing off and wrapping themselves around power poles. A flipped car skidded along on its roof; other vehicles had been crushed. Bare trees were bent double, their branches trailing the ground. As he watched a tree with a metre-thick trunk shook itself free of the sodden earth and began dancing with its entire root system on display before bumping almost apologetically into a station wagon and shooting up into the sky.

In the bathroom he heard the shotgun blast of the glass louvres blowing out, causing the noise of the shrieking wind to increase yet again. Directly across the street a roof flapped like paper; an inner sense screamed he had to get the hell out of the front room. A split second later the roof tore off with an enormous screech and smashed into the house as he dived into the hallway.

The roaring wind strengthened to an unbearable pitch and began sucking him backward toward the huge hole that had been punched into the living room as he frantically clawed at the carpet for any kind of hold. His hand closed onto the bottom of a doorframe, the suction already lifting his body off the ground. His horizontal legs kicked air. He chanced a glance behind at the dark vortex of splintered furniture and glass shards that had been the fastidiously neat front room only moments earlier. The whole structure was rocking, twisting and creaking.

Right there and then he knew the onslaught would cause its high-set weatherboard walls to disintegrate; there wasn’t a brick in the entire place. He should’ve stayed downstairs in his car.

Too late now.

All he could do was seek shelter in the house’s strongest part, which had to be the bathroom or toilet. The extra plumbing there might provide something to hang onto while the smaller wall sections might stand up to the wind. He crawled face down along the narrow passage, choking on fine dirt and cursing the builder who’d put together such a jerry-built piece of shit.

He just about made it into the spare bedroom as the raging wind pummelled him. He tried to get under the bed frame, sobbing when the gap proved too small. Instead he pulled off the mattress and cowered beneath it, mumbling a prayer that quickly petered into babbling. He shrieked as the window blew in. The driving rain soaked him and the air pressure immediately rocketed; any second now he’d be sucked out. The wind tried to snatch the mattress off him until a flying dressing table half-plugged the jagged opening. An ear-splitting noise told him the roof was no more.

He risked a peek, transfixed by the plaster ceiling rapidly changing colour as the rain saturated it. It grew heavier by the second and began leaking water until it reached critical mass and began peeling down in long strips. Chunks started falling on him. Within seconds the ceiling would crash down and everything in the room would disappear into the night. He scrambled out of the bedroom and passed the kitchen to see all the cupboard doors ripped off and their contents dancing on the floor.

He leapt into the bath and curled up with both hands covering the back of his head. Blood and water began filling the tub, forcing a check for injuries. His arm was badly gashed and he’d probably lost quite a lot of blood. His scalp seemed to be a mass of cuts and although his eyes were stinging and half-filled with mud he could see glass shards embedded in his knees as the wind ripped up the rest of the house. He looked up just about able to make out the plaster ceiling darkening, knowing full well that the bathroom wasn’t going to fare any better than the bedroom.

Somehow he found the strength to scramble out of the bath, splash onto the floor and duck into the separate toilet but the wind’s demonic force left him unable to click shut the inward-opening door. He strained against it but couldn’t manage the final few centimetres as it swayed erratically back and forth; instead he dropped to the lino and slumped against the door bracing both feet against the base of the toilet. He sensed the small room was the only one still left standing in the entire structure.

He stared at the glass louvres, amazed they hadn’t blown in. With a shock he realised they would soon and were aimed straight at him like daggers. The shards would either kill him outright or slash an artery, leaving him to bleed to death. Most likely they’d blind. A moment later he shrieked as a spear of timber smashed through the wall, struck his temple and left his ears ringing. With cloudy vision, he stared dumbly at its blunt end quivering just in front of his nose. He couldn’t stop shivering. The walls began flexing.

This was it. This was the end.

He panted, trying to steel himself, and looked up to see the ceiling plaster darkening as he babbled about God and Liz and life and hate.

And then the toilet door clicked shut, causing him to swivel and stare at it flush in its frame. Something felt different. He concentrated hard, fearing a trick; his senses were so jumbled he knew he couldn’t trust them. He waited for the ringing in his ears to lessen, listening intently while wiping at his mud-encrusted eyes with the heel of his palm. Yes, the tremendous noise and the atmospheric pressure had dropped. It also seemed a bit warmer.

He groped for the end of the timber spear protruding through the wall and tried to haul himself up, the clumsy effort causing a large wet strip of plaster to peel off the ceiling and drape itself over his shoulder. Sobbing, he fell back to the floor trying to still his galloping chest. He could no longer hear the cyclone, its banshee scream having been replaced by a deathly quiet.

As something approaching control returned, he pulled himself to his feet and gingerly opened the sticky door, expecting to see the rest of the house gone. Instead he was confronted by the smooth, blank hallway wall. He took a shaky step toward it and placed a palm against its freshly painted surface, its coolness radiating along his trembling arm as the unnerving silence continued to press down on him. Overhead the ceiling was still in place while beneath his feet the carpet remained dry.

This... doesn’t make... any kind of... sense.

Euphoria and stupefaction fought with each other. He swallowed and turned to look down the passageway, unable to find the slightest trace of the cyclone’s fury. Just a few minutes ago a flying roof from across the street had smashed into the front of the house.

He’d seen it happen.

Now instead of vast structural damage he could see a pair of well-tended pot plants sitting on Liz’s desk, even managing to pick out the blue cover of her favourite embroidery manual. He sank to the floor, bewildered by the overwhelming evidence of normality before his eyes.

He whimpered, drew his knees up and wrapped his arms around them. He was so cold. For a while he rocked back and forth, picking the odd shard of glass out of his right thigh, until he thought he heard something in the kitchen. He cocked his head, his hearing muffled by the prolonged roar of the cyclone and the rapid pressure changes. He dry washed his face and roughly massaged his head, hawking up the harsh clumps of crap clogging his nose and throat. His senses grew a little sharper; his stomach was abruptly tantalised by the thick, rich smell