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Edition 12: Inside Ferndale by Lee Murray
Lee Murray was the winner of the 2013 Story Quest competition. Judges were impressed with her story of young women shunted into the system, and how reform fails the best of them. While not supernatural, she invokes true horror in the girls’ plight. SY
Ferndale Hostelry for Girls: a pretty name for a juvie detention centre, and a place I’d never heard of until I came up on the last charge. It was my third offence, this time for assault on a teacher, but the snotty cow deserved it, and everyone knows the law has no teeth when it comes to teens. So I was sitting in the courtroom not worrying, picking at the frayed knees of my jeans, waiting for my parents to arrive at the hearing. Only they never did. And when Judge Eastergard realized they weren’t going to show, he sent me to Ferndale. He said, if my parents weren’t willing to take on the job of straightening me out, the state would have to do it for them.
Eastergard may as well have sent me to prison. Hell, it was a prison. One for kids. There were no cigarettes. No alcohol. No TV after ten. At Ferndale, they told me when to wake up. When to eat. When to pee. And the good-cop bad-cop thing? They had it mastered. One minute, pursed-lipped guards were checking under the mattresses and rifling through drawers, and the next, sweet-voiced counselors offered milky smiles and stupid suggestions: “Come on, Storm, we’re here to help: a problem shared is a problem halved, after all.” Silly do-gooders. They didn’t know anything.
Edition 12: Serial Fiction: Clutter Coach (Part 1 of 2) by Tom Barlow
Part 1 sees us meeting Kathy, clutter coach, who helps clean up other people’s lives but can’t control her own dysfunction. Giving into her own secret collection compulsions, Kathy comes upon a silver samovar. She may not have bargained on what the samovar brings to her life however. SY
Illustration by Gerry Huntman
Kathy struggled all through dinner with the thought of the treasures sitting curbside for any passerby to grab. Perhaps if her husband Stuart had stayed home to watch “American Idol” with her that evening, she could have put it out of her mind. But he bowled on Wednesday nights.
Edition 13: Serial Fiction: Clutter Coach (Part 2 of 2) by Tom Barlow
Part 2 and the extent of Kathy’s hoarding finally comes to Stuart’s attention. Feeling cornered, Kathy starts to push back against her husband’s controlling nature and act in a disturbing way. What spell is the samovar weaving upon her? SY
Illustration by Gerry Huntman
Stuart caught her staring at her eBay sales when he arrived home early. Before she could shut down the window, he saw the sale notification on the art deco pin she had put up for sale.
Edition 13: The Church of Asag by Cameron Trost
Gary Inglewood has been offered an exciting contract working in rural Queensland, in a small town called Isisford. His family aren’t particularly happy to be uprooted, but at least the locals seem pleased to see them. Nothing much happens in this sleepy little town; except for those events on the religious calendar, of course… SY
Isisford was just what the Inglewood family had expected—a hick-infested hell-hole in the middle of nowhere. Gary had tried to remain optimistic, thinking of it as a close-knit country town a stone’s throw from Longreach—but the stunned look on his face bore witness to his disappointment.
The over-packed station wagon rolled warily along the main street. The Inglewoods had tried to bring all of their earthly possessions with them, but even a spacious car like theirs had its limits.
They passed an art gallery, and its recycled rubbish sculptures—with beer caps for eyes—seemed to watch the family from behind a dirty display window.
Edition 13: Keeping An Open Mind by Dan Rabarts
When it comes to the question of what makes us individuals and where we can find that special spark, Josh thinks he has the answer. Dan Rabarts was third placed in the 2013 IFWG Publishing Australia Story Quest competition, winning the judges over with his clear style and dark storytelling. SY
Joshua knew he was guilty. He just didn’t know why.
There had been a time, before the accident, when it had all fitted together well enough. A time when things had made sense. There had been echoes of laughter and the glow that reminded him of late summer, good times remembered but fading. Sitting on the riverbank, sharing a durry, swigging from a glass flask, squeezing his eyes against the burn of cheap raw liquor—the best they could afford—and contemplating everything from the meaning of sunrise to whether or not there really was a Great Hereafter. They had reached an agreement, Joshua and those whom he had once called friends, that what lay beyond was whatever you believed it would be. He had, in the folly of his youth (not so long ago), believed that this husk of blood and bone and brain had the power to summon an afterlife of his choosing, simply by willing it so. He wished that he still held to such frivolous dreams. But he had seen what happens when a man is rent from jaw to spleen. There is blood, and bone, and the reek of copper and shit. He had seen the grey and brown that lurks within the skull, that frail temple that hides man’s concept of soul and lets him believe that after death there is anything more than dust or ash or the long devouring of worms.
Edition 13: Stills by Jeremy C Shipp
The latest in home decorating style are the Stills, key to any successful social engagement. Their position requires time, patience, and only the very best will do. A great bizarro piece from our guest author, Jeremy C. Shipp. SY
You can imagine the shock to my nerves when I catch my son balancing on a wobbly barstool, placing a diaper on a woman’s head.
“Look, mama,” my boy says. “She’s a diaper queen. Mama, look.”
I cross my arms over my chest, so that he knows I mean business. “Take that off of her. And get down from there. Now.”
Steven leaps off the stool and I gasp. Thankfully he doesn’t break a leg or even twist an ankle. He rushes away from me, giggling, flapping his arms like a frightened chicken.
Edition 1: Nullus by Mitchell Edgeworth
Traversing the Nullarbor can make you think you’re alone in the world. But this time, it’s not just a feeling. An Australian twist on apocalyptic fiction that’s sure to raise the hairs on the back of your neck. SY
You didn’t think you’d have bad weather in summer, yet here are grey skies lying sulky over the Nullarbor in the middle of February. Nothing you can do about it. You take the tent down and stow it in the panniers before straddling the Kawasaki and continuing east. With luck, you might hit Ceduna before nightfall.
At Balladonia an Irish backpacker serves you coffee and a sandwich, and looks wistfully out the window at your bike parked by the petrol bowsers, the clutter of occy-strapped luggage teetering on the rear of the seat. “You take carr on dat boike, all right? Just take it easy.”
Ravens flutter and croak in the spindly trees at the edge of the road. The flat and barren landscape is broken only by the occasional road sign or ruined farmstead. You gear down every time a road-train approaches, lowering your head so the whoosh of displaced air doesn’t pick you up off the bike. At 120 kilometres an hour, the buzz of the engine levels out as a steady drone. The frigid wind picks out the exposed bits of skin between helmet and jacket. Still, the weather holds out.
Edition 1: Neighborhood Watch by Jennifer Solomon
When kids start to disappear, local menace Jaden points the finger at his odd neighbors, the Spragues. Will he be able to stop them before there’s another friend on the menu? A classic thriller, but wait for the twist… SY
Jaden Conner-Sterling was an awful little boy. Not to his parents, perhaps, but certainly to most of the world. He was eleven; too old for his actions to be considered cute, and too young for them to be considered dangerous. He was smart in a sly sort of way; too small to be a bully at his school, he instead used his fast wits to become a lackey to the older, stronger kids.
It was Jaden who came up with the nickname “Fetus Face” for the soft, fleshy fourth grader named Douglas, and “Crotch rot” for the pretty, but extremely shy, Marilyn. When his friends found a dead cat by the side of the road, it was Jaden’s idea to put it in a used Chinese takeout bag and stow it in the locker of an Asian student named Takumi. “Enjoy your runch!” the gang shouted as the young boy (Japanese, not Chinese) tried not to cry.
Jaden was clever enough to modify his behavior among adults, though he didn’t fool everyone. His math teacher, Margaret Leonard, for example, watched him like a hawk. Forty years of dealing with unruly children had given her sharp instincts, though she was no longer fast enough on her feet to catch him in the act. Jaden referred to her as Grandma Moses. His neighbors across the street, the Fitzgeralds, had caught him chucking stones at their bird feeder. His parents reprimanded him vaguely, and Jaden was careful to check that the Fitzgeralds were out before resuming his target practice.
His parents, David and Laura saw Jaden in a different light. In their eyes, he was a highly intelligent, inquisitive little boy.
SQ Mag 