The Knife Sharpener (50 & 51)

50.

Bohemian Bob Tells His Version of the Wastes (5)

War brings all kinds, Nicky. Scurrilous sorts, mostly. People keen to pick at the corpses and the wreckage. Profiteers seeing a cheap buck to be made. And the gold hunters were already scattered through the east, waiting to dig at the remains of Walker and Taylor to see what clues they could uncover about buried hordes of gold. They all have interests in keeping that kinda turmoil kicking. In that, they’re a bit like a shitty footy player tagging a gun. All they want is to ramp the tension, milk the indecision, make it all dirty, drag it to their level. A truce is bad for business. An agreement that things got too messy.

            Chauncey – what’d you say he was calling himself again, Helmut?

            Chance.

            Yeah, that fella. He’s one of them dirt types. Keen to stick a fist in the ribs when you ain’t looking and duck off the other way while you check for some official to call foul. Sneak a goal out the back kinda cunt, ya know?

            Power hungry fucker. And when Aayden ran back to his uncle Roy and got the Taylors all fired up and marching off to brawl, Chauncey – Chance, whatever, he ratted out the whole situation to the Walkers. He conned his way into the funeral preparations with a few tough lads and he gets to telling them who killed old Sharmayne’s mum and that Roy was bout to break the armistice on Carers. But, worry not, he said to the Walkers. Pointed at the guys with him. I’ve got a few of me own Carers willing to work for gold.

            There was no moment of thought or doubt as far as Sharmayne was concerned. She hired a few of them right from Chance and put em to work Caring up some knives and forks for weapons.

            They didn’t – I didn’t know, he’d already sold off a few equally less worthwhile Carers already to Aayden, Roy, and the Taylors. Chance, he put himself in the middle of it as the fucking arm’s dealer.

            I thought we were on the same side for a bit. Realised pretty quick his only interest is himself, but. No Ministry about the man. Detested Ministry, actually. Yet, it didn’t stop him basically helping in its dirty work. And when it all went pear shaped, he came begging to me to keep him out of it. Didn’t want to be tarnished as a war crim, right. I told him I’d see what I could do. Man frightened me, to be honest. When I excised him and Rudiger from the stories, a couple of years later the motoboys started keeping watch of me. Wasn’t sure if it was to keep me quiet. Or payback. Probably both. Chance hedged his bets.

            And speaking of Rudiger, he watched his heart get torn, as his missus fell in with the conflict. He disappeared for a while there. Somewhere out east. When he came back, it wasn’t pretty.

            The conflict kicked hard from the get-go. Armed to the gills, Taylors and Walkers systematically demolished each other’s Collection Stations, manor houses, compounds, and union halls, killing any number of family and disappearing tracts of the east to the looser powers of the Cared weapons they recklessly carried. For though Roy was an accomplished Carer, the hitmen Chance hired out were little more than journeyman scrubs whose Cared tools were as likely to backfire as they were to properly function. The other Carers who were hidin out there tried to keep out of it, but fearing that they’d choose the wrong side and twist the war, Taylor and Walker hunted em down. And them gold diggers, too, took a dislike to em, firstly, when they refused to Care for their pick axes, and secondly, when they thought they might step in and end shit and ruin their chance to pick at the remains of whatever gold mines were hidden across the east. The Carers were hunted, mutilated, and cut down. The order was getting well trimmed.

            The war continued to rage and flame. Senseless in the way that things can get when revenge and greed are the fuel. It was a series of raids, surprise attacks, drive bys, and duels. As I said, the Cared implements were destructive, digging out swathes of land into voids that far as I know still swell and vibrate out there. Butter knives used to sever people from existence itself. Pots and pans which gathered the air and burned it molten, that was then hurled at the opposition. Most of it that wasn’t Cared by Roy or his men was a hair trigger prospect, likely as not to disappear the wielder as serve it actual function. Like I heard about a whisk Cared to scramble a man’s molecules, which backfired and twisted the arms of the man who had into red liquorice. He lived. Uncomfortably.

Released of her affair and swelled with a new infatuation, Sharmayne led with unbridled violence. She torched Taylor lands right to the edges of the Valley. Savage aboard her Holden, leaning out the window screaming and shooting. Sharmayne hunted for Aayden. Suburb to suburb. Aayden fled from her, salting the land as he went, causing his own kind of twisted carnage.

Eventually, Sharmayne believed she had him trapped. With her brother Hunter, they cornered him at a Toll Booth deep in Taylor lands. They stormed right into a trap. Gunfire opened on the siblings and Hunter fell in a tangled, riddled mess. Sharmayne who had been blinded by the idea of achieving her satisfaction fell with a bullet in the knee. From the Booth stepped Aayden, bearing a knife especially Cared by his Uncle Roy. It was a chef’s knife, Nicky, a bit like yours. He came up to Sharmayne and people said he shed tears for the woman he loved who didn’t love him back. I’ve always believed that was bullshit, but. Man didn’t have tears. He only saw something that he couldn’t possibly have, and, cos of that, it wasn’t worth keeping round. She wouldn’t submit to him. Not ever. Cut down and waiting for the inevitable, she only stared at Aayden as he came and a string of sweet curses dripped from her lips. He placed the knife to her throat and slit.

It was not the first time that knife had done its business. People knew what it did. Nothing quite so otherworldly as slicing through time and space. Nah. What it was Cared to do was separate a being from its body. It cut the souls right outta ya physical sack. Dribbled out their wounds. Then as it floated free, the knife could rend the body of the soul, flay it, slice it, mince it into nothing. Aayden took that knife to Sharmayne’s body and spiritual existence and cut both into paste, then nothingness as the air carried it away. She was diced out of this world.

For a moment, it seemed as though hostilities would cease. Brutality had been thought to reach its crescendo. And though it was more violent and terrible than anything I had anticipated, the job was all but done. The Ministry would clean up the east. Block off the black holes. Take back the land and have the control it sought.

Rudiger heard about Sharmayne, but. Any idea of peace was quashed as he exacted his terrible revenge.

Not just on the Taylor’s neither. He became adept at hunting Carers – Helmut there may tell you one day. He blamed them for creating the kind of monstrous weapons that could so thoroughly vanquish his love. And in his rage, the cool calculations of the man remerged: he saw it as his mission to clear the way for Ministry and turned on the Walkers and their Carers, too, whom had started as his loudest cheerleaders, then came to tremble at his name.

No one knew where he was hiding out. But they knew the dull thump of his cricket bat. The deep voice of a man committed to his task, who had talked himself into it, informing the victim of their crimes, the rationale of their impending battering.

Eventually he came for Aayden, Roy, and the knife. I was there. Under duress. Found by the Taylors at a Walker compound. Rudiger came in one evening as they interrogated me about what I knew. The coward Aayden he fled. Roy tried to stand his ground with the knife, but Rudiger slipped past him and took out his legs with the cricket bat. He took the knife to him then. Claiming this was how justice is best served. The Ministry Good requires balance, he said as he took apart the bits of Roy’s soul like a chef at a chicken carcass.

It was horrific. I still think about it. Too much.

He left with the knife to hunt down what was left of Roy’s Carers in the compound.

That was enough for me. I fled.

Of course, what happened after is well known. Aayden’s last stand at the Costco. The faulty spatula he tried to use which ultimately scrapped away a large swathe of Ringwood, before he was gunned down by gold diggers. The whole east lost to insanity. The Walker and Taylor families split. Tracts of land empty and burnt and swirling into vortexes. Things, molecules, the stuff of reality displaced and fractured. Distorted. There was nothing left for the Ministry. I suspect that Rudiger made it certain: there was nothing Good there anymore, no room for it to fit.

            And, still, he came out a hero. The man who tried to save the east. I fixed the story. Omitted his role from the love story become tale of revenge. I made it a tragedy. In a sense, it really was.

51.

Paul was dreaming of stars and cults and finding the best in people.

            The grates near the train line rattled. Churned against rust. Limply, Paul woke up and looked straight into the flames of a lamp. Above it a beard floated against the dark.

            ‘Paul,’ the beard said and split in two. ‘Time to go.’

            The light came to Paul then and he smiled a little, but didn’t know why.

The Knife Sharpener (49)

49.

Bohemian Bob Tells His Version of the Wastes (4)

In a culinary obsessed city, we can kinda look at it like a bunch of ingredients, yeah? Everything was simmering in the pot, but the flavour wasn’t quite right for it to really pop. We had fictional gold mines all over the east, gold hunters flowin in and getting into places they didn’t belong, Aayden Taylor starting to put his nose in where he shouldn’t, Rudiger finding passion in love and lust, and an ancient grudge boiling suspicion and greed into lethal fumes. But it missed the seasoning.

            Helmut’s boys took care of that, didn’t they?

            The Carers weren’t much liked by the Ministry, which didn’t have time for their shaman hocus pocus. Their gift was to fuck with the inherent value of things. This didn’t really mix with the Ministry worldview. Biffs had been chasing them from one end of Melbourne to the other for years and a few had already escaped out east.

            They were mostly welcome out there. Both the Taylors and Walkers liked to keep a few on staff at any given time. In advisory roles mostly. They thought them wise and wordly, but they were also superstitious about those kinds of things – not wanting to make the magics of the world agro, that kinda shit.

            You’d think they would’ve long ago weaponised em, but. Had em turn a couple of forks into weapons of mass destruction, twist a couple of spoons to scoop the other family out of existence.

            It does not work like that.

            That right, Helmet? Really?

            Mostly. More complicated.

            May be so, but I saw some weird shit from a few Carers when I was a kid. A saucepan that simmered the air around it. A pepper grinder that minced molecules into finer forms of dust. Real sorcerers. Alchemist shit. You folks – you had power, Helmut. Might’ve been careful in its application. But it was there.

            Anyway, the Walkers and the Taylors, they’d reached a kind of truce long ago about using Carers in their conflicts. A few Cared utensils out in the east, in the hands of the wrong kinda folks – they knew that that kinda escalation could spell annihilation. Pointless to be in charge when there’s nothing to lord over.

            The so-called Great Gold Rush disturbed that worldview.

            A few of the Carers that came over, they weren’t happy at their banishment. They’d had good lives in the city, doing research in universities with their banished Gardner Creek Guardian friends. Working in restaurants at the height of the dining craze with chefs like Maxwell Olinda – before Ministry took control of eating regulations. Or, just doing as Helmut here does, getting around, helping people out with their tools, bringing out the best in their potential. The Biffs that came for em, but, had no sympathy. Took their hands mostly. They was an enraged order, Nicky, and they came out east with that fury.

            Some say that the Carers got greedy over the gold. Saw a resource that was scarce in the world to weave their magic into. An element that was naturally imbued with a kind of magic lustre. A material to be fabricated and Cared into tools to enact their revenge against the Ministry.

This was partly true. But they didn’t see the gold as a part of their magic. They saw it as a source of revenue. The Carers were as eager as any gold hunter out in the easts and significantly more dangerous. The east was suddenly flooded with Cared cutlery and a few Cared chef knives. A part of Belgrave was sucked off into a black hole opened up by spoon in a nasty disagreement between some gold hunters who pillaged a careless Carer.

You can see that the story was getting out of my hands now. Poised on the edge of some bottomless chasm. Waiting for either the Walkers or Taylors to make their move and push the other in. Both had been rattling sabres. Trying to flush out the nuisance gold hunters. Control the flow of Cared items. And both were getting greedy to find the other’s gold.

Rudiger was wrapped up in Sharmayne during this. Letting the carnage bubble away. Ever dutiful to his mission, he did his part in spreading misinformation, fanning the flames, but with none of the vigour I’d seen in him at the Taylors. The man was deep in the business of his love. They both were. The queen of the east was usually the first to arms. Cos of their affair, but, Sharmayne had been pulled away from the Walker business. She had been an absent spark to the whole disaster.

I wonder sometimes if your dad did it on purpose. Kept her back long as he did.

The reverie and tension were bound to intersect.

Two things happened almost simultaneously. Firstly, Roy Taylor came home. His name has been seared from existence, Nicky. It should be a fucking parable of hubris and careless arrogance. If the Carers had a leader, he was it. A brilliant man who saw no limits to his skill and was unafraid to announce or demonstrate it. He loathed the Ministry. He was their terror. Out east, he came with rage and a posse of dangerous Carers to implore his brother, the head of the Taylors, for funds – gold – to fight back against their oppression. He had an apprentice with him – Helmut, over there, but a different name back then.

Secondly, Aayden discovered Rudiger and Sharmayne’s affair. He had been snooping around the Walker estate for weeks, hoping for glances of his apparent beloved. I had seen him on my frequent wanders with the bottle on their grounds. The Walker matriarch at the time, lovely woman, she’d show me the wattles and we’d have a toke and a chat about who was boning who. Gave me all kinds of juice for my stories.

Aayden was always disguised, never particularly cleverly, but sufficiently to go unnoticed by any who had been fortunate enough to not spend time near him. I didn’t rat him out. Wanted to avoid such confrontations. I regret that.

On one of his stalks, he discovered Rudiger with Sharmayne, in the rear of her Holden, together on one of their clandestine flings. Aayden was contorted with jealousy and betrayal. He pulled his gun and indiscriminately fired it at the couple.

The only bullet that hit though was one which went through the eye of Sharmayne’s mother who I was pottering through the garden with at the time. She was just finishing tellin me bout some ancient footy match, when the Walkers and Taylors weren’t quite so violent, when I was suddenly covered in eye goo. I could hear this weak, whining wail from nearby, and crashing bushes as Aayden nicked off. Then Rudiger calling out, asking who was there. Sharmayne came running to her mother and she didn’t weep a tear, Nicky. She got up, pushed away Rudiger who didn’t really know what to do – he stood there with his arms out and pupils dilated – and ran off to the house.

Aayden fled back to the Taylors and found his uncle Roy. Together they hatched a plan to get back at the Walkers: for Sharmayne’s betrayal and for their gold.

The truce was broken. The Carers went to work. Sharmayne was cold and distraught. And I saw the strains of my story begin to fray at the edges as both sides committed to the other’s complete destruction.

The Knife Sharpener (48)

 48.

Bohemian Bob Tells His Version of the Wastes (3)

Not to give too much away about ya dad, Nicky, but it was like a man coming in from a drought. He was dehydrated, a little delirious, and desperate to quench his thirst, and when he finally found a billabong – so to speak – his whole face went into that nourishing pond and came up sopping wet, hair lank, eyes filmed with satisfaction. The grit and grime of the dirt that had caked onto him slid off in slick, streaky lines.

            If the metaphor isn’t clear, Sharmayne was his long cool drink of water. His chance to connect with something that wasn’t the Ministry Good. In her, he found a fiery spirit who wielded a Magnum revolver like a fencing sword and provocatively proclaimed her independence, her will, her future at the head of the Walker family. She was the queen of the eastern suburbs, the scourge of the Taylors, the roughest and toughest of the Toll Gang capos. All Sharmayne’s talk of desire and autonomy, of striking the east from Melbourne as its own city-state, it was all but sacrilege to Rudgier’s indoctrination, his own beliefs. Yet, they were also tantalising and forbidden, wrapped then delivered in a voice that balanced on the edge of jazzed smoke and dictator eloquence. For a man still trying to find his own voice, hers was a lure which he could not resist. She was his shadow double: everything he was and was not. He was still a young man, Nicky … though, I guess, temptation knows no age.

            He told me all about her one night. To be honest, I still don’t know why. Maybe he was seeing me as a confidante, ya know? We’d been out there for a few weeks and had each other’s back. The families may’ve let us in, but we were still Ministry, and a Ministry scalp to hang on the veranda would’ve been a neat addition to any eastern suburb décor. Yep, even back then. But Rudiger wasn’t the chatty best mate type. Not like yours truly. Even drinking, he held onto himself. He was observant and analytical and always interesting – just you never felt like you were talking to him, yeah? The Ministry Good fell out of his mouth more often than not, and though he delivered it with all the sincerity and poetry of a preacher, he was always looking into it, asking me questions about it. The only answer I ever had was, it’s a job. For some reason, this placated him. It’s a purpose, he’d say. The Good is circular. You spread it because it needs to be; and it needs to be spread because it is. No wonder he lost it in the end.

            Which is all to say, we rarely sunk into personal matters, so when he goes and tells me about Sharmayne, I didn’t know what to say. Beers had been had, Nicky, but I wouldn’t have thought enough to set tongues wagging and teeth chittering. He spoke humbly, but, admitted to his naivety, the first timeness of these feelings. I think he needed to get it out, admit to a doubt that didn’t often dare to cross Rudiger without him interrogating it first. All I did was sit there wary and worried. There was danger in this: a man finding his heart for something other than a cause for the first time, ‘specially as it come up as we were tryin to convince her family to war. A war, mind you, she would lead the charge in. Rudiger was quick to assure me he could perform the classic split between business and pleasure, and all I could do was say, sure you can. We drank some more that night and I spoke of old flames me self. He listened as though taking notes. It was all new to him. Really, he was more than the thirsty man I tried to say he was. I don’t know if he’d ever seen liquid.

            Course, there are dangers when it comes to dunking yourself headfirst into unfamiliar waters. Like, ya never know if a croc dwells somewhere under the surface, waiting to have a cheeky munch. When it may decide its hungry or bored enough to act on its most bastard desires.

            Aayden Taylor was that sharp toothed smiley fuck lurking just below the smear of mud on top of the water. His own ill repute camouflaged under that muck.

The eldest of the Taylor brats, Taylor was a rev headed thunder cunt if ever there was one. A proper force of personality and possessiveness, who was properly infamous round the east for the casual off-handedness of his brutal behaviours. Collecting Stations adorned with the decimated, disrespected heads of Walkers. Merchants unable to pay his toll neutered and then set off into the rain wilds of Ferntree Gully. Destruction derbies where the cars were set with explosives, then filled with eastern locals Aayden found disloyal.

The less said about his experiments in that torrid fucking situation people call the Vermont Vermin incident, the better. Rudiger and I saw a few of them poor, mutated bastards lingering around the far east when we went out on expedition with the Taylors. They were hiding under old trees and bridges, desperate to avoid the light. And he fucking giggled, Nicky. Him and his little disciples, while every other Taylor turned their eyes and spoke about the weather.

Rudiger had been wary of him right off. He disliked violent men who used violence for its own end. Whose satisfaction was steeped in those actions. Ever the rational Biff, he needed to understand action before committing to it. And it was obvious that Aayden didn’t really get Rudiger – he was thoughtless action incarnate. He tried to be matey with him. Go shooting or driving. Surely, they shared a love for the sound of a man’s skull cracking under impact. Tried to invite him on a few “hunting” expeditions. Hunting for what? Out there? Nicky, I’d rather not guess. But ya dad, he turned him away and kept his distance. Went back to the older, more venerable Taylors. Even they worried about Aayden, even if they found him to have his uses. Every family needs their own bunyip.

Personally, I found Aayden useful. A torrential gossip who always took the bits of the story that he liked and ran with it. Like, Aayden didn’t listen to the parts of the legend that told of Rudiger’s hesitation, his sadness that people didn’t understand the Good. Aayden only heard the bits with the cricket bat. So, telling him that there was treasure at the Walkers – he didn’t hear ‘treasure,’ not even gold when it got to that. All Aayden heard was that they had something, anything, that he didn’t, and cos of this, he wanted it and wanted it now.

Probably, why he was obsessed with Sharmayne.

The Knife Sharpener (47)

47.

Bohemian Bob Tells His Version of the Wastes (2)

Nicky, if that knife is gonna show you anything, it’s that people in this city, they place unbelievable value in bloody things, especially things they don’t have. It doesn’t matter if they don’t completely get it or know for sure it really exists, cos if someone else has it, then they need it too.

            At least that knife looks real, you know. Something that may be worth chasing – coveting.

            Your dad and I, we went out east as envoys of the Ministry. Apparently there to have some chats with the family patriarchs about relaxing the tolls. Few fine dinners, drinks, a show or two, friendly banter about reaching some kind of middle ground for all parties. Couple of bucks thrown in for good measure. For show.

Both families knew this was bullshit. Ministry would never send someone from the Cultural Bursary as an ambassador. We were marketers, advertisers, speech writers – lets be frank, Nicky, I was a propagandist. We weren’t negotiators. And I wasn’t high up enough to have a seat at the fine Tassie oak table to be taken seriously as a mouthpiece for the Ministry.

I had three things in my favour, but. One, I was raised out near Burwood. I knew the lingo and culture out there. Two, I had the gift of the gab, which you’re probably getting the gist of now, yeah. And, three, I had your dad, whose legend was already preceding us. It was still a novelty back then – an object of celebrity fascination. Less nasty than it got over the years.

So, though they was distrustful soon as they saw me waving Ministry colours and claiming to be some kind of diplomat, I was able to lean on my heritage and, also, your dad’s rep. I told told em that, yeah, I was out there do Ministry bidding and, yep, I knew it was hopeless, so I was taking the chance to visit some old haunts. Don’t get enough holidays, yeah? Am I right? Or am I right? All this hard yakka. Sometimes, ya gotta get home. Relax and unwind. Visit the Burvale for a pint. Any excuse. Oh, by the way, have you met Rudiger? He’s a friend of mine.

It wasn’t quite open arms, Nicky, but they didn’t toll us for coming onto their lands, if you know what I mean.

            Now, your dad, he built that brooding, orator myth he was known for: the penchant for rhetorical assaults and the brute force of his body language. I was proud of him for it. He embodied the Ministry hood become bombastic wraith of rebellion. But it was so heavy. Weighed down by pretention and its own thick, near curdled majesty. A real-life cliché of the hardman spewing biblical passages to terrify, or in the case of your father, convince his charges of their own guilt. There was no room for a human under that.

            Back then, but, when free of his Biff duties, there was hearty, unchanneled charisma to the man. A willing smile and an easy manner. I guess there were moments when you’d see the future in him. Sparks of temper and darkness and doubt he needed to convulsively explain away. The rest of the time, he was Rudiger. A gentleman and fine conversationalist, who liked a beer. Big into loyalty. Considering that he had just brutally crunched what we thought were the last vestiges of discord against the Ministry Good, I felt it seemed like he was also out to have a bit of a holiday. Giving away the Biff mask. He hardly pulled his bat out during the first few weeks. When he did, it was to show it young Taylors or Walkers excited to be meeting a Melbourne hero.

            Infiltrating the families was easy. Stoking the hatred, it turned out, wasn’t too hard either, especially once Rudiger got involved. They had doubt about whatever I said. When he said it, but, they swallowed the whole fishing pole. I gave them a pinch of doubt. He gave them a clump of certainty.

First, we told the Taylors that the Walkers had managed to acquire some great treasure, which they were keeping all secret like. Sitting on it. Waiting for the right moment to open the war chest.

Then, we told the Walkers the same thing about the Taylors.

I tried to steer them both to think that the other had come on this sudden wealth by tolling a particularly wealthy merchant. You know, make em jealous. Think about trying to poach some stations. Start a little war.

Somehow, but, and I think your dad may have had something to do with it – he had his own embellishments – as I let the story do its things and discover its meaning in its audience, be regurgitated differently, and then carry more possibilities to different audiences – somehow that treasure alchemised into gold and secret gold mines.

Neither Walker nor Taylor were hard strapped. Yet it would be dumb to think they were satisfied. Both were always looking for more. They may have quietened their tussles somewhat to aggravate a common enemy in the Ministry, but there was no love lost between em. Their relationship still perched on the verge of being outright explosive, waiting for someone to strike the fuse.

The rumour of gold really caught their imaginations. The idea of a source of wealth that was, like, its most pure, earthly symbol, pulled up from the ground, rather than collected from the resistant patrons of their Collection Stations, it’s fake endless quality, all of it gave them this idea of absolute power. They looked at it like a tap, that when switched on, would pour money into their hands.

I mean, gold wasn’t far from my original design. The concept was always to get them thinking the other had something they desperately wanted. But when they became convinced it was gold, they went gold mad. Like, Nicky, you ever read about the old rush in Ballarat? The Eureka and the murderous prospectors? Them Sandhill Boys who caused all that ruckus over the Capitan: the 50kg nugget that led to the decimation of Ararat? The stories are always the same: people already marred by a reduction in sense, with appetites for violence, they whiff that sterile soft metal, and they find themselves ballistic, but always calculatingly so. Nothing quite drives the need for complete destruction and ownership of land, materials, those fucking things, Nicky, like gold does.

Same thing went for the Walkers and Taylors.

They thought I’d been trying to mislead them or spoke in riddles whenever I tried to steer it to treasure. Either way, they didn’t believe the roots of the lie I fed them that they now held to be complete truth.

We were with the Walkers when it really started to kick off. The innuendo and suspicion flying around. The surety that them fuckin Taylors had found it near their compound in Lilydale. Nah, definitely in Ringwood, near the ruins of the old bypass. Dug up under the new Costco that was meant to bring some stability out east – Ministry getting their noses in it, ay.

They started plotting their assaults and their manoeuvres with that old-timey gold mad focus and obsession.

The cauldron was bubbling. I thought I’d done me job, Nicky. They’d be at each other, weaken each other, and the Ministry would creep in to put out the fires, install them as little puppets. Your dad and I had been plotting out exactly what it’d look like. Some of the rewards we may get.

Of course, it all spun completely out of control. Gold envy is one thing. The east became something different. Became the Wastes. Cursed land.

Maybe, it shouldn’t all be put down to gold. The families were getting restless, after all. Not often had so much time passed between conflicts. It was like breathing for em. Throw in the gold hunters who started to appear, often heavily armed themselves, indiscriminate in the way they blew up Walker and Taylor compounds. The ongoing quarrels over the tolls. The restless and agro population sick of them high and mighty Walkers and Taylors. People running from the Ministry trying to force a home for themselves. The ongoing spread of the rumours I was telling about the sick predilections of various family members …

You’ve got a light awful close to fuse now, yeah.

Then your dad hooked in with that Walker girl, Sharmayne – yeah, the one from all the stories … it took an enormous, career ending effort to get your dad out of those stories, I’ll tell you what, make people forget he was there when it all happened – and, well, that fuse became like a presidential button bout to launch the nuclear fucking weapons.

The Knife Sharpener (46)

46.

Bohemian Bob Tells His Version of the Wastes

Ya gotta realise, Nicky, when they talk about the Walkers and Taylors now, they talk bout them like they were merely ‘clans.’ This makes em seem a bit rustic. Crude round the edges. Old fashioned. Maybe, superstitious.

It’s like, great families, yeah? They feud. But clans, they get into scrappy, messy brawls. Families have old enmity. Clans hold basic grudges. Families have ancient, pure lineage. Clans have soiled bloodlines.

            But the Walkers and Taylors, they were more than clans. More than families, too, really.

Which isn’t to say that either was particularly sophisticated. Both came from long cross-bred lines of cashed up bogans, real estate agents, and tradies. Made their money selling land to the winegrowers in the Valley, owning the largest plumbing and sparky firms in Melbourne, and basically running the chippy and builders’ unions. Between them, they lay claim to and split nearly all the land in the eastern suburbs.

What they were was two big ancient kingdoms. As old as Melbourne itself. Or so some say.

No one touched them. No one could.

No one told either family that particular tidbit bout the other, though.

Nicky, you don’t get hear it much now. Least not in any certain terms – maybe they get the gist of it across in the stories you hear round town. But the blinding hatred and loathing Walker had for Taylor, and Taylor for Walker – it was elemental, like one of them bushfires always cropping up right near the top of the state blown to rage by a hot northerly.

No one knew where and when it started. Kinda didn’t really matter anymore. It was a way of life out east. Even, cross Melbourne. Spats of violence over plumbing contracts. Sabotaged building sites. Various suburban football associations driven to extinction by the bloodbaths that would play out on their fields as Walker and Taylor took to opposing teams.

And there was nothing much worse than their battles over the roads out east.

If you’ve ever been out there, you’d know it’s a warren. A tangle of streets, bypasses, roads, and arterial routes – especially after they destroyed the Great Eastern Freeway in one of their little spats. There’s lots of places to set up what they called ‘collection stations’ to block anyone getting through. Little family sanctioned ports of highway robbery.

They taxed anyone coming through the eastern suburbs. Kept tabs on anyone and everyone, sayin who could and couldn’t come in and over their lands. It gave them power over trade, access, money. And it caused all manner of carnage shitstorm when one decided to try their hands at taking the other family’s station. Cos it was not ever just bout the station. These takeovers were a flex, an attempt to remind the other that they was still around. It was all performance art, Nicky, but the kind where the audience gets massacred and the whole theatre has to shut down while the players figure out their shit.

That’s why when the Ministry came to power, it started its mission to dismantle Taylor and Walker control by calling them ‘Tollbooth Gangs’ in all the official Medias. It was an attempt to discredit them, make em seem like nothing less than vagrants manning the roadways, demanding tithe.

Problem was, both Taylor and Walker loved the name. Made it there’s – doubled down on the title. Everything suddenly had a ‘Toll,’ collectible whenever they saw fit to collect. Your car isn’t a Holden. Toll. Your car isn’t a Ford. Toll. You’re wearing red today. Toll. You’re visiting grandma. There’s a family toll today. You’re with who? Toll. That was a Taylor fly you just swatted. Toll. That was Walker air you just looked at. Toll.

In a way, being called ‘Tollbooth Gangs’ brought the two families closer to agreement than they’d ever been before. Their riches doubled. Their power became a stranglehold. They went happily about getting in people’s way – getting what they said was their just dues. It’s hard work running a kingdom.

This caused our new Ministry all kinds of headaches. To spread their Good, unify Melbourne under their new laws, make sure vital trade to the wineries remained open, basically keep the coffers flowing, they needed to break down the Taylors and Walkers. Limit their influence.

They sent me and Rudiger.

I was there to sow discord, turn their ages old angst up a few notches.

And your dad, he was still new to the Biffs. Fresh from the academy. But he was already getting his reputation.

He’d tracked down the last of the Bracks and the old government down near Sandringham. Torched their boatsheds and drove them from hiding. Frog marched them back to the CBD all the way from Port Phillip wearing nothing but their skins and Ministry red/blue sashes.

Didn’t stop there, neither. Nope. He went on and dismantled the opposition headquarters near the Basin. Bashed the plaster right off their walls, they said. Force fed them the asbestos beneath. Wielded that cricket bat of his like a young Bradman with a brain full of speed, practicing the blunt eloquence of a reverse sweep, screaming around a mouthful of philosophy.

All this was recorded, too. Including his speeches all about knowing what’s best – what is Good. Everything was a lesson. They went straight to the Ministry Archives. He always followed Ministry regulations to a tee. The other Biffs worshipped him. Watched his videos on repeat.

They said they sent him out there to be my security.

I think they sent him out there to be himself.

The Knife Sharpener (45)

45.

‘Forest Hill,’ said Bohemian Bob, coming over to stand beside Nichola. ‘Before the Wastes.’ He slugged on his beer. Helmut stood off a few paces, leaning against the kitchen bar. Nichola saw the heaviness of his eyelids that draped pupils staring intently, with familiarity, at the image on the coffee table.

            She held her silence. Her dad hadn’t kept any photos at the house. As if he didn’t care for his own image or artefacts of family in stasis. Nichola’s dad as a younger man, then, it was all memory. They were certainly less carefree than what this photo revealed. More bulky and unhinged. Less present. This was a photo of a strong, confident, and grinning man she recognized, but didn’t know.

            For a moment, Nichola felt resentment towards Bohemian Bob. He had got a part of her dad that was long lost by the time she was aware of the world and their place in it.

She leaned in closer and saw The Chase in the background. Still a shopping centre in that photo. No longer the last foreboding, canon armed fort between the Wastes and the rest of Melbourne, standing lonely guard on Canterbury Rd. Holding back the raff, Toll Booth Gangs, and the twisted gold hunters, driven crazy by the crumbled expanses and the hopeless search. Along with whatever else roamed those blasted plains now.

‘We worked together. For the Ministry,’ said Bohemian Bob. ‘I was employed by the Cultural Bursary in their propagandist arm.’ His voice had changed slightly, slipping into his slight lisped drunkenness as another beer passed into his system, but losing some of its old mate charm. It was almost officious.

‘I used to clean up messes and polish up ugly stories. Spit shine Ministry ideas, policies, politicians – well, when they were still called that anyway. They had me craft rumours and whispers, build fictional backstories for people to embellish their problems and advantages, develop and distribute marketing to discredit, celebrate, grow, convince. All for the benefit of the Ministry – the Ministry Good. These stories, Nicky, I would watch them grow so vast that they would become entangled in contradiction and impossibility, develop unexpected B-plots, insinuate unintended conspiracies, become forms of doctrine. They were more believable because of these flaws; flaws that I deliberately built in,’ he said. Seemed thoughtful. ‘You know, it wasn’t hard to make everyone forget about me. Not that I was ever front and present like your dad. But I had my role in all … this.’ He gestured vaguely at the world. At the picture. ‘When you spend your life controlling someone else’s narrative, it’s not that hard to dictate your own. I became Bohemian Bob, the Mayor and Chaplain of Chapel St. Robert Asher – him, I left behind. Took my pension, buried my mistakes, and hid myself away.’

He walked back to the fridge and grabbed another beer.

‘Mind if I smoke?’ asked Helmut. He was already rolling a Champion cigarette.

‘Nah,’ said Bohemian Bob, opening another bottle. ‘This place will always smell like plaster dust and pine. Smoke won’t hurt it.’

Helmut nodded and lit up. Visibly relaxing as the nicotine entered his system. It was the longest time that Nichola had seen him without a smoke. Clouds congealed above his head against the ceiling of the terrace.

‘You picked that up recently?’ asked Bohemian Bob. ‘Don’t remember you being a puffer.’

‘After the Wastes,’ said Helmut.

‘Yeah, same here,’ said Bohemian Bob, nodded to his beer and drank again. ‘Of course, I’ve always had the taste. At volume, too. But it doesn’t really do much, anymore. Only so long you can drown something before it either dies or fights its way back to the surface.’ He looked at Nichola.

‘Mmmm,’ said Helmut and smoked.

Nichola finally slumped into a beaten old armchair in front of a small TV and a radiator heater.

‘Rudiger told me to watch out for you,’ said Bohemian Bob.

‘He did?’ she asked. Her voice sounded strained. Almost bruised.

‘Not a word since we parted in the Wastes. Then, out-of-the-sweet-fucking-anywhere, he finds me on my way back home from the nightly pilgrimage. Scared me near to liver failure. I’ve not known a man less inclined to announce his presence. Forever suddenly, unexpectedly there. No sidle. No warning. Just his beared and honeysuckle voice emerging out of night.’

The front door slamming and the tread of his boots. The whine of the cupboard door opening where he stashed the bat. The rustle of moving the vacuum cleaner out of the way. No called greeting. A heavy presence, creaking boards, a kettle set to boil for Earl Grey tea. It was enough to let Nichola know he was home.

‘He launched right into it,’ said Bohemian Bob. ‘No catch-up on old times. No “how ya been”. Nope. He tells me about a Church near where I drink on Chapel, some special knife, a daughter I never knew he had who would be poking up around near there soon. Commands me to keep an eye on her and help when I can. No uncertain terms about it. Never were with Rudiger, but. You did as he told.’

Helmut grunted. ‘Some did,’ he said.

Bohemian Bob kept his head over his beer. ‘It was all nothing more than that, Nicky. As it was way back, he only gave me what he thought I needed to know. Add to it all that I’m drunk. Wobbling home. Seeing a man who we all thought was chained to cement at the bottom of the Yarra. I’m stricken with muteness. Me. The Gentlemen’s Storyteller. I couldn’t make the words to ask him what he meant. What this Church and knife were. Your role. How I could help. I guessed it was dangerous, but. Your pa gathered danger like he was some kind of fucked up collector of the stuff. Haven’t heard from your pa, since.’ He lifted his eyes to her. ‘You showed up a few days later and I knew you were his get from the moment you started to obsess over that building – like how he used to obsess. Methodical with that journal. Every day. Clockwork.’

‘She didn’t see the cameras,’ said Helmut. ‘The lookouts.’

Nichola glared tiredly at him.

‘We all make mistakes,’ said Bohemian Bob, after a moment. ‘Miss the cameras through the surveillance. Get so used to being watched, you forget sometimes.’

Helmut shrugged and rolled another cigarette.

‘Anyway, I figured Rudiger wanted me to make sure you kept clear of it all. Obfuscate and the like. Let him do his work.’

‘Ministry has him,’ said Nichola.

Bohemian Bob let a wheezing breath free. ‘I also thought that may be the case.’

‘I have to get the knife to him. He’ll know what to do.’

‘Yeah, he may at that,’ he said. ‘Seems to be a pretty powerful implement, but –’

‘But what?’ asked Nichola and felt Helmut’s wary glance.

A cold break and cigarette smoke wafting.

‘He’s not the type to let something like that go easily is all, Nicky,’ said Bohemian Bob. Pointed at the chef’s bag. ‘I don’t want to doubt his intentions – interests in that thing. Only that, sometimes, his feelings – beliefs about that kind of force, it doesn’t line up with everyone else’s.’

‘He isn’t an arm of the Ministry Good anymore, Bob,’ said Nichola. ‘He came to his own insight about this city, the Ministry, what was better for everyone.’

‘Exactly. His mission of repentance, though, it wasn’t without its own questions.’

The bat never went away for long. She hadn’t been able to find it when she tried to scout his house after he disappeared.

‘You didn’t already know about the Church?’ asked Nichola. The luck of her father’s old work colleague, who he clearly had a history with, already being in place to survey where the knife eventually ended up – it seemed too fortuitous.

‘Not really, love. I’d had that run-in with – who was it? – Paul. But they set up that little institution only recently, well after I’d already made my ritual on Chapel. Before your dad found me, they were just another part of the scene. A weird one. But no weirder than the 78 tram sprite, or Neil the Boulder at the 7/11. So, I ignored them. Thought they were just freaks getting their freak on. Not my business,’ said Bohemian Bob. ‘They only took on an air when your dad told me about them. When you started showing up.’

He finished another beer, went to the fridge, pulled another three between his fingers. Helmut sipped at his and came over to Nichola. Sat on a lumpy futon across from her. Did not look at the picture on the coffee table. Bohemian Bob slouched down beside him, one of the beers already half drunk.

‘How’d you know to look for me tonight?’ asked Nichola.

‘I’ve got passing familiarity with the two sentries that Church employed,’ said Bohemian Bob.

‘The bums in the tracksuits?’

‘Them, yep. Liu and Jenkins been around doing the Chapel crawl for a long while. Not quite fixtures like yours truly, but close,’ he said. ‘You did quite a number on em, Nicky. Scrambled their brains some. But they managed to get a hold of some hard liquor and were properly celebrating up and down Chapel like a pair of royalty. I ran into them when I was near Commercial. They nearly fell over themselves to tell me that they were unionizing; that they were gonna tell their boss at the Church they weren’t responsible for the theft and they were entitled to smoko breaks and more pay. Theft? I asked. And they told me all about how one of them was punched and the other bottled by a brute lady who ran off with property from the building they were hired to security guard. I didn’t think much of their chances to still have a job tomorrow, but, then, what do I know of the job market?’

He opened the second of the three beers.

‘I knew you’d gotten into it, then. Not the severity, necessarily. But, as I said, if Rudiger had me watching you and this Church, I suspected there was more to it than the, um, contextless instructions he left me, yeah? One thing for a man to say, “keep an eye on things.” Another thing entirely if Rudiger says it. I abandoned my pilgrimage for the first time and got to waiting near where you lived. A few hours later I saw them Biffs. Then you.’

‘How’d you know where I lived?’ asked Nichola.

‘I made inquiries after Rudiger gave me his commandments and I met you. Had a few folk I know follow you back to your flat when we first encountered. Told me it wasn’t too far from mine. It ain’t just Liu and Jenkins I know on Chapel. I’ve got like a whole set of additional eyes right down to the foreshore. Plus, them motoboys – I got connections there –’

‘Chauncey,’ said Helmut.

Bohemian Bob nearly spat his beer. ‘How?’

‘We met Chance earlier,’ said Nichola.

Bohemian Bob skulled off his beer. ‘Floating to the surface,’ he said.

The mess of connections played out in front of her. Like what Bohemian Bob said about his stories, the more outlandish it became, the truer it felt. Like the fatalism she perceived in her own life. The limited series of paths she had chosen – all forked off her dad’s grand journey – that she, and these others, had followed to bring them here.

The knife splitting and diverting all roads.

‘How do you all know each other, then?’ she asked.

‘That starts and ends in the Wastes, Nicky,’ said Bohemian Bob. Helmut smoked and leaned back. Let his eyes close a little.

The Knife Sharpener (44)

44.

Bohemian Bob lived in a small terrace off the Esplanade between two apartment buildings that were all modern curves and columns. Spotlights and fake marble. Almost completely empty of any residents. For lease signs all over the block.

            ‘They wanted my land. I told em to fuck off. Ministry pension got me this prime estate. I wasn’t about to give it up.’

            They had kept off the main roads as much as possible. Sticking to alleys and smaller streets. Careful to conceal their faces when they came near Ministry cameras. Nothing conspicuous. An itchy nose. A long sneeze. Coughing. Keeping close to walls and buildings. Any shadows.

            It still didn’t take them long to arrive at Bohemian Bob’s. Weaving between a few stray St Kilda bums and revellers trying to find the beach for a skinny dip. There was that classic St Kilda scent of dredged slime mud, rotted penguin carcasses near the jetty, and gently churned saltwater. Fairy titters bouncing around the night as they teased backpackers passed out on the sand.

Bohemian Bob’s dwelling was an almost quaint throwback to dockworker cottages and beach houses, but also classically urban Melbourne. Wooden floorboards and white, paint peeling ceilings edged with classically curved trim. A long central corridor into an open plan rustic kitchen, backed onto a living room. It was surprisingly tidy. Though not much lived in. Scarce furnishings. A few framed photos. A fridge stocked mostly with bakery pies and beer.

            Even dazed – scratchy, distorted image on repeat of the Biff going down before her trying to hold his throat together – Nichola knew it wouldn’t do much good to be here for too long. If the Ministry were onto them, they’d piece it together. From the woman who they’d left alive. Their actions had made them easy to trace now, even after trying to hide from the cameras.

This was merely a respite. Surely the men knew it too.

Bohemain Bob pulled out a few beers from the fridge and handed one to Helmut.

‘Sorry, love,’ he said. ‘Don’t have any cider.’

Nichola shook it away. She didn’t feel like a drink. There was blood on her shirt. Bohemian Bob skulled his beer in one breathing gasp. Then opened another.

She staggered around for a minute, aware that Helmut watched her closely. The knife was back in the bag. All the gore of the evening had washed off it as soon as the act was committed. As if it repelled human viscera.

The actual stakes of this mission – Nichola had never truly considered them. Never really thought her dad would deliberately throw her in harm’s way. He’d called her in his moment of desperation. Had faith in her. Spoke to her independence. Her belief in getting things done. Daughter like daddy. A singular focus.

Raised herself on toasties and two-minute noodles while dad was out being the tough guy at work. Her mom – who knew? Dad never mentioned her. She asked once but was met with resolute silence. The kind of quiet her father rarely deployed. A grandly threatening, all surrounding quiet. It told her enough. Don’t mention it. Don’t cross me on this. That’s the rule, the only one. Nichola let it go along with any desire to know. Emotions and memory let unmoored to drift away to nothingness. No empty slate in her mind waiting to be filled. Only complete, unquestioned absence.

She taught herself how to live. Make sense of her small, cloistered world.

They had a TV, where Nichola learned bits and pieces about her father’s legend in the ever-growing Ministry propaganda. His exploits in the Waste garnered glowing attention. Closely observed the tight, scarred faces of the always changing array of newsreaders. Until, one day, they were the same. Relaxed mouthpieces of Ministry media.

She learned to read – preferred it, in the end. It was a skill her father encouraged, a rare enjoyment they both shared. He would sporadically bring home armfuls of books. All of them indiscriminately grabbed from – Nichola knew better than to ask. They were sometimes new. Sometimes curled and pock marked with water. Sometimes missing pages. Sometimes manuals about how to assemble a cupboard. But they were all distractions. Gifts from her dad that she relished.

She found heroes in between the covers of those books. Clever, daring, independent, and dangerous. Beautiful, ugly, and plain. Loquacious and close lipped. Able to see the world in all its realist, surrealist, and abstract strangeness. Where actions spoke for them, their moral beings, and the significance of their decisions. And, mostly, it worked out all right. Though, she loved a sad ending, finding satisfaction in the simple truth that things don’t always go according to plan.

The characters of these books – Nichola lived alongside them. Chatted to them. Found company with them. And, even though she saw herself so clearly imitating the lonely clichés of the erudite bookworms she encountered in the same texts – that embrace of fictional worlds and people – she admired them for their lack of self-awareness.

Of them all, Nichola loved Matilda most. Read it cover to cover over and again. Finding kin, though not authenticity, in its heroine. The smartest kid no one knows about. Imagined a world where she could help her dad. Correct the petty slights of people. Help him realise the better world he constantly obsessed over. The kind of world Matilda eventually achieved through her single-minded devotion to justice.

Nichola tried to will herself to telekinesis, and, finding that a hopeless task, learned other ways to control her environment. Kept the house clean. Shopped for supplies. Maintained vigilance. Organized her dad’s papers and kept the fire stoked for whenever he started writing. Trained alongside him as he did his stretches and shadow boxing and HIIT exercises. Read when he went into a philosophical sinkhole. Nichola made it all as homey and normal as possible. Existed alongside him.

School came and ground on. She had no mother. No one knew who her dad was – he never picked her up, dropped her off, attended PTA or parent-teacher evenings. Her last name wasn’t even Otwey there. Rather, plain old ‘Smith,’ which she loathed. Her real name was feared and known. No one gave a shit about a Smith. She got through it. Kept mostly to herself. Never unkind or unliked. But always a little distant. Concerned with her own activities and missions. She studied widely and curiously. Whatever fuelled her interest. Rarely to any great depth. She had her father’s restless intellect, the need to perpetually be moving on. Teachers wrote in their twice-yearly reports that Nichola was a smart, independent kid. Not the most sociable girl, though. Could involve herself more. Her dad never read them.

Drama studies at university made sense. Not so much the performance side of it, though. More the analysis. She had been living with a performer her whole life. Nichola only wanted to understand the language of his spectacle. The face he felt compelled to present to the world. The mask he was forever cultivating and justifying. The metres and rhythms of his proclamations and rage.

There was forever the pall of threat. The dented, cracked, crimson stained cricket bat in the cupboard, constantly falling out.

She thought of how many people her dad had crossed. That if the knife were really connected with him in some meaningful way, it would only get worse as more players came into the picture.

She was no longer his secret. Finally. The irony nearly keeled her over in Bohemian Bob’s domain. She had her real name at last. And she thought how quick she was to destroy that Biff. Tear him to shreds in two clean slices from the shoulder, elbow, wrist. The violence handed down.

The knife itself was bad enough.

She held onto it and was watched by Bohemian Bob and Helmut. Both, she could tell, carried concern. She wasn’t sure if it was for her, them, or the knife. Maybe all the above.

And on a small driftwood coffee table she spotted her dad. In a photo with his arm slung around a version of Bohemian Bob she didn’t think possible. Not skinny, but comfortable. Fit. Hairy and no toupee, that even now he tried to adjust to sit properly on his sweat slicked cranium. Mouth split into that familiar smile, but less lopsided. Clear and reassured.

Her dad, too, was different. Younger. Maybe just after she had been born. Brown, wavy mane. Full beard carefully curated to appear wild. Bold shoulders and Biff shirt strained across his chest. Resting on the handle of a cricket bat. A slight, easy grin. An absence of the tension – the strain, crow’s eyes, grey hairs, slight stoop – that Nichola had grown used to. Eyes wide open and alive, as they often were when he wrote or spoke, and gave himself to his ideas.

Not closed or suspicious as they had grown to be.

The Knife Sharpener (43)

43.

‘Quiet, boys,’ said Xavier. ‘I think that’s the Jazz.’

            The few members of the Toorak Militia he had handpicked agitated behind him. Bunch of fanboys. He’d already told Alfie and Barnaby to put away their phones. Busted them swiping through their favourite posts. Giggling in a way most unbecoming to proper gentlemen of the last great Melbourne suburbs. Didn’t they know they had their family names to uphold? Reaffirm their place ahead of the mediocre lesser classes?

Only Charles kept his decorum. Reliable, right-hand Charles. His shield bearer. Eyes tight and Tec-9 set to the ready. He followed up his boss with a short and sharp ‘hush.’ There was still palatable excitement about them, but they quit chittering like common state-school girls about to meet some bland, C-grade teen idol.

Such things were a fantasy world. This shit was real. Finally.

            Xavier’s heavy watch chafed at his wrist. It was the first time he had worn the enormous silver Blancpain. He wanted something practical – none of the family heirloom Rolexes – not too ostentatious – not his Chanel For Monsieur – but which would draw attention all the same. Gently, he twisted it to sit more comfortably and raised his left arm to rest on the rear of his gun. Casual and calm. The watch twinkled a little under halogen lamps. They were waiting in the carpark of a French restaurant in Hawksburn. Closed for the night and quiet. Not even a scent of croissant.

            His light pink polo was freshly laundered. Bit of extra starch to keep his collar sharp and popped. And he could feel the cool air running up against his bleached white trousers and exposed arms. But he didn’t really feel the cold. Xavier was amped. Thrilled. Finally called upon by up high to do important work. Not just guard the gates.

            The half a bag of Toorak’s finest single plantation, minimal intervention, naturel cocaine, still making his teeth numb, did its part too. Xavier was in fucking charge of the situation. Wasn’t about to be overawed by a KillingTime legend. Abso-fucking-lutely not. He’d been raised amidst the most powerful people in Melbourne. Had his networks. The old boys. No one intimidated Xavier.

            He checked to see if his gun was still showing its polish. Adjusted his watch again. Then leaned back. Relaxed. Tried to look chill. The car probingly entered. Bumping over a small speed bump.

            Honestly, he had expected something sleeker and more dangerous than the Honda Jazz she arrived in. The kind of car where you just fucking zoom, yeah? Pull it onto the freeway at 200 kilometres an hour. Lusting for speed. Hitting hairpin turns and weaving traffic. A proper escape vehicle. The automobile of a stone-cold killer. An extension of your gun arm. But, also, like an absolute panty dropper. Tongue lolling out, lapping juices as you flip onto the main street.

            Xavier thought someone of her reputation, built on the usual fame sink of KillingTime, would flaunt it more. Sound it out loud and clear through the deep guttural roar of a turbo-charged acceleration. LuciasLuvs was a dare devil. Rode the edge. Threw perfectly posed bodies to the adoring masses and saw her perilous mystique get deeper, more complex. Likes throbbing in. Comments slavish to her craft.

            She should be driving a Lambo, at least. Maybe a Porsche.

            This was so safe. Everyday. And … girly. Like it should have pink hubcaps and underglow. Sticker of a Japanese kitty somewhere in her rear window. It meandered into the carpark and turned softly away from Xavier and the Toorak Militia. She parked and they all waited. No one seemed to breath.

            It made sense, though. It was circumspect. Careful. A vehicle no one would double check. Perfect to slip around in. Arrange her killings just so. Xavier was clueing onto it now. Getting excited with his sudden empathetic insight. Lone killers get killed if they scream killer. It’s like a dare for the uneducated animals of this town.

I mean, fucking think about it though. Hoon in a Lambo, some souped up ‘nip car and watch em come for you. Like, may as well scream from the roofs with a hand canon in your grip. Deadset, that’s just the way it is. Murder may be glamour, particularly when performed with such panache by LuciasLuvs, but baby it’ll tear you up if you aren’t careful. This KillingTime sweetheart – artist, she got it.

Fuck the sports cars. Keep it simple and lowkey. She didn’t have a Militia to back her.  

Plus, it took serious, hardcore nonchalance to get around in something peasant like that with a name like hers. A cool self-assured arrogance that Xavier associated with the best of the boys and gentlemen he knew. That buy big or go home, huge dick energy. What? Lost a mill. Fuck it. Happens. I’ll make ten tomorrow. Let’s crack the 78 Burgundy, snort a few lines minced with fairy bones, smoke a Cuban, and do her all again. Nothing to it.

That material life isn’t shit if you don’t have the testicles to flip it in the dog, smack it around a bit, and rail it like a balls-smacking-on-belly piston, until ya blow the good old proverbial.

LuciasLuvs got that, man. She didn’t need any fancy car. She got her kicks.

He felt his teeth grinding a little bit. The beginning throbs of an erection. Took a breath and loosened his knees. Found some zen, yeah. Act cool, now.

The door opened and a perfect ten exited. In a sleek and hugging black outfit. Deep dark red hair, close cut – not how Xavier usually rolled, but this, though … whew. She moved with mean grace, like each step expected the air to part for her, while her hips mocked it in passing. No fucks given face and big red lips. A thick Smith & Wesson tucked under her jacket. Hilt projecting out. All attitude.  

She was what he imagined. Perhaps more. Simply, a babe. He was even more in love. Heart pounding from desire and cocaine and intense need to go fucking shoot some cunts in the face and get that knife back and get into the action. Toorak boys hit hard. Whoo! Get on the beers. Chase the lines.

As LuciasLuvs stepped into the light a little more, Xavier saw that she had recently scuffled. The left side of her face was swollen and bruised. Some dried blood on the collar of her jacket. There was a slight limp to her stroll. He felt rage. Someone hurt his darling. He’d double down on the lousy stains who’d done this.

All the Toorak Militia hung back. Quiet, finally. He knew Charles had his back.

‘What happened to the face, baby doll?’ Xavier asked as she reached the group.

She smiled. There was blood in her teeth. Xavier was overcome with it. The drugs sending his brain scattering.

‘Oh, honey, I had me a tangle with some monsters is all,’ she said.

The photo of the wind jackal and the motoboy she had posted just before Oscar suggested the Toorak Militia team up with his hired hunter. So unlike her, but also exactly like her: pure. Perfect. Savagery, though not as afterthought this time, but in the current – in motion.

‘Deary me,’ he said. ‘You got out all right?’

‘I did. By the skin of my poor little teeth,’ she said. ‘See.’ She smiled again. More dried blood visible on her molars as she got closer.

‘I’d say you were lucky, but –’

‘There was no luck.’

‘I know.’

‘Do you now?’ she asked.

Xavier shuffled a little. Tried to calm his buzzed nerves. ‘I’ve seen your work. It’s accomplished. Beautiful. The craft of someone who knows their way around a weapon.’

‘Stop it. I’ll blush.’

‘Flushed to match the fire of your hair,’ said Xavier. ‘I’d die to see it.’

‘Only a small death, I hope.’

‘The best kind.’

They stared at one another for a moment.

‘We are to team up, then? How terribly exciting,’ she said. ‘I’m happy as a clam,’

‘Yes. Yes, we are.’

‘It’s gonna be great,’ said Alfie behind him.

Xavier turned and quietly drew his finger to his lips. Alfie swallowed. Looked around. Eyes still bright with what he had shared with his leader earlier. Charles stepped back to him and put a hand on his shoulder and a whisper in his ear.

‘A treat, I’m sure,’ she said. ‘So what can you –’

‘Xavier,’ he said.

‘Xavier,’ she said. Hung on it. ‘Lucia.’

‘Lucia.’ A succulent name. Her real name.

‘What can you – apologies, Xavier, offer to help our cause to catch the thief and the knife sharpener?’ she asked.

He grinned. Lopsided lips and spinning thoughts. ‘Our newly silent friend,’ he pointed at Alfie. ‘His father is Ministry to the bone. Works high up for the Watchful Good. We have access to the cameras. It won’t be long till we find them.’

‘All that access.’ She breathed, and Xavier saw that it hurt her, just a little. ‘How delicious. Like a fresh baked pie on a windowsill sending out little hot scents for us to follow to a tasty treat.’

‘Exactly,’ he said.

‘Think of the resources,’ she said.

‘Access wherever we want.’

They both let their lips curl. Caught each other’s eyes. Sparks and flickers. His LuciasLuvs had come to him.

The Toorak Milita watched on and he felt them working up the spirit to be his wingmen. Charles stood at his shoulder. Don’t worry boys, I’ll ride in the Jazz.

The Knife Sharpener (42)

42.

Lucia sat in her Honda Jazz and flicked through the recent photos on her phone.

            From her vantage point on Smith St, she had managed to get a few good pictures of the wind jackals attacking the motoboys. Action shots of the beasts in stooped run. Charging and clamouring. Slashing and ramming. Faces of the motoboys unanimously in shock under various helmets. Falling over their scooters and motorbikes as they tried to flee.

            One she particularly liked. A close zoom. A little pixilated. But charmingly. It was all movement and blur either side of her subjects. Beasts caught in grapples. Falling. Running. Contorted. The suggestion of pained howls and electricity sparkling against the void. And in its centre: a perfectly modelled still frame. The imminence of violence. Frozen in time and locked into her digital library.

Lucia applied a black and white filter. A little light contrast to deepen the dark and make the light almost impenetrably bright. A motoboy backing up towards the window of the café, hands up in defence. The wind jackal cornering him already in flight. Whipped claws extended. Amplified chest up. Just the corner of the face in the image. Mouth in screaming rictus, filled with glowing light.

            The result all but certain. But, also, not. The suspense of the next, absent frame. Did the window burst? Did the motoboy trip into the small stool behind his knees? How hard did the wind jackal hit?

A thousand mysteries if you spent enough time with it. Classically posed. Man, versus beast. Chaos of the hospitality class. Just another night. At the end of the day, how safe is a helmet?

            Lucia tilted her head and considered the photo. In all her own artistic missions, she had never quite captured this moment. Always the after effects. They lacked the volatile velocity of this. The sense of it being locked into a kind of static present. Its blurred imperfections casting doubt on technique but seeming to embody the tale. The tense cessation of dynamism, viciousness, and terror at their peak. The million microseconds that immediately predate and hold an instant’s bloodshed from its inevitability. Form is never more than an extension of content. Lucia was finally starting to understand what that meant.

She was usually so self-exacting. Made sure her KillingTime pictures had their own narratives. A broad ideological commitment to the idea that violence can be eloquent, revealing, unveiling. The desecrated remains a comment on existence, time, society, culture. The sly comment a perfect execution of literary irony. Look at her digital literacies. Her ability to contort them to glibly dismiss the bullet in the middle of a forehead. Her canvasses contained multitudes. It was why she shied away from documenting murder for murder’s own sake. She hated the Modernist position. Art had to mean something. To her or her audience.

            Especially, online. It needed to be more than a pretty picture. An inspirational quote. An appeal for love. It had to say something about her. There was no other point to the Medias. The endorphin hit of her audience was nice. But what she wanted was to portray a life she felt deeply in her very being, which didn’t quite line up with her lived reality. A life that could be validated by her legions. Brought dragging to the surface.

            This photo, though, was tricky. An unexpected conflict with her worldview that art is a deliberate considered exercise. This was an accident of timing. Lucia had done nothing to set it up according to her standards of lighting, posture, position, and morals. She might infer meaning and story from the launching wind jackal and the cowering motoboy. But it was pure interpretation. There was no deliberation. It existed because she had decided to take a few snaps. For her own enjoyment later. Maybe for her Story – although she was wary of oversharing and alerting the motoboys to her behaviour. It was art’s for art’s sake.

            Yet, there was real story in the photo. A story she had set up with her Bluetooth speakers and now told in her study of camera phone’s contents. A story with an air of mystery and impossibility.

Heard the one about the wind jackals, the motoboys, and the café?

How very Melbourne.

            She wasn’t sure if she’d share it. The black and white almost made it pretentious. Existentialist. Noir-European.

Her whole left side ached. Shoulder, hips, and breast. Scraps and bruises. A loose tooth. One of the wind jackals had collected with her firmly when that scoundrel, Chance, had alerted them to her presence. Drove right into her body, slamming her into Smith St. She could almost see the shards of crystal and broken glass on the street. Stomped syringes. Piss stains.

Stunned, but not incapacitated, Lucia managed to pull her pistol in close and release a series of shots to the stomach of the creature before it could start to shred her body with its claws. It slumped and she slipped out from under it, already shooting at the next wind jackal bearing down on her. Precise, measured shots, from a single knee, blowing out the circuit board brains of two. Then out of ammunition.

She had pulled herself up and reeled down the street. Heard the swift clunking steps behind her. Then the van sliding by, seeming for a moment to veer in her direction. Then away again. Curious about the evasion – a mistake she filed away – but also desperate to lose the wind jackals chasing her, Lucia turned sharply into an alley next to the abandoned pub from where she had originally watched the action.

The sudden change in direction caused the ill-proportioned animals to slip in their haste. She reached the end of the alley, vaulted over wooden fence, and circled straight back into the pub from a delivery entrance. A splintering bang sounded out from the alley as the wind jackals ran through the useless impediment to their charge. Then a few static soaked grunts and long bending squeal. Lucia waited in the shadows of the bar and reloaded her gun.

Another droned howl.

She heard them stumble away. Bumping and jostling the side of the building.

From the empty balcony where she had observed the chaos and taken the photo which both obsessed her and caused so much consternation, Lucia watched the wind jackals head back north. They left the strewn and ragged bodies of the motoboys spread out the front of the cafe. Disinterested now whatever rage and confusion had brought them here had dissipated in their orgy of screaming. In the absence of anything else to slaughter.

Her Jazz had been where she left it. She drove it away from Collingwood aimlessly. Pondered her next move. Pulled into a carpark in the city and now waited.

She drifted through more photos. They would have dumped the van by now. That would be the smart move. Much harder to track. Still, up close, the girl had been familiar. The jaw line, maybe.

Slid through notifications from KillingTime: inquiries about her hunt. Fans hungry for more.

She relented and posted the black and white image of the wind jackal and the motoboy. No comment. Let it speak for itself. A few hashtags: #art #laststand #stillhunting

As for the motoboys and Mr Pistol – well, let them give her an excuse to hunt the man down. Pose him and strip him and leave the remains of his empire to his horde of hungry boys.

A comment rang through almost instantly from ChaunceysChance98: good eye, trade ya?

She puzzled over this.

Then Jumjuphries wrote: OMG! WOW! Take my photo!??

Datenitenanal wrote: down? dm me hot stuff. we can make art alllll night

They continued to filter in. Buffed her up. Made it all feel a little better. Not a complete waste of time. They always got her. Held her identity close. Even when she went abstract, poseur like this.

A text message came in. It was from her current employer.

Hello, LuciasLuvs. Please call at convenience. I have someone who may be able to help you.

Lucia dwelled. Usually she didn’t work in pairs. It always ended ugly. Disputes about shares of spoils ended when she had to put them down. Greedy blighters. But, but, but, she was at a lose for the moment. Where would they have gone? Maybe her employer could provide an answer without her even having to ask. Tell her who the chick was, too. A target with a name always had a better story, she thought. All kinds of meanings in a name.

Lucia dialled the number. Grinned a little and prepped her girlie voice. There was dried gritty blood on her teeth and wind jackal cords knotted in her hair.