Buffalo
Dog Bite Protection Spell
Untitled (Show Text)
Dinner
Illustrations by Archie Saunders.
Plain text here.
You are a curly curly little thing, balled up in my grip. After three years, your face is still the same.
(Wedding)
“Push, One, Two.”
Mark stretches and flexes his body over the bar, then drops back down.
“Three - I used to be better at these - Four.”
I’m impressed though. I take him to the park after he showers. I take Mark out of my pocket, spin him around in my hand. He’s always tugging on my arm, waiting for the train to come. I let Mark run on the grass while I finish smoking, feel the sweat drip down my calves. When he comes back from his run, I’ll let him slip his hand behind the bend of my knees.
“Isn’t that gross?” I ask. Mark nods ‘yes’, wiping his hand on his trousers. I would’ve let you do the same.
Mark had started the practice of introducing one another as husband-and-wife at a friends’ housewarming in November. This eventuated in a wedding down the Peninsula early January. It had only been something like a year since we started dating. In the cove of that long weekend, I wore my dress, and Mark wore his dad’s suit. It was 6 years after we had first met, and 3 years after you and I had broken up. It was almost 10,000 days after I was born. Mark has this straight, fine hair that’s quick to get oily and flat; I style it for him. Lani pipes our real names onto a cake, but I call him Ever Yours that day.
I dream about being pregnant every night for a few months after the wedding, waking up naked, having slipped out of my pyjamas, and with hands desperately clinging onto my hot belly. It was the same dream I’ve always had, where I catch you on the train, follow you through each carriage. We reach the end, and you would turn around and slip right by me, touching the small of my back as you pass. My stomach would flutter with baby kicks. It’s a compulsion to stay sober when I have fits of these dreams, so I cling to 0% cans and enjoy miming recovery. Somedays, I take a few Valium, tracing my fingers up and down the curve of my bed frame, then walking slowly into the city. Everything has a pregnancy filter on it, a soft glow. I dream again of us crumbling into one another, crumbling together in the shadow of the failing body politic, crippled first, let down first, by our skin and organs and breath, and then, second, made scared of the world. You call me a dope when I get home and clock me around the head softly.
⁛
In April, I fall off my bike riding home. By the end of the month, sharp pains dull to thump kinds of aches; a thick, lumpy bruise starting to grow. It started just under my left arm, wrapping down, against the curve of my waist, and creeping at my underwear line. Even in May, it’s still a layer of purple shellac on me. Mark tells me that I can’t heal if I think and talk too much about it. He says to stop believing that something bad is happening. I’m stagnant, I squash new cells. I look at the bruise every morning, look at myself, tracing out the new shape against my skin. I ask Mark to check it for me as well, make sure I’m not too lumpy, warm, cold. When he says he won’t do it anymore, I learn to contort myself, pressing my chin to my shoulder, and my palm to my back.
It’s cruel to be in the stasis of recovery among the pull of ordinary jobs. Sometimes the injury can be quantified in inconvenience (like, taking off work for appointments, pricked veins, having no money), but it’s generally difficult to realise. I’m neither victim to nor a survivor of it. I’m getting blood tests every week: looking at clotting factors, immune function, vitamins C, K, and B. I have no infections and I’ve got good platelets. Cold jelly on my skin bores a hole through my stomach, and they suck bone marrow from my hip. I learn that people don’t care about things for very long, I learn to get very boring. My friends start to hate me. All my tests come back normal, but it’s still there by winter. My life-force, the thing pushing at the edge of my body. It’s boring, my friends are bored of me. The line between image and truth fragments.
“It’s the beginning of the end,” I promise Mark.
After everything, it’s a ball of energy that buzzes all day. I can’t not touch it, coxing stagnant pooling back towards my heart. Sometimes I cover it, but most days, I walk around, shirt balled up in my hands, and show it off. It’s the promise of blood underneath my skin. It’s the promise of my body underneath.
In April, I fall off my bike riding home. By the end of the month, sharp pains dull to thump kinds of aches; a thick, lumpy bruise starting to grow. It started just under my left arm, wrapping down, against the curve of my waist, and creeping at my underwear line. Even in May, it’s still a layer of purple shellac on me. Mark tells me that I can’t heal if I think and talk too much about it. He says to stop believing that something bad is happening. I’m stagnant, I squash new cells. I look at the bruise every morning, look at myself, tracing out the new shape against my skin. I ask Mark to check it for me as well, make sure I’m not too lumpy, warm, cold. When he says he won’t do it anymore, I learn to contort myself, pressing my chin to my shoulder, and my palm to my back.
It’s cruel to be in the stasis of recovery among the pull of ordinary jobs. Sometimes the injury can be quantified in inconvenience (like, taking off work for appointments, pricked veins, having no money), but it’s generally difficult to realise. I’m neither victim to nor a survivor of it. I’m getting blood tests every week: looking at clotting factors, immune function, vitamins C, K, and B. I have no infections and I’ve got good platelets. Cold jelly on my skin bores a hole through my stomach, and they suck bone marrow from my hip. I learn that people don’t care about things for very long, I learn to get very boring. My friends start to hate me. All my tests come back normal, but it’s still there by winter. My life-force, the thing pushing at the edge of my body. It’s boring, my friends are bored of me. The line between image and truth fragments.
“It’s the beginning of the end,” I promise Mark.
After everything, it’s a ball of energy that buzzes all day. I can’t not touch it, coxing stagnant pooling back towards my heart. Sometimes I cover it, but most days, I walk around, shirt balled up in my hands, and show it off. It’s the promise of blood underneath my skin. It’s the promise of my body underneath.
At night, I ask Mark to put his canines into my back, get out all the old, dead stuff.
I call him Dogbite when he snaps at the air of my hip, grinding his dirty teeth on my skin.
I call him Dogbite when he snaps at the air of my hip, grinding his dirty teeth on my skin.
⁛
When Mark and I drive down Yarra Ranges way to see his family, I detail the story to his mum as such: trying to ride down the stairs; hitting a rock; skidding; falling; waiting for the pain to hit; ouch; bruised forever. I pull up my top to show her, and she frowns a bit.
“I had this horrible bruise after Mark’s birth,” she tells me. “It was a C-Section, and I got left with this red purple bruise. I was convinced that the doctor forgot to stitch me up, and that I had internal bleeding. Very scary. They told me it was normal, but nothing seemed normal about it.”
I nod my head in agreement. Mark’s mum is only soft words, dotted by a broad and regional curve upwards.
“I bugged doctors about it constantly. I was a new mum though, crazy. Anthony was never home, he only had a week off and had to fly back to WA for work. This was before we came here as well, so we were living just out of Sydney at the time. But my family is in Griffith, Anthony’s in Brisbane, so I was alone, with this injury and new baby I had no clue what to do with.”
“Yeah,” I say, “My doctors are good. I’m frustrated though, bored. I’m looking for the end.”
“I didn’t even pick a name for weeks, I was so distracted,” she says. “There’s always an end though. The bruising went away, that was my end. The baby’s name was either going to John or Mark, and then it ended and I decided to call him Mark.”
All three of Mark’s brothers had gotten gel blasters for their birthday over the weekend. Joe pointed his gun at me now. “They really shoot, you know,” he says.
Marks mum holds her hand over the barrel. “But…” she continued, “If it doesn’t go away, it becomes ordinary. That’s the other end: when it just becomes ordinary.”
Seb cocks his gun in defence of his brother. “Hands down !” he threatens. Mark’s dad grunts loosely from the couch, and his mum shoots a vague smile at me. I’ve known her long enough to know our talk is over. Louis affirms his brother by repeating that the guns really do shoot. Louis lists the mods that he plans on doing. His brothers are laughing, but he is deadly serious. He’s intense, telling me that his gun is most definitely the best one. It’s more powerful than Joe’s or Seb’s. It’s more powerful than Mark’s, who didn’t even get one; it’s the most powerful one. The carpet in this house soaks up the citrus cleaner and the smell is giving me a throbbing headache so I go lie down.
⁛
A new lump is later revealed under the foreign light of Mark’s families’ bathroom. I’ve grown to survey my body everyday because I think it might shut down soon. I post a photo of the new lump on r/medical_advice. I’m with Mark, sitting together in his teenage twin single. He’s doing work on his computer, and when I turn to look at him, his face is all shot up with blue light. My computer dings. “This is a porn account, look at the history,” someone has commented on my post. In the photo, I’m lying down on the bathroom floor, twisting to capture how the bruise goes from my hip, up my back, with the lump circled. Someone else says it’s fetish content. I don’t mean it like this, so I delete the post and make a new one. On r/bruise, I’m instead asked my technique for bruising. “Looks like 30 minutes or so of light smacking to bring blood, then light whacking with your favourite device. That one looks like your basic paddle or spoon,” a user replies. I grimace a little at my laptop.
Mark roll his head over to look at me. “You don’t have to like my family,” he says. I delete the account.
“I do like your family. You don’t like mine.”
He snorts, “Do you like me?”
“I like you fine,” I say back. Mark has this fantasy of being tortured by his family. He is then, consequently, tortured by his family. It’s a self serving pleasure, and much easier than unfounded dislike. He wishes that his family were evil and then they become evil for not serving him that. His family is fine though. ‘Just different to me’ is how he describes them.
“You know, I don’t like your dad,” he tells me.
“That’s OK,” I say back.
“We always see him, but I don’t like your dad.”
At home the next night, I think I see you from across the road. Heidi and I are sitting on Brunswick St; you air me. Heidi didn’t spot you, and said that you wouldn’t have seen me, but I thought that we looked at one another.
(Pool)
I’m desperate when I have a crush. I’m using Mica’s body in such a way that when I press my fingers onto her temple, I feel my own thoughts humming. I take her into the crawlspace, and pretend to know her there. I call her Mica in my head even after I learn her name. I’m violent and obsessive, avoiding Mark, posing myself in the kitchen and reading on the couch. I can imagine myself here, hands working into the cushions, trying to be still. I cock my head to the skylight. Like my own body, which is now closing in on itself, I’m turning slowly to dust.
I’m naked in the light between the kitchen and the bedroom, creeping slowly, and playing this game where I imagine a million ways that I can get someone to fall in love with me. On the phone, over the phone, on the train to work. You are always there, and I don't know it.
⁛
Then, three years on, there you are, swimming. I follow you up the pool, for real. You are a Swimming Pool Tuna. You’re like a Morning Dream, I reach out to touch you. I graze the air of your back before you dip under the water again. You disappear every time you go under. And then, when I’m ready to see you, you come up.
“Hi Caroline,” you say to me.
Pool water falls out of your goggles when you take them off. Your skin pulls taut across your body. You are nothing meaty. You are someone who is perfect, I love you. I will always read your texts. When I used to put my head to your chest, I could never hear beating. My dream used to be you and me, piano in our house. Kids, big windows, photos, weekdays then weekends. My dream was glue on my fingers, for my body to be shellac and clean. Your stone body will tenderise with touch, and it will still glow a little green in the pool water. You are two hundred years old to me, I always read your texts.
I used to wake you up and call you There You Are.
Now, in the corner of the North Melbourne Pool, I take off my puffer, and curl up my top to show you the bruise.
“Wow Caroline”, you say, “How d’ya get that?”
We meet again that Friday. You wear a black polo, and have your hair tightly cropped, with a little fringe at the base of your forehead. You have a social disorder that pushes you to have your back against the wall. You are compact within yourself and built for efficiency. What you said was:
“Come with me back to the High Country.”
That’s where we are from, together. You’re someone I think I will always know. I have an MRI on Tuesday and I can’t leave Mark behind. My heart is going crazy. You tell me to meet you there after. I call you The Real One to make myself feel better. The Right Thing, Serious. I call you One Thousand Things, I call you One Million Times Everyday. I agree to come and I invite you to dinner tomorrow night.
Later, when I’m walking home, I'll feel my blood pumping and pumping, and when I raise my fingers up and look at them, they will be swollen and red.
⁛
My dad used to be addicted to opioids, which is why I’ve never taken them. I cry the whole morning I decide to tell Mark I’m leaving. I’ll tell him I’m coming back. I’ll tell him he can come. We have you over for dinner, because I mention you’re back in town. We haven’t seen you in a long time, almost three years. I’m sad because you're sad, Mark. I’m leaving, but I’m coming back.
“How is the back, Caroline?” you ask. I forgot to look at it this morning.
“It’s the same.”
After dinner, I’m eavesdropping. I hear you talking to Mark and you sounded perfect and Mark was slurring his words, which is normal, and I’m slurring too, but you never do that, and I kept making the drinks stronger and I kept hoping that I would hear you fuck up your words or see the back part of your skin or something. I feel neglected and I feel like I want to fix you and I also feel drunk and I sneak into the bathroom to split an oxy from Mark’s surgery and I’m tired and drunk and becoming a bit high and I pass out on Mark and I’s bed, our bed together, rubbing makeup into our sheets. I sleep the whole night and I don’t see you leave or get say bye to you.
In the morning, Mark and I cook together. He cuts vegetables for the omelette while I push eggs through a sieve.
“Will you go home?” he asks. You mentioned it when I was asleep, before I could.
“I think I should go back, it’s been ages.”
When Mark doesn’t say anything, I continue, “I would like to go, I think.”
“Love you,” I promise. Mark pulls back from the knife:
“Ow.”
I watch as little red dots bubble from the cut on his hand. I bandage him up and give him the other half of the tiny oxy from out my pocket, apologising for taking it last night. I looked at Mark for a long time that day. I think that if I split you open, I would find nothing wet.
(The End)
I’m waiting, waiting, waiting, ready.
You left an hour ago to go buy food from the supermarket. It’s cold but too early in the year to be snowing yet. Even though you would think that kangaroos wouldn’t live in the mountains, they do, so when it gets dark, I warn you to watch out on the roads. When I call Mark, he doesn’t pick up. We haven’t spoken since I got to the mountains. When I was packing to leave Melbourne, I could see Mark watching me. I looked up to catch his eye and smiled at him. I had cried the entire night before. My husband smiled back at me. We had known each other for almost 7 years and been married for almost 1, but we still smiled when we caught each other’s eye. We took a break together to get lunch, and then Mark went back to work and I went to the couch to nap. I put my legs up against the wall to stop them itching, and tilted my head back to look out the window. It was a very sunny day, I imagined the sun. A girl and a boy walked past the window. Our house is very beautiful, so everyone always looks in. The girl looked in. She’s so beautiful, she’s got such a beautiful face. I exhaled, imagining being outside the house, walking along. I imagined the sun, imagined being the sun, then the trees, then the acid and the breath that became her. I imagined being this girl, walking along, walking there. I imagined my face to be like hers, in every way being like her, always looking down first at the concrete, then up through the window. I imagined wanting my house, wanting to live here. I imagined getting married. I imagined being in a pool right after it closed, staying in because you just don’t ever want to get out, imagined watching the cover pull slowly and the hum of motors locking me in. I imagined all the cells in my skin pruning from chlorine, and how nice it would feel when I finally broke out of the pool. I imagined my first shower after being trapped in the pool, and whether I would be scared or not. I imagined being scared of water. I imagined being scared. I imagined being the sun.
I cocked my head left to look at Mark in his office, then right to look at the front door. I tensed my body, holding this feeling outside me, then inhaled to realise myself there, wholly visible with my legs against the wall. I was inside our house, the weight of my feet up high dropping to my core. I surrendered to myself, and got up to go to the kitchen. I would have been breathing heavy, crying a little, and dragging my feet on the ground.
“Is this okay?” I asked the room, clasping at the handle of my suitcase.
I walked to the door. Mark wouldn’t have been looking for me anymore, he would have been looking at Excel. All of those boxes were full of numbers, little houses with tiny people. I thought to myself that I was ready, so I opened the door, and I felt ready, so I left. Mark was listening to something in his headphones, so he didn’t hear me go. I caught his eye through the window. We smiled. Feeling ready, I kept on going down the street, rushing a bit to make the next train.
⁛
I hear you pull into the driveway, then open the door and click on the stove. You’ve been living at your parents’ extra property up here for years now, but I haven’t been back since I was in highschool. I wish I knew what you were thinking about and sometimes I think that it might be nothing. I slip down, off the bed and onto the carpet, pressing play on The Verve song I had been listening to earlier.
“Cause bay-bee… Ooooh…”
I love this song. I get up for a walk before dinner. I live here now. You are silent and awesome. You like still air and quiet houses. The first thing you ever learnt was how to protect your head with your hands. The only confident breath that I ever took was my first. I live with you now, and it’s with you that I’m doing things like reading books, math, climbing mountains. It’s cold but it’s not snowing. On the hallway side table is a big mirror, too big and too heavy for the room. I’m naked and I’ve been naked all day. In the mirror, I watch myself put on my coat and shoes, and if I were to have turned around, I wouldn’t have seen the bruise. I would have seen the end, smooth, healthy skin, no bruise, the end. I don’t though, and I don’t even really care. I call Mark again. Because I heard you get home, when I walk out, I don’t lock the door behind me. Mark doesn’t pick up. I don’t know why I’m worried about it. I start walking. I wonder what you are cooking for dinner and I wish I had asked. Normally, it’s a dense sort of meat and a salad with something carb-y. I feel sick when I watch you cook or when you start talking about food. Your parents gave us a few bottles of red wine as a sort of celebration thing, so although you don’t normally drink on the weekdays, we’ll be having that at dinner. I keep on walking.
The only other thing close to us here is an old primary school, closed for about a decade. You showed me that you can get onto the roof using a pile of bricks to boost yourself up onto the wire fence, and then climbing from there. From the top of the school, our house looks tiny. Smoke is pushing out from the chimney, and the lights are on. It looks further away than the last few times I’ve been up here. I hear a sound, and when I turn around, I see it: a big lump, lying in the middle of the oval. I know it’s an animal because I can see it breathing. I get down from the roof, walking over, crawling over to it. It’s on its side, whinging. I look at it in its eyes. It’s a buffalo, massive and brown, and bleeding.
Every part is thumping alive like:
"One-two-one-two-one-two..."
It could have made me cry, I stroke its head. The buffalo whines a bit. I stroke its head again, and look in its eyes, smiling without teeth. “You aren’t meant to be here,” I say to the buffalo. It blinks slowly, knowingly.
"I don’t really know what to do,” I say. I stand up and idle around for a few minutes, hoping someone will show up. I walk quickly to the edge of the oval, which backs onto a freeway, but there’s no cars coming. I walk back. The buffalo is breathing heavy and desperate. Maybe it’s a bison, I don’t know. I know there’s no cell service here, but I still reach to call Mark one more time. It doesn’t even ring. I wait a bit longer, sitting back down. It feels like I’ve been here for ages but it’s still not that dark. I look at the buffalo’s face, and it looks back at me.
“Where’s your herd?” I ask.
I always wonder what you’re thinking about. Even though I won’t see him again, I will never forget that Mark is so Tiny and Crazy. I always knew what he was thinking. He was always tugging on my arm and I was always waiting, not feeling quite ready to turn around. I wanted him to push right through me. He was soft and like jelly. The buffalo’s breath starts to slows and it stops whining. It’s such a fat dope of an animal. Its fur is so wiry and coarse. I pat its fat, dope-ish head. I wait a few minutes for it to fully stop breathing, then I get up and I go home.
It only takes ten minutes to walk back from the school oval. It’s twilight now: the same colour light indoors and outdoors. When I turn to lock the front door, looking out to the yard, our hallway will just keep on going forever. I close the door, and go to your room to tell you this but you've already gone.
End.