WINNER, Summer 2023
The Screw Turn Flash Fiction Competition
BY BRID CUMMINGS
It’s early morning and the red dirt is already a hotplate beneath my feet. The air, saturated with the menthol tang of eucalypts, is heavy and humid and reluctant to release any oxygen to my lungs. Still, it doesn’t stop me dragging on a ciggie. God knows, I need something to calm the nerves, sat out here on the edge of the veranda, watching the scrubland, knowing whatever is out there is watching me right back.
Behind me, from inside the cottage, Bazza’s boots shuffle across the kitchen lino. The fridge rattles as it’s opened. No surprise what he’s having for brekkie. And no judgement either. The night-time watch has gotta be the worst. At least I can see out here in the daylight—low clouds smothering the skies and fifty metres of baked earth giving way to that endless ocean of scrub.
“Throw us a beer too, Bazza,” I call, grinding the ciggie beneath my boot as if it were a roach. Not that there’s any roaches out here. Nor ants. Nor birds. Not even a fucking fly, and who’s ever heard of no flies in the outback?
The door swings open and the old man emerges like a bear out of hibernation. He scratches his scrawny belly, tosses me a can.
“Reckon the rain’s gonna come?” he asks.
“Nah. It’ll pass over.”
He raises his beer to his lips, slurps noisily. “You’ll shout if you need me, then?”
“Sure.”
“I’ll go kip in the rocker chair. Hear you better there.”
He plods back into the abandoned cottage that has been our home for the past six weeks. He looks exhausted, rake-thin; his smart crocodile-skin belt ran out of notches a fortnight ago. Our supplies will last another month, but we’ve both decided that soon as the weather cools, we’re gonna try and make it out on foot. We say it’s cause the mine is empty. That the strange symbols etched on the walls likely say as much. And anyway, how can we work the mine now there’s only two of us left?
Johnson was the first to go. The rains came heavy that night, fat droplets falling onto the rusty roof like a hundred marching boots. Rainstorms aren’t so unusual out in the bush, but the jarring hum that accompanied the downpour was like nothing I’d ever felt before. My thoughts grew a little twisty. A weight seemed to press against my chest. Then Johnson got panicked about the Ute—said if the creek bed flooded, we’d lose our only way out. We shrugged. But he was right. We found the Ute the following morning, a crumpled wreck sunk beneath the flood waters. Johnson, we didn’t find until three days later. None of us questioned why he was a hundred metres upstream. And though we could see slash marks around his neck, we all agreed they must be from the flood debris—not from his own hunting knife.
Cripps was the next to go. A smart lad, but nervy as a hound. The rains fell one afternoon, drizzle rather than downpour. But something happened when the water touched the earth. Like the land hissed, and my guts twisted with an unexplainable terror. It took all my will to keep on digging. But our hopes of finding gold were still strong then. We didn’t know Cripps had left us. We found him back at the cottage. The shotgun had not spared much of his face, but I swear what remained of his features was an exact manifestation of my earlier terror.
A rumble of thunder startles me, and then, without warning, rain pours from the heavens as if the devil himself were up there taking a piss. The familiar hum follows, tightening the muscles between my ribs. I snatch up the rifle and set the butt snug into my right shoulder.
“Bazza.”
The chill rainwater soaks into my scalp. Rivulets trickle to my eyes, and the scrubland shifts out of focus. I blink. Blink again.
“Bazza!”
Around me, water pounds like fists into the unyielding earth. Ruts and gullies turn to swift-flowing streams, charging down towards the line of waiting scrub. I holler again as the rain, sharp as gravel, pelts my face.
Lazy fucking bastard!
My rifle quivers, but I keep it aimed ahead. Something is stirring within the bushes. I can feel it. And with the knowledge comes a deep fear sliding inside my belly. Something is coming. Something dark.
Predatory.
The bushes bristle, then cower as a rush of air cracks like a bullwhip through the scrub. I see shadows through the rain. I want to scream at Bazza. Tell him to wake the fuck up. Drag his bony arse out of that damn rocking chair. But my throat is too tight. And my limbs are suddenly too weak to keep hold of the rifle. The gun drops to the ground with a wet thud. And then I am down too, knees hitting the dirt. I can see nothing now but thick, suffocating sheets of rain.
And then it stops.
The air falls silent. And as I look around, the terror that captured my reason slowly lifts. Only sodden dirt and bushland surround me. Nothing more. A small laugh bubbles inside my chest. How pathetic I must look. On my knees. How did I give way to such childish imaginings?
“Hey Bazza,” I call, clambering onto the veranda.
I hear the creak of the rocker.
“Come on, you lazy fucker. Get out the chair.”
But as I drag the door open, I see Bazza is not in the chair. He is above me, swinging beneath a rafter that creaks in protest at the smart crocodile-skin belt wrapped tight around its girth.
And behind me, once again, I hear the rain begin to fall.
Brid Cummings is a writer living in Australia with short stories published in Australia and overseas including the Bath Short Story Awards, The Moth Magazine and The Big Issue Fiction Edition. She has won awards in the Sisters in Crime Short Story competitions and was the winner of the inaugural Glencairn Glass/Bloody Scotland crime short story competition. When not writing, she enjoys hiking and kayaking around the beautiful coastline of South Australia.
