Hi everybody, its fiction writing time again. go here for details This month’s prompt is Princess Tuvstarr by John Bauer (see my first posted image). There’s a prize to be won! Come on God of winning stuff!


 

White Girl

I’m not sure why she keeps me alive. It may be the imperfections in my face amuse her: the empty eye socket that permanently weeps, the ridges of scars that look like ticks feeding on a goanna’s neck, or perhaps she enjoys the way my jaw is fused to my shoulder. In the right light, or to a man with barbed wire in his eye, I’m sure my tilted head makes me appear curious, quaint, but most days I look like day old steak that’s been left in the sun.

My good eye travels to my keeper. She’s still enough to be a misplaced garden sculpture, or an abandoned esky. I don’t know what she is, or why she glows in the moonlight, but this is her place, and I’ve learnt to ignore the mosquitos and match her stillness. Her head is tilted, but I know she is watching me. I watch her flat chest rising and falling, and I notice the night air has made her alabaster nipples pay attention to her reflection. I follow the line of hair cascading from her belly button to the shadows between her thighs, and, as if she knows what I’m looking at, her thighs slowly part.

The impossibly white down falls like snow against a pink sky and then disappears into a swirling blizzard. Her quick movements no longer scare me, and, clumsily, my lonely eye refocus’ and her face materialises a hand width away from my own. Before it reaches my sunken cheeks, heat catches in my chest, and my tattered levis become uncomfortable. The night is watching. In the distance a koala barks, and beating wings crash into foliage.

She never talks, but her eyes speak volumes. Icy shards and diamonds float in deep blues, the swirling blues of oceans, home to barracuda and sharks.  Her feline teeth are showing, the big ones, curved and shiny with saliva. The tip of her pink tongue strokes one fang seductively and she places a hand onto the melted plastic looking skin on my shoulder. She smells like red earth and crushed tea tree, and her breath is warm and honey ant sweet.

I was wrong, she doesn’t like the way my jaw is joined to my shoulder. Her extended talons slice through the scarred flesh and before I can scream her tongue is punishing my mouth. My head tears away painfully, and a spray of blood dyes her paperbark hair red. Like a boxing kangaroo her legs rake down my thighs, and her naked hips and hungry tongue knock me to the ground.

After being covered in petrol and set alight by the doped up freaks who roam the shire, and then surviving with were-bitch for two years, I believed I was immune to pain. I’m wrong again. Someone is massaging my neck with a wire brush, and a Tasmanian devil is fighting with a wild pig nearby.

After cleaning my wound with her rough tongue, my albino nurse returns to her reflection. This time she is standing, but I’m too shaken to admire her athletic buns. My body is twitching and jumping like a lamb getting mulesed. I’m not sure if I pass out, but I must be lying still because the frogs are singing again. Gingerly I stand, and, although the night air is pouring lemon juice into my wound, I’m almost two metres tall again.

Doctor moonlight is staring at her reflection, and I think about her blue eyes. The way they looked while she chewed parts of fish, snake, and Galah, before she spat it into my mouth and forced me to eat. Something plops into the water and the cicadas quieten for a second.

I think about the edge of town where blacks and half casts drink Listerine and methylated spirits. Where dangerous white boys messed up on designer drugs shoot kangaroos and burn sleeping drunks. I think about soft blue eyes dragging me further and further into the bush, away from sex with mouths you cannot kiss, government handouts, and the sorry generation. Soft blue eyes.

I walk towards Wolverines-a-white-girl, and barely disturb the ground. The frogs continue to chorus and a wallaby remains drinking on the far side of the pool. While my tongue finds some spit to soothe my abused lips, I stand beside the moon, and stare into the crystal dark water. Her head tilts slowly towards me, and I remember, during moments of awareness, her warm body and soft mews. How long did my flesh take to heal?

Looking down, my skin looks smooth, and I look like I have two eyes. The polished deep is kind. A black fella is standing beside a naked white girl, and no one is calling the cops. A white girl. Her hand slides into mine and I timidly squeeze her warm fingers. The claws remain sheathed.