Liminal by Grace Harvey.................................. 6
Hot Pink Blues by Jaime Colley ..................... 7
Going Down by Rory Hawkins ....................... 8
Tuned In by Lilian Martin................................ 25
Home, Foraged by Sophie Tomassen ....... 58
Whether you’re a glass half-full or glass halfempty kind of person; this issue of Glass is stacked with stories for QUT students by QUT students.
Like always, we aim to navigate you through all facets of life that students experience. Glass is here to be a lens on the issues, successes, and stories that matter to students, and we hope you enjoy this issue.
QUTGLASS.COM
Glass Media and the QUT Student Guild acknowledge the Turrbal and Jagera peoples as the First Nations owners of the lands where QUT now stands. We pay respect to their Elders, past, present, and emerging, their lores, customs, and creation spirits. We recognise that these lands have always been places of teaching, research, learning, and storytelling.
Glass Media and the QUT Guild acknowledge the important role Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples play within the Meanjin community.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are warned that the following magazine may contain references to deceased persons.
Glass Media informs readers that the views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this issue of Glass belong solely to the author, and do not necessarily express the views of Glass Media or the QUT Guild.
I spent my teenage years babysitting: flitting in and out of houses around Ashgrove (chauffeured by my ever-patient parents), wiping baby throw-up off my shirts, organising glitter and stickers that were invariably out of control in my bright pink craft caddy. These years of babysitting proved fruitful in many ways, but at the time, one of my favourite parts was having a licence to see the inside of so many people’s homes. A writer’s dream.
The only homes I didn’t like – the only homes that, to be honest, scared me – were the ones where there wasn’t a bookshelf to be found. (There’s an obvious discussion to be had here about the fact that access to books and access to the time necessary to read them is complicated by socio-economic status. You’ll have to trust me that this was not a material issue in this case. ) I remember being so confused about the adults who lived in these homes. How could they have houses without books? How did they function? How did they even know who they were? Perhaps more judgementally — what sort of children were these people raising? These are questions that have niggled at my mind ever since.
Like many, I have a deep affection for words and language, and the feeling of holding a hardcopy book or magazine between my fingers. I believe that through reading and fiction, there is a sort of vital exchange between writer and reader that makes life worth living. I would guess, given that you are reading Glass: The Fiction Edition , you probably feel the same way.
TOM LOUDON CIARAN GREIG ELLA BRUMMThis special edition of Glass is a celebration of the practice of fiction writing and the love of fiction among QUT students. We have collated five stories from current students, as well as Q&As with each author so that you can have a peek behind the curtain of their creative practice.
Writing can be lonely. Because of this loneliness, there’s something so magical about seeing someone else read your words and interpret your work in their own artform. I hope Grace, Jaime, Rory, Lilian, and Sophie –our wonderful authors featured in this edition — enjoy experiencing this magic for themselves (some of them for the very first time!) when they see the illustrations Claudia Pilbeam has created to accompany their stories. I hope you delight in the playfulness of Claudia’s work as I do.
The thing I love most about all writing, but especially fiction, is the dance the writer and reader do together. Reading is an inherently creative act, to conjure in your mind the images a writer has attempted to paint with mere words. We hope you enjoy reading (and dancing) through this special edition of Glass
Ciaran Greig Fiction EditorBrisbane is a stone and glass monolith, spiralling out into a collection of old Queenslanders and low, seventies-built, brick bunkers with warped metal balconies. The city is a yawning maw, an unfamiliar predator waiting to swallow August whole.
The sun is slinking its way over the uneven skyline by the time she pulls into the rental house’s driveway. August stares through her windshield up at the white panelled townhouse with its large, dark oak door. It’s tucked at the back of a sleepy suburb a few blocks back from a major road. The street is a collection of green lawns and weeping jacaranda trees dripping purple flowers onto the hoods of cars.
Inside it is achingly empty, filled only by the squeak of her boots on the floor, the dry sound of her fingertips skimming the walls. August opens all the doors and forces the windows wide to let in air but somehow the house still smells dusty and stale.
She fights with the jammed lock on the back door for a few minutes before giving in, dropping to the floor in the centre of the would-be living room, hands and head resting between her knees. The Brisbane humidity has descended on her like a second skin, lingering and heavy. It sits on in her lungs and over top of her head. Sweat running down from her hairline to the concave space between her shoulder blades.
August looses a long breath, the unfamiliar space leaving her prickly and unsettled. She tries to imagine herself cooking in the kitchen or lingering in a corner during a house party, but the house still feels like a white box, unfamiliar and unwelcoming without the lived-in clutter. It’s just her and the few lingering pieces of past tenants: a milk crate on the small landing at the back steps and a few scattered pasta shells in the kitchen cabinets.
She tries to picture Beau, happy and day-drunk at a concert. Her brazen haired little brother sweaty from the muggy heat and the closeness of other bodies. Maybe he is kissing someone lazily in a corner or shooting straight tequila off a sticky bar. Maybe he is damp with salt water, sunburnt shoulders layered in a thin sheen of aloe vera and sunscreen.
A panic builds like pressure in her chest the longer she lingers, a strangling worry. The weight of overthinking bearing down, stomach rolling. August presses one of her own cool palms to her forehead, focusing on the swaying jacaranda through the kitchen window.
***
That first night she spends long hours awake listening to the staccato beat of the traffic on the walls, the gentle half hum of the next-door neighbours playing music on their back deck, the occasional cacophony of laughter. It makes her feel less alone, the house less stagnant. But sleep is still slippery. The air is heavy and warm and the light in her room is an odd, unnatural shade. The ceiling fan only serving to move the air in the room around rather than providing her any real relief from the oppressive heat.
August tosses, one way and then the other, on the unfamiliar mattress. Pressing her forehead to the cold wall she takes a long slow breath and lets the weight of the leaving settle over her, acknowledges the ache of missing home behind her rib cage. In the quiet almost-morning of her half-unpacked bedroom, August lets herself cry.
***
August tries to keep herself busy after that first day.
She works through her boxes methodically, trying to find homes for her plants, pruning a scraped leaf off her ficus. She puts her expensive art history textbooks on her windowsill, stroking the silky texture of their covers, the glossy inside pages with the pads of her fingertips. Buys furniture for her bedroom and uses up an evening and a cheap bottle of wine building it all. Tries to find places for everything she owns, puts it all up and takes it all down again.
August cleans the settled dust off all the surfaces and makes a simmer pot to sit on the stove to fill the house with a smell other than closed-up-must. She re-washes all of her clothes and irons the wrinkles out of her good shirts. She spends long hours reading in the back grass on one of her beach towels, in just her bra and jeans, in that short time she can almost pretend it’s a holiday.
She takes herself to get a haircut and while the lady is combing through the damp ends of her hair, she asks August where she is from.
‘Out west. Is it that obvious?’ August chokes out, embarrassed, staring at the scuffs on the toes of her boots.
‘No. Well—’ The hairdresser pauses, August watches a few strands of hair drift past her cheek. ‘It’s the ute, mostly. But your accent as well.’ She turns August’s head, then imitates her own apparent drawl to her. August doesn’t say anything else.
For the first time that afternoon she thinks about going home. ***
On her final night alone in the house, August drives to the Mount Coot-Tha Lookout in her pyjamas. She shuffles through the cassettes Beau left in the ute’s glovebox and puts one in while she drives, the car speakers tinny and quiet.
The lights of the city are violent at first, growing to winking and distant the further she drives. August winds the windows down and lets the cool air run over her sweat slicked skin, lace its way through her open palm hanging out the window.
From this high up, the city is nothing but a sprawl of blinking lights and shadows surrounded by an angelic glow. August’s not the only uni student here. She can spot them, clumped in small groups, a few lingering alone like her. She sits alone on a small patch of night damp grass, the air around her is quiet and thin. No one seems to speak above a whisper, as if trying to maintain the simultaneous illusion of quiet away from the city below.
August tucks her knees up to her chin, wrapping her arms around her shins and pressing herself into a hug. In the moment she feels childlike again, small, and distantly sad. The feeling creeps up on her, the dry cough of a cry threatening in the back of her throat. August forces it away. Still, the city yawns.
Grace Harvey is a third-year creative writing student and Meanjin (Brisbane) based fiction writer. Their work can be found at ScratchThat, Glass Magazine, Baby Teeth Journal, and most places online at @graceharveywrites.
Lemon is pregnant, a soft litter of puppies, due in a few weeks. She nuzzles into my hand, forcing my love onto herself, so I give in and scratch her ears. She pants, her belly round and full. She wanders away from me and flops down in the grass. The sun filters over her eyes, so she reshuffles, and then lets out a long sigh. I smile, as I realise how alike she is to a pregnant human.
I call Mum a few weeks later to see if she has birthed the puppies. Mum tells me Lemon forced a miscarriage. When I ask why she would do that, Mum explains that dogs can reabsorb the litter if something isn’t right.
‘Mothers always know,’ she says. ***
I wake before the world when I find out the news. At first, I don’t absorb it. I’m scrolling through Instagram the same way someone functions before coffee, but slowly, I get my fix, and my mind is working. By the time I read the news, the sky is the colour of peaches, clouds like tissue paper. Roe v. Wade is overturned in America. My brain is instantly thinking, thank God I’m in Australia. However, this does not dull the panic that’s smoking in my belly. It is an ignorant thought. Oceans do nothing to protect from sexism. If anything, America has taught it to swim. I climb out of my bed and sit by the fireplace. It provides me no warmth, so I cry hot tears instead.
I’m home helping Mum and Dad muster and mark lambs. Three hundred head. Mum is in the yards with the kelpies, pushing sheep up the race. I needle and drench while Dad brands and tags. It is a routine we mastered years ago when I was a kid. We move accordingly, shift when sheep need pushing up, step away so the dogs can get through. Some families rotate around kitchen benches to prepare feasts; we rotate around yards, sheep, and dogs. At some point, Mum struggles to push a mob of rams into the race. I jump back there with her, a black kelpie at my feet.
‘Push ‘em up,’ I say. The kelpie barks and sweeps across the yard. The rams shift, and they understand they must move forward. I tell the dog to sit, and she does. I look at Mum.‘I think I want to go to a protest.’
‘You can’t.’ That’s all she says. I refrain from saying that I wasn’t asking for her permission. I climb back over the fence and walk up the race. For the remainder of the afternoon, we are unbalanced, and sheep spill everywhere.
***
I pull tarot cards every morning in July. A ritual, for myself. Some of my friends think they’re a waste of time, but I find comfort in their meanings, like every vibration will become a ripple, like this world is moving through us, rather than with us. I pull the same card for a while: the Ace of Swords. It is a card of great force, and means to triumph or conquest, either in love or hatred. For a while, I can’t pair the meaning with my life. It isn’t until one frosty morning, do I consider that it is not talking of any of my triumphs.
It is after all, a card of great force.
***
I buy a pink dress to wear at a literary salon. I make peace with the colour. For years, we blued. I didn’t like its deliberate grandstanding, parading purported femininity. For so long, I thought being feminine should’ve been a secret, like secrecy equalled elegance, and that’s what being a woman came down to. I am not elegant. I’m heavy, with chocolate cake thighs, and like a blister, I hold more anger than forgiveness.
I was taught where pink was soft, and I was calloused. It wasn’t until I became older did I realise I could be both. Being a woman means I am both.
***
‘Bitch!’ Some guy hollers as they drive past while I finish my afternoon walk. I didn’t even know he was trying to talk to me out of his car window. Taylor Swift was blaring through my earphones, and I turn her down for no one. He just happened to scream as a song was finishing (Champagne Problems). There is no guilt. If I had heard him, I would have ignored him, and I would still be a bitch.
In ignorance, accident, or deliberation, I am the bitch. I think of Lemon, and her reabsorbed puppies, how her body understood it’s limitations. Maybe a bitch is something to aspire to.
*
The condom breaks. Of course it does. I take my pill in a religious fashion, a habit which was hard to enforce, so the worry doesn’t come right away. Any girl would say they’ve used less and have been fine. Hell, I genuinely have used less and have been fine. Still, there’s something in my stomach curling. God, how privileged of me to be like that, to throw caution to the wind,
to not think ahead, to wait and see if I care if there’s blood between my legs in a month. I feel sick. My partner sees this and offers to drive me to the chemist in the morning.
I think of the conservatives I’ve seen on social media, likening abortions with careless, stupid teenage girls who couldn’t be bothered to use protection (because it’s only her responsibility, right?). I think of my pills, and the broken condom now wrapped in tissues in the bin. You can do everything, and it can still be not enough. I cry in the shower for those teenage girls. I see my sixteen-year-old face behind their eyes, and I feel the ache in their hearts as I wash myself clean.
When I go into the chemist the next morning, I ask for the morning-after-pill in a crisp and loud tone. I hope a teenage girl hears me and knows this is okay.
***
My brother’s wedding is soft. It’s in a garden nursery, and I can smell early blooming wattle. Sun filters through poinciana trees, and everything glows at the edges. I pick at my acrylic nails. It’s not often I get dressed up like this, the heels and hair. I feel like a girl. Dad gives me a hug and tells me, ‘You look good, mate.’
This is his way of saying beautiful. I cling to the words and feel so warm.
My three nieces play with the hem of my dress. They’re aging, which is such a sad verb to give to a child. But it’s the truth. They’re so little, and soon they won’t be. I recall being their age.
I was a grotty and feral kid, with cake batter painting my face and warts on my knees. These girls are gentle, with plaited hair and a fresh spray of freckles. I would crash my Bratz
scooter, and eat mulberries from trees, and use curled hibiscus as lipstick. I genuinely had so much to look forward to. I look down at these little girls, and I sigh.
They don’t know yet what it means to be a woman. It will be the most exciting and terrifying time of their lives, but I hope they know that every female in every room stands with them.
And that I will be there too, to buy them morning-after-pills, to drive them to clinic appointments, to pick out their pink dresses. I will be there, ready to hold their hands, and show them how to move forward.
Jaime Colley is a fourth-year creative writing and law student at QUT. She has been published in Concrescence Zine, Verses Magazine, Glass, and the Luna Collective, among others. Her writing often swings wildly between the dark potential of thrillers, the subtle delicacy of relationships, and if she’s feeling especially game, both. Jaime is a proud Taylor Swift fan and has somehow survived this far into her degree without drinking any coffee. Psychotic? She’s aware.
Elevator doors open to a 2030s revival-deco foyer, complete with black marble floors, vaulted mirror ceilings and chandeliers.
The bellhop beckons.
This is floor 273, Sandhurst & Stanthorpe Holdings, for which this particular sir has been authorised for. His reproduction suit pockets have been turned out, his bag screened, his various IDs and licenses scrutinised. He is a body worker, a chauffeurone.
This explains his size, taught shoulder-span inside polyester, the contents of his duffel bag. Work-alias too, like the rest. Credits were counted for booking and boarding fees, baggage handling, emergency exit access, elevatorial insurance etc.
‘Thank you again, sir,’ the bellhop drawls. ‘For choosing to travel today with Chrysler Line elevators. We hope to see you in future.’
Stiff, like cheap bourbon.
The chauffeurone exits. The doors close behind him and the whole foyer judders. He struts across the marble. The receptionist is dressed to fit the room, strapped and sequined in 50-year-old fashion. Wrinkled antique mags lie across the desk; she gawks into her computer screen.
The chauffeurone clears his throats. ‘I am here to see Mr Hahn. I am Henry Kissinger.’
The receptionist follows something on the screen, to and fro. ‘Mr Hahn is not here, presently. You’ll have to leave and call in later.’
‘That can’t be—’
‘Mr Hahn is a very busy man,’ sighs the receptionist. ‘He only takes appointments. You’ll have to leave and call in later. Maybe then,’ – she brushes back a blonde lock, casts a thick-lashed look at him – ‘we’ll find time to book you in.’
Kissinger tries a smile. ‘You misunderstand.’ He holds out his practicing license. ‘Mr Hahn is the one who made the appointment.’
The receptionist takes the card, looks him up and down. ‘Aughta fuckin said, Henry Kissinger.’ She hits a button. ‘Joe, you hear me?
Joe, get up. The chauffeurone’s here.’ She slides the license back. ‘He’ll be in his office.’
Kissinger takes it. ‘Thank you.’
Crystal chandeliers rattle as the elevator goes by.
Her eyes flicker over him again. Through mascara, they are palest green, like the last sip of chardonnay in the bottle. ‘It’s last on the right,’ she says.
That it is, with a plaque engraved J. S. Hahn, Esquire.
There are dozens of plaques on the dozens of identical black doors Kissinger has passed, but polished without names, they are mirrors. Warm brandy eyes glance back at him. Kissinger smooths polyester creases. He traces the hipflask in his pocket.
Just a little wouldn’t hurt, would it?
No, get paid first.
That elevator cost was enough.
No use continuing to be behind on rent.
But that’s it, what he needs to be – men like Hahn always fancy a brandy. In fact, there’s already a drink in his hand. Ice catches what small light there is in the office.
‘Ah, just who I was waiting to see,’ Mr Hahn chuckles. ‘Sit.’
He himself reclines in a red velveteen chair, behind an arcing synth-wood desk. The window behind him plays sunsets over 2000s New York cityscapes.
It all begins with familiar pomp.
‘I have a business function tonight,’ motions Mr Hahn. ‘Upper stratos, Floor 2-kay-somethin. Everyone who’s anyone in Even Newer York will be there: Silicons, Moonheads, even the Governor of our fair hive of Connecticut. So, what happens the day before? My usual throws his back out.’ Mr Hahn throws back the rest of his drink. ‘And then the agency wants me to pay property damages.’
The desk whirrs. Another full glass appears, golden in twilight.
Some kind of algal-whisky.
Kissinger blinks through the smell. He unzips his duffel bag and passes a portfolio across the desk. ‘As you can see, sir, I am able to dress to a great number of occasions and themes.’
Mr Hahn thumbs through the photos. ‘This is good. I like this one. Could work.’ He throws one back: Kissinger topless in tie-dye flares. ‘Tell me, where do you get these outfits from?’ Hahn grins. ‘Something on the side?’
‘No, sir, I make them in my spare time.’
‘That’s nice, very nice. You independent types always keep things interesting.’ Mr Hahn claps his hands. ‘Time to strip. Ready to see the goods.’
Kissinger stands to oblige. ‘Of course, sir. Seeing is believing.’
Hahn downs another mouthful.
Kissinger removes everything, down to jocks and garter belt. He folds it over chair, takes a step back.
Mr Hahn clears his throat. ‘Gimme a light.’
His desk whirrs. A lit cigar appears.
Hahn bangs on the desk. ‘The other kind.’ He takes it anyway.
A synth-wood latch opens on Kissinger’s side. A deskineer emerges with a hand-torch. Mr Hahn orders the child around as they circle Kissinger, who turns and flexes each and every muscle as they are illuminated.
‘I said abs then glutes, not quads,’ barks Hahn. He throws a half-empty glass and misses. Once the reviewing process has finished, the child picks it off the carpet and takes it with them back into the desk.
‘Faulty piece o’ shit.’ Mr Hahn reclines further. ‘So, what’s the going rate?’
Kissinger details them.
‘Nice, very nice. Cheaper than agency, of course, which’ – Hahn gestures to the room –‘is why I’m hiring you in the fuckin first place.’
He presses something under the desk. ‘Did you hear that, Delilah? It’s a done deal. Wire the credits for, uh—’ He runs his tongue round his mouth.
Henry Kissinger repeats his alias.
‘Yeah, Mr Kissinger here. God, these old-timey names you people pick.’
Kissinger glances round the room.
Yes, why would anyone be so fascinated with the past?
But this means pay.
Kissinger changes into uniform boots, tuxeshorts and waistcoat. ‘Now, would sir first prefer cradled, across-the-shoulders, or piggyback?’
Like a great many clients, Mr Hahn makes a show of the ums and ahs before, like a great many clients, making the same decision.
Piggyback is most preferred.
Mr Hahn is not a heavy man. His pinstripe suit is oversized, hiding his featherweight. But he is difficult in other ways. Cigar smoke billows forward into every step Kissinger makes; his client’s is an overzealous locomotion. After a few dim laps around the office and canters across the empty black marble hallway, Mr Hahn steers towards the front desk.
‘Delilah! Book me the next available elevator! I’m going out to lunch!’
Floor 326, The Chinatown Association’s Buddha’s Chalice Bar & Restaurant.
It is a liquid lunch.
Algal-whisky does not mix well with cocktails, or soju, or sake, or even a dessert brandy. After his client is turned out for vomiting more than he’s spent, and missing the courtesy bucket one too many times, Kissinger cradles his client in the return elevator.
The bellhop wrinkles his nose. Hahn mumbles. ‘S’not over. Show ‘em. Night’s get me all I-’
Until he passes out. Lucky bastard. He could’ve offered one. Just the one, even on duty.
Elevator doors open to that black and silvered foyer. The bellhop readies himself. ‘Thank you agai—’
Hahn retches as urine-streaked Kissinger crosses the threshold. He gurgles, so his head is shifted for safety’s sake. You can’t continue to be paid if the client chokes on their own vomit. You can’t continue to pay rent, or drink it away yourself.
Kissinger blinks through the smell, marches on.
The receptionist is nowhere to be seen. Better just to keep walking back to Hahn’s office, so that he can clear up before his next enterprise, tonight’s supposed ‘function’. Before Kissinger reaches the handle, the office door opens.
A female figure in an iridescent jumpsuit. She scowls but steps aside, hoop earrings swinging. She runs a hand back through dark, damp hair. It has been teased out of false curls.
The receptionist.
‘Earlier than expected,’ she sighs. She won’t look at either of them. ‘Just put him on the couch and clean yourself up. You still have time.’
Kissinger does just that. ‘What do you mean, still have time?’
In the office twilight, that jumpsuit spits oily technicolours into his eyes. He feels something on his forehead; hand comes away sweaty. ‘What do you mean? I’m on the clock till tomorrow.’
‘For the moment, sweetie.’ She saunters to Hahn’s desk and asks for a cigar. ‘Still, better you get washed down.’ She motions behind Kissinger to the adjoining en-suite. ‘No one wants you like that.’
Kissinger looks at his suit, still folded over the chair, hipflask tucked away.
No, better not, at least for now.
When the financier-police bust down the door halfway through Kissinger’s shower, it all begins to start making sense. The receptionist’s outfit.
Kissinger isn’t going to get paid at all.
Fraud.
Embezzlement. Bankruptcy.
The unconscious Hahn is cuffed and gurneyed away.
Kissinger sits in the marble hallway, halfdressed and still soaking from the shower, as he is questioned. Without his clothes and IDs, he is ordered to give his private name.
‘So, Miguel Velasquez, are you or have you ever been,’ squares a financial officer, ‘a property of one Joseph Spencer Hahn?’
Before time to answer, the receptionist intercedes, waggling a handful of IDs, Kissinger’s among them. ‘This one’s with me. Independent.’ She bundles Kissinger’s belongings into his arms. ‘I’m heading about 70 floors down, promotion,’ the receptionist whispers. ‘After that, blow me or it’s on your own creds.’
Kissinger feels for the hipflask’s shape. It’s there.
Something remains. He agrees.
In the elevator, the bellhop ignores the dripping chauffeurone and tries complementing her new look. ‘I love your earrings. They really, uhbring out the colour in your-’
‘Shut it. I’m not paying for small talk.’
Kissinger clears his throat. ‘I should thank you. Delilah, right?’
‘Yeah.’ She takes out that cigar, lights it and takes a drag. ‘But now it gets to be ‘Alejandra’.
Rory Hawkins is an English/Irish-grown & Meanjin/Brisbane-based creative writing student in his second year. In his work, he loves exploring ideas of expectations, perspective, and the every-day weird. With short stories and sometimes poetry, Rory wants to create pieces you’ll not just reread but reinterpret every time.
Find more of his fiction in Glass from 2021’s Fiction Week, poetry and prose in ScratchThat Magazine, read aloud with QUT’s Literary Salon, and any other random bits through his Instagram @rory_writes_sometimes.
Susie’s dark eyelids began to droop, heavy like wet clothes after a downpour. But the burning glow of the television seared the back of her retina and kept her conscious. It might have been an old repeat of a kids show. Or could it have been a commercial? Susie could not tell. Both tended to look bright, loud, and ridiculous anyway. Drowsy, she lit her second joint for that evening—the paper tip of the joint scratched at her chapped lips. Her long knees were crisscrossed across her lap as she sat on the floor in front of the sofa. She could feel its hard edges jab and prod into her back, but she was too tired to feel like moving from her spot. Instead, between puffs of smoke, she tried to discern shapes made by the faded colours of the television screen.
It was a commercial, Susie finally figured out. There was a woman applying eyeshadow, lathering the bright powders onto her eyelids, blending them into the smooth sheen of soft skin.
Susie breathed in the dark musk of her joint and felt the urge to touch her own eyelids — she felt her way around their almond shape, her fingers finally pressing into the deep sunken pit beneath them.
She groaned. The smoke she exhaled glowed a gentle yellow from the televisions light. Susie wanted to slip into a deep sleep. It would be so much easier that way. An unconscious dusk settling over her mind, rest and salvation from the bright lights stabbing her eyes. She came closer and closer, eyelids drooping, darkness began to envelop the room and a pleasant quiet buzzing began to fill her ears —
‘Stop that,’ said a voice through a buzzing.
Susie jolted. Her eyeballs could feel that familiar burning sensation return, ‘Huh? Who’s there?’
‘Over here, stupid Susie,’ the voice said again.
Her eyes focused on the television set, the image it was broadcasting was the woman from the make-up commercial, with gleaming white teeth grinning at her from in front of swirling, psychedelic vortex.
‘Do you think you can sleep, Susie?’ the woman sneered.
The colours on the screen behind the woman made Susie’s eyes burn, she wanted to close them, feel the darkness of her eyelids shut off all the colour flooding and overloading her senses, but a strange feeling swelled in her chest pulling her up. She suddenly was sitting upright, her eyes peeled open.
‘That’s better,’ the voice said. ‘Your posture is a disgrace.’
‘Fuck off.’ Susie had no idea what this television woman was playing at.
The woman on the television smirked and held back a laugh.
Susie could swear she felt fingers clawing at her eyelashes pulling her eyes wider. She tried to look away from the television, but her pupils were trained on the screen, urging her body forward.
The woman beckoned. Susie dropped onto all fours and crawled forward, her knees scraping on the carpet.
‘Sit, Susie,’ the woman commanded.
Susie knelt before the television set and was eye to eye with the woman.
‘You can’t make me do this,’ Susie winced trying to force her eyes shut.
The woman tutted. ‘Oh, Susie. I already have.’ She smiled.
Susie shook her head, defiantly. Susie’s arms felt like lead as she reached around the back of the television set and felt for the power cable. She tugged. The television screen sputtered to black.
But a moment later there was a pop — the woman returned to the screen with an exasperated sigh.
‘How in the fuck?’ Susie hissed, grabbing the sides of the boxy television. She whacked the sides, and even tried to shake it, but it was too heavy.
‘Stop that,’ the woman said.
The woman sent an electric shot through the sides of the television. Susie howled.
‘Susie,’ the woman said. ‘That was never going to work now, was it?’
A loud buzzing filled Susie’s ears, and a searing hot hand marked her shoulder. Fingers crawled up her neck and grabbed a fistful of her hair and tugged. All Susie felt was an intense waft of heat greeting her as she was pulled headfirst into the television screen.
‘Susie, Susie, Susie’, the woman chanted through clenched white teeth, pulling Susie in.
The woman looked down at the lower part of the frame and saw Susie lying on the floor, fast asleep. The woman tutted, and began to pull herself through the edges of the television screen.
When Lilian Martin isn’t studying (a bachelor in creative writing at QUT), she is busy listening to music, talking about music or singing along (badly) to music. She loves to not only make others laugh, but also to make others cry, and she hopes that her writing makes them do both! You can’t find her work on social media because she has probably forgotten the password...
Strictly speaking, Sir Fourpaws wasn’t a stray. Sure, he was clambering up a downpipe and putting his claws in all the same places as last time, going hup hup hup up to a distant third floor, but he had a home. His mother had had a home. Sir Fourpaws had even had a collar at some point, green with a little buckle that always snagged on wire fences. He wasn’t a stray. He had just… moved around a bit.
On the third floor’s poky balcony, Sir Fourpaws scuffled around the overgrown plants for as many long-cold, crushed cigarette butts as he could find. The taste was less than divine but they were a necessary evil. He moved quickly. A hop and a well-practiced little jump delivered Fourpaws to the second-floor balcony and he began nosing the butts around on the soil of Mrs Sherman’s hot pink mandevillas.
Mrs Sherman was an angry old cooch, but not all humans were the same.
Just outside and to the left of his house’s milk-crate entryway was the back door of a boulangerie. Fourpaws knew the rotations. The biggest worker, with the steps like thunder, would toss nibbly little ends just next to the
dumpster, blame it on bad aim. The girl with shuffly gait would simply leave the bin’s lid open and watch the comings and goings from the bakery’s side window, and the youngest boy could even be convinced to leave a full (full!) cheese croissant on the pavement if Sir Fourpaws did some meowing and wound around his legs.
Recently, Sir Fourpaws had needed to find ways of getting more than just bread. A swath of threadbare cotton had become the first padding for his cardboard pallet bedroom; three days of nipping at cheesecloths hung to dry at the nearby fromagerie had proven immensely successful. He even brought the wooden pegs that had jumped off the line at home as well. They were front-door décor. Sir Fourpaws had shaken the moist mandevilla dirt out from between his toes and swept it off the balcony’s edge by the time Mrs Sherwood filled her gigantic watering can at the kitchen sink. He took up the usual hiding place behind a pot of rosemary and crouched. Rosemary smelled like the arse-end of a dog, but Fourpaws had learned the hard way that the coriander pot was always first to be watered. He tried not to breathe and waited.
Soon, Mrs Sherman trundled out with the water and spotted the cigarette butts. Her wrinkled, lipsticked lips flattened before slamming open to make way for obscenities that she directed at her upstairs neighbours. She fetched her longhanded trowel to racket against the upper floor for good measure.
But she didn’t notice Sir Fourpaws stealing inside the open door. She didn’t notice the track of paw prints on her memory-foam sofa, either. Nor did she notice her favourite tea towel –sliding off the oven handle and across the carpet and out the door and off the edge of the balcony.
Fourpaws considered that the old lady might be distressed by this all, but she didn’t really need the towel.
Not as much as Sir Fourpaws Jr would.
Sophie Tomassen is a second-ish year Fine Arts student at QUT. She’s never been published before and has no clue what she’s doing but is trying her best to learn as she goes. She writes about the small, beautiful magic we see in our everyday lives and how it can change us for the better.
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Tom Loudon
Ella Brumm
Illustrator
Claudia Pilbeam
Contributors
Grace Harvey
Jaime Colley
Rory Hawkins
Lilian Martin
Sophie Tomassen
We love celebrating and publishing the work of QUT Students and Alumni. Our online submissions are always open and our print edition submissions open as advertised. You can find information about the submission themes and how to submit to Glass on our website, qutglass. com/submit , or our Facebook page @glassmedia.
We accept writing of all genres. We take poetry, opinion pieces, essays, satire, fiction, recipes, reviews and more. We also take illustrations, collages and photography. If you have any questions, feel free to get in touch with the editorial team to discuss.
For more info on how to submit your work, visit qutglass.com/submit