Alan Baxter - The Gulp - Five Tales of Horror

Dace smiled, thinking about two dead elderly Macedonians. Fuck those twisted freaks, he’d done a service ending them. And a young girl with a wire through her eye, maybe that had been a mercy. There was nothing he could have done for the two dead teenagers that sloshed, with disconcerting symbols carved into their flesh. He thought about the blood flooding from Talbot as he thrashed in his death throes and enjoyed a tingle of victory. There was a thrill in winning a life or death scrap like that.

“Thanks, Mr Carter.”

“I have a job for you, but I’ll need to organise some stuff first. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Okay, cool.” Dace turned and headed back for his car, trying not to limp. He wondered what the job might be. And if he didn’t like it, well, maybe twelve grand was Get Out of Gulp money.

Troy Mackay waspissed off. All the effort, all the time put in, and she runs off with Albert fucking Chang. Al was a great guy, Troy didn’t hold it against the man. Al didn’t know Troy and Cindy were on-again-off-again, he didn’t know how much energy and money Troy had sunk into proving his love for Cindy, and Troy had seen the way she fawned all over Al in Clooney’s the previous weekend. The bitch knew exactly what she was doing, playing him, stringing him along, then swanning off with Al right in front of him last night.

With a sigh, Troy trudged past the bank and the roundabout, carrying his rod and tackle box. When he’d awoken to his alarm, still angry, he’d thought to blow off the fishing. Which was spiting himself because it was his solace. But something had drawn him to the window, looking out into the pre-dawn darkness. Like gamblers, fishers always thought the next time they’d get the big score, it kept them motivated. Troy was self-aware enough to recognise the addiction of it. But something else seemed to nag at him this day, something indefinable.

It was barely dawn and already hot as hell, the late-January heat lingering right through the night. It would only get worse once the sun came up properly. He walked along the cement footpath by the grass, then past the lighthouse and its surrounding car park. He took his own private route over the rocks just south of the lighthouse and zig-zagged down the steep decline to the rock shelf on the furthest south-east corner of Spiny Point. He had tried several times to learn why it had that name, but no one seemed to know. An aerial view of the small peninsula where the lighthouse stood did show a spit of rocky land with several small points along its north side and a wide, shallow shelf along the south. It looked sort of like an echidna if you squinted and didn’t think about it too hard. But that was a stretch as far as Troy was concerned. Regardless, this spot, at this time, was prime for bream and blackfish. He had his 8-foot rod and Alvey Combo reel and planned to cut some cunjevoi off the rocks for bait. Usually he’d bring more gear but couldn’t be bothered right now. He was too upset about Cindy Panko.

Well, they were welcome to each other. Al would no doubt learn pretty quickly that Cindy was a weird and vindictive person. A ‘malicious fucker’, as Chrissy at the pub had called her once, and Chrissy was smart as hell. He should have listened to her in the first place. But Cindy was hot, and Troy loved exploring every inch of her creamy skin and dreamed of doing it again. Maybe the chance would come around, when she got bored of Al. But one thing was certain, she would never be his true love. All his ideas of settling down, having someone to care for, to care for him, were wasted on Cindy. If that ever happened, as he desperately hoped it would, it wouldn’t be with Cindy Panko.

He felt like one of the old boys in Clooney’s. He’d always refused to become like them, complaining about everything. Nothing but whinging about fisheries inspectors and fishing rules, all the bloody amateurs taking undersize fish, never any bait, and all the damn leatherjackets. Troy wondered why they kept fishing when everything about it was apparently so miserable. Droughts are no good for fish, rainy weather sucks, the wind is a pain in the arse. The fishing is always awful, it was better when they were kids before the bloody council ruined everything. They even moaned about things like the streetlights being too bright or chips not tasting like they used to or craft beer taking up too much space in the bottle shop. It seemed that to be a keen fisher, you had to whinge about everything. Troy didn’t want to be that way. But maybe just for today he’d stare sullenly out at the ocean, grey in the dawn light, and let his inner cantankerous old bastard have dominion.

He loved to get up early and fish, it was his meditation. Maybe it would make him feel better. One thing he and his dad and his older brother had always enjoyed was the fishing. Never his sister, the middle child. Rose always screwed up her face at the very thought of it. That was okay. The Mackay boys enjoyed their thing. But his dad had given it up, too early, too late, too cold, too hot. Any excuse for the passion he’d lost. Same as the way the passion had drained from his marriage. Troy’s brother still fished occasionally, but said he had no time any more, now he was manager of the wood yard and a qualified tree surgeon. Always busy, and about two minutes from married with kids, Simon had done okay. His girlfriend, Laura, was the right stuff. A bit ordinary in the looks department, but solid, fun, honest, kind. They would have staying power. Si was a lucky bastard. He would get his family.

Troy reached his spot and stood staring at the ocean for several minutes, checking the swell, feeling the breeze. Nerves tickled over him, a strange sensation of expectancy. Why was he nervous? The thing his dad had instilled in him and Simon right from the start, when he and his brother were both wide-eyed little boys, was respect for the environment. Always keep a good sense of your surroundings, never turn your back on the ocean, and save yourself from wave knockdowns and subsequent lacerations, or even drowning. When it came to participant deaths, rock fishing was the most dangerous sport in Australia, Troy had been told. Unexpected waves or slipped footing off a platform into the churning waves with no lifejacket claimed a lot of lives every year. His dad had made him and Simon well aware of the risks, had always insisted they wear lifejackets as boys. Of course, he didn’t any more. He didn’t want to look like an idiot out here.

But today the sea was calm, just on the turn of the tide, perfect conditions. The sky was slowly brightening ahead over the ocean, soft orange pushing away the pink and grey. It might stay a little overcast, but that would only trap the summer heat in.

Thinking about his dad’s old lessons, thinking about his family, made Troy melancholy. But he was only twenty-five. Plenty of time to find a wife. Make a home and a family of his own. His home wasn’t bad growing up. It was perfectly normal, except his parents didn’t love each other. They stayed together for the kids then, and they stayed together because they didn’t know any better now. All three Mackay siblings were out of the family home, though all still in The Gulp, and Mum and Dad Mackay orbited each other in the big house at the top of Thomas Street in blissful apathy. They were good friends, they had their own hobbies as well as shared interests. They both worked, they had pals around town they socialised with, it was all normal. But it was so fucking empty . Cardboard cut-out people living cardboard cut-out lives. No aspirations for anything bigger or better, just treading water until they died. Not what a real family should be.