Conclave

by Murray, Lee

  So, for now we stay here, at Conclave Manor. Compared to being trapped in a Spratonite aquarium, it’s pure bliss. It’s no longer a prison for me, it’s a headquarters. A place to come back to once we’ve enlisted support. It’s a place where we can keep our secrets safe. A place to meet our one and only Spratonite friend in its protected waters. A place to keep our past and discover our future.

  The Fence

  Piper Mejia

  1

  Doze watches his paling teacher. The blood rushing to protect her heart leaves her skin tinged with blue. Shallow breathing. She steps back to give him time and space to enter. He’s used to the thick sweet smell of dope clinging desperately to the deeper fragrance of clothes worn too long between washings. After all, the smell comes from him. But she’s supposed to act like she doesn’t notice.

  “Sorry, I’m late, Miss. Had some business to do.” Doze’s mocking apology provokes an eruption of laughter around the room. They’ve all seen him lope across the back field from the gully towards the classroom minutes after the bell rang, and there’s only one type of business done in the gully. Last period on a Friday, even he doesn’t know why he’s come back to school.

  Doze uses his ever-growing frame to crowd his teacher further into the room before staking a kingly position by the back door. He can see the incident has left Tera trembling—a mixture of anger and fear—and it takes a while before she finds the courage to start the class.

  “For any of you still pretending that you care about this course, the notes are on the board. You have ‘til next Friday to finish your assessment. It’s worth three credits.” Only two quiet Pacifica students make any move to get out their notebooks and start copying. Lone survivors of a sinking ship, the brother and sister cling to their pens and paper like knives against their inevitable academic death. The rest of the class is divided into two. The largest group, a variety of athletes, sit by the windows overlooking the back field and the gully, the perfect place to watch sports all year round and to keep alert for trouble. Balancing the division, on the other side of the room, the smaller group is neither academic nor sporty. Instead, they find their fun taking bites out of their weakest member. Their vicious attacks on the slow boy are ignored. Doze is the only one with the rep to stop them, but he’s too busy being pissed off with their teacher to care.

  At the front of the classroom, Tera ignores Doze’s threatening looks, seeking safety behind her desk and her paperwork. She marks the roll, hunting for the missing by the absence of their voices rather than calling out their names. Nearing forty, Doze guesses, she doesn’t do herself any favours. Her hair looks like she cut it herself in the dark, uneven shades of brown with strands of silver like tinsel clinging to the dying branches of a discarded Christmas tree. She’s going nowhere in her career dressed year round in jeans, hiking boots and T-shirts. Her battered appearance is an open invitation to students to give her crap.

  With her eyes still focused on her computer screen, Tera raises her voice to be heard above the rowdy conversations of her students. “Boys... if you’re not going to do the work then you need to stay in your seats and be quiet. I don’t want to have to deal with any more complaints.” The reflex of a polite up-bringing is too strong for some of the boys, and they make a token move from the top of their desks and back into their seats. But even with the sound of their music turned down, anyone walking into the room would know this class has checked out.

  “Give up, Miss. No one cares what you think.” Doze’s challenge is unnecessary.

  “Fine with me,” she whispers. Only Doze recognises the tone. In that moment, she breaks. Whatever was holding her together lets go, the half-death like blood in the water.

  “Shit!” He says it louder than he means. The other boys’ heads swivel, mouths open like carnival clowns, as the tension in the room stretches. “Don’t do it, Miss.” Doze ignores the escalating excitement, knocks over his desk, and kicks his bag away in his rush to get to her. She doesn’t look up as his shadow darkens her desk. His eyes narrow on her right hand as it blindly searches for the pair of scissors lying half-open amongst a pile of scrap paper, her fingertips slipping through the holes as if it’s a life preserver…

  “Drop them. You don’t know what you’re doing.” Doze’s mouth begins to salivate. He hungers for the unfolding violence, and this scares him. Tera lifts the scissors higher, closing the blades to a single point just as the classroom door flings open and the bell rings for the end of the day.

  “What the hell is going on here?” Like a glass shattering on a tile floor, the class grab their belongings and scatter out both doors, leaving chairs and desks in disarray. Only Doze keeps his place. “I repeat, Miss Tera. What’s going on here?” An underfed pit dog, Mr Norway sniffs excitedly at the turbulent air.

  “Get fucked,” Doze replies for both of them as the slow burning part of his nature turns towards the Deputy Head. The weak are easy; in comparison, Mr Norway is an irresistible fat prize.

  “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that, Daniel Jaycob. Grab your stuff and get out.” The man strokes his non-existent beard, calculating the risk. With all three of them in the room, there would be witnesses if he didn’t choose his words wisely, but Tera does not appear to be snapping back to reality.

  “No, you get out, No Way. This is between Miss and me. Dick.” Doze’s confrontation forces Mr Norway to change his initial choice of prey.

  “Swearing at a teacher, I believe that’s a final strike for you, isn’t it, Daniel? You don’t know how happy it makes me.” Spit flies from his lips in anticipation of the carnage he’s about to inflict on an old foe. Miss Tera can wait.

  “Ask me if I care.” Holding the man’s stare, Doze keeps his smile cruel, knowing this is the last pissing contest he will ever win here.

  “Probably as much as I do. I’ll catch up with you later, Miss Tera. I have a student leaving form to fill in.” Mr Norway lets the door slam behind him as he leaves. As the pounding of his retreating footsteps fade down the corridor, Tera struggles out of her stupor.

  “Why did you do it?” As if noticing the scissors gripped tightly in her hand for the first time, she lays them gently back on the table, easing her cramped fingers out one by one.

  “Fucked if I know.” Doze picks a fallen chair and drags it closer. “You’re not going to hurt yourself now, are you?” he asks as he sits down, his chin resting on forearms folded across the back.

  “Hurt myself?” She’s taken aback by the question. “No, I wasn’t going to hurt myself. I was going to hurt you.”

  “Well, that makes more sense,” he says, noting that her cheeks have pinkened, puffing out the lines of her paper-thin skin.

  “Don’t know about you, but I’m done. It’s pointless for me to stay. No Way will find a way to volunteer me and probably you too.” Her confidence has returned. Like the tightening strings of a marionette, she lifts her chin and looks at him as if it’s the first time she has seen him.

  “Won’t disagree. Though this isn’t how I imagined leaving. I thought there would be more police...and a fire truck.” The truth is, he doesn’t want to think about how his mother is going to react. Not good. She expected one thing from him and that was not to bring attention to the family. That was the deal.

  “What? Only one fire truck? There’s still a bit of time left.” Tera leaves the invitation hanging in the air like half a hand shake.

  “Maybe next time, Miss. Hey, since you’re not going to be my teacher anymore...” She laughs. He’s never done any work for her in all the years he’s sat at the back of her classroom. “I wanted to say thanks.”

  “You’re welcome, Doze. It’s been…interesting.” She empties her backpack, stacking the piles of student work neatly across her desk before heading out the back door. “Take care, Doze. Keep your eyes on the Fence.”

  He watches her a while, a decreasing lone figure making a final crossing towards her home, one of the school houses edging the back field. He wonder
s who her family are, her friends, if she has anyone to go home to. It’s such a small community, he feels he should know.

  “Take care too, Miss.”

  Closing his eyes, Doze breathes deeply. In through his nose and out through his mouth. The steady circulating air matches pace with his slowing heartbeat. Rewinding recent incidents, he stops his thoughts in the gully. He wants to experience the triggers again before leaving. The quiet classroom is all the privacy he needs—unlike the none he’d have at home, cramped in a bedroom with two little sisters. In his mind, he’s back sitting next to the filthy stream that passes through the gully, its shallow water choked with garbage. The joint in his hand burns low as he sucks the calming chemicals into his lungs. He hears the school bell ring. Reluctant to end his private meeting, he takes another hit. No reason to hurry. Miss Tera’s cool for a teacher, doesn’t push. Fast forward to her reaction to his smell. He re-lives the anger, the fear. No, wait. Hold it. It’s recognition that scared her, made her angry. Fast forward. He hears her repeat I wasn’t going to hurt myself. I was going to hurt you.

  “Shit.” His eyes snap open. The re-entry into the present slices away any remnants of mellow left over from his smoke. “She knows.” Checking his phone, Doze decides it’s time to leave. The mental trip has left him feeling antsy, he needs food, drugs and sex, and he can get at least two of those on the way home.

  “That you, Daniel baby?” The slurred endearment licks harmlessly at his ears.

  “Yep. Go back to sleep, Jill.” Sprawled across the living room couch, Doze’s mother clutches an empty wine bag to her chest like a favourite toy. She seems sweet and vulnerable right now, but Doze knows that once the buzz has left, ‘mean’ Mum will be in search of someone to hurt.

  It’s a short walk from the living room to the kitchen where the muted sound of clinking of spoons tells him he’ll find his sisters. Frozen, their spoons in mid-air, they wait cautiously to check his mood. “So, Mum managed to get to the shops today. Yum, yum.”

  “You want some, Doze? There’s heaps left.” Smiling now, six-year-old Chrissy shakes the half-full box of sugary delight in his direction.

  “Nah, thanks, I ate on my way home.”

  Doze’s sisters are his burden and his blood. It pains him that they feel they need to be good so that he’ll honour his promise to keep them safe. They share without complaint, but then again they never complain about anything, taking what they can get while denying they need more.

  More than staying fit and healthy for the Corp.

  “Are you cutting out?” Kym the elder by only a year is ancient from experiences.

  “Yep. You guys wanna come?” Unlike his mother, the price of Doze’s lifetime of addiction makes it difficult for him to stay still for long.

  “Will you to take us to the park?” Chrissy’s gaze flicks hopefully towards the skateboards leaning in wait against the back door.

  “Okay, let’s go, then.” The two girls slurp down the rest of their soggy cereal, chocolate milk dribbling at the corner of their mouths, while Doze picks up their boards. Before leaving, Chrissy puts the cereal box in the cupboard and Kym washes the dishes. They know to leave the place clean. You never know what kind of mood Jill will be in when she wakes.

  November has been a cruel month; stray smudges of cloud taunt the earth, which is cracked deep in desperation. The park is easy to see, its dirt barely covered by grass still clinging on in the hope of rain. It should have hazard signs declaring ‘Do Not Enter’ rather than be a place for kids to play. With the maze of concrete, steel ramps, jumps and half-pipes in sight, Doze passes the skateboards to their eager owners, noting how poorly they’re dressed. “You guys should be wearing helmets and jackets and protection stuff.”

  “You gonna go buy them?” Out of the house, free from their mother’s neglect, Kym struggles to act her age. Her face shows no expectation that the world can be kinder.

  “Maybe. Christmas is coming.” Kym rolls her eyes.

  Yeah, Christmas. A small pile of cheap crap from the two-dollar store and maybe fish ‘n’ chips for dinner. Nothing wanted or needed ever arrives down their chimney.

  The girls put their boards to the ground and race off, leaving Doze to jog ungainly behind them. Like a pro boxer, he punches the air with his fists and gives silent cheers to a non-existent crowd for his never-to-happen wins.

  Having fun? The question penetrates his good times and rips him into the need.

  “Go away.”

  Chrissy has slowed down to wait for her brother. She twists a full circle as she searches for his interloper. “Who are you talking to, Doze?”

  “Nobody, buddy. Having a conversation with myself.” Crossing his arms over his chest, Doze runs his palms up and down, smoothing the raised hair in an unconscious effort to calm himself. “Off you go. I’ll be there in a minute. Need to have a smoke.”

  “That stuff will kill you.” Doze knows she’s afraid of losing him, to the drug and to the unknown.

  “Don’t worry. When I die, it won’t be from smoking a little reefer.” Shooing the girl away, Doze pats his pocket for a spliff. “Come on, come on, where are ya?” Finally locating a crumpled baggie of leaves and papers, he rolls himself a short one, and lights up. Inhales.

  Had a bit of trouble today? The false interest fades as the calm hits his bloodstream.

  “I don’t need your help.” Unwillingly, he makes out a distance chuckle.

  But I’m going to help you anyway.

  “I can’t do it anymore. You’ve got to take me next.”

  A deal is a deal, and you’ve been paid.

  “You made a deal with a child.”

  Name.

  “I won’t do it.”

  Name.

  “No, please.”

  Name.

  “No way.”

  Again.

  “Mr Norway.”

  ConClave Corp thanks you for your cooperation.

  The robotic voice cuts out as if a plug has been pulled, but the sense of malice lingers.

  “Doze, come on, stop talking to yourself and check this out.” Taking a last drag, Doze licks the fingertips of his thumb and forefinger and pinches off the end of his smoke, smothering the dying embers. He tucks the remnants back into the baggie and stows it deep in his pants pocket.

  “What’s all the excitement?” He calls out, joining his sisters on the top lip of the skate ramp.

  “Can’t you hear it? Must be at least two fire trucks,” Chrissy replies.

  “No, it’s an Ambulance. Wonder who’s volunteered?” Kym cuts her gaze towards Doze.

  “I don’t like the Ambulances,” says Chrissy. Her small hand creeping into Doze’s causes his chest to tighten, squeezing the breath from his lungs. “They do something to people.”

  “No, buddy, neither do I. Hope it’s not anyone we know.” From their vantage point, they can see the tips of the Fence curve away on either side of the town, dipping into the bay before meeting near a group of small islands dotted on the horizon. The Fence is another thing he doesn’t like. Built as a palisade against a pending epidemic, it remains a symbol of the community’s voluntary imprisonment to ConClave Corporation.

  No heart left to skate, Doze takes his sisters by the hand and leads them home.

  2

  The rest of the weekend is spent out of sight, making his dysfunctional family happy through the practice of parental avoidance. Doze shepherds his sisters from park to beach, to town and back home again, returning each night wary of what to expect. His sisters anchor him, preventing him from pacing the Fence like a wild animal in captivity, looking for a chance to escape. Each night he listens to the sound of their breathing, white noise against the voices in his head that tell him there’s nothing more.

  The buzzing transforms from a bee into an electrified Fence. Doze has fallen asleep with his phone trapped in his pants.

  “Why are you waking me?” he slurs into the mouthpiece. Cracking one eye open against the brigh
t light stabbing through a gap in the curtains, he notes his sisters’ neatly made beds, a sign they’ve gotten themselves off to school.

  “Doze, you have to get down here. You’re missing everything,” the voice yells excitedly.

  “Get down where? Missed what?” His mind still a fog of too much smoke and not enough sleep, he struggles to make out who the call is from.

  “School, where else? When you and Miss Tera didn’t turn up this morning, there was a riot. Chairs thrown through windows, rubbish bins kicked over, even a food fight. Man, it was cool.”

  Doze finally recognises the intonation of Brett. Not a friend. Not anyone’s friend. A dim-witted bully, a waste of space in anybody’s opinion. “Then Mr Norway’s wife turned up, went psycho about her husband being volunteered. After that the police came.” At the word police, Doze leaps out of bed. Clutching the phone in one hand, he grabs his hoodie and rushes out the front door.

  “Do you see Chrissy and Kym?” he asks urgently. “My sisters. Do you see my sisters?”

  “Give me a sec.” Doze hears the phone being muffled. “Yeah, yeah. I can see them. They’re right in the thick of it.”

  “I need you to grab them for me and get out of there.”

  “Get them out of here? Are you crazy? Wait, no, what?” Doze can hear the phone being dropped before it cuts out.

  “Come on, you bastards. Leave my sisters alone. We had a deal,” he yells, smacking at his temple with the heel of his hand. No one answers.

  High on a drug he’s never taken, Doze cuts through backyards, propels himself over fences and scrapes his way between buildings, finally emerging behind the old scout lodge. He clambers onto the roof. Sirens and voices surge over the field from the school. Fear chases him forward. Doze leaps to the ground and begins a manic dash.