Last night I had the weirdest fucken dream. I’m in the water deep down in the sea and it’s real bright blue, fulla light and beautiful. I’m swimmin’ around, lookin’ at the light shinin’ down through the water, swimmin’ and swimmin’, but then there’re clouds, shadows, above. I look up and all I can see is these big, pale bellies, blockin’ out the light. I can’t see nothin’ else but then there’s blood, great big streams of blood, swirlin’ all through the water and I see that the big pale things are sharks come after the blood. It’s Brett’s blood; there’re his arms and legs turnin’ over like some great big fucken sacrifice. The sharks come nearer and nearer, nosin’ through the water and I can see their big fucken teeth and suddenly, I know it’s not Brett they’re after, it’s me. It’s punishment for what I done.
Ya see, I knew it was Brett standin’ there that night: me mum’s always said I’ve got eyes like a hawk and just for a second the moon came out from behind the clouds and I seen him. I shoulda stopped it I coulda stopped it, somehow stepped in fronta Craigie and made out we was doin’ it for a joke. Hey, Brett, how’s it goin’, mate? Fancy a bit o’me arse? and we coulda all hadda laugh and gone home. But, once Craigie started kickin’ him, I had t’join in and, once I started, I couldn’ stop.
So, it’s my fault he’s dead. In the dream the sharks are closin’ in an’ the water’s boilin’ with blood. Bits of hand and arm float past me like some sicko horror movie. Brett’s eyes, 100 kilometres up, look at me like they did the night he died. I woke up sweatin’ and screamin’ then lay there lookin’ out the little winda of me bedroom, thinkin’ about the dogs and who’s gunna take care of ‘em, ‘cause that lezzo’s onto me. She’s out there cruisin’ in her big fucken Sharkmobile and she’s come to get me.
Janis Spehr
First Prize Trophy, 1999
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Floating in a Live Circuit
Dotty sat in the car, contemplating her underwear. Was it suitable to die in? She wanted to go the toilet.
The car was a live but floating circuit. Dotty knew the game. She could earth it, and die, by getting out. The car, now shorted out, rolled to a stop neatly inside the garage. The garage door slid down behind her. The plan was as good as he’d predicted.
The spark that flashed off the bonnet was confirmation that Dave carried out his plans. He killed people. He was finally going to kill her and no one would know. She would die of a heart attack caused by the electric shock. The beauty of the scheme was that she had an irregular heart beat, documented by her doctor. The shock would leave no trace. Dave would turn off the power and put the wiring back in place. The ambulance would be called to treat her, sadly too late, for a heart attack. Dave would have won. Simple.
Dotty looked through the doorway into the kitchen. Dave sat just inside. His square body planted in a hard-backed chair, elbow leaning on the bench, feigning casual ease, his tension betrayed by the drumming of his fingernails on the bench-top. He loved this.
“You mad bastard!” Dotty yelled as she wound down the window. “Do you really want to kill me? Do you want me to die?”
Dave raised one eyebrow, the usual sign of a dare. “Up to you, Babe.”
That was right, according to Dave’s rules. If she could get herself out, she would win. If not, it was Dave’s victory. She would be dead and it would look like an accident. The conclusion of the game, either way.
Dotty reviewed the state of play. The electrical wire must have been hanging from the garage ceiling when she drove up. The spark signalled the car was live. Dave hadn’t been sure it would work but the rubber tyres and his removal of the earth wire obviously prevented her being electrocuted, for now.
If she put a foot on the ground, the current would travel by the shortest route to earth. Her body would be that route. She couldn’t back out of the garage, the car touching the roller door would bring her out of the floating circuit, to earth, to death. The car wouldn’t start, anyway. That was something Dave hadn’t figured, that the car would short out.
The urge to go the toilet was overwhelming.
“Hey, Hon, how about you let me go to the toilet and then we start again?” Dotty called.
“No way, Babe,” Dave smiled.
There was no one like him. Polite, helping her along the way, enjoying the process and quite prepared to kill her. The smile was genuine. This was fun, for him.
“Give it a bit of thought. Remember what we discussed? It’s quite straightforward. Don’t spoil this for me,” Dave said sulkily.
No one quite like him. Here he was trying to kill her and he was sulking. How could she be such a bitch as to ruin his fun?
Dotty was his comforter. She could cheer him up, calm him down. As he got more insecure, as the world closed in on him, she was the only one that could be trusted. Most of the time she could be trusted, sometimes he had to reassure himself. Sometimes he had to follow her around to make sure she wasn’t doing any secret deals with the enemy. He would have no one without her. Dotty loved that power over her exceptionally intelligent man.
The game had been their fun. The game of planning the perfect murder, victim dead and perpetrator beyond detection. Dave’s marvellously devious mind was always excited by new plans. He met the challenges of Dotty’s imaginary complications during dinners. She’d laughed when he ran into the bedroom trying to articulate the latest solution through the toothpaste in his mouth. They’d gulped down breakfast before swapping that dream-induced ironic touch over a cup of tea. Dave had a rule that nothing could be said about the game before breakfast was eaten.
Dave, the lover of rules, maker of new rules, expanded the rules gradually. Victims must be real people. Previous methods and victims could not be mentioned. The victims started adding up: world leaders, sporting identities, television stars. Later the personalising and narrowing of the victims started: neighbours, friends and relatives. All victims, all banned from mention.
The only victims left were each other. A development in the game, a new rule by Dave, kept it going. Each would have the other as the victim. But the victim would be saved if he or she could work out a way to escape the scheme. Dave, the new-age man, was empowering the victim. Dave, the competitive man, knew the victim didn’t stand a chance.
“Clue, Babe. Conductors,” Dave called helpfully. Dotty was obviously boring him by just sitting in the car.
Dotty’s heel started gently tapping, a metronome for her thoughts. Electric currents travel through conductors. Metal was the best. People can be conductors but remain unhurt if they stay within the current. She was sitting within a current. She had to get out of the car without becoming the current’s conduit to earth.
The car had metallic paint. That was something Dave had worried about. Would the car conduct the charge? He had rung the car company and asked them about the metallic content of their paint. He concluded that it would. He had also worried about the tyres. Would steel radials conduct? The whole effect was ruined if the car stopped before the garage door went down. You never know what the neighbours might see. There was no point in the game if you got caught. Obviously, Dotty thought, the metal content and the tyres were adequate for the job.
She could jump. She could open the door and leap out. If the car door shut on her or she couldn’t make a clean leap it wouldn’t work. At her height, Dotty didn’t like her chances of a jump to freedom. The car seat was fairly low to the ground. She would have done better in a four-wheel drive or a prime mover. For her size, a cherry picker would have been perfect.
Her foot was beating a frustrated tattoo. Anger didn’t help. Dotty tried to suppress the rising heat of rage. If she ever got out of this car she would kill Dave. She could feel herself brutally hacking him to pieces, stabbing again and again. She didn’t care if they caught her. She didn’t care if she went to prison forever. She was angry at the waste of time, love, energy, the future.
“I’ll kill you, Dave, you fucking bastard,” Dotty muttered.
“What was that, Babe? Didn’t quite hear you,” Dave taunted. “You want another incentive? Remember Taylor?”
Dotty remembered. Taylor had been her work enemy. He made her life miserable. She became so angry with him she could barely function. Dave had wanted to help, to protect her. She loved him for it.
He’d got her to play the game using Taylor as the victim. Dave started hanging around her office. Research, he said. Her workmates commented on Dave’s constant presence. She couldn’t tell them the reason. Dave developed a plan and devised the most elegant torture for Taylor before death. The finishing touches, destroying the evidence, were Dotty’s own. It had given Dotty a rush of excitement, a sense of power. She made sure they got away, scot-free.
She left work just after that. Dave convinced her she didn’t need to work. He needed her. With the world working against him, he needed her at call to reassure him. She was the only one who could calm him, make him feel safe. The only one who understood the need for the game and the emotional release of a successful kill.
A workmate had rung after she quit. Laughing, he’d said someone had suggested that she and Taylor had run off together. No one had seen Taylor since her last day. She mentioned the call to Dave. He said nothing. Dotty felt odd, a sneaking fear, a secret pleasure? She didn’t know. Their lovemaking that night had a desperate fury, a grasping, urgent frenzy.
If she got out of this, it would be the ultimate victory, an adrenalin rush like no other. Dave knew it, too. She could almost feel the force of his lips on hers. The full length of his body against her. The heat travelling to her every pore. Wrestling like two children fiercely protecting a secret tenet of their lives. Afterwards, his weight like a concrete slab on top of her, contracting her breath. He was a cave protecting her from the storms of the world.
That was the reason she had stayed, Dotty thought. They protected and nurtured each other. Her world, with him, was floating above that of mere mortals. The game stretched her mind. Dave let her, insisted she could, go further than she would have dared. The thrill of finding a solution, seeing Dave’s eyes light up when she thought of a scheme, was magic.
This morning she had threatened their magical world. Was this just a threat, a warning, not to scare him again? A way of showing her the awful fear he felt most days? Or did he now hate her enough to kill her?
She had to do something. Slowly Dotty removed her hands from the steering wheel. Nothing happened. Stretching each finger, she eased the stiffness. She placed one leg over the console onto the passenger’s seat. The turning of her body increased the pressure on her bladder. She could let it go. Who cares? If she lives, she can clean it up. If she dies, that will be the least of her worries.
Potential differences. There was something worrying about potential differences. Maybe some parts of the car had different potentials. Urine might change the potentials. She’d be killed by wetting herself. Dotty laughed. What a way to go, pissing herself to death.
“That’s the spirit, Babe,” Dave’s fingernails stopped drumming. Now the excitement was beginning.
“Fuck you, Dave. I’m going to get out of this,” Dotty screamed at him.
“Always thought you would, Babe,” Dave gave her the thumbs up.
Dave’s encouragement sparked her determination. She had to think. Electricity can jump. Dotty would have to get rid of all the metal on herself. She started by taking off her ring, earrings, hairclip, watch. Dave watched, interested. She twisted in the seat as she unhooked the waist and slid down the zipper of her skirt. Dave sat up straighter in his chair. She slid the skirt down and threw it onto the passenger seat. Dotty arched her back, slid her hands up to her bra and unhooked it.
“Get it off! Get it off!” Dave started to chant, banging his fist in time on the bench-top.
Dotty wriggled the bra straps over her shoulders. Under her shirt she pulled a strap over her hand and felt the elastic snap into her side. She reached up through the sleeve of her shirt and pulled the bra out.
Dave was now clapping in time to his own chant. Dotty balled the bra and threw it out the window. It landed short of Dave. She would love to see him forget himself enough to go and pick it up.
Dotty checked her remaining clothes. The shoes had metal eyelets but they also had rubber soles. Tough call. Her shirt was cotton with plastic buttons. The only other things she had on were her underpants and panty hose. The underpants, far from glamorous, were a good sensible cotton, even the elastic was cotton covered. The pantyhose worried her. They gave off static electricity at the drop of a hat. Now she was being paranoid. Still, why take chances? She slipped off her shoes and rolled the panty hose down her legs.
“I’ll be right with you, Dave,” Dotty mouthed a kiss as she threw the panty hose at him. “Just you wait, right there.”
It hardly needed to be said. He wasn’t coming near her. Maybe a few years ago he might have been tempted.
The changes to the chemistry of their relationship crept up on Dotty. Dave’s anxieties increased. There were big and small conspiracies aimed at him and her. The game had been their trustworthy safety net, their currency of communication. To ease anxiety, the perpetrators of the torment would be the victims of their game, like Taylor. The demise of the victims would bring them back to laughter, to a shared scheme. Other topics of conversation dwindled and were nearly forgotten.
Dotty spent her time verbally avoiding death. A tiny part of her became afraid that, if he won, she would die. He would put his idea into action. It was just a small seed of doubt. Dotty had told herself she was getting as paranoid as Dave. She decided it had to end, she couldn’t live with the doubt, the fear growing. This morning she told Dave she wasn’t playing anymore.
“I’m taking my little red wagon and going home,” she’d said. What she meant by home she didn’t know. The friends had dropped off. They had been banned from mention for years. She didn’t now if they were alive or dead. She couldn’t stand her relatives saying, “I told you so.”
“Go. You’ll be back,” Dave said with certainty. “You can’t bear to leave anything unfinished. Not to win.”
He was right. Here she was, back at the house. Dave knew her well, but not as well as he thought. She had tried to contact some of her old friends. None of them was at their old address. They were not listed in the telephone book. She almost rang her mother but Dotty couldn’t bear it if she was gone, too. It crossed Dotty’s mind that Dave had been doing more than playing a game. She told herself not to be silly. Her mother would never move but she couldn’t test it.
She knew Dave. She came back to prove that her niggling fear was just her imagination. She couldn’t have lived with a man for five years and not know that about him. She came back to prove to herself that her feelings for him were well placed. To show everyone who said he was weird that they were wrong. To show them all that she had made the right choice.
Dotty tried to think logically as she put her shoes on over her bare feet. What she needed was something big and insulated. The spare tyre, a big lump of rubber.
She crawled into the back seat. Her fingers clawed the seat catches. She lay the seats out and lifted the cover to the spare tyre. Dotty stared at it. She had forgotten that the metal wheel was part of the spare. She could still use it. As long as just the rubber touched the ground it would give her the extra room to get out of the car without touching its surface.
Dotty scrutinised the doors. The back doors were out, angle too narrow. The front doors were better. The driver’s side was out because of the steering wheel. The passenger’s side may be okay. The hatchback was a maybe. It had the advantage of being nearer the spare. She could lift the hatch, ease the tyre to the floor and roll it away from the car. Perfect, except there wasn’t enough room with the garage door shut.
The front passenger door was the best option. Dotty needed to get the spare into the front seat. Then she had to get out without touching the floor and the car at the same time. If the wheel fell over
and the metal touched the floor before she had cleared the car, she was gone. Not a good option. The chances might improve if the tyre didn’t have the metal rim inside it. Dotty dug out the tools from the gap under the spare tyre, a jack and a bolt tightener. Not particularly useful.
Dotty nearly cried with frustration. She stole a look at Dave. The smug bugger was enjoying the view of her bum between the seats. All she wanted to do was hit out, to smash something; Dave’s head preferably, but anything would do. She grabbed the bolt tightener and smashed into the soft upholstery of the seat back. She could see Dave through the windscreen, smiling at her frustration.
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