by Pat Ritter
a dying priest. Father Ryan tells Jenny, Matilda was her mother and died giving birth to her. Her father placed Jenny into an orphanage and left her to be raised by the nuns. On her 26th birthday she inherited Churinga Sheep Station.
On hearing this news from the dying priest tears filled her eyes. Pain turned to rage, then sorrow. She lost all sense of time and place as she stared through the tears. Then the faint, distant chords of an orchestra drifted back to her and she thought she saw a woman in a green dress, waltzing with her handsome husband. They were smiling at each other, lost in happiness.
They turned towards her and Matilda whispered, ‘This is my last waltz, Darling - just for you.’
Word count: 345
The One Reason Why I’m Not Rich.
In one word, gambling, I am a gambler. My parents gambled, their parents gambled and most of my relatives and friends gambled. If there were two flies crawling up a wall, a wager was laid to bet which fly would first leave the wall. I knew of no other way of life. It was exciting and the adrenalin rush was unbelievable. To win was the rush. To lose was disappointing.
I’ve never been a drug user, but I can imagine the comparison between the two. Endorphins in the brain must almost explode into ecstasy when a person is using drugs. My brain certainly went to dizzy heights seeing a horse win a race after I waged a bet. It wasn’t the money invested, but the thrill of winning when the feeling of excitement fluttered through my body. It was better than having sex. I couldn’t stop shaking with excitement and pleasure, and that Toyota feeling of stretching your arms wide and jumping in the air always took over.
I think it may have started when I was a child living in Roma. Around Christmas each year the Ambulance Service, QATB as they were known then, had what they called a chocolate wheel in the main street of Roma. The chocolate wheel stood on a stand – round in circumference displaying numbers on the outside of the board. Each number was divided by a wooden peg. On top of the board, apart from the wheel, a piece of leather strap stopped on the number after being spun by the operator.
People gathered in the hope to win the prize of either a leg of ham or a can of ham for Christmas. They purchased a ticket for a prize and waited for their number to be spun on the wheel.
Tickets sold for a shilling and I purchased one ticket. I remember it as if it happened yesterday. The ticket I purchased was number 56. This time it stopped on number 56. I won. The initial feeling of winning a prize was the best feeling I had ever felt in my ten year old body. It became a drug and I wanted to have that winning feeling again and again.
If it was possible to stop gambling at ten years of age and deposit the amount of money in a bank account I’ve wagered since then, I would no doubt be rich in wealth alone. Unfortunately, I continue to gamble and like the druggie am waiting for that adrenaline rush to have that affect not only on my mind but also on my body and you never know one day it may return.
Word count: 451
A Story Centred On A Key.
All through my life I have been gravely concerned about something terrible that happened during my childhood. I’ve often wondered how quickly habits are copied by children from their parent’s behaviours.
For instance, my grandmother, my mother’s mother, was a wonderful person. She’d hug me when I needed comfort and told me wonderful stories to soothe my mind.
One habit she passed down to me was seeing things through rose coloured glasses. Everything was always better than it actually was. It wasn’t telling untruths but close enough to it, more exaggeration than telling the true story. My mother possessed a similar habit and therefore this habit passed onto me.
As I grew older this habit became strongly engrained into my mind, so much, that when I was in trouble for any misdemeanour, a defence mechanism popped up to protect myself from getting into further trouble. This defence mechanism at times was a blessing and at other times a hindrance. I had learned well from my mentors.
In my early twenties I joined the Queensland Police Force. Suddenly my thoughts were mangled to such a degree at times I couldn’t disseminate between what was fact and what was fiction. One important role of a police officer is to bring wrong doers to justice. Thereby arresting them and presenting them before a court of law.
Sometimes the person would plead ‘guilty’ and other times defend their innocence. Unless the police officer had a photographic memory or recorded each second of the arrest and circumstances, many questions were asked by defence counsel about the arrest. In my case I possessed this defence mechanism of protecting myself from ‘getting caught out’ as I’d done all through my life. Many times this habit was embarrassing.
I wanted to do something about it. The key I used to open this door was to learn always to tell the truth. At first, it was hard to break the habit, but as an instructor once told me if I was going to succeed, I needed to work at changing it and it would take three weeks to change any habit.
She told me each time I was about to exaggerate, if I didn’t tell the truth, then I should immediately stop and tell the person the information I told them was untrue and recorrect what I’d said. I worked hard to break this habit.
I am pleased to admit I no longer carry this habit in my mind and found the key to tell the truth at all times opened the door to make me realise it is always better to tell the truth than to exaggerate. I am a great believer in karma. If you do the wrong thing then expect it to come back and bite you on the bum.
Word count: 473
The Last Word.
If ever you wanted to know anything in our family than Aunty Mickey was the ‘go to’ person. There wasn’t anything that Aunty Mickey didn’t know from the correct way to tie your shoe laces to the latest gossip.
She was my mother’s sister, bless her soul. She passed away only a couple of years ago and I bet she had the last word even when she met St Peter at the Golden Gate.
Memories instantly flow back at the sound of her name. Visions form in my mind remembering her features, thin face, brown mousey hair, trimmed short, blue eyes bulging from inside her eyelids when her temper rose above the normal level. She had a fiery temper and was a pocket rocket.
In my early teens she became my surrogate mother after my parents decided to abandon me and move interstate. I lived with Aunty Mickey and Uncle Vivian and their children, two girls and a boy, throughout the remainder of my teenage years. Their home was my home and the memories I hold will remain forever.
Many times I heeded her advice. She always told me I was stupid to do the thing I asked her about. Like the time I wanted to purchase a car. She was against the idea and put her two bobs worth in.
In those times I attended college at night and to return home I had to hitch hike a ride with whoever would pick me up from the side of the road. One night I received a ride with this fellow who told me after I was comfortably seated in the front seat of his car, ‘I’ve got a gun under the front seat and if you try anything funny I’ll use it.’ That was the final straw that broke the camel’s back. I wanted my own transport.
Without consulting Aunty Mickey I purchased a car suitable for my means at the time. She didn’t say a word and was pleased to ride in it whenever she wanted to go anywhere or for me to take her.
Three years ago she lost the love of her life, Uncle Vivian who passed away from a heart problem. When I visited the home to pay my last respects, her comments were, ‘he was going to die anyway. He had a bad heart.’ She even had the last word on her husband’s death bed.
It was difficult for her to cope without her long time friend and husband. She moved into a Nursing Home. For a reason I can’t explain I wanted to visit her and I was too late to tell her how I loved her dearly and to thank her for how she’d enriched my life. She’d passed away before I could tell her.
Unfortunately I couldn’t attend the funeral. When the clock chimed the time of her funeral, I developed a huge pain in my stomach and needed to visit the toilet. For four hours I sat on the throne and couldn’t move
because of diarrhoea. Aunty Mickey had had the last word.
Word count: 519
The Gate.
Unfortunately this gate didn’t swing like any other. It dragged along the ground. With years of torture from cattle crashing into it, a bar missing and others bent in all directions. How it kept any animal from escaping was anyone’s guess. At times it didn’t.
Actually I felt sorry for the gate because if it had a mind of its own no doubt it would have wanted to be repaired. So, being a kind person as I am, I decided to bring it back to life? Unscrewing the hinges from the top of the gate it gave way with a sigh of relief. How it survived this long was anyone’s guess. The top bar was mangled and twisted.
Normally these gates had three steel tubes equally spaced from the top to the bottom running along the length. One was completely missing whilst the other two hung by a thread. I laid the gate on the ground to decide how to repair it. What a task. Perhaps it may have been better to purchase a new one rather than repair this old one. I wanted to repair it and bring it back to life.
Taking a sledge hammer to it as it laid spreadeagled on the ground I continued hammering it with all of my might. A slight dent here and there and after more bashing with the sledge hammer finally the gate again looked like a gate; the exterior of it anyway.
There