Consequences

If his hands could kill me, then I would be dead very soon. Because my wrists are in his grip, clasped together behind my back and my forehead is kissing the bed. And his hands were around my neck not too long ago and I was on my back with my gaze softened towards the ceiling. So if I really thought about it, he could have killed me already. But he hadn't, and we are wet all over, wet on our chests and foreheads from the hanging, hugging, Territorian heat, and our groins are wet from one another. 'Why are you interested in echoes?' he asked. I didn't answer him. 'You murmur about echoes in your sleep'. I recall a phantasmagoria of bells somewhere in the distance but nowhere to be found. The last chime had an echo. But the inescapable heat was making me red in the face and unable to explain or think, anesthetised. I could tell he was desperate to know but not desperate enough to push. I found it odd that I was more willing to send him my drawers and skin and chest and bits, than I was willing to talk about the echoes. The heat had settled on me like a wet towel, thick, clinging, and oddly intimate. It dulled the edges of things: the clatter of dishes, the scrape of a chair, we drifted in the hot bed like moths in syrup. I moved slowly, not out of laziness but necessity, as if the air itself had weight. In an attempt to cool off, I take a dip. Dead bees floating atop the pool surface. Poor things. I push them aside with some care, clearing an exit path. Water comes with me as I drag my limbs, insensate, on to the warm pavers. I am pink in the cheeks and brown on my shoulders. Young looking and it is nice. I'm sitting outside in an early morning peace, goosebumps on my arms from the fans above. They never stop spinning. The droplets from my ponytail trace my spine, from my neck to my bottom. He appears and I ask him to leave. And he does. With every intention of never seeing him again, I said goodbye. 'Good luck with the echoes' he said. I drank a hot coffee from a speckled mug that wore the name of a community art centre on its posterior.

I hadn't bled yet. I was one week late. Hopeful that no creature was growing inside of me, I didn't mention it to the other boy I was with a month ago, three nights in a row, tongues down each other's throats all night, unable to stop touching one another. 'I miss you Anna', 'What are you doing?' 'I'm sore from football' 'How was your night'. A narrative of unanswered messages, and I had no intention of responding to him. I deleted the images I had taken the night before with every intention of recovering them later to send to someone else.

The heat made my ankles hot, and my feet swollen. I slide them into sneakers and struggle into a long black skirt. My singlet is exposing my belly, and it looked acceptable in the mirror. But as I caught quick glimpses in shop windows, I hated how it looked, wide from the front and a low, pudgy bulge, as though I was carrying some stranger's strawberry of a child inside me. The conses of my quences. I’m never happy with how I’m dressed.

Down the street and along the highway into the city, in Maclachlan Street stood the Mela Leuca building. It was open and cool and didn't at all possess the creepy spirit I had heard about in the myth that led me here. Documenting the oral histories of Mela Leuca was meant to be a sort of 'modern archival and digitisation project of historical oral moments'. What I was most interested in was the echoes allegedly once heard by a young waitress new to the city, on a journey to find herself after suffering an acrimonious breakup. It is said that the bells ring at sunset and very few can hear the echoes of the bells. The young waitress said she'd heard them from the courtyard of the Mela Leuca building. It was the neoclassical Australiana version of a witchy tale, and I was hooked.

I entered the courtyard for a cultural event for legal services clinics in the Territory. I wasn't invited. I just walk in. Slowly, I manoeuvre myself between groups of people, mingling, networking, suffering. The champagne glass is a chilled distraction, a fingertip of reprieve, something to do.

I was keen to put the matter to rest. I doubted that the bells rang or echoed. The story, charming as it was, had the feel of something passed around at dinner tables. It might have lasted a few decades, but it couldn’t be pinned down, and so it had no place in the archive. Intending to promptly return to Melbourne, I had already finished a draft which premeditated that 'whilst many people knew of the tale of the echoes of the bells, no single living person had confirmed it by audio visual recording or otherwise’. And as such, 'reference could be made to the ongoing tale of the echoes which may be a connection to grief and guilt that exists in the subconscious but simply lingers there and never materialises into existence. Therefore, this particular tale cannot be confirmed or supported by any primary or secondary source.' I felt both triumphant and slightly bereft, like someone packing up after a long, absorbing conversation.

The hum of the event sang a noisy song distracting me. I retired to a teeny tiny office above the courtyard. The louvre windows are ajar and allow a breeze to enter and the air was cool on my skin. I lay reading the earliest mention of the echoes of the bells in an attempt to refresh my memory on the original tale. It came from a saltwater chronicle from the settlement days of the city, published out of Browns Mart. Recently divorced and very heart broken, a waitress from Babylon was new to the city, she was walking home. She peered into the building courtyard from Cavenagh St, she observed falling palm fronds. She sat down to enjoy the last of the sunshine, pulling apart compound leaves. Feeling emotionally unsatiated and anxious about the end of her relationship, she lay her head down and replayed the sound of the bells of her wedding day, a song she once knew by heart. The conses of her quences. Suddenly she was awoken by a beaming, burnt, sunset sky and echoing of a bell in the distance. All she could hear was chimes and their echoes. After inspecting the surrounds, she learns that there is no church nearby. The city is a tropical sweat untouched by Anglo structures. No bells. She was interviewed countless times, and men marked her as 'uppity', 'a bit odd' and 'clearly delusional'. Odd little tale.

The spinning, spinning, spinning fans and the noisy song from down below lull me to sleep. I am warm, the humidity hugs me. Suddenly awakened by the echoing of a chime of a bell, ringing in the distance. The louvres reflect a lurid, dissolving, melting, spilling sky of golden blood-orange. The hush of the room steeped in apricot light; the kind that makes you think something’s on fire until you realise it’s just the sky doing its slow, operatic thing. In the distance, the bells were chiming, soft, insistent, like someone calling my name from a long way off. I lay still and let the colour seep in, like tea into cloth. It was too beautiful, really. Almost rude. Outside the air is thick with the scent of frangipani and holds its breath as the light softens. Mimicking tones of warmth, birdsongs hush. A rhythmic, atrial-fibrillating pulse rises from the earth itself. In this moment, the city felt Homeric which belied its tropical, equatorial nature. The sky is a canvas of pale ale, golden, molten, bleeding, haunting...

Leaving the event, I looked at the dark sky that hangs above a courtyard full of people I don't know. It feels as though I am admiring a painting in the hallway of a stranger's house. I am in awe but unsettled and eager to return home. I walked and walked and walked. Along the highway and to the water. The atmosphere had a fog like saltiness to it. I made the bottle of water from the fridge fizzy and sat with a swollen bellyful. I opened the archives of my own life. When I looked at myself in those photos, I felt the woman that looked back at me was someone else. A foolish, smiling bride. Rings on every finger. A stranger's face with features that were now alien to me. Looking at myself like this, my soft mouth twisted into a small, bitter smirk at the memory, not of the wedding itself so much as the fact that I had permitted myself to be so painstakingly decorated before being led to the gallows. It seemed absurd and futile. Like polishing kindling. The conses of my quenses.

Max South