Ordinary Gods and Monsters by Chris Womersley

Author:Chris Womersley [Womersley, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-07-27T00:59:41+00:00

The Workshop

THE NEXT DAY, Simon came around with the trailer hitched to his car again. We loaded rubbish into it and made several return trips to the tip, which was about a twenty-minute drive from our house. It was sweaty, dirty work, but also a lot of fun; smashing things up was usually good fun.

On our return from one of these trips, the bolt on the trailer worked itself loose from its bracket and the low trailer gate swung open as we rounded a corner. Luckily it didn’t happen on a main road or something might have fallen out and caused an accident. Simon pulled up abruptly in a small quiet street beside the railway line and I jumped out of the car to secure it.

‘I’ll be back in a sec,’ I told him when it was done. ‘I gotta take a pee.’

‘Why didn’t you go before?’

‘They didn’t have a dunny at the tip, did they?’

‘You could have pissed anywhere there. It’s a tip, idiot. You could take a shit out there and no one would give two hoots.’

‘Sorry. Sorry. I’m busting.’

There were no houses in this part of the neighbourhood, only empty blocks overgrown by grass and weeds where people had obviously been dumping their junk for decades. Among the high grass were car chassis and washing machines, bed frames, mattresses and countless tins and cans and bits and pieces.

Despite the urgency of my situation, I was seized by sudden indecision. I didn’t want to go behind a tree in case a car came along, but there would be hundreds – probably thousands – of snakes and funnel-webs and redback spiders lurking in all that stuff in the empty lots. Horrible creatures like that loved long grass and bits of machinery that had been nicely warmed in the summer sun, didn’t they? It seemed way too risky – plus, I was only wearing thongs. I recalled, with some distaste, the time a man from a wildlife park came to our primary school with a bunch of snakes in wooden boxes, to give us a little educational talk. They’re more afraid of you than you are of them, he’d reassured us. Hard to believe by the manner in which Queenie, the massive brown snake, thrashed around, as if desperate to bust out and sink her fangs into the nearest tender-skinned nine-year-old.

Further along the road was a corrugated tin shed. The immediate area surrounding it appeared to have been cleared, so I jogged down there. As I approached, however, I could hear activity from inside it. A bit of banging, an Angels song on a radio, men’s voices. Dammit. I vacillated for a few seconds, but it was too late. I absolutely had to go; there was no choice. I peed against the hot tin fence, keeping an eye out for snakes or spiders that might seek to take advantage of my momentary indisposition. Phew.

Once relieved of pressing physical concerns, I was better able to absorb my surrounds. There was a familiar smell, something sharp – what was that? Chemicals.

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