Last Days of Ava Langdon by Mark O'Flynn

Author:Mark O'Flynn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Queensland Press
Published: 2016-03-22T04:00:00+00:00

EVENING

Ava fetches down a sheet of cardboard from her pile of Weeties boxes on top of the tall cupboard. She lays it flat on the table, face down, and angles a look at it, the unproved vista of it, grey, what the blind might see, or perhaps her dolls if they could speak. The grain of the cardboard stretches into the distance. The shack creaks around her, the fire shifting, sticks falling on the roof, corrugated iron protesting. In the other rooms of her imagination, faint as a mosquito in the corner, she hears a new sound. She listens. Nothing. A buzzing in the brain. Her cochlea coming loose in her ear. Perhaps the corporeal manifestation of an idea being born, if that’s not being, she thinks, a tad too fanciful. There it is again. Louder. It’s real. The boy! She jumps up, shoves the cardboard back and goes into the bedroom, where she is able to peer out the window at the venomous world. From here she has sometimes seen menacing figures creeping through the scrub. Sometimes they throw rocks on the roof.

The shrill buzz grows louder. It’s a noise she’s unaccustomed to, like a cricket in a bottle, or a lawnmower falling out of the sky. Through the wattle she sees a motor scooter weaving slowly between the darkening trees. It stops. The motor cuts out. Silence and perfidy. A tall Martian steps off it. At least, it looks to Ava like a Martian. Perhaps she’s imagining things. Wearing a silver space suit, with an alien’s smooth helmet containing the brain and masking the hideous features. This is it, she thinks, they’ve tracked her down, the end has come. She’s trapped. There’s no back door. She wishes she had something to defend herself with. A gun, for preference. She looks around the hut. The gurlet is all she has, nestled in the wood box like a prehistoric bird.

The alien is walking towards the hut. It’s a slow, measured step, working a way through the trees, as if still getting used to the force of gravity. The wattle branches flick back as the figure moves through them. Ava scampers to the kitchen and plucks the gurlet out of the wood box. Now she can hear footsteps outside, the twigs cracking. Pause. There is a knock at the door. Would an alien bother to knock? Then a muffled, alien voice calls out:

‘Saviour.’ Or is it: ‘Favour?’

Then she realises that perhaps someone is calling her name.

The latch rises and the door gradually opens. The alien in the silver space suit fills the doorway. With a fierce battle cry Ava leaps forward, the gurlet held high in her fist, as if the ancient bird had come to life and she was seizing it by the talons. The figure jerks backwards, stumbling off the welcome stone, arms raised.

‘Whoa,’ the voice calls through the helmet. ‘Steady on.’

It’s not a space suit, she sees that now, just a type of motorcycle jacket. The figure quickly slips off the helmet and says:

‘Hold your horses.

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