To The Naked Eye
You bury your feet into the brake pedal. The tyres screech below you as your Toyota crashes through the side-barrier of the bridge. You're thrown into the air – slow motion. The Sprite in your cup holder rises up out of its can, forming perfectly smooth, clear, little globules that float through the air. Your sunglasses fly off the top of your head. The cigarettes sitting in your console are thrown towards the back windscreen, along with the Skittles you were yet to finish, and your phone. Your hands leave the steering wheel and move towards the roof, which is now littered with the assorted trash that was moments earlier covering the floor and the backseat of your airborne vehicle.
Your life begins to replay itself over in your mind like a bad quality home slide-show. Your first smile. Your first step. Your first birthday. Your sisters first birthday. The first time you caught a fish. The first friend you made. The first time you got drunk. Your first girlfriend.
The first time you put your hands down a girls pants. The first time you got laid. The first time you went overseas. Your first near death experience. The first time you dropped acid. Meeting your wife. Fucking her for the first time. Getting married. Having your son. The death of your father. Having your daughter. Cheating on your wife. Fighting with your wife. Leaving work. Crashing your car off a bridge.
As your bonnet hits the water the faces of your children are clearly visible in front of you. You reach out to touch them but find only the smooth, hard surface of the windscreen, cracked horizontally across. You are driven down into your seat; hard. You feel your internal organs compress. You vomit. The car begins to fill with black water. You remove your seat-belt, grab your cigarettes and the shrapnel lying on the passenger seat and wind down the window.
The water is cold and unwelcome. Fear begins to overcome the adrenaline in your system and you begin to shake uncontrollably. You push yourself through the window after your last breaths of air are taken from inside the car and follow the rising air-bubbles up to salvation.
Your body breaches the surface like a submarine. The air courses through your throat and lungs - almost painfully overwhelming. The lights of the city skyline reflect off the water; seemingly still, yet overtly perturbed by the recent trauma of your car hitting its surface with the intensity of a clenched fist punching a smiling face.
Treading water, you look up. You can see people’s heads peering over the rail that you just demolished. It is so high that you cannot make out any faces, just the black silhouettes of concerned, fascinated people. You swim to shore, shivering, and are shortly greeted by a police officer. He drives you home without asking many questions, which you think is quite fortunate, even though you havn't really done anything wrong. You forget to thank him.
Your house is empty when you arrive. You start to think about dinner, but soon get sidetracked by the bottle of rum in the kitchen pantry. You are hungry but couldn't be bothered cooking, you'd rather get drunk. Exhausted, you pass out on the couch.
You wake up in the morning still on the couch. Your wife and kids have neglected to wake you up or even clean the rum you spilled from your glass as you nodded off with it in your hand. You massage the bridge of your nose and your temples and look out the window. Your wife's car is not in the driveway. The young girl across the street is playing under the sprinkler in her front yard with some friends. They run and squeal and frolic underneath the dancing streams of water. You can't help but stare. You are aware of their youth; it is something that you cannot stop telling yourself in the back of your mind, but you continue to look anyway. You feel slightly perverted, but then again you are
really only having an innocent cup of coffee on your own veranda. It's a hot day and you wish you were young enough to do something like that again. You think you'd look like an idiot, and maybe even a pedophile, if you went to join in with the girls now.
You remember being younger, doing the same thing in your front yard. You were a teenager and your balls were dropping, causing your voice to occasionally shoot up at least an octave for about a syllable or two and then abruptly come back down again. All the other kids in the street thought this was hilarious; except for Ted. Ted's voice was breaking too. It was almost as if you were in competition with him over who's voice would finally break first. Ted won.
You remember the flow of the water-jet, spraying in about five or six thin lines that arched like a rainbow, tall enough for you to walk through without really getting wet. You had all the kids from the street in your front yard all day - running and mucking around, laughing and smiling and talking, getting wet and dirty, covered in grass and leaves and other front yard things. Nobody cared at that age.
You remember this one day, when you and Ted's voices were breaking, it was so hot you couldn't stand on the road without burning your feet. All the grass in the neighbourhood was dying from the heat and lack of water and had turned from a luscious green to a crisp, prickly yellow. Bushfires had incurred a water ban on the area, but luckily your parents didn't care and still let you use the sprinkler for as long as you wanted. Everyone thought they were really cool for letting you do so (for letting you break the rules and such) and therefore that made you cool too. Nobody else’s parents broke the rules like this. Breaking the rules was cool.
You all sat in the shade – not cold enough for pleasure, only just cool enough for some slight comfort before running back out into the sunlight again to get wet. A dash through the sun would quickly turn your skin the colour of a cherry at Christmas time. You remember it reflecting so harshly of the solar paneled roofs of your neighbours that your eyes started to hurt from the strain of squinting. You remember your father sitting on the veranda smoking his pipe, sitting in silence as he watched you play with your friends, smiling as thin whisps of smoke trailed up from the bowl in his fingertips, lingering for a while before disappearing into the heat.
really only having an innocent cup of coffee on your own veranda. It's a hot day and you wish you were young enough to do something like that again. You think you'd look like an idiot, and maybe even a pedophile, if you went to join in with the girls now.
You remember being younger, doing the same thing in your front yard. You were a teenager and your balls were dropping, causing your voice to occasionally shoot up at least an octave for about a syllable or two and then abruptly come back down again. All the other kids in the street thought this was hilarious; except for Ted. Ted's voice was breaking too. It was almost as if you were in competition with him over who's voice would finally break first. Ted won.
You remember the flow of the water-jet, spraying in about five or six thin lines that arched like a rainbow, tall enough for you to walk through without really getting wet. You had all the kids from the street in your front yard all day - running and mucking around, laughing and smiling and talking, getting wet and dirty, covered in grass and leaves and other front yard things. Nobody cared at that age.
You remember this one day, when you and Ted's voices were breaking, it was so hot you couldn't stand on the road without burning your feet. All the grass in the neighbourhood was dying from the heat and lack of water and had turned from a luscious green to a crisp, prickly yellow. Bushfires had incurred a water ban on the area, but luckily your parents didn't care and still let you use the sprinkler for as long as you wanted. Everyone thought they were really cool for letting you do so (for letting you break the rules and such) and therefore that made you cool too. Nobody else’s parents broke the rules like this. Breaking the rules was cool.
You all sat in the shade – not cold enough for pleasure, only just cool enough for some slight comfort before running back out into the sunlight again to get wet. A dash through the sun would quickly turn your skin the colour of a cherry at Christmas time. You remember it reflecting so harshly of the solar paneled roofs of your neighbours that your eyes started to hurt from the strain of squinting. You remember your father sitting on the veranda smoking his pipe, sitting in silence as he watched you play with your friends, smiling as thin whisps of smoke trailed up from the bowl in his fingertips, lingering for a while before disappearing into the heat.
You make another coffee and return to the front veranda. The wet girls across the road are aware of your presence, yet obviously undisturbed by it – oblivious to your wandering eyes and adult thoughts. One girl looks old enough to pass for sixteen, although you are quite aware that they are all much younger. She draws your focus more than the others. She is tall and thin, with a long neck as straight as a ladder. Her chestnut-brown hair is cut short at the back and pulled up in a pony tail that sits slightly to the left on her head. Her tiny boobs and bottom are covered in a pink and blue bikini and she smiles incessantly. She seems to be unaware as to the implications of sitting with her legs spread, and every so often reaches down to scratch herself between them. It occurs to you that your father may have been thinking along the same lines as he sat and watched you play with your friends years ago. He may have had similar, crude thoughts about certain kids on his mind as well.
You look back at the girls and ponder once again on what they are thinking or talking about - whether or not they are annoyed at you for watching, or if they may be wondering what you are thinking, or if they even care at all.
You think back to that scorching hot day when you were younger, when your voice was breaking, and you can't seem to remember thinking about what your father was thinking, or in fact, even caring at all.
They sit in the gutter on the corner of the street, occasionally running back toward the spray of the water, gigglng and cackling as they talk about whatever girls that age talk about. They are too young to realise the power of their appeal, still in the mindset that you're to be mean to the boys you like, yet they're old enough to flaunt what they have in front of any seemingly interested male, even if they have no idea what they're doing and why. Someone like you does not draw the attention of girls like this, or at least, the girls that they may grow up to be. They are young and naïve, and not yet privy to the more mature teachings and truths that life has to offer. You assume they talk about boys and french-kissing; possibly even fucking, who knows. You look away, slightly disgusted at the direction your mind is headed. You are not going to speculate on the sex-life of these young women. Whether they'd had sex yet or not is their business, not yours…
You quickly sneak in one final thought about the fact that if they haven’t yet lost their virginities, it shouldn’t be too long until at least one of them does.
As you put a cigarette into your mouth and light it your wife pulls into the driveway with quite a stunned expression on her face. “Are you alright? I heard what happened. Oh my god!” She leaves her car door open and runs to give you a hug. “I couldn't believe it when I heard. I was so worried I'm so glad you're OK. Jesus!” She clicks her tongue and pulls herself back to arms-length, frowning and furrowing her brow as she looks you in the eye. “Is this going to be expensive?”
You notice a strange, expensive-looking necklace around her neck. “Hopefully not as dear as that!” you say, with an apparent air of criticism obvious enough to make her blush.
“My mother gave it to me,” she retorts defensively, looking over towards the girls sitting together in the gutter. You wonder whether shes worried about you staring at them, or if she trusts you enough to be above those thoughts. This woman doesn't know you from a bar of soap, you think to yourself. She tries to change the subject back to the crash. You sit back down and smoke the rest of your cigarette while your wife continues to talk into your unhearing ears.
She eventually leaves – you don’t know if she explained where she was going.
You know, in your heart, the bitch has been cheating on you too.
That night you sit at home by yourself in the dark, drinking whiskey and smoking dope. The weed has made you high but the whiskey is yet to take any real effect. A business card sits on your lap, along with your phone and an ashtray. You pick up the card and the phone and dial the number, but hang up before it starts to ring. You have a sip of whiskey and exhale long and hard. To your left there is a picture of you and your wife from years earlier when you went sailing up the east coast of Australia. You both aren't smiling, but you remember being happy then. It had been a good trip; little to no fighting, plenty of sex and a great adventure. What more could you ask of a marriage? You roll another joint and sit there smoking it, staring at the picture of the two of you during happier times. The phone rings and you neglect to answer it. You pick it up and look at it, waiting for it to stop ringing. When it does you dial in the number again and it begins to ring. This time you don't hang up.
You hear the connection but nobody says anything. You wait for a couple of seconds before saying, “Hello?”
“Speak,” a raspy voice replies.
“Ah, yes… I'm a return client. We've worked before, on a similar assignment. A couple of months ago we –“
“I know who you are. I know what you want. I have a PO Box in Ultimo. Number 454.
“Write it down.” You jot down the numbers on a pad.
“I need you to put everything I may need in there; work records, photos, useful addresses and phone numbers. A diary or a calendar can be very useful too. I'm sure you remember what to do from last time.
“I will contact you soon with the billing information a couple of days prior to the assignment and you can give me the go ahead. I guarantee that my work will meet your satisfaction, as I'm sure it did last time. PO Box 454. Four-five-four, OK?”
“Got it,” you say as he hangs up. It's really happening now. You place the phone and the hitman’s business card on the coffee table and close your eyes.
You begin to visualise the crash. You remember the barrier breaking, sounding like the crack of a lightning bolt. The fall seemed in slow-motion, and not once did you feel fear. It felt like an immense release, like you were accepting death and embracing it openly. Until you felt the water.
As you put a cigarette into your mouth and light it your wife pulls into the driveway with quite a stunned expression on her face. “Are you alright? I heard what happened. Oh my god!” She leaves her car door open and runs to give you a hug. “I couldn't believe it when I heard. I was so worried I'm so glad you're OK. Jesus!” She clicks her tongue and pulls herself back to arms-length, frowning and furrowing her brow as she looks you in the eye. “Is this going to be expensive?”
You notice a strange, expensive-looking necklace around her neck. “Hopefully not as dear as that!” you say, with an apparent air of criticism obvious enough to make her blush.
“My mother gave it to me,” she retorts defensively, looking over towards the girls sitting together in the gutter. You wonder whether shes worried about you staring at them, or if she trusts you enough to be above those thoughts. This woman doesn't know you from a bar of soap, you think to yourself. She tries to
change the subject back to the crash. You sit back down and smoke the rest of your cigarette while your wife continues to talk into your unhearing ears. Above all things you remember the coldness and colour of the water, rushing into the car unstoppably like a high-pressured oil leak.
A huge adrenaline rush hits you and you stand, gasping for air. Your chest rises and falls as your breathing increases. Your heart begins to beat extremely fast. Your eyes widen. You reach into your wallet, into the hidden section where men hide condoms and baggies of drugs. You pull out a picture of a young, attractive blonde. She has long, straight hair and longer legs. Tanned and thin, she leans against the bonnet of your Toyota, smiling. Her green eyes are framed by the most beautiful, lacy eye-lashes, and her perfect teeth allow her smile to give her face a certain glow that would make Helen of Troy look like a hat-full of arseholes.
She made you feel young and special, and now, looking at her standing next to your now demolished car, she has never felt more deceased. You loved touching her - rubbing your hands along her smooth skin. You loved fucking her. You loved the way she breathed and panted and screamed. Your love was forbidden and morally wrong, but either way, you loved her more than anything. She brought out the lust of an adolescent in you and the ambitions of a child. She made you feel something that your wife had never been able to give you – she made you feel alive. You put the picture back into your wallet and a tear rolls down your cheek.
You stub out your joint in the ashtray in your lap.
The whiskey in your gut begins to take an effect.
You're hungry... you need to eat.
10TH NOVEMBER 2010