By Monica Carroll
Depot
I wrap the cold toast in a piece of fresh paper. They can do a drawing on the packaging after they’ve eaten. Sometimes I dream of getting a card in the mail. A home-made job with a scratchy zebra drawn in charcoal on the front. I don’t know how much Australian they’ve got, but a thank you inside couldn’t be too hard to muster.
— Truck’s in Dave, says the intercom.
That’s my summons to get the morning loading done. I push back my chair from the mess of the warehouse kitchen-table and start the day.
Table
Mum rests the hot dish on the cork trivet. Tuesday is cannelloni night. She cuts the meal in half, like she does every night. She puts half in a plastic container, like she does every night. The lid atop at an angle to let the steam out, like every night I’ve ever known.
Holding hands. Closed eyes.
This is family. This is food.
Instead of looking for the feelings of gratitude and humble thanks, I think about how I’m going to get my sister to lend me her pink jumper for the disco on Saturday night.
Secret
In the darkness of the unlit room the fridge light screams guilt as she breaks the seal of cold, opening the door. It’s harder to say no when her husband is away. She’ll have to lie to him. Again. She lets the future sleep as she takes another cold sausage between her teeth. She bites into deception, minced pork. Maybe she can send her breakfast instead and spare herself the white lie.
Depot
Number 92, Mark yells over the din of Monday morning, Customer number 92.
Monday morning is peak. It’s as though the excess of a weekend causes a mass penance of giving to start the week off right. Mark is already exhausted and sick with the stink of generosity.
In-between
Been to the depot yet, asks Linda as the coffee machine hisses into the steel jug of milk.
Nah. Go at lunch, Joe replies bouncing the milk up and down, Sugar today?
Linda shakes her head, eyeing-off the display of Verry-Berry muffins. She wonders if she ought to buy a couple, one to eat, one to send.
Depot
Righto, Dave calls waving his arm for Rick to stop. Rick watches in his side-mirror unable to hear over the morning radio ramble. It’s those Enviros again. Brow-beating the good nation over giving too much.
It costs five sandwiches to transport half a biscuit.
Hungry kids need to grow maize – not dependency.
If we don’t stop there’ll be nothing left to give.
Righto, Dave calls again giving the truck a thwack on her metal flank as the roller door cranks shut. Rick rolls out and commits to give all his lunches for a week just to spite the Enviros.
Kitchen
But I’m hungry, Emma says driven by the rumble in her stomach.
So are the children in Africa, says her mother, plastic-wrapping the remains of her daughter’s cheese and apple.
Fine. Moving to Africa, she mutters rising from the table.
Ignoring her daughter’s insolence Helen hums with the high of good works as she pops the snack into the box marked Depot.
About The Author
Monica Carroll
Monica Carroll used to hold the hose for the concrete mixer but now she writes. If you like creepy poetry read her book Isolator (Recent Work Press 2017).
Or find her slightly less creepy essays listed on <monicacarroll.com.au>. On <monica-carroll.com> she writes hard and clear about philosophy and creative resistance.
Ion Newcombe is the editor and publisher of AntipodeanSF, Australia’s longest running online speculative fiction magazine, regularly issued since January 1998, and conceived back around November 2007. He has been a zealous reader and occasional writer of SF since his childhood in the 1960s, and even sold a few stories here and there back in the '90s.
Mark Webb's midlife crisis came in the form of attempting to write speculative fiction at a very slow pace. His wife maintains this is a good outcome considering the more expensive and cliched alternatives. Evidence of Mark's attempts to procrastinate in his writing, including general musings and reviews of books he has been reading, can be found at www.markwebb.name.
Timothy Gwyn is a professional pilot in Canada, where he flies to remote communities. During a lull in his flying career, he was a radio announcer for three years, and he is also an author.
Garry Dean lives on the Mid Coast of New South Wales Australia, and has been a fan of SF for most of his natural life. Being vision impaired, he makes good use of voice recognition and text to speech in order to write. Many of his stories have appeared in AntipodeanSF over the years, and his love of all things audio led him to join the narration team in 2017.
Margaret lives the good life on a small piece of rural New South Wales Australia, with an amazing man, a couple of pets, and several rambunctious wombats.
Laurie Bell lives in Melbourne, Australia. She was that girl you found with her nose always buried in a book. She has been writing ever since she was a little girl and first picked up a pen. From books to short stories, radio plays to snippets of ideas and reading them aloud to anyone who will listen.
Pixie is a voice actor, cabaret performer & slam poet From the Blue Mountains in NSW.
David Whitaker is originally from the UK though has travelled around a bit and now resides in India. He has a degree in Journalism, however decided that as he’s always preferred making things up it should ultimately become a resource rather than a profession.
Mark is an astrophysicist and space scientist who worked on the Cassini/Huygens mission to Saturn. Following this he worked in computer consultancy, engineering, and high energy research (with a stint at the JET Fusion Torus).