Davey Dreamnation

The Merchant‘s spiralling homeward journey, dragged onwards by something like Fate, his days filled with trip falls, delays and junctures neither he nor the befuddled donkey could have pre-estimated nor predicted, and his nights spent following a trail of breadcrumbs through another person’s life, or so it seems. A Merchant still three hundred miles from [...]

For the first time ever, I’ve been asked to be a judge for a short story competition. The competition, organised by the City of Boroondara, features three categories: Open Short Story (judge Paddy O’Reilly), Young Writers Poetry (judge Bulk Ace) and Young Writers Prose (judge, yours truly). You can read the press release here. Jippie. [...]

Her own Harem. Such a strange idea. But then again, a perfectly reasonable one — for if Peele (discounting, for the moment, any possibility of his delirious grief) could gallivant, stepping in and out of who knows what den or brothel at any point along the trajectory of his merchant travails, then a Confectionery Harem [...]

Downstairs in the Kitchen, the Boy Catcher listens to the subterranean bumble of the mines, thinking of the massive industrial works and labyrinthine railroad systems there, the schematics that stuff memories miles underground, as if this feat could only ever be achieved by means of a crafty diversion. The mines may be useful for the [...]

THOUGH MUCH OF history is anecdotal, one thing we know for certain is that it was the great scientist and explorer Captain Terror Nullius who discovered Marzipan on the island continent of Ahem in the year 1769. The exact sequence of events is blurred, however it seems certain that this discovery acted as an imperial [...]

Cook boils then pounds the Almonds to a Paste. The Almonds, Eggs and Sugar, arrayed in an arc on her smooth wooden bench, appear as offerings on an altar. Her hand barely trembles as she turns to the relevant page in her Cook Book, stirring the ingredients all the while with a spiralling motion, her [...]

Please call
a doctor. I’m losing blood. There isn’t much time.
I’m at home. Please call
a doctor right away. I mean it. Hang up the phone, then dial the number. It’s on the fridge. Above that one. Right. You’ve got it? Good. Now, do it.
I’m at work. Please call
home, as there seems to be some kind of [...]

Very well, declares the pasty-faced man, I shall introduce myself fully and formally, so that you are under no illusions as to my best intentions and high moral standards. My first name though not of great importance is the Boy, there it be. I am known secondly as Catcher (though you need not trouble your [...]

Nullius’s magnificent characteristics — his humaneness and his spirit of generosity in his dealings with the Vowel Birds — became apparent almost immediately. He signalled for his crew to commence shooting down all but thirty of the parrots and instructed his crew to begin educating the remainder on the finer points of English grammar. The [...]

Send me your sunshine. Only you can make this buddha machine run. When there’s just one the drone creeps and the loops begin to skip. Buddha needs two machines to set up his feedback mantra, his fearful explosions. Buddha’s playing your melody. Buddha’s sweating underneath those robes. Your sunshine is Buddha and the sound of [...]

The boy busied himself confecting his figurines all that morning, taking more care than he perhaps needed to. For this was no simple design. No fear you, he thought, mine is an elaborate Confection, complete with platform, railing, stairs and a cast of dozens. As he laboured away, gaining more pleasure from his efforts, the [...]

The moon shines down like Tintoretto’s torch, illuminating stilled pools of water, trails of crystal zig-zagging across tiny canals of light. Wooden bridges like kisses across banks, faces and animal shapes engraved on the sharp corners of confected marble buildings. Pathways spread like fingers or paws, clasped together to form clandestine handshakes. Quicksilver streams, falling [...]

The first time Cook attempted to confect an Exhibition Building, with its gigantic egg-shaped dome, it soon became apparent that something was awry. She ordered some initial sorties into the Confection, using teams of twenty Bakers at a time. Their news was not good: the porridge cakes had begun to ferment. Hence the brewery-like smell [...]