Dangerous Life
By Ben Pullar
The crab candles sounded glum in that wheeze of rocking chairs. That rasp of rocking chair pine Watts and Gruel were using. They worked on their giant pie and rocked back and forth and they ignored the doctors playing with the tawny cards. Watts was stabbing at the pie’s top with his knife and looking at Gruel. Gruel was lightly tapping the roof of the giant pie and singing to herself.
Her mouth shook with the song she was singing, which was Edgar F. Wandfire’s ‘Reef Barney’, a psych folk lobster of arms swinging fists west. Her mouth was working it out perfectly. Watts was really trying to cut through the pie but he was fascinated by Gruel’s cover of the Wandfire song. Watts had known Wandfire in the seventies. He knew Wandfire’s discography well. He had it up on the wall in his Grange toilet. He was measuring Gruel’s lip ticks and combs. When the third doctor in four minutes swore mid card game Watts lost his temper and reacted.
He reacted with his shoes. One of them thumped onto the dining table, the other one kicked at the chair leg. The third doctor watched Watts’ flagrantly aggressive arm reach out towards his face. Palm open, hands wriggling like guests, a lot of hatred went echoing out of Watt’s injured nose. The third doctor reacted.
He thrust his tawny queen of clubs at the Watts palm, missing three calluses and slicing Watts’ little finger almost entirely off. Watts immediately reacted to that.
And things got very heady, because Watts and the third doctor were both extreme balancing act types. Both of them were ready to bleed all over their elbow patches if it meant some sort of local celebrity. Both of them had nostrils the size of live telecasts. They stood in the table between the saltshakers and the paperback stacks and they dueted on a piece of filth called Violent Retribution. It was a dreadful obscenity of knocking gestures and they did it with their fierce teeth drooling biscuit materials in every possible direction. The two other doctors went on playing with the tawny cards. But Gruel wasn’t tapping the giant pie anymore.
She was standing at the other side of the room, next to the green armchair, one fur-gloved hand on her heart, another charging a microphone. She was performing Wandfire’s ‘Reef Barney’ with every bit of Keith Almond she had at hand. She was deep in the third verse, between the line ‘the hutch purse wrong / the window sung / the shell well rung’ and the line ‘carry tea trunk / the teak tock toll / everyone young one would.’ It was a terrifying mixture of beads, because when she wasn’t roaring the words out in descending stair hutches, she was making the chords hum, and the lead guitar land, and she was opening and closing her eyes, a lighthouse of bleeding Norwegian brothers chuckled in damp.
The two men battled on over the table, losing hands and fists at a top rate of whales, but Gruel was outclassing them in the corner. She had another seventeen verses to go, and verses fourteen and fifteen were the ugliest collection of wounds anyone had ever caught, hideous bookshelves of welts smelling difficult. Gruel looked forward to them, all of her ears alert, her elbows on fire like wolves.
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Ben Pullar is a writer living in Brisbane Australia. He writes short stories, reviews, and produces comedy audio. He is writing a novel that has nothing whatsoever to do with golf.
By Ben Pullar
The crab candles sounded glum in that wheeze of rocking chairs. That rasp of rocking chair pine Watts and Gruel were using. They worked on their giant pie and rocked back and forth and they ignored the doctors playing with the tawny cards. Watts was stabbing at the pie’s top with his knife and looking at Gruel. Gruel was lightly tapping the roof of the giant pie and singing to herself.
Her mouth shook with the song she was singing, which was Edgar F. Wandfire’s ‘Reef Barney’, a psych folk lobster of arms swinging fists west. Her mouth was working it out perfectly. Watts was really trying to cut through the pie but he was fascinated by Gruel’s cover of the Wandfire song. Watts had known Wandfire in the seventies. He knew Wandfire’s discography well. He had it up on the wall in his Grange toilet. He was measuring Gruel’s lip ticks and combs. When the third doctor in four minutes swore mid card game Watts lost his temper and reacted.
He reacted with his shoes. One of them thumped onto the dining table, the other one kicked at the chair leg. The third doctor watched Watts’ flagrantly aggressive arm reach out towards his face. Palm open, hands wriggling like guests, a lot of hatred went echoing out of Watt’s injured nose. The third doctor reacted.
He thrust his tawny queen of clubs at the Watts palm, missing three calluses and slicing Watts’ little finger almost entirely off. Watts immediately reacted to that.
And things got very heady, because Watts and the third doctor were both extreme balancing act types. Both of them were ready to bleed all over their elbow patches if it meant some sort of local celebrity. Both of them had nostrils the size of live telecasts. They stood in the table between the saltshakers and the paperback stacks and they dueted on a piece of filth called Violent Retribution. It was a dreadful obscenity of knocking gestures and they did it with their fierce teeth drooling biscuit materials in every possible direction. The two other doctors went on playing with the tawny cards. But Gruel wasn’t tapping the giant pie anymore.
She was standing at the other side of the room, next to the green armchair, one fur-gloved hand on her heart, another charging a microphone. She was performing Wandfire’s ‘Reef Barney’ with every bit of Keith Almond she had at hand. She was deep in the third verse, between the line ‘the hutch purse wrong / the window sung / the shell well rung’ and the line ‘carry tea trunk / the teak tock toll / everyone young one would.’ It was a terrifying mixture of beads, because when she wasn’t roaring the words out in descending stair hutches, she was making the chords hum, and the lead guitar land, and she was opening and closing her eyes, a lighthouse of bleeding Norwegian brothers chuckled in damp.
The two men battled on over the table, losing hands and fists at a top rate of whales, but Gruel was outclassing them in the corner. She had another seventeen verses to go, and verses fourteen and fifteen were the ugliest collection of wounds anyone had ever caught, hideous bookshelves of welts smelling difficult. Gruel looked forward to them, all of her ears alert, her elbows on fire like wolves.
- - -
Ben Pullar is a writer living in Brisbane Australia. He writes short stories, reviews, and produces comedy audio. He is writing a novel that has nothing whatsoever to do with golf.
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