New Animal by Ella Baxter (speed reading book .TXT) 📕

fault. When I found out about the note, I saw the word, mentally, as no body. It was nobody’s fault and yet his body was flung away. Ever since, I go to the ravine and stand on the edge; it helps me to know that humans are too sensitive for a world as hectic and harsh as this. There is an unbearable volume of chaos and beauty to endure and enjoy in one small, short life.

After Daniel’s death I had a duty to live in double time. I squashed his existence into my own and took it upon myself to jump into everything for both of us. My body could take the baton he passed me and jog us both forward.

Floyd told me that in the week before he died, Daniel lost control of his sedan and drove into one of the banana-packing sheds. He was fine, and the car was fine, but we all think it must have rattled something inside of him loose, because he came so close to dying and he didn’t seem to mind. Maybe the realisation that he wasn’t attached to himself was all he needed to completely detach.

I did his make-up for the service. Hid the lower half of his body. Buttoned him into his favourite tropical dress shirt. But all I could think about were his legs. Shins. Ankles. Feet. I shouldn’t think these thoughts—no one should really—but you can’t jump off a platform like this and not invert. In the coroner’s report it said that he was found at a distance from the edge, which means he would have run as fast as he could before jumping, and when I stand at the lookout I imagine him sprinting from the car park towards the rocky ledge. Chest forward, his eyes focused on the skyline ahead. Sometimes I wonder if, like Daniel, I have the ability to be so out of sync with myself that both my body and mind seek to annihilate each other. Sometimes I wonder if all of us metaphorically throw our body from cliffs every day of the week.

I lean on the railing and open my phone to check if there are any responses from the night before.

Fauzi: You’re a bit keen aren’t you, cheeky girl

Nathaniel: Not sure what time were you thinking

Rafi: Possibly, what time?

Liam: What time???

Liam wins. I delete the rest, and tell him to pick up a bottle of red wine and send me his address.

He writes back to say that he also likes red, and that I shouldn’t worry, he’s not a murderer, and he hopes I don’t now think he is. Har har, he writes, see you soon then.

Har har, I write back, then I look up his address and let him know I’m half an hour away.

Liam lives one block away from the university in a peeling weatherboard house surrounded by a decaying wooden fence. A choko vine has managed to weave its way from the back of the property all the way to the front, and forms a bright green canopy between the roof and the carport. I pick my way carefully along the broken concrete path between the letterbox and the front door, where I slap the metal flyscreen loudly.

Heavy footsteps thud down the hall, and Liam swings the door open.

‘We have a doorbell,’ he says.

He is dressed in corduroy pants and a rugby jersey, and is about a foot taller than me, with bright blond hair that I suspect he artificially lightens; it’s not the sun doing all that work. He looks like the majority of his photos, which is a relief.

He steps aside to let me in, and I enter a house filled with the heady aroma of body odour and marijuana.

‘How’s your day so far?’ he asks.

‘Amazing,’ I say.

I follow him down the hall, passing a plastic mannequin draped in fairy lights.

‘Cool dummy,’ I say, stepping over a collection of bent street signs.

‘It came with the house,’ he says.

‘What are these for?’ I point to a pile of phone books while shuffling around an old bike that is propped against the wall.

‘The fireplace.’

‘Are you a hoarder?’ I ask, because this seems on the cusp.

He shakes his head. ‘No, this is all useful.’ He looks around at his useful things, smiling. ‘The bike just needs a new chain.’

The hallway opens into a living room that is sparsely furnished. A sagging tartan couch faces a blank wall, with a projector setup off to the side. In front of the couch is a low coffee table, with a laptop and a fruit bowl, where an overdue electricity bill has been jammed between two rotting oranges.

‘I thought maybe we could watch some X-Files,’ Liam says, walking through to the kitchen. ‘Or anything by Fellini.’

I sit on the couch listening to him open and close cupboards for a few moments, before he emerges cradling a bong. ‘The password is “Nietzsche”, if you want to start looking.’

He uses the neck of the bong to push the laptop towards me, but instead I uncross my legs and reach forward, touching his knee.

‘Where’s your bedroom?’ I ask.

‘Upstairs—but don’t you want some wine?’ He reaches under the couch and drags out a bottle of shiraz which he looks at intently. ‘Notes of peppercorn.’

He unscrews the top and takes a swig before handing it to me, and as I drink, I find that the wine replaces any doubts or impatience with a harsh fizz.

Liam pulls a lighter from his pocket and suctions the bong to his mouth, inhaling deeply. The water bubbles raucously as I take another glug of wine and wonder how long we will spend anaesthetising ourselves here before moving to the bedroom and doing it all again—how many layers of oblivion we need this afternoon.

Liam coughs a long plume of smoke at the ceiling, and I feel that the answer for both of us is: perhaps quite a lot.

‘What do you study?’ I ask.

‘Biomed,’ he says.

‘Clever,’ I say.

He shakes his head. ‘No, it’s