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Unfortunately, he was really coming alive now. He said he'd like to 'return the favour,' meaning that he wanted to go down on me with his bad breath. 'Now listen here, dog breath, you ain't gettin' none a that!' Did I speak or was that Jackie? Now he was Neptune trying to romance me, then a sunken wreck. Somewhere he must shine like treasure, but he was covered in growth like an old wharf pylon. The years of neglect and indulgence sucked at my imagination and played funny tricks with my mind. Had he just asked me to marry him in the Caribbean? I grinned and pushed him back onto the pillow that I would have to boil, like if the dog got rabies. I climbed on top of him and moved my pussy like a small motor in a speedboat, and to cut a long story short, his dick was small but I was tight, and he came in five strokes. I made this big fella's night, and he tapped in my work number on his mobile phone. Just my luck that he'd want to be a regular. He made me very sleepy. I took the condom off with a tissue and wrapped it up neatly.
To rub it in, he asked me to wash down his back with Nikita's pink loofah. I never used it anyway. It's just for show and it's Nikita all over. Personally speaking, I wouldn't touch it 'cause you don't know where it's been. The same applies to the jasmine-scented candle, perfumed soap, shower curtain and floral quilt. All of this pretty stuff invites men to come and play with the cunt of a sexy little girl. All this decoration she sets up in here is infantile. I don't like it. To be completely honest, it makes me nervous. Nikita loves all this stuff, but I'll tell you where I am tonight. Even though it's the beginning of the dry season when the dragonflies come, I'm on the Stuart Highway with my camera, watching the thunderheads build up near the equator, where the whole horizon is drunk with the sun. I must stay fully awake with this man, as I must stay awake to the other men and to this life. Otherwise a big nasty throat full of rotten fish will take the opportunity to sweep down over my sleeping mouth, and before I know it, the barnacles will brush past my eyelids, and I'll be sucking on them for fifty bucks.
It was by the grace of God that we happened to be driving along that stretch of road trying to find the injured mother ringtailed possum. But it was not by the grace of God that someone had ruined her tonight. Or that they had hit her with a car. Her timid nervous body slammed by steel, the muscle sticking out of her face like springs. Her tiny jaw was untidy and fractured in three places. Her loose mouth hung open, stretched into an expression of agony to a universe that would never see it closed, nor would it close it and treat her gently. Her tongue fell flat inside her mouth, the blood and broken teeth pushing it down. One special eye was gone, beyond recognition and recognising nothing. Blood leaked gently from her right ear.
Her forearms were grazed and stinging from furlessness. She was dizzy with agony and the burden of a smashed skull. This is how I found her, crouching in the middle of the road, quivering like an open umbrella over a puddle, her warm pouch heavy beneath her tummy fur. This was how I found the ringtailed possum in a fantastically complex world, alone with her face smashed in. It was by the grace of God that I found her. I stopped the traffic in order to capture her. We finally got her to a night vet at Malak. She was wrapped up in a tarpaulin. I held her all in a bundle, her tiny bloody face resting on her fallen tongue, as though she had refused to see any more. It was only in the surgery, when the vet grabbed her by the back of the neck to deduce the damage, that she hissed and screamed and really began to fight for her life. Then I saw the small furless baby inside her pouch. 'She's a mother,' I said. I put the tarp over her, like I had on the road. The vet shook his head.
'You really must let me look at her now.' I wanted to protect her, but her agony was permanent. 'I'll give you whatever amount it takes to save her.' I asked him to operate. I said, 'I'll go to the Eftpos machine right now, okay?' He looked at Sharlena, who had turned pale white. 'She's better off being put down,' he said. We killed her at his instruction. He gave her a lethal dose of whatever it is they kill them with, directly into the abdomen. The vet was calm but not too happy. He said that it would take a short time for her to die. He removed the baby from the pouch and handed it to me wrapped up inside a small and blood stained towel. He swept the tarp up over the mother possum, now quiet and lying on her side. This was so that we couldn't see her dying. After a few minutes I lifted up the tarp to check on her and to see if she had gone. She lay under it still breathing, with her face smashed in. |
