Mum is a fan of expensive shopping, but not much of a gift giver outside of birthdays and Christmas. So, seeing her at my front door holding a glossy white gift box—the type you get from fancy shops, tied up with a bow—immediately put me on edge. She hardly ever visited, especially without calling first. …
When she opened the front door Jake stood there with his clown behind him. The clown wore a big full-cheeked smile, with the slightest bit of stubble pushing out through his makeup. She wasn’t sure why she was surprised, the clown always followed him everywhere, like a rainbow-coloured shadow, but for some reason she had…
In the queue at the cafe, four people are in front of me. All enjoying the usual delights of the English seaside when the sun comes up at the beginning of June. They all look pickled somewhere from brown to red, each wearing their comfort or discomfort in place of winter coats, each shuffling towards…
Shauna felt certain there was a dead body buried on her new property. Sometimes it was bloated in the water tank. Others, it was buried under the shipwrecked rowing boat, the one with the bromeliads sprouting above clay sky-rises architectured by the wasps. She had ten acres of New Zealand bushland, where the skyline was…
He pours me into the copper perfume bottle. A dropped pearl of me trembles on the bottle’s lip, before sliding in. He stoppers the bottle; I am in darkness. I slosh as the bottle is carried elsewhere. Low chanting, muffled. Someone unstoppers me. That pearl that so recently rejoined me slips out, away. That pearl…
She chews the pen until her teeth ache, the plastic splintering faintly under the pressure. The ink is metallic, bitter as it seeps into her mouth. The paper beneath her hands is soft and damp, its edges curling inward as though retreating from the weight of her touch. Bread. Canned beans. Powdered milk. Each word…
They have escaped to this region on the recommendation of Josh’s friend, who has family down this way. Josh and his partner, Matt, don’t think they know anyone else who lives or holidays here—not regularly. The whole environment is abnormally clean, the air and the freshwater springs, the bush, the burnished beaches, the sea and…
Your beautiful piece in the current issue of takahē, “fog/fugue,” talks about what feels like addiction and the process of taking back power. It’s both dark and hopeful, I think. Can you tell us what was on your mind during the writing of that piece? The story came about because of an actual experience of…
Ezra has all of his teeth. This is not particularly important but considering his peers, it is noteworthy. The other guys on his logging crew are not so dentally successful. They ride together with chainsaws and fuel cans in a flatbed truck to a forestry block almost exactly like the one they’ve just left. The…
The east wind is blowing the day Meg finds out she is pregnant. She leaves the remains of the pregnancy kit strewn across the floor of the public toilet, strides out across the carpark and follows the gorse-choked path to the ocean. Standing on the dune, wind and sand whipping her face, she stares out…