FLASH FICTION 3

Flash Fiction has a few disciplines, the three I know of are 100 words - popular with The Spanishish Museum of Words which has a $US 20,000 prize every couple of years. the there is the more traditional 1000 word staple popular in anthologies, but my favourite is 150 words or less that I learned with many other talented folks on the Redbubble art site before it stopped being a community and became a place to buy pirated artwork. It was something I enjoyed and found that these short little stories with a start middle and end were great for transitioning into comic scripts, which is what I tend to do more of these days. These stories below (and in the next couple of posts) are from those redbubble years and can be found in compilations HERE from blurb via Anne van Alkermade's murphywrite imprint. So here we go. Short sharp stories or as Mister Khan called them once: Short stories with a punchline.
PART ONE IS HERE
PART TWO IS HERE


LIFE IN A GAS MASK

It was hard to live your life with a gas mask on. Distorting the words you wanted to really say and clouding the sights you wanted to see. Nadine knew this. For the last 30 years it had destroyed her marriage and alienated her children. Alcohol seeped through the mask and diluted the bondage and made the mask a little easier to ignore. Medication didn’t work when she took it and everybody told it did when she didn’t. Then one day Nadine took the mask off and it was all so clear . In her car with the windows up and the hose connected to the tail pipe.
As the cockroaches, mice , spiders and rats ignored the purring motor in the garage till the fuel run out.
Clarity was brief and so was the answer.

ALWAYS CHOOSE TREAT

Jason walked up the footpath with his usual swagger, his mates lagging
a few steps behind. He leaped up the stairs in one bound.
"I'll show you how it's done" he boasted as he smacked loudly on door.
"Go away" came a muffled voice behind the door. Jason kept banging until he heard footsteps pounding towards the door.
It swung open revealing a skinny, tired looking old man "What?"
"Trick or Treat?" asked Jason
The man stood- staring at Jason for a good twenty seconds.
Then said: "Trick"
"Tight arse" Jason mumbled and in one fast motion thrust out his hand which palmed an egg and slammed it into the man's forehead.
 "There" shouted Jason and turned to run.
The man shot Jason in the back five times before he made it down the stairs.

 PULL MY FINGER

“Pull my finger”
“No”
“Go on , it’s a surprise”
“Dad, I’m thirteen. It isn’t even funny anymore”
“Go on, humour your old man”
“No!”
“Come on for your dear old dad’s sake. It’s been bakin’ for a while”
The son knew he would never get to fully enjoy the television show he was watching unless he complied with this age old ritual. The son took his father’s finger and in a moment of cheekiness decided to push instead of pull.
The last thing the son remembers of his father was the look of shock and pain seconds before he exploded.

REPLICATOR comic book review

COMIC REVIEW
Replicator #1 

Self-published via Kickstarter 2016
Writer: Robert Arnold
Artist: Armin Ozdic
Colourist: Ross A Campbell
Letterer: Jaimie Me
Editors: Nick Glenister, Alison Arnold



I’ve always loved me a near future dystopian/plague/climate calamity yarn, so when I read the opening pages of REPLICATOR, I knew I was in for a treat.
The comic tells the story of a deliberately released virus called the Red Death in modern day Britain that forces the country to be isolated generating food shortages and martial law. Eventually forcing the healthy (and rich and useful) to shelter in a walled city called Sanctuary guarded by the latest and the deadliest of men and technology.

Life goes on outside of Sanctuary but the ones left behind are reminded that those inside are far more precious and any indiscretion committed against those from Sanctuary if they leave the city (illegally) are swiftly executed.
This is where we meet our protagonist Ryker. Whose sense of justice seems to fall short of what is required by the security forces. Blank faced, armour wearing humans without much compassion.

Actually, we first meet a totally different and more aggressive Ryker just prior to this. In a two page shoot-em-up involving powerful hand guns, grenades and what looks like a super villain, that happens 18 months in the future. Obviously, Ryker has had some life changing episodes since then that we are going to eventually find out.
There are a few scenes in this first issue that hint at conspiracy and super powers.

Lovely colour work by Ross A Campbell

These are entertaining and well-paced, it all finishes all too quickly on a cliff hanger ending and the reader is left not sure where everything is going.

Thus the problem at hand.

This comic being a successful Kickstarter project only committed to this issue are we going to see what happens next within my lifetime? I hope so because this has the makings of a great series.

Rob Arnold has created a great story and draws the reader in. Artist Armin Ozdic style reminds me of both Javier Berreno and Fernando Melek from Simon Spurrier’s Crossed tale Wish You Were Here. Clean and neat and when asked to draw a splash, really delivers.

I enjoyed REPLICATOR and look forward to more, I just wish it wasn’t something far off on the horizon than something I could pick up next month at the LCS.

A haunting Splash Page by Armin Ozdic

For more info:

The original Kickstarter link

Replicator website

Replicator Facebook

FLASH FICTION PART 2

Flash Fiction has a few disciplines, the three I know of are 100 words - popular with The Spanishish Museum of Words which has a $US 20,000 prize every couple of years. the there is the more traditional 1000 word staple popular in anthologies, but my favourite is 150 words or less that I learned with many other talented folks on the Redbubble art site before it stopped being a community and became a place to buy pirated artwork. It was something I enjoyed and found that these short little stories with a start middle and end were great for transitioning into comic scripts, which is what I tend to do more of these days. These stories below (and in the next couple of posts) are from those redbubble years and can be found in compilations HERE from blurb via Anne van Alkermade's murphywrite imprint. So here we go. Short sharp stories or as Mister Khan called them once: Short stories with a punchline.
PART ONE IS HERE
PART THREE IS HERE

WHEN YOU WISH UPON A STAR

I wished in a dream and dreamed in all hope and I hoped and I prayed that things wouldn’t stay the same and that one day we would meet travellers from other worlds and beyond. Now that is all subject to conjecture as a lie strapped down on an examination table in a very large spaceship somewhere near Jupiter whilst a two and a half metre , four limbed, grey skinned Alien is ready to slam a very large cylindrical probe up my butt.

 FAITH BOUND

It removed all the uneaten meals from the table and scraped the plate’s contents into containers to be used again. The food had long perished; it had been replaced with coloured blocks. The dishes were placed in the Hydro Wash. The robot performed this dutifully three times a day for the mummified crew of the Missionary vessel FAITHBOUND.
It also dressed them every morning and prepared them for the sleeping quarters every night according to the 24-hour shipboard clock. The bodies were well cared for and well preserved, the life support had been shut done eons ago. Forever waiting and serving whilst searching for Heaven amongst the wide reaches of space. Its role in reuniting its crew's bodies with their souls that had left so long ago. Then it could find what the crew used to always talk of but it thought spelt wrong. So it corrected it. Piece of mind.

THE BULLY, THE NERD and THE NERD’S MUM.
The nerdy boy thrust his groin at the bully. “What in hell are you doing nerd? I’m still gonna pound you”, the bully threatened. “My mum wrote me a note telling me how bullies like you can be defeated eventually, by kids smarter than them. Kids just like me ” The nerd replied almost triumphantly. “Show it to me idiot” The bully held out his hand, the nerd continued to thrust rather suggestively at him why rummaging in his pockets. His actions were starting to make the bully feel uneasy. The nerd handed the note to the bully, which he quickly read. The Bully walked up to the nerd and bopped him on the head and walked away laughing. “You idiot it should say, “The pen is mightier than the sword” not “The penis” – Tell your mum to learn how to type”

FLASH FICTION

Flash Fiction has a few disciplines, the three I know of are 100 words - popular with  The Spanishish Museum of Words which has a $US 20,000 prize every couple of years. the there is the more traditional 1000 word staple popular in anthologies, but my favourite is 150 words or less that I learned with many other talented folks on the Redbubble art site before it stopped being a community and became a place to buy pirated artwork. It was something I enjoyed and found that these short little stories with a start middle and end were great for transitioning into comic scripts, which is what I tend to do more of these days.
These stories below (and in the next couple of posts) are from those redbubble years and can be found in compilations HERE from blurb via Anne van Alkermade's murphywrite imprint.
So here we go. Short sharp stories or as Mister Khan called them once: Short stories with a punchline.



REMEBERANCE DAY

He’d been at the door for hours now. Just standing in the doorway with his “Army” hat he’d made so that it looked just like his dad’s. His mother was still lying on the bed sobbing uncontrollably clutching the official letter that arrived that afternoon. In a scene of subtle synchronicity, the boy saluted the sun as it set in the mid-winter sky just as his mother dropped the letter onto the floor. As of tonight the world as they knew it would take a whole new course, meanwhile, the cat went from room to room trying to get either’s attention so it could be fed.



AND THE WAY TO GO OUT.

 As he lay in the foxhole clutching it hard against his chest Corporal Todd felt a blinding chill pierce his very being when the cry went up.
“Banzai!”
He looked to his left at his comrade. It was like he was sleeping.
 He didn’t look to the right. He already made that mistake and only saw a body, no head. Both men he knew intimately through conversations he had but never considered either a good friend. It would be a lonely death. The charging Japanese were getting closer now, his last wish now as he lay shivering in fear was that the grenade he was holding would go off before he felt the oncoming bayonets.


ALL SOULS DAY

 Terry held his head in his hands as he sat on the steps leading up to the party. Tears fell from his face onto his shoeless feet and instantly disappeared. It had been two years now and nobody seemed to remember him anymore.
“I'll show them, they’ll miss me when I’m gone” he’d vainly cried. The accident had proved that. His funeral was massive and all the girls cried. Some even kept photos, for a while.
But now it was a different story. Beside his still grieving parents he never heard his name mentioned amongst his old crowd. He was stuck, he hadn’t been offered Heaven, he hadn’t been offered Hell. It was just him and his heavy head. Terry stood up and put his head under his arm and walked back through the yard to Cemetery He was wrong - popularity was fleeting. Death was eternal and lonely

TALES FROM THE LOOP

TALES FROM THE LOOP. Illustrations and text by SIMON STALENHAG

 This a gorgeous book.

A nostalgic look back at an alternative history, about growing up in the boom times of a 1980s Sweden, where, after World War 2, new technology is discovered that leads to a massive Hadron Collider being built under an area in the county's southeast, resulting in incredible machines and structures dominating the pastoral landscape. All this is seen through the eyes of a pre-teen.
 Accompanying the striking artwork is a narrative that sometimes only feathers on the picture represented to tell of deeds done, places explored along with creepy urban legends about Dinosaurs, teleporting and runaway robots that were told by an uncle of a friend of a friend while playing in the discarded hulks of the new technology.
 It ends with a melancholy note of what happens when the boom times fade and the money, men, and memories move onto some other area.

Simon Stalenhag has become an internet sensation with his artwork and when this book began a KICKSTARTER to publish an English language version it raised 300 times its initial goal.

BUY THIS BOOK.

Check out Simon Stalenhag artwork here and other books of note.

Some of the images from the book.

Poems with a Medieval bent.

I wrote these poems a few years back with the tunes Greensleeves, Over the Hills and the Three Ravens swirling around in the back of my mind. I dispensed with all the Ye, thou and thy nonsense. I'd ultimately like to see them illustrated in some form or another. Any takers?

The Jigsaw Tree

Autumn is a never kind to the Jigsaw Tree
All the pieces falling off making the image hard to see
The visage seems all set to change
Then it all falls apart
And leaves large holes where the picture used to be

 Winter is the saddest season for the Jigsaw Tree
It sits in a forest of skeletons just like a cemetery
The creatures leave
The nests all empty
 With bareness showing. only snow to cover its modesty

 Spring brings new hope to the Jigsaw Tree
The creatures all return with the bringing of the Green
The pieces start to fit together
To form a brand new picture
Only the box top is missing to reveal the final scene

 Summer is the time of the Jigsaw Tree
Its picture now complete for all the world to see
A million different pieces
Hidden from first sight
But many glances later reveal a new mystery

All the seasons cannot replace my Jigsaw Tree
 Where I painted you many times to complete my final scene
You are my missing piece that has now been replaced
By the grey stone memorial
Lying at its base.


NOTE: yeah, I know jigsaw puzzles were invented in the 18th Century, not very medieval at all but I liked it better than PUZZLE tree.

The Apple Cart

The apple cart
With its seasonal spoils
Is bouncing down the path
Young men sneak a quick hand in
To please a passing love
And small ones gather the fallen fruit
To take home to their Ma

The Hay cart
Is a busy wagon
Pulling all the chaff
To make sure all the farm beasts
can be fed during the harsh
Mothers pack the beds so children
 don’t sleep on cold hard ground

The manure cart
Is not well liked
It makes all catch their breath
As it passes through the square
But all know of its rewards
In the production of lovely roses
That fill the maiden's hair

The plague cart
Is an unwelcome guest
That greedily asks to be filled
And the villages reluctantly feed it
With their loved ones now deceased
And watch it disappear out of site
Past the apple yards

THE BAYSWATER BOYS HOME. A Dark Past

THE BAYSWATER BOYS HOME. A Dark Past

The original home rebuilt in the 1930s

When I first moved to Boronia my wife took me to one of her favourite viewing spots in the area. A clear unobstructed panorama looking east across the basin from the corner of the roundabout opposite Rainy Day Books and the Post Office. It was a clear late autumn day and the fields and mountain backdrop were green and the sky the blue you only get in the mid-afternoon. I agreed it was a stunning vista (and still is.)

Part of the view with the Home just visible

“But what was the building down there?” I asked.

 “It was the old Boys’ Home, I don’t think it has been used as one for a long time, it’s a farm or something now. Funny you don’t hear a lot about it” She said.

I had no idea there was a Boys Home in the area, I was familiar with Tally Ho and Burwood Boys home from where I grew up because many of the kids who stayed there attended schools in the area or I played sport with, and of course every teenage school boy was familiar with Turana, the place that was said you did your apprentice for Pentridge.

The No1 Home around 1950s

It wouldn’t be long before I did.

These days it is heard of more and more. Due to a State Parliamentary Inquiry and an ongoing Royal Commission.

The place I am referring to is the Salvation Army run Bayswater Boys Home established in 1896 (named thus because Bayswater was the nearest railway station) and was operating in the area for nearly one hundred years in one form or another having existed in any one of at least five locations, but - before closure - operated in mainly three sites. (a)(b)(c)These being: the oldest site, which housed Bayswater Boys' Home No 1 on The Basin-Olinda Road, and is still run by The Salvation Army as the Basin Farm or Basin Centre and is a drug and alcohol treatment centre. Home No. 2 catered for boys who could not be placed at the Salvation Army's Home in Box Hill because they were too old and judged to be 'in danger of falling into criminal tendencies because of neglect'. The No.2 Home segregated its boys from older and more serious offenders in the No.1 Home and was located on Liverpool Road where the Salvation Army Boronia Corps still operate and also the independent Laser Challenge. There were also a separate junior section Boys’ Home No.3 which was situated behind Home No.2 from 1930 until 1947 and housed boys who were not classified as 'reformatory cases' -that is not being held for any form of delinquency-. After its closure, boys were transferred back into No 1 Home, which was rebuilt and expanded in 1946. Another part of Boys Home No.2 was a Special needs home opposite No.2 and No.3 where the Basin Primary School now exists. (Refer Map)

1966 Map of the Home Sites

The Homes operated in various guises until they were closed progressively from 1980. The last, Boys’ Home No.1 by then known as the Bayswater Youth Training Centre, closed in 1986.

The homes originally commenced in response to a request by the Government of the day, for religious denominations to open homes to replace reformatories and along with the Catholic and Protestant Churches took up the challenge. They, in turn, were eventually shut down or phased out by a shift in Government policies regarding institutional care in the late 1980s. These shifts of policy also saw the closure of Kew Cottages Larundel mental asylum and many other mental hospitals and disability homes.

These types of homes were in existence for nearly a century and served a major social function but like all institution, no matter how important, whether they work in a hospital, asylum, petitionary, detention centre, an orphanage or are members of the Clergy, Police force or judiciary. There is always a way that people of power or influence can abuse their positions.

The Bayswater Boys Homes now have a documented history of serious sexual and physical abuse that can no longer be suppressed.

No.1 Home 1950s

The Home site today

During the1990s and into the new Century allegation were raised of serious physical and sexual abuse in these institutions which many victims came forward to expose the lack of accountability and duty of care by those who ran these institutions. One Senate report, the “Forgotten Australians: A report on Australians who experienced institutional or out-of-home care as children” which was released in 2004 coincided with a flurry of activity from organised religions. In 2006, the issue of Victorian state wards snowballed when the media discovered the Salvation Army, Catholic Church, and State Government had been making hundreds of secret payments to people to people making claims of

past institutional abuse. This led to The Victorian State Government’s Parliamentary Inquiry into Child Abuse Betrayal of Trust report, which was published in 2013. Prior to this report being tabled a more far-reaching Royal Commission was announced by Prime Minister Gillard in November 2012  and was tabled in the Australian Parliament, on 15 December 2017.
During these commission hearings Angela Sdrinis - whose firm has represented more than 1000 wards of the state, including 137 from Bayswater - said systemic abuse by Salvation Army staff was so severe that in some cases boys were killed or allowed to die from their injuries. (e)

It was from the Betrayal of Trust findings that it was revealed many of those bodies in charge of the institutions had no reporting guidelines for abuse by officers and vast amounts of records had been damaged by fire flood or simply disappeared. In fact,  the Salvation Army never had any procedure for self-reporting Officers during the operation of the 90 plus years of activity.

In 2009 Police reacted to claims by an ex-state ward Rod Braybon after his book  Salvation - the true story of Rod Braybon's fight for justice.(d)A harrowing recollection of his time spent at the Home during the 1950s, Mr Braybon stated three boys disappeared under mysterious circumstances. While not in the Braybon book he told police of two wards of the state who died of beatings in the 1950s and were allegedly buried in the Sugarloaf Hill area of the No.2 home.(This is the high area that separates the Salvation Army land and the Retarding Bain further down Liverpool road.) (e)(f)(g)

That same year the allegation was acted upon and were investigated by Victorian Police. They conducted a forensic investigation on the No. 2 Home site and found nothing they also interviewed former residents who said they had no knowledge of the alleged incident. No charges were laid nor prosecutions commenced over the claims.

These allegations were again brought up in the Parliamentary Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse hearing in December 2012 and the Salvation Army angrily denied it blaming the lawyers of being “false and mischievous” and that “Over time the allegations had become a matter of hearsay piled upon hearsay. The exhaustive police investigation did not find any such offence had been committed by the Salvation Army.” (h)

The buried bodies seem to have become an urban myth. Originating from the Homes themselves. This does not discount the fact that children did go missing, though runaways were common, children were not photographed or incidents recorded (i)and a number of Officers who have been brought to justice and convicted as well as those revealed as perpetrators post humorously grow with every inquiry.(j)(k)

This article by no means even remotely gives a clear picture or even pretends to be a concise history of what has happened in our area over the years but with the Royal Commissions still running more information will become available. Moreso since one important factor concerning the findings of the Victorian parliamentary inquiry Betrayal of Trust: that abuse in state-run institutions was not included in its terms of reference; this means more of the story will be told.

In 2004 and 2010 the Salvation Army made formal apologies to former children’s home residents for the abuse they suffered.

In a written statement, the Salvation Army said it would “fully co-operate with the royal commission and actively engage with individual survivors and care leaver groups”.

I do believe it would be fitting for some kind of memorial, plaque or even information board at the former sites be considered, to let our children know we are better than this now and as a tribute to those poor children who suffered, mainly because no one would listen and they couldn’t fight back.

(The Herald, 29 October 1952, p.4)

Notes Sources and suggested reading list:

(a)     It was also referred to -From the 1950s, Bayswater Boys' Home No 1 received boys on fixed sentences from Turana.       No 1 Home originally focused on farming to provide training and direction, but  expanded into a wide range of vocational training. It became known as the Bayswater Farm and Vocational Training Centre.  In 1960, it became the Bayswater Youth Training Centre.

(b)     www.findandconnect.gov.au- Bayswater Boys' Homes (1897 - 1986)

(c)     www.coxhill.com History of the Bain Chapter 6 Rick Coxhill

(d)     Salvation: the true story of Rod Braybon's fight for justice -Vikki Petraitis Jewel Pub. 2009

(e)     The Age 18 Dec 2012 Paedophile ring 'lent out boys'-Barney Swartz

(f)      Free Press Leader September 2, 2015 -Jordy Atkinson and Jesse Wray-McCann,

(g)     The Australian 4 Feb 2013 Mellisa Iaria
(g1) In a submission to a Victorian parliamentary inquiry in 2012, Brian Cherrie, who was allegedly raped and sexually abused on numerous occasions at the Box Hill home, said the Box Hill and Bayswater homes were “absolutely notorious for beatings and child rapes”.
“I personally know of two people aged in their late 60s who have lots of physical scars on their bodies from the Bayswater Boys’ Home,” Mr Currie’s submission read.
His submission also stated that he had spoken to someone who had seen a skeleton at the Bayswater home during his residence there.

(h)     http://www.salvationarmy.org.au  Media release 18 Dec 2012

(i)       www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au – Public Hearing- Case Study 33 (Day C108) a pdf download which I recommend everyone to read not only because of the witness statements but the information supplied by the Director of Performance, Regulation and Reporting of the Department of Health & Human Services, Victoria. Alan G Hall. His statements reveal truly scary record keeping relevant to the Homes.

(j)      www.abc.net.au THU OCT 08 Candice Marcus

(k)     Herald Sun Oct 25 2016 Shannon Deery

www.justice.vic.gov.au -Betrayal of Trust implementation

The Monthly August 2008

Crikey  Nov 18 2013

The Australian  Nov 13 2012

Herald Sun Dec18 2012 Mitchell Toy

http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Community_Affairs/Completed_inquiries/2004-07/inst_care/report/index

www.findandconnectwrblog.info/2015/06/a-historian-can-get-lazy/

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