Bremer's Edge

Trigger warnings:

Depiction of child drowning, dead cat burning, menstruation and violence. Also swearing and mental health themes.

Part I: 1980

It was Sunday. Ingrid leafed through her Social Studies textbook, lying on her stomach on the mat as the fan swung its head from left to right and back again, like it was saying a huge parental NO!

Chloe, arms stretched out, stared at the ceiling. The transistor radio played the cricket.

“Hey, Chloe?”

“Poor old Fizz,” Chloe answered. “He didn’t hurt anyone.”

Ingrid rolled her eyes. Chloe was two years younger than her, but she liked her. “Is there something better on the radio? Maybe some music?”

Chloe turned and reached toward the timber floor. As she lifted the radio, the battery fell out of the back and rolled. Ingrid caught it with her finger.

Chloe took back the battery and swiveled the ribbed plastic thumbwheel.

...And Langley is coming around the turn, look at that horse go...

Bored Ingrid tapped the textbook and pointed to a hand-drawn illustration of a Viking long ship, its front a curved dragon spectacle, its center a light. “Chlo, I got an idea.”

Chloe quickly circled in to read the caption: “The deceased leader was placed upon a funeral pyre within his ship and set adrift.” She paused. “Returning his spirit to the elements.”

Chloe held a blank face. Ingrid's brother Bill was right she was a dizzy blonde.

“Hey Chlo,” Ingrid prodded, “poor old Fizz. Well, he was a hero. So cute, wasn't he? Remember how he would walk through the bush with that funny hiss like my Uncle Barry had—you know, the one who smoked too much.”

Ingrid rolled to her side, propping her head up with her hand. “Chlo, we could do that for Fizz.”

Chloe raised her voice. “What are you talking about?”

Just then her mother came to the bedroom door, crossing her arms. “How are you two going?”

She scanned them. The open textbook was a good sign. “Ingrid, are you doing some homework?”

Ingrid looked down and nodded.

The mother turned to Chloe. “Nice to see a smile on that face again.” She paused. “Chlo, it was just a feral. David Maxwell put it out of its misery… Anyway, girls, seeing that you're settled in, I will be going out."

The girls held their breath until the footsteps faded back down the hall, the front door shut, and the car engine sounded.

Ingrid leaned in closer. “Well? Are we doing it or what?”

Chloe looked at the dragon ship, then back to Ingrid. “You mean do that to Fizz?”

“We have to,” Ingrid insisted.

“Right,” Ingrid said, taking charge. “Check the sink.”

They scurried into the kitchen.

“Got it!” Chloe yelled.

“Good. Bring it!” Ingrid yanked open the drawer. “Clothesline. Yes. And—voila!” She swung a coil of bendy wire.

Out in the backyard, the piled-up garbage held two spaghetti, one bean, and a few dented dog-food cans.

“Get some sticks, Chlo! About this long—”

They raced to the property line, ducking straight through the barbed-wire fence. Ingrid spotted a few long branches. Chloe scrambled to grab them. Working together, they tied the bundle tight, stuck the limp cat in the box, and readied the cargo on the back of Chloe’s bike.

Ingrid rode fast, her long, muscled legs powerfully pushing the pedals. Chloe's smaller wheels wobbled under the weight of the box and sticks strapped to her rear rack.

"Hurry!" Ingrid yelled, glancing back around her backpack. She knew they’d never make it back before her mum returned and cracked a doozy.

"Woo!" Ingrid shrieked, tearing her hands off the handlebars as the bike gained speed down the hill. Her dark hair flung wildly toward the massive, open sky. Ingrid looked different today—her shoulders broader, her movements softer. Then Chloe caught Ingrid’s thrill and loosened her fingers, letting out a wild yell of her own. "Yahoo! Go!"

They slogged it up the next rise.

"Get off the road!" Ingrid ordered, back-pedaling her own coaster brake. Obeying, Chloe jammed on her brakes, slamming her foot into the dirt as her bike arced sideways. Then both girls closed their fists and pumped the air. A deafening reply of HONK-HONK tore into their bodies as the semi roared past, spraying a volley of gravel over Ingrid.

Instead of ducking, Ingrid just danced in the swirling wind, waving her arms and swinging her hips. Chloe froze. Ingrid’s hips were tilting in their new, unfamiliar, as those two small lumps wobbled under her faded T-shirt. Chloe took off.

Part II: The Warning Shot

Dave crushed his beer can with his bare hand as he watched from his veranda. "What are those little bitches up to today?" he muttered, spotting Chloe's overloaded bicycle and the Jones girl’s stuffed backpack moving in the distance.

He remembered that night so vividly. He just didn't like them; they both were no-good big mouths, told his business, to everyone. They’d lain in the long grass near the bridge. He’d been driving home from the pub, furious because his missus had just up and left him. Then, he saw something on the road. It glittered.

"Hello, what do we have here?" he’d slurred.

He’d slammed on the brakes, left the engine running, and grabbed his torch from the glove box. Stumbling onto the road, he slammed the door hard. A purse out here would have a story. Grim things happen; ladies go missing. But as he bent down, the purse moved an inch. Dave scratched his head—he'd only had a few beers, right? He bent down to pick it up again, and this time it moved a good four inches, followed by sudden cackling from the ditch.

He shone his torch and blasted the culprits with the light. The Jones girl—she hung her head and hid something, making him feel instantly uneasy. Bad news, your family, he muttered to Ingrid. He moved the beam. "Does your mother know you're out, Chloe?"

He’d waited for Chloe to answer. She swallowed hard. "Mum and Dad are at prayer meeting."

Dave lost his temper. Such stupid girls. "Get in the truck."

Even today, the memory made him boil, he ran out the back with his dog scrambling at his heels, and grabbed his shotgun. He aimed into the distance and fired straight at the tree line to ward the girls off.

Part III: Blood and Tinder

As the shot rang out, Ingrid felt confused. Chloe’s eyes had already glazed over. Her voice came as a soft patter of madness without a leash as she twirled her hair and tripped over her own feet.

"Dad said, that night David brought us home—you know, the purse time..." She gave a shrill, short laugh. "...that you were the same trouble as your sister. Dad said he wasn't the same since Peggy left."

“High five,” Ingrid said.

They shoved their bikes, the track choked with long grass up to their hips. Chloe went ahead. Then, a cramp pulled deeply within Ingrid. She pressed a hand against her stomach.

“Chlo, put our bikes here,” she said urgently, pointing to a camouflaged low canopy of lantana tangled between the gums and eucalyptus.

As Ingrid straightened up, another cramp threw her completely off balance. She dropped her canvas backpack. Sensing Chloe watching—and knowing Chloe probably didn't understand—made Ingrid feel fiercely protective, but angry.

She yanked the old plastic soft drink bottle from the backpack's side pocket, guzzling the water down to dull the pain was a good idea, but it was also a clever distraction. She could feel the heavy, sticky sensation on the inside of her thighs, her jeans sticking to her skin as they grew soggy, soaking up the blood.

She held up the bottle. “Drink,” she commanded.

Muddled, Chloe gulped from the same bottle.

“And get me some dry stuff," Ingrid ordered, gesturing toward the trees. "We ain’t got time. Git!”

Ingrid watched her childhood friend run off. Ingrid hadn’t meant to snap. She shook. Her fingers fumbled as she untied the bundle of sticks. She laid four of them out in a rectangle. She bound the corners in a tight, crisscross motion, pulling the clothesline taut and holding it fast between her teeth the way her older brother Andrew had showed her, flicked opened her pocketknife and cut the length.

Chloe ran frantic, frightened and lost. Feverishly, she gathered small sticks, leaves, pin needles and used a stick to scrape up dried Scotch thistle leaves.

Ingrid brushed away a fly, she'd finished thatching the base and was wrapping wire around the tin cans on the underside of the raft just as Chloe reappeared.

She swallowed hard, squinting up at Chloe’s dirty, tear-stained face. Chloe's chin set stubborn and thick. She stomped her foot and thrust the tinder and Scotch thistle leaves right under Ingrid’s nose, defiantly sniffing the stale air around her.

“You stink, Ingrid!”

Ingrid’s eyes dropped lower. “I’ve got my whosits.”

Chloe frowned. “What’s the whosits?”

“My period, Chloe.”

“Huh?” Chloe exclaimed.

Ingrid’s voice went up an octave. “You don’t know?”

Now, her inner commando fully revealed herself. “That does it!” She pointed aggressively at the bed of the raft. “Put half the dry stuff there Chloe.”

Chloe cringed and hesitated, about to ask a question, but Ingrid cut her off. “Doesn’t matter! A dead cat can’t feel prickles, just do it!”

As Ingrid walked away with the rag and the bottle of metho, Chloe muttered under her breath, “Yes, Madame Cluck-Cluck. Next time I’ll put my hand up to ask…”

She threw the last words out loudly, letting them ring across the clearing. “…Bitch… Bitch… Bitch!” she spat. She thrust the tinder furiously onto the bed of the raft, dragged the cat out of the squished box, and loaded it right on top, then piled the rest of the debris over the body.

Ingrid stiffened. Hearing the curse, she whipped around and yelled back, “If I’m a bitch, you’re a little crybaby!”

Part III: The River Calls

Without a word, Ingrid and Chloe lifted the shaky frame together, Ingrid taking the brunt of the wood and the front tin cans on her shoulders, Chloe holding the tail like bike handlebars. Ingrid’s cheek burned beneath a red mark the exact size of Chloe’s hand. Chloe’s extended arms were raked with deep nail scratches, and a tiny trickle of blood pooled where a clump of hair had been yanked clean from her scalp.

In unison, wading ankle-deep into the murky edge, they lowered the raft onto the water’s surface, pointing its nose toward the deep channel.

Deaf to my Good Afternoon, Ingrid ordered, “Get back, Chlo!”

As Chloe scrambled, Ingrid unscrewed the plastic bottle, splashing the metho generously over the dry tinder and Fizz. She pulled the damp hanky from her training bra, soaked it in the remaining spirits, and jammed it firmly into the sticks at the back of the raft like a fuse.

She paused, leaning down to scrub her hands in the creek and scooped up a handful of thick river mud, smearing it deliberately over her bloodstain. Standing at arm's length, she struck a match and threw it. It blew out in the draft. She paused, thought, then took a step closer, struck a second match, and touched the hanky.

Whoosh.

A blinding sheet of blue light exploded. The backdraft of heat curled her eyelashes. Sheltering her face, she turned and fell into the shallow water, scrambling onto her haunches, and retreating toward the bank.

Chloe began to dance, her bare feet. “We’re Vikings! Fizz the leader is free! We did it, Ing!”

She grabbed her best friend’s muddied hands, and together they dosey-doed—totally lost in the joy of their ceremony.

Just behind them, the raft caught a cross-current, tilted, and rammed itself hard into a mud bank at the creek bend. A sudden cool breeze fanned the blaze and it jumped into the dry, overhanging leaves, twisting to send walls of flame roaring through the dry grass and into the undergrowth.

Part IV: Into the Current

Chloe saw it and ran. She already knew Ingrid’s words, mouthing them as they left Ingrid's lips: “Don’t go in, Chloe!”

But she was already stripped to her full-piece bather, as angry, flames radiated near the bank.

She hit the water. Knee-deep. She hesitated, watching the edge of the creek surge faster than before. “Run-offs,” she muttered.

Then waist-deep. The water became a brutal, crushing weight. In front of her, the bushfire rumbled like wind lifting galvanized iron. Hidden roots tore and tripped her ankles. Sharp rocks dug into her feet. A falling tree branch whammed into her, cutting and tearing the flesh of her shoulder.

“Ahh!” Chloe wailed. She clutched the wound, watching her blood thin like red cordial, vanishing into the sarsaparilla current. Crybaby, the word mocked her again. No time to be a sissy. Dettol tonight, she thought, right in front of Ingrid and her little tits.

Up to her chest now. Chloe turned her back to Ingrid's shouting. Chloe had to dive. Get away from her.

She ducked under. The sound stopped in her ears. It was hollow there. Ancient. A shiver ran up her spine. Murky leaves coagulated, sticking to her skin. Something slimy and alive wrapped around her. She thought of Ingrid and kicked her leg hard. Flung off, the reptile swept ahead, a helpless shadow spun into the dark.

The creek awoke again saying, I am surprised, almost endeared. Oh, my little Queen of Heaven, my little Queen of Hell felt her own power. How nice, she did not flinch?

Chloe shot sideways, banging into a submerged car door. Stunned, she felt frail, trapped plastic flap furiously to and fro around her thigh. Past swimming drills kicked in—the diving, the different strokes, the hard push off the pool wall with her blue-tint goggles on. She locked into a breaststroke. She controlled the width of the water, moving as the crow flies.

Buoyant, drifting, she enjoyed my silence. Until I gave a thin whisper.

Chloe. Chloe.

She heard me. She curled and stopped for a brief, tight moment. She looked not once, but twice behind her. Twice! And then she paused. As if she were stirred—a young feminine force soon to be caged, wanting to conquer an old, old, old lady like me.

Chloe snapped alert.

I recoiled. Too soon, perhaps? I supposed.

Above her, she saw the obscure outline of the bank and the smudgy, etheric orange rectangle of fire.

She jammed her legs against a boulder and exploded through the surface, inhaling loudly, an arm's length from the stuck raft.

The fire at the front had died down. Chloe took a fast, deep breath and dived beneath the belly of the raft. Underwater, she planted her back against another boulder, bracing tight against the submerged roots of a gum tree. She aimed and delivered a massive kick.

Above, the burning craft unlocked, it shifted, pointing out toward two o’clock, but its front corner dipped heavily.

Chloe surfaced. “It’s lost a can!” Chloe wailed. She bobbed her head the focused, looking past the bend where the main current surged. Out there, layers of bone- everything waiting to burn up.

I whispered sweetly. Oh, careless Chloe, I said. You have a big choice, don’t you? Burn the house down and Mum and Dad find out, or come with me.

Chloe concluded she must push the raft into the middle; the current would swallow it. She knew where the undertow hid; you could see it in the way the surface rippled and tipped in three directions at once. She had almost been sucked into that trap before, but she believed: just go under and instantly dovetail the centrifuge.

It failed.

She freestyled furiously. She struggled and grabbed a gasp of air, to say goodbye one last time to the sun and the blue sky. Then her feet were pulled down. Her little poppet hands disappeared as her thighs and hips spiraled and twisted like Alice falling, dragged violently into my pure watery vortex over the creek floor and Bang! Her head smashed against a rock.

I said, You need and want to let go, Chloe, don't you?

Remember when I visited you in your dreams.

Your mother found you in your nightie, sleepwalking down the road toward me. I called you then, but your mother was awake that night to pull you back. Now, she is somewhere else, delivering ironing and catching the latest church gossip. My bet she feels a bit edgy, doesn't she? Like she should go home to you. But she never listens to herself. Or to you, for that matter, does she, Chloe?

Part V: The Aftermath

Meanwhile, poor Ingrid limped and was rambling to herself. It was her fault, you know. She knew it, too. It was her taunting that had sent Chloe into the water.

Now, the winds were circling around her like a gossiping town. From every direction, the fire found its own tempo—sometimes a deep, hollow drum; other times, a staccato flute. And then, the snarl of an awakened, torrid pulse. She steadied herself between two screaming trees.

“What the fuck is that?”

Dave straddled the fence, using his shovel like a pole vault, and ran. Ahead, the heavy black smoke crested into a golden crown—about to topple.

The hot air stone-walled him. It choked his breath, and the roar shook the soles of his boots.

Ingrid stood paralyzed between two trunks, their tops screaming with flame. Her clothes were tattered, her jeans soaked through with mud and dark, blooming blood.

Dave dropped the shovel and bolted. He slammed into her, throwing her violently away from the furnace. Ingrid hit the dirt, rolling in agony.

Dave towered over her, his chest heaving. “Where is she?”

Ingrid bellowed a cry, her face contorted, and pointed a trembling hand toward the creek.