simplism

NON-DREAM DREAM
We walk towards the door, which appears level with the path I slow down mid-sentence when I notice that the front door is ajar. A sense of dread. (perhaps linked to the story I was telling Frida last Saturday morning 26/2 about experiences of my childhood house being robbed consecutively and how I used to have recurring dreams about coming home to an empty house)


Perhaps we approach the door quietly, listening if anyone is still inside, and we hear men’s voices speaking in Russian deep inside, because I panic and run as fast as I can, to the other side of the street, before we are noticed and devoured by danger. I run straight to the Coates’ house, knocking on the clear glass door, the mother approaches with a drink in her hand, smirking with her mouth full as if she’s having a party in the next room and they’re telling dark jokes. She answers the door mischievously at arm’s length. I smile and ask her if I can use her phone quickly. I call the real estate agent, and anxiety builds, anticipating (like when I called Stuart on Saturday night with only 88cents of credit) the credit running out, listening to repetitive automated messages, before finally I get an answer.


I report to him urgently that someone has broken into our house and that they are violent (dangerous) and need to be removed. The man on the other end says that they will be prepared to proceed with the matter once I supply them with the arrest report and that he can’t do anything now, that I should’ve called the police first, and as I realise the mistake I’ve made, the stress returns, he questions why I was never taught that I had to do that.


There are few scenes of us standing across the road from the house, indecisive on the Ash’s council strip watching for any movement.


While I sit outside the Coates’ house, I see Mum come home, pulling up in the station wagon. She gets out, with Margaret, walking towards the house. I call out to her but she doesn’t hear me. I shout out in a hushed tone, so not to raise the alarm of the men inside, but she’s getting closer to the house still. In desperation I begin shouting for her to get away from the house, but only Margaret hears me, stopping on the lawn, shocked by the intensity of my voice, but my Mum has already entered the house stupidly, and I have to grab her by the arm and march her out, insulting her for not hearing my warning and ignorantly putting herself in extreme danger, and she apologises a little embarrassedly, thanking me cheerfully, still not realising the seriousness of the situation.


There is another memory of sitting on the grass in the backyard of the Coates’ house, where I find 3 identical kitten, white with dark spots, and my friend tells me that they are dangerous. I ignore him, talking to them, so as not to frighten them, staring at me and shifting their formation slowly. I pick one up and it starts thrashing about, clawing at my wrist, trying to get free and lunge at my head, as I lean back and to the side defensively, as the others gang up on me at the same time.


At one stage, sitting on the concrete, like a loading bay combined with an outdoor cafe seating area, next to the convenience store, there are two young men standing above us, arms crossed and necks crooked towards each other, talking in German, and I point over to my Mum, who is mid-sentence with Margaret, pursing my eyebrows to indicate the two men, and without further explanation she quietly translates their conversation in real-time, which is about us, judging us contemptuously.


Sitting out the front of the Coates’ house, night-time, which is now a brightly-lit convenience store, and I go inside, filled with young people dressed up like a Friday night on King Street, perhaps because I spot Laura (who I saw at the Friki Tiki on Saturday night before the film screening) because I approach her specifically so I can borrow her phone to call the police. She doesn’t want to lend it to me, and not because she is broke, making up an excuse, awkwardly, saying thanks instead of sorry.


I then ask Cordy in the other aisle to use his phone quickly, which he hands me without hesitation, but I realise that the criminals have sabotaged the emergency line, a strange mix of different voices digitally contorted, which I interpret as muffled laughter.


I thank him and tell him that it was no use because “they’ve fucked with the [police] line”, at which point he suggests casually that I go up to the police station. I say it’s a good idea but I don’t know where the nearest one is, and he says that it’s just up the street.


Enthusiastically with pace, I walk up Peacock Parade which is a dark, semi-industrial area, with lots of old brick warehouse fronts, and junk out the front on the sidewalk, broken wooden crates piled up against a telegraph pole, obscuring my field of vision, an illuminated sign on the other side, but standing discarded against the wall, when I hear one of the criminals screaming indignantly, running at full speed from the house, passed the bend in the road where I started at the convenience store, and I start running as fast as I can.


The short guy catches up to me, around my age, and he runs straight to the bottle shop, open like a fruit market, and picks up a bottle of red wine from the rack, and threatens me, saying that he’ll bend my arm back the wrong way with the bottle against a chopping board, or something, a hard surface but unfixed.


The police station is right next door and I suddenly make a bolt for the open doorway before he has a chance to block me off, and beat him to it, feeling invincible by passing the threshold, slowing down like a sprinter, down a narrow hall towards the shoulder-high wooden bench with a large authoritarian insignia printed on the front of it, even though there is no one manning it at that moment.