“Why do you bother? What’s the point?”

Sometimes they’re right, there is no point in washing my hair when I’m going to work tonight. Other times I know they are lying to me. I don’t know what they have to gain from it though, with me dead, then who will they torment? I can’t willingly give the voices us, I can’t give them to somebody else.

I at least know they are lying to me. Those hundreds of suicides, those are people who never learnt to cope. I can cope. I am stronger than they are. In the end, I will beat them. All the same, right now I don’t need them. Spending time with my boyfriend shouldn’t be interferred with, it’s my time. It’s my life to do with what I will. It will never belong to the voices again.

Every day, on the 9:47am bus, I saw her get on a couple of stops after me. I always got off before she did, and so I wondered where she might be going. I promised myself I would ask her, follow her at least, find out what proffession she was. I doubted she would be interested in me, a pale boy. I was almost 18, but it didn’t feel like it.

this day was different. Although the bus wasn’t overcrowded, I looked up to see her sitting next to me. I shifted guiltily, pulling down my jumper.

She spoke.

“What’s your name?” I had expected her voice to be smooth, with a sounthern accent, but instead it was clipped, with a cheery overtone.

“Uh…” I stuttered in shock, cursing to myself. “I’m, um, Jack. What’s your name?”

She smiled.

“Nice to meet you, Jack. Where are you going?” I thought this was a bit strange. My school uniform was plain enough. And wasn’t it normal for people to respond with their own name when  asked?

“Uh, school. You know, like highschool.” My voice shook. She wouldn’t bne interested in me now, I seemed too young. “I’m in year 12. Doing the suicide five.” I laughted nervously.

The woman sighed, her face somehow turning inwards and sad. “Suicide.” She repeated it to herself, over and over, her eyes getting more and more wet.

I felt uncomfortable.

Their voices shriked and carried well through the still morning air, the breathe and mine mingling in puffy white clouds. I stood silently, waiting for the bus to come. Most of my life was about waiting, waiting for calss to start, to get home, for my mom to bring home the shopping, my father to snap out of his depressive slump. Oh, what a wonderful life it was.

The rage and frustration built up inside my head. Why couldn’t she just shut up? The rest of us knew how to sit quietly on public transport. At the same time, it was unreasonable to expect her to be like the rest of us. She was obviously brain damaged. Often she talked abotu her work in a factory. Today it was putting Body Shop products in a gift bag. Regular people wouldn’t allow themselves to be degraded like that.

Or perhaps they would. I had worked at Coles over summer, boring, repeditive work. Anything to avoid thinking. Packaging useless products all day couldn’t be too bad, at least they got to talk to each other. If she was with others of her own kind, the result would be a cacophous racket, all of them speaking at once. I pictureed this for a moment, smiling wryly to myself. At least they would be happy, each in their own little works, entertaining themselves harmlessly. If only I was as simple to distract.

I shrugged off my jumper and pulled the two Ts I had been wearing off. I doubted that my date would get any further past my outer defeces. My round down-syndrome face, muddy brown eyes and mousey hair were the least of my problems. I would wear my cute singlet if it killed me. Being cold would help get rid of the fat too, burnt up for energy. My size 8 jeans were getting snug too. Aim for this winter would have to be getting down to size 6.

Mom called me from the front door. “Your date’s here.”

He was early. Quickly I tumbled my hair into a ponytail and flicked my finger through the front of it. Why did he have to be so early? I wasn’t ready. I couldn’t match his hansome face nor his well toned body. I briefly considered adding some makeup, but that had ended badly last time.

I opened my bedroom door to see him stnading there, flanked by my mother. He was just as thin as I remembered.

The girl sighed. They were talking about Shanelle’s new phone. She wished that they would get over it already. The girl’s jealousy grew. Here she was in her second-hand clothes, with her old brick mobile, and they were complaining that it was so expensive to go out places. It was absurd. And more than that it wasn’t fair.

If the girl had had a job, money matters wouldn’t have improved. Any spare cash she had would go into the ‘shopping fund’. Sal had to provide food, and the money her father left after drinking was paltry. Paltry, now that was a nice word. The girl let her thoughts drift off and settled into the flow of beautiful words in her mind.

“Cellar door.” She wasn’t sure what the attraction acctually was there, but Donnie Darko made it stick in her mind. The girl reminiced about the movie. That wonderful bunny-rabbit. Sometimes she wished she had one of her own, some tangible reason why she was mad. The quiet voices in her head, which often argued with her, never manifested into anything more sinister. She didn’t need them to tell her that life was crap and not worth living.

“Yeah, and, it like, totally cared me the other day. It was, like, exploding off the table.”

Shannelle shook herself and made buzzing noises. Yeah, sure thought the girl, and I’M the crazy one. She wished there was something better to do, like read or something, but that would be frowned upon. She couldn’t afford to be caught now, so close to her goal. Being a loner was an excellent way to get noticed, better to try and blend in with the crowd. The girl didn’t need these people’s respect, she just needed the cover their ‘friendship’ provided.

The others laughed. “Hey Shannelle, do that again, I think Hadyn missed it.”

Shannelle squealed pircingly, twisting in her seat. “Where is he? I want to see him.”

The girl muttereed, “Probably out in la-la land with the rest of you dumb numbskulls.”

“What did you say? Isn’t he cute? I just want to hug him right now, he’s so adorable…” Shannelle rambled on in thie vien for a while, while the girl made ‘mmming’ noises. These people didn’t realise the value of peace and quiet. The bell rang, putting a merciful end to the stream.

“Catch yous.”

“Yeah, see ya,” replied the girl dutifully. She had music now, with the rest of the metalheads. She doubted there would be a chance to actually practice though.

I was an organically grown cotton seed which escaped being crushed by the mill (how I escaped… that is another story). As a young one, I was separated from my beloved mother and put into a feed mix. Being a smart seed, I could identify chaff, cotton seed meal, molasses and oats in my surrounds. As part of this mix I was sold to a farmer, who fed me to his herd of beef cattle to fatten them for the table.

The feed was poured into a trough and a cow licked me up and chewed me briefly in her mouth. I was mixed with saliva and incorporated into a bolus. I caught a flash of pearly whites before being swallowed. Peristalsis pushed me down the oesophagus, by my counts nearly a metre long, to the rumen, a huge vat inhabited by an anaerobic bacteria and protozoa which began to digest my faithful companions, the chaff fibers. I saw other victims of the cow’s herbaceous appetite: chicken feathers – looking very bedraggled -, bone meal, fish meal and soybean meal.

The cow must have had a drink then, because litres and litres of water poured in on top of us. I heard from the grapevine, that cows drink up to 100 litres of water per day. Right at that moment it felt like 400 litres. After stewing for a little while we were regurgitated up to the mouth. Because we were a big mass of material passing from the largest compartment – the rumen – into the smallest compartment – the reticulum – we stimulated regurgitation.

The massive molars of the cow’s mouth chewed us as “cud”. This time I observed 32 teeth, 8 in the front of the lower jaw and 12 each at the back of the upper and lower jaws. I was re-swallowed into the rumen and reticulum. In the rumen the resident 500’000 billion bacteria formed essential amino acids from nitrogen and synthesized the B-vitamins the cow needed. The micro-organisms’ waste products, being volatile fatty acids, were absorbed by the rumen walls, which had villi to maximize the surface area available for absorption. I appreciated but could not share the tender symbiotic relationship between the micro-organisms and their cow. Instead I narrowly escaped having my shell crushed by their rumination!

I saw that the reticulum had tiny pockets in its walls, looking like the honey comb which was stored next to my bag on the store shelf. On the floor of the reticulum I noticed a large fencing nail, the missing key to the shed door – she was obviously a house cow – and a granite stone. I hoped that these items would not puncture the reticulum wall. This would be very dangerous for her because she could get peritonitis or even an injury to the nearby heart or diaphragm.

This time I moved on to explore the omasum where I’d say about 65% of the water was absorbed into the cow’s body, together with electrolytes such as potassium and sodium and the remaining fatty acids. The atmosphere was distinctly drier. The walls, floor and ceiling of the omasum looked like the pages of the receipt book I had seen in the store when I was purchased.

I entered the true stomach, the abomasum. I wasn’t sure why it was called the true stomach, as it looked similar to the omasum I had already passed through. But then the walls and duct openings of the abomasum started to spray in digestive juices which included enzymes and hydrochloric acid and I was churned around. The protein and starch of my deceased friends, the crushed cotton seeds, were digested there by enzymes such as pepsin. The micro-organisms that travelled with me from the rumen certainly could not survive in the pH of 2.5 and were given a rumbling requiem before being broken down into peptides. The acid was trying to get through my defensive shell but before it could I was sent to the small intestine.

After passing through these four chambers of the stomach I entered into the small intestine and was once again pushed by peristalsis and was acted on by digestive juices secreted by the pancreas, liver and intestinal wall. All that was left of my companions, was starch, turned into glucose, and complex fats, turned into fatty acids. The pH level rose to 7 or 8 and my shell was saved from almost certain destruction. The small intestine I would estimate to be 40 metres long, in the lower part of which absorption occurred. It was as though the intestinal wall reached out with fingers to draw in the nutrients.

I met some interesting bacteria living in the large intestine whose work it was to digest any remaining foodstuffs. Further absorption also occurred here. While I was passing through the colon I ruminated for quite some time about my experience before I realized that my tough shell had kept me safe through all of the chemical and physical processes of a very rough ride. I survived and passed out as part of a cow pat.

“Plop!”

My journey had exhausted me, but not so much as to prevent my putting down roots and growing into a fine cotton plant with many seeds of my own. I live to this day in quiet corner of a farmer’s pasture.

I wrote this for yaer 11 biology. It was actually quite fun.

I put on my skirt, enjoying the feeling on my legs. Next, my black v-neck, with the short sleeves displaying the tattoos running down my arm muscles. Then, I slipped on my shoes. Heavy dark lines ‘round my eyes, then a touch of red lip-gloss. On with the cloak and wings… an evil, gothic fairy!

Thredbo Mountain Biking

I strapped on my helmet, bracing myself for the ride down the mountain. I hadn’t bothered with the full pressure bodysuit, but I regretted it now, facing the unforgiving slope. I looked over at mom, wondering whether she too was nervous. Didn’t matter, we would try our best. Black Diamond – No guts, no glory.

A writing task that I did in year 11, such a long time ago now…

Now, don’t get me wrong, they are a great bunch of kids in 9H. But trying to teach them is like talking to a brick wall. Literally. They turn their backs when I come in, they talk so loudly that you can’t even hear the lovely classical music I put on to assist their learning, that was something suggested by my teaching manual in college.

Nothing there had prepared me for this. The practice classes I had taken in my second year had all been quiet, well-behaved and willing to learn. Older teachers had sometimes sniggered at my light-hearted methods, telling the kids how well they had done etc etc, but it had worked in practice. 9H was going to take stronger stuff than that though.

Seating plans never worked with them, not the regular ones anyway. The nice kids, the ones who wanted to learn all sat up the front. You couldn’t put them next to the rat-bags of the class, freedom of learning and all that. Parents would complain about their little precious not being able to study his English in peace.

Other ideas I have tried included doing plays, letting them play the parts. Sadly, most of the girls are too blonde to even understand what is going on, let alone remember when Ophelia or Juliet are about to speak. The boys are too busy wondering who will get it on with Hamlet or Romeo, and enacting Mercuito’s death on the poor fat boy in the corner.

I know that kid will go far one day, I heard his mom on parent-teacher telling his friends how great he was at chess. Pity board games were useless commodities in this collectable-card playing world of high school. Once he gets to uni he’ll find his place. If he gets there without being suicidal or something else.

There is one girl in the class that is really quiet. I don’t think she is simple, she just doesn’t like talking with the rest of us. The others whisper about her behind her back, but I don’t think she notices. The piercings would get her suspended or thrown out by any teacher but me. I think they look kinda cool. At least she has something individual about her, unlike the rest of the jocks in the class. She and the fat kid are always spending time together too, a really odd combo. I think.

Today, I’m going to mix them up. Each kid has to have an empty seat on each side of them, and when I run out of seats I’m going to put them in the corners. A bit like baseball. First base, one detention, second, two detentions, and so on until they get to home base. For home base, they get to go and see the vice principal. That will get a few out of the class for a while, suspensions are becoming so common. Pity they took out corporal punishment, all these rules make it hard to teach what I am supposed to. No way of enforcing peace and quiet. I noticed that they like their lunch-time though, I can take that away from them until they learn.

The garments flowed about me, their unfamiliar silky softness caressing my skin. It was so ironic how I was standing in the wind to protect the others from the invasion. I should have been enjoying my morning cup of soothing green tea about now, with my feet being massaged back into shape after the cold night on the rocks. The training for mages was difficult, but the benefits were priceless. I steadied my feet, and winced as unseen splinters popped out to provide a distracting annoyance. The bridge was old and rickety, the only place of entry into the island that was left.

The island stood in the centre of the basin, on a rocky outcrop that had been gradually formed by the waves and winds of time. Eventually the place would crumble into the ocean, at the moment it was being held up by the master spells. The view was breathtaking from the centre of the bridge, green vines spiralling downward from the edges of the island, and the outflow of water into the surrounding lake.

I leant over the edge, rocking the bridge further. I could see my fellow students and the enemy. Whatever had been my luck to be out here I didn’t know. I was new, this would really stretch my abilities. I had watched all the other attempted invasions, and the mages who had become famous in repelling them. The magics they used were far from what I knew. This test would be the breaker of me.