Red Ochre Rising

June 2020 longlisted bath Flash Fiction award.
August 2020 Longlisted (no shortlist) Reflex Fiction Flash Fiction Competition.

I’m roadkill on red earth. Car is three metres away, wheels in the air.

Outback stars powder the fading blackcurrant sky.  

My mouth’s a ridge of broken teeth and my leg dead as butcher’s meat.

Feral pigs and dingoes howl in the heartbeat of the night. I’m dinner on a dirt road plate. My wife’s asleep at home, but I see her here in the emptiness. Hear her.

‘Don’t drive all that way. Fly.’

Didn’t listen. Never do, she’d say.   

Minutes pass. Hours. Weeks. I don’t know, time is lost and broken.

I holler at a passing truck, but the wheels spit grit and the driver’s blind to me. It shrinks to a dot. I whimper.

Hazy apricot sunrise, sweat beading down my back. One dim headlight pulls up. A pile of blokes dark as charcoal stands over me.   

‘What happened, brother?’

I point to my leg. To my tumbled 4x4.

‘You had a wobble-up. You’ll be right.’

‘Am-bu-lance.’ I croak.

‘Out of range, bro.’

They slide me into their tray-top ute next to a mottled cattle dog.

‘He’s friendly, don’t worry.’

Dog slobbers me, tongue warm and meaty.

Engine starts, sounds like a screeching bat. Sheets of pain hammer my leg and private parts. Guys hop in the back with me and the hound. A fella with messy curls and an AC/DC t-shirt rests his hand on my shoulder. ‘I’m Col,’ he says. The warmth of his body is like a tiny campfire. ‘Hospital’s not too far, bro. We’ll speed all the way.’

‘Hospital’s not too far, bro. We’ll speed all the way.’

I half lift my index finger and point to the dawn. Sun ball to the left. Moon ball to the right. The sky is stoking an amber fire. Not many people die watching something as pretty. Col says.

‘Our mobs name for the sun is Walu. She’s decorating herself with red ochre right now. When she’s painted, Walu lights a stringybark tree, then carries it west across the sky so bright it lights up country. When Walu stumps the stringybark out, daytime’s finished.’

‘The sun is a woman?’

‘Old lady.’

I imagine her. Old sun lady, a soaring torch of flames. Sparks crackling. Embers in her skin. Hair blazing. Eyes seven shades of fire. One is the startling red at emergency. As the hospital trolley flies down corridors and the lights are bright as lightning, I hear my wife saying, ‘Idiot. You’re going to be alright.’