#huntingsunrise

[wisatabandungutara]

by. @irva_herliyanty morning gaes... Sapaan hangat buat para pemburu sunrise... ❤ ... #sunrise #gunungputri #gegerbintangmatahari #pemburusunrise #huntingsunrise #hiking #camping #cityview #wisatabandungutara #nature #tourism #wonderfulindonesia #ayodolan #keluarbentar #jelajah #jelajahbandung #jarambahbandung #aipfman (at Gunung Putri,,Lembang,Bandung) https://www.instagram.com/p/CBmYUrpJsV7/?igshid=1nzym3tie6yht

[ecotone99]

[MF] The Sheriff

This story was longlisted for the Australian Writer's Centre "Furious Fiction" competition for May, 2020.

--

Five o’clock shadow. Rabbit fur hat. Flannel shirt. Gun holster. Snakeskin boots, with brand-new spurs that clanked as he climbed down from his horse outside the old corner store in town.

People stared at him as he walked past, the five-pointed star on his chest winking in the bronze sunrise.

Let them look, the stranger thought, chewing the straw in his mouth and clank, clank, clanking off the edge of the road. The doors splayed wide as he entered, and the shopkeep paused, one eye on the man’s face, another on the six-shooter in the holster slung just underneath the belt.

“I don’t want any trouble,” the shopkeeper tried with little success to keep the quavering note from his voice.

“Ain’t gon’ get none from me,” said the stranger, throwing a bag of peanuts on the counter, “Say, you know where a man can get a decent drink in this here town?”

“Uh, sure,” said the shopkeep, “There’s the tavern, up the road. Just next to the sheriff’s department.”

The stranger smiled, and switched the straw from one side of his mouth to the other. “Why thank ‘ee kindly,” he said, “I happen to be headin’ that way as it is. Keep the change,” he added, tossing a series of coins onto the counter. The shopkeeper stared as the stranger strutted from the store.

Taking his horse by the reins, the stranger walked with deliberate calm down to the tavern. Next to it was the sheriff’s department. He thought to wet his whistle before presenting himself there, but thought better of it. There would be plenty of time for celebrating later. He would need a drink for his horse, though.

The barkeep had much the same reaction as the shopkeeper had. The ol’ sheriff musta done things different, he thought.

“I need a pail o’ water for my horse out there,” he said. The barkeep said nothing, but fetched it as requested. None too friendly round here, are they? The new Sheriff thought.

He left the pail out for his horse, then patted him on the neck and wandered, bow-legged, into the Sheriff department.

No sooner had the bell on the door chimed than he heard a whoa there, hands up! And the sound of five or more guns being pulled on him.

“Easy there, boys,” the new sheriff said, “Heard y’all needed a replacement Sheriff?”

One of the officers was speaking into a radio, muttering something about backup. Another had rushed outside and checked on the horse, and came back saying “That’s the one sir, matches the branding of the call from the Mackenzie's farm we received yesterday.”

A man was frantically taking notes on his laptop, and another man with a Sheriff’s badge came out. A real badge. Black, with a silver lining.

“What the hell do you think you’re playing at, son?” he said, as he took the toy revolver from the holster.

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[ecotone99]

[MF] Roadside

The apron of the driveway met the roadside with a sheer abruptness that made it seem as though the cracks in it were created by force and not age. I sat next to it, drawing silently with a stick held in my non-dominant hand. Anyone looking at me that day would have assumed I was a sullen boy, perhaps with a slightly broken home or at very least not a well off one. My shirt was far too big for me, old and worn with stains where the pigment had washed out. My shoes were caked in a fine layer of mud and held a pair of odd socks that were probably on the high end of an acceptable number of days of continuous wear.

My mother wasn’t due home for at least another two hours, and my suburb didn’t have much in the way of traffic after school. I’d usually potter around the streets until I got hungry, then make my way home for a snack. Today, though, I was waiting for someone.

I didn’t even notice her approach. I was so intrigued by the icons and imagined stories at the end of my stick that it wasn’t until her shadow crossed my vision that I looked up.

Penny stared sullenly at me, the lemon yellow of her dress spoiled by patches of muck that had dried out. Her shoes, usually pristine, were scuffed and grubby. Her hands were the only thing clean about her, those having been washed thoroughly by the nurses at the school after the incident at lunchtime.

“Hi Penny,” I said.

“Hi,” she offered back, obviously not happy to see me.

“I brought you something,” I said, and pulled my backpack toward me. She stepped back, and I didn't blame her. Her eyes lit up when I pulled out the ribbon she usually wore in her hair, slightly damp but otherwise clean. I held it out to her.

“I saw it left in that mud puddle when you ran off.” I said, “After the boys were splashing you, I mean. I thought you might want it back, so I washed it for you.”

Penny took it gently, and held it with both hands. She stared at me then, as though she was trying to see if I was going to do something more. To mock her, or somehow make her horrible day even worse. She decided I probably wasn’t going to do that.

“Thank you,” she said.

As she wandered down the street, I watched her walk to her house around the corner. Once she was out of sight, I pulled off the dirty shirt of dad’s that I’d stolen, along with my spare pair of runners and the socks I’d pulled from the dirty clothes pile. I reached into my bag again and got out the clean clothes I’d stashed there, and pulled them on as fast as I could.

That’s better, I thought, as I walked towards home.

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[ecotone99]

[SP] It had rained again

It had rained again.

He’d woken in the middle of the night, the staccato patter on the uninsulated tin roof penetrating the fog of sleep. He had a vague memory of having rolled over, exasperated at the realisation of what the next day would bring.

He stood staring out at the makeshift garden. Three racks of plants, with the broader leafed and more robust varieties above, less sunlight dependent and smaller plants beneath. A sickly grey-green on the best of days, the leaves were covered in a thin layer of muck brought by the previous night’s downpour.

Sighing, he pulled on a set of weathered gloves, and moved over to one corner. He reached, grabbed the leaf of a rhubarb plant, and methodically wiped the surface free of mud. He did the same for the next leaf, and the next. When that plant was done, he moved on.

His crops were smaller each month, and he knew the day would come where he could no longer sustain himself through the plantation he had. Acidity, ammonia and other toxicity in the soil was building up too fast for the vegetation to drain it away, and the pall on the foliage suggested the plants were slowly suffocating, starved for nutrients. The rain didn’t help. It was as bad as the soil, though it did save him watering them.

He wiped his brow with the back of his hand, taking care not to get the dirty gloves anywhere near his mouth. Humid. The cloying damp was at least a change from the musty heat of the last month.

The sounds of laughter that used to drift over the next door fences had long gone. Maybe it had been a night of quiet stories, and then a large dose of medicine. Maybe they’d gone walking through the haze, hoping to find some haven or other. Sooner or later, they all left.

He was lasting a lot longer than most, as through sheer dumb luck he’d had a flatshare with a large backyard, a mess of shelving in the garage, and a green thumb. Three months earlier and he'd been in a thirty-six square metre apartment. Not a lot of agricultural space there.

It had started while he’d been at the old place. These things take time to build up, then they happen all at once. The fires that swept across every continent on the globe. The mass of volcanic activity. A melted glacier full of ancient gas bubbles, each of them as noxious as the last, and then the dust storms started.

He moved to the planters against the back wall, stepping over the small wet mound that had formed behind him as he’d cleaned. The mess would have annoyed his flatmates, but they were gone. He wondered idly if they’d found what they’d been looking for. Shelter, or something like it.

He stood up to stretch, and stared up at the sky, wiping sweat from his brow. It was a hazy blue, for the first time in months. At least after the rain had collected all the floating particulates, the air outside would be safer to breathe. For a time.

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