A striped air bed repaired with aged tyre patches sank slowly beneath Susan in the middle of the pool, and she rolled off it, squinting into the sunlight rafting on the water.  She swam to the edge and began mining corn chips from the packet on the tiles, smiling at Lilian as the latter crossed the grass toward her in brief black underwear, pale hair knotted atop her head, frowning at the pheasants dozing like outlandish teapot cozies in their small, sun-struck conclave.  Dragging the lounge closer to the pool, she took out her cigarettes and sat down.  Susan was reminded by its proximity of something and smiled again.

“Did you hear about Rachelle the other night?  One of the bar girls said the whole place saw her having it away with William by the pool.  I was downstairs... I miss everything.”  

Nodding briefly, Lilian lifted a hand to shade her eyes.

“Don’t take it personally... Lamb and that crackhead stalker.  That shit’s not anything.”  Susan felt a warm, discomforting conclusion burning in her cheeks while she hauled out and sat on the stone, kicking her calves through the water.  “He’s into this whole other piece.”  Her companion looked over at her with an obscurely mocking expression.  "I’m not saying it’s not weird.... he doesn’t usually stop to like, emote on his way up a skirt.”
“He's... it's nothing." Susan sighed, rolling up the bag of chips and smoothing the plastic across her leg.  "He does it to everyone.  We get on alright, but there’s... I don't know... so much...”
“Irregularity?” Lilian suggested.  “Once you go freak, you don't go back, but then you’re stuck with all the fucking freaks in freakytown.  Lucky the sex is great, because there's no fucking utilities." she added, dropping her chin as she frowned at the house.  “But fuck it... I'm not gonna sell you someone who cage-fights for drug money.”  Susan’s mouth fell open.  “Google El Resto del Mundo... that’s his cage name." Lilian smirked.  She settled back into the lounge.  “Regularity is fine... don’t sweat it.  I'll get him to quit humping your leg.”   

The notion that Lilian had taken her dismay somehow to heart crept up on Susan and she qualified it cautiously, chipping at the blue polish on her thumbnail.

“It’s not... I do like him.  He's... strangely lovely, actually.  But I don't think I should, for some reason.  I just... I don't know."
Lilian shrugged.
"Who the hell does?"


“Oh yeah... there she is, it’s the blonde...” Trent related, peering into the rear portion of the Lamb estate with field glasses as Lilian lay back on the lounge.  A stridulating cicada swung low over Josephine’s head, weaving through the air that weltered above them in a desperate attempt to elude a squad of sparrows.  She scratched at her neck where the heat worked on the crisp new fibres of her shirt collar.  “What she don’t know aint hurting her." he snorted to her silent disapproval.  "The tech guys got a wire on the beamer... they say the dark one puts her over the hood and gives it to her eight ways to fuckin Sunday.”  He waved the flies away from his face.  "Wouldn't mind a piece of that myself."  

Josephine looked up from the intercepts she had been studying as Nathaniel Shaw climbed the hill and came to a halt in the shade of the Range Rover, taking a moment to adjust his watch.  

"Shaw... Trent." she murmured, by way of introduction.  The two men looked one another over with a similar degree of distaste.
"You're..?"
"What y' might call a consultant." Trent assured him.  "Fuckin Admin, and fuckin O'Connor."  He leant out to spit onto the ground beside Shaw's calfskin derbies.  "Shiny-assed bastard.  He's the dipshit who fired off that unit that got chunked in France... unsupported, no intel... guess I called that one right.  Fuckin orangutan could've called it." he sneered to himself.
“We need an ID on the women." Josephine informed them.
"I'll take a run at both females as soon as there's a solid window.  Has there been a decision about letting the local PD in on the two plantation Does?” Shaw inquired.
“O’Connor don’t want to risk it.  They were a few weeks dead anyway, one had his head just about popped right off, the other might’ve been female but they couldn’t say from lookin at it...” Trent related from behind the binoculars.  "These assholes don't get pinched anyways.”

Josephine lifted a bottle of water to her lips, its contents heated to an unpleasant degree and tainted by the taste of plastic, closing her eyes against the glare.  

"Anything more I should know?" the newcomer asked.
“Sub One comes and goes, jumps the country on twelve different IDs, goes through the hubs then we lose him.  He's back, three to eight days later.  That's what he did in town, that's what he's doing now.  Sub Two's interactions look like buckshot at thirty metres... too many unknowns, far more than we could ever watch, so whatever he's doing is still his own business."

Shaw raised his own binoculars to his face, completing a sweep of the park with its great spread of tranquil deciduous shade and glittering pool.  Another woman appeared from behind the corner of the building, taking a seat on the grass beside the sun lounge with a bag of convenience food.  She wore a short dress in a faded cotton print over the dark, damp underwear that she had swum in and her posture devolved into careless repose.  Trent trained his scope on her.

“Who we got here?  Nice titties.”
“Resident maid.” Josephine stated, looking back to Shaw, who had finally removed his sunglasses.  She saw that his eyes were a lucky shade of dappled olive, and that he used them strategically.
"Anything worthwhile?"
"Related chatter." she admitted.
"Encrypted?"  Her hand rose to the edge of the laptop screen in an instinctive desire to close it against his inspection.
"They don't get into much on the wire and it's sanskrit when they do."
"You can read that?"  Shaw chuckled as he walked out into the sunlight, shaking his head to himself.  “I’ll be dropping updates three times a day.”  He offered his hand and she shook it without looking back at him.
“Better get your ass up and go check in. ” Trent reminded him.  “You don’t get to un-fuck shit like this.”

Shaw replaced his glasses and began checking his phone messages, condemning Trent's injunction to oblivion before heading off down the access trail toward his own concealed vehicle.  They followed him with their binoculars to his park on the verge east of the gates, the blameless ease of his admission steeped in unreality.  Almost with Shaw’s removal around the far side of the house, the red Jaguar convertible departed the drive with two of its habitués.  

"The dark one’s come casual." Trent grunted.  "Redhead always looks like some crazy shitbird, but he don’t.  Something’s up.”  Josephine lifted her glasses once more from the hood, but the Jaguar slid out of sight around a bend.

William leant back against the slim trunk of the fir he had ascended, his bare feet gripping the branch he had entrusted with his weight, and peered down from the crown of the hill where the sombre plantation trees met the scrubby wilding growth clothing its margins.  They had settled some hundred yards uphill from the party clustered about the Range Rover, having climbed to the position on foot.  In a neighbouring tree his brother found his own vantage while William surveyed their surveyors with a number of abstracted frowns and head-turns, attempting to catch what they were saying on the breeze.
“She’s right about not being able to evaluate us against a simple deviant human model.” Edward remarked.  
“Tweedle Dum thinks we’re undead beatnik homersexual dope fiends.” 
“Sounds like they're tapping your car.”  
William smiled across at him.
“Where'd you put Orb?  You're fucking lucky Frost can keep her mouth shut.”
“Her intellect defies the cognitive paucity generally attributed to females of her particular tonsorial orientation.”  
"Lo siento, no hablo pendejo."  The furniture-polish scent of the foliage beneath them was broadcast by the afternoon, lending its colour to the cicadas' song.  “Christabel found blood in the kitchen again, but she’s cool about it... I told her it was a hipster fight.”
“You're lucky too.” said Edward.
“Why?”
“If she continues to mind her own business you won't have to drive her out to the plantation.”  
“How can you be so evil on a day like this?  And fuck you about Susan... if you’ve dragged Frost back to the swamp, I get to have a girlfriend too.”  The lack of audible response annoyed him.  “A whole few weeks with you and she’s into federal heat... what’s it going to be for your six month anniversary?  Home invasion bloodbath?  Three day SWAT siege?” he complained, extricating the sleeve of his T-shirt from a snagging twig.  “You should have parted out that shitty pimp before he swung at her.”
“You should have cleared putting Opal out with me.” 
“She was about to suplex Christabel in the coolstore.  I took an executive decision.” William muttered, knowing his brother would not defend such a fundamental breach of his own hospitality.  “And you can tell that hoary trout if she darkens the fucking door again it’s chick chick boom o’clock.”
“That doesn’t get you off the hook for inviting nightcrawlers to her show.”
“I didn’t... they were Siobhan’s peeps.  It's vampiro en vampiro, chico... they're all spitting on La Rue's grave and angry dancing over her sucking up to the Prague gestapo.  Didn't you get the why no other bloodsack can ever cockblock me or tell me what the fuck to do speech down at the Moth?  I’ve been getting it for six months.”

They fell silent, watching the pair below.  Edward was puzzled by the man’s concerted interest in the rear of the house, unable to see past its gable.  William had a better angle.
“You’re not going to like this.  Frost’s gone commando by the pool.”  He looked back at Edward with a smile until the latter reached out and attempted to dislodge him, tugging the crown of the tree toward himself and threatening William with violence.  He laughed as he clung to the listing fir with both hands.  "I've seen it all before anyway."
“Avert your eyes.”
“Like I’m going to do that.”  William scooted around the tree and stood out of reach, putting his hands together and making a winding motion that hoisted a middle finger; Edward let go of the branch and it whipped back hard into his brother's face.

Trent lingered over the enticing panorama until he set down his glasses and reached for a camera case, shouldering the kit and setting off down the hill.  Josephine was forced to jog to catch him up.
“I can’t leave my post.” she complained.
“I’m gonna get myself some shots.” he chuckled.  “Some of the intel guys got a OFP website and this shit here’s gold.”  He jumped down onto the tarmac across the road from the estate.

Brushing off his jeans as he emerged from the saplings, William still chuckled to himself, staggering sideways when Edward pushed past toward the back of the unmanned vehicle.  Its twin doors proved not only unsecured but ajar; William made for the front seat, where he yanked open the glove box.  They passed a short while in their respective inquiries.

“They’ve got a trace on my car.” Edward muttered.  
“I don't know how long someone can monitor your activities before needing to throw themselves off a fucking bridge, but they must be getting close. ” William smiled.  "I thought the hot guy was sweeping our rides."
"Hand-held units won't pick up this system."  His brother appeared beside him and reached under the seat, pulling out the laptop and resting it on the floor of the foot well, where he brought up the recent files.
“Anything in the house?” 
“Nothing monitored from here.”  They sat in critical silence while Edward made progress through the data.  “They’ve got audio.” he said slowly.
“You’re shitting me.  Where?”  His companion's expression gave him a clue.  “Oh.  Ohhh...” William smirked.  "Quelle honte.  If you’re going to abuse the beamer, maybe turn the radio up first.”
“Music kills the mood.” Edward murmured, taking the computer to the rear of the vehicle.  William emitted a small shriek of horror.
"If I never hear those words again it'll be too soon.  But again, what the fuck about Opal?  I know she’s been jumping on your neck about those euroturds and their ghetto masterplan... what are you going to do when they roll in?  Let her negotiate a package?”
“What do you suggest?  A single-idiot defensive initiative?” 
“How about not playing for the evil empire just because it's paying out?"  William launched into an impassioned denunciation, condemning everyone involved with such vehemence that he did not perceive Edward shaking his head slowly at his vituperation.  “You sneaky shaitan." he declared, interrupting himself.  "You fucking had me going.”
“Talk to Auberjonois about them.  How is Papa Gâteau?"
“I don’t want to call him.  We’re sort of... not cool.”
“Who do I have to thank for shutting the other up?”
"Elif air ab tizak.  Hey woah... code brown.”  Pausing upon opening a binder full of photographs, William discovered it contained a reference image of every visitor to the estate since their occupation, some taken during the current round of surveillance, others gleaned from police and immigration files.  "Putain... they’ve got everyone."  They looked at each other through the seating.  “What do we do?”

Edward returned the rear doors of the car to their former position, setting them carefully against each other.
“When in doubt, he is a wise man who does nothing.”
“And verily he is often an incarcerated man, or a fucking dead one.”
“They’re on their way back, so feel free to stay and test the theory.  I’ll wait in the car.”

C O N T I N U E D   N E X T   W E E K
© céili o'keefe   do not reproduce
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While most of your are probably either lamenting or anticipating the return of winter, down here in the southern hemisphere we're just coming out of all that and heading into summer.  The first rose flush is underway, the runner beans and zucchini are in the ground (I never plant them before Halloween) and the bees are back, curating the deliciousness to come.  It's been a pretty uncertain spring, swinging between 25 and 10 C daytime temps; as I type this, I'm freezing my tits off at the bottom end of that range under a nasty lid of scungey grey cloud but at least the equinoctial gales were short and sweet this year.  

You might have noticed the blog's been running to images and reviews and not too much else at the moment aside from the serialisation, and although you're all surely gagging for lengthy, hectoring essays and opinion, the sad truth is December will probably bring more of the same.  Call it xmas brain.  Something to do with the seasonal increase in ultraviolet levels; it lowers IQs, reduces core competencies and makes you want to eat tiger prawns on the deck between toots under the above mentioned Pseudoacacia.  The good news is there'll be plenty of pretty pictures for your delectation since the lovely R has availed himself of his dream camera, including an incoming rose smellathon that will survey the blooms at the Dunedin Bot Gardens.

Don't look at me like that.  I'm a lazy bitch, I know.  It is what it is.

I did make a nice goat rogan josh for dinner.  Have a look at the garden while you're here.  Some of it's tending toward overexposure on this laptop for some reason but it seemed fine on the iMac.

 Oscar Römer

Riding four horses slowly with the vague idea that someone was following or trailing us, though we seemed to only go about a kilometre every day before setting up camp.  We carried everything we needed with us.  One of the horses was too small for its rider and burden and I worried about that.  While setting up our single, pavilion-like white tent I noticed the horses were thirsty and took them all to a creek where they drank; up the bank behind us someone was making cackling jokes about lesbians but I couldn't see them.

The person with me was small and nondescript, neither male nor female and he/she crossed the creek saying they were looking for someone and I let them go because I didn't care for their company.  I saw remotely that this nameless quest came to nothing and they were forced to shelter for the night in a faded old shed, painted peeling red, with a bunch of vagrants who were eating stale white bread out of a plastic bag.  My former companion broke off small pieces of it and scattered them on the ground, using a stick to strike the many mice that came to eat it.  He/she skinned and cooked the mice, heaping their pinky red bodies on a large round platter.  I experienced chewing their sinewy entireties and feeling the cooked innards spill into my mouth and remembered all the diseases carried by rodents.  

REMARKS: Not sure about the horses and camping.  Maybe a hangover from watching Game of Thrones?  Horses usually symbolise my personal creative volition in this sort of context but it didn't feel that way this time.  The lesbian jokes- we tittered our way through Basic Instinct last night and the gender-neutral companion was probably something to do with the discussions we've been having lately about the mutability of sexuality.  The horribly detailed process of eating cooked mice might seem like more sexual imagery but it was definitely more to do with my fundamental conflict about consuming pickled mussels, which I did at lunch; the rubbery deliciousness always countered by the knowledge you're chewing whatever that filter-feeding bivalve managed to sieve for its own supper in an equation that looks like this // mmmm/ewwww/mmm/ew ew ewww //.

I will sit sucking down empty calories while dinosaurs fight aliens with the best mouth-breathers in the game, so this critique is not about pitching any lofty elitist trajectory.  It's just that Pacific Rim sucks arse, so much so and on so many levels that it's difficult to know where to begin, but let me do so by aiming a roundhouse squarely at del Toro's puffy chops.  Anyone who still thinks Guillermo's some kind of wünderkind needs to account pretty robustly for the misfired, piss-weak tripe he's squirted out since Pan's Labyrinth (which was overrated anyway).  He shares his searing lack of taste with Jackson et al, that other bastion of seemingly unimpeachable nerdmanship and together they fap all over contemporary speculative cinema in a godawful binary orbit. 

Having told you how I really feel, why wear precious epidermal matter from the ends of my fingers slagging something like Pacific Rim?  Because furry dweebs like del Toro piss me off when they shit all over my Saturday night.  Yes, we were adults sitting down to a robot battle scenario but to be fair, we weren't asking for much.  Gigantic automatons fighting complicated monsters.  At great length.  Brooding, scantily-clad hotness, colourful pseudo-science and the real promise of humanity's imminent demise.  Sexy times would have been a bonus.  What we got felt like ten broken minutes of budget Transformers groping pre-op Godzillas who were rumoured to have sort of upset a few people internationally while my precious pseudoscience was assaulted as never before by the kind of supporting characterisation that makes you howl on your knees for mercy or at least Ja Ja Binks.  Idris Elba bleeding manfully from the nose.  Pointless bulldog.  Ron Perlman as Ron Perlman Futuristic Arsehole Diminishing Returns/Hey It's a Cheque Guy.  A confused-looking and annoyingly chaste Charlie Hunnam.  Rinko Kikuchi, who, judging by her behaviour and delivery, seemed to be suffering some kind of heavy-metal poisoning, but that could have just as easily been the script.  Their gelid lack of chemistry.  Fake Australian Accent Douche, most probably chosen from a talent pool heaving with actual Antipodeans.  In-jokes, subtext, irony, sexy times?  Hell no.  By the time the Glimpsed Phlegmatic Russians saddled up I was hoping maybe they would get it on but no.  It wasn't that sort of movie.  We smoked a bowl.  It still wasn't that sort of movie.  

And by that sort of movie, I mean a good one, on any level.  I'm not sure who does enjoy Pacific Rim.  Maybe... 8-14 year old males?  Do they look up from their consoles long enough?  My gamer/comic devotee nephew would have gone back to his laptop after 20 minutes muttering something about it being crap and PR was aimed squarely at him.  If we allow for the essentially sub-adult market, we're still left with the fact that it's poorly-conceived, shamelessly plagiaristic and execrably written effluent that, like Pitt's World War Z, does more to damn than to proselytise on behalf of its genre.  An ageless and deeply inconvenient truth is once more revealed- the simplest premise can demand the most from those charged with its delivery.  Subtlety and subtext are essential, not kryptonite.  Say it with me, mecha fans- it really didn't have to be this way.

In groping for something positive to tell you, I can only say that the money shot-CGI passes were pretty well executed.  They entertained us, briefly, although they bitchslapped me again with the infantile candied neon riffing that so irritated in the midst of Mendes' Asian Skyfall scenes.  It's visual corn syrup, but isn't everything that rattles past the arsecheeks of the del Toro/Jackson complex?  That's my problem with their output in a nutshell.  Pacific Rim was a movie about robots and monsters that was neither monstrous nor even very mechanical, for the love of god; it was flaccid.  And no, that doesn't happen to every director from time to time, Guillermo. 

A dim, flesh-red light suspended from a cord swung slowly over Sachiin's head so that its lurid glow dragged his shadow behind and then before him.  Heat was compressed into moisture; it gleamed on dank walls and dripped in a dense, sanguine precipitation, his naked body glistening with it, sludge swallowing his feet and sucking wetly at his ankles.  He stood imprisoned in that boundless depth of solitude that trapped all dreamers within nightmares, each small notion of escape stillborn in his unconscious mind.  The light swung more slowly still, both glare and shadows brought to rest; pulpy, elastic, spineless things writhed beneath his toes, squirming under the bare soles of his feet, arching and sliding in the ooze.  Something brushed heavily by his leg, its greasy fur easing past his skin.

In the distance, from interminable isolation, came the footfalls he awaited.  The gore-red light dimmed with the ponderous tread until the bulb gave only a bloody, enfeebled bioluminescence, like a dawn sensed from behind closed lids.  The heat turned the gas inside his lungs to brackish liquid, drowning one chamber of his chest then spilling into the other; he bowed his head and felt it run from the corners of his mouth and down over his body.  Like a cloud illumed by lightning flashed the shell-white flicker of eyes burnt blind by the ocean.  A woman stepped out of the darkness, as slick and unclothed as a newborn, made by those same forces that had fashioned him; water streamed from the corners of her stare, its passage over his skin raising blisters in which blood simmered and turned septic.  Long claws slid from the fingers that sealed his mouth while another arm flew back and plunged into his body, punching through skin and sheets of flat, striated muscle.  He was spared nothing, not the ripping as she dragged a fistful of his slippery, trembling viscera from him and not the sight of her stuffing the coiled mass into her mouth, sucking it down her throat until her long neck bulged and black ran from her nostrils.

He awoke and bolted upright, staring into the darkness in his hunger for the sight of anything else.  His brother regarded him from the chair beside the French doors.
“Fuck!” he whispered, rubbing at his eye.  “Has no one told you about those boundary things?  If someone’s going to stare at me while I sleep it can’t be you.”
“You’re too loud."
"You don't sleep."
"Frost is an insomniac.”
“No she’s not.” William insisted, shaking his head with his eyes still closed.  “I’ve been crashing at her place for years... she snores like a fucking carthorse.”  He could see that his assertion troubled Edward, but would not qualify it for his benefit.  “If she’s still up it’s the junk.  And the toxic relationship she just jumped into, with this guy, who thinks affection is something caused by bacteria.”

Edward received the remarks with uncharacteristic solicitude, and William glanced at him again, still acclimating to the sight of him.

“I don’t think she’s using injudiciously.”
“She will... you’ll freak her out and she’ll run for the spike.  And who bought it in the kitchen?  Smells like a hippo hit a claymore in there." 
"Frost v Orb."
They gazed at one another in silence while William tried to pull the details together.
"When did you scrub in?" he demanded.
"My involvement was superficial."
"She must be a fucking ninja with the steak knife." 
“You look like a third degree burn yourself.”
“Yeah well... shitty dreams.”
“A problem shared is everyone’s problem.” Edward suggested.
“Kala'amātya, you're freaking me out with this pretending to care shit so... practice on someone else.  Practice on Frost.”  

They sat in the warm, expansive darkness that spilled in under the crooked doors and from the narrow breach that had opened in the roof, looking more alike than not and reflecting each other in their opposition.
"Rana, alright?” William sighed, to his companion's patient stare.  “I don't know what it is, but I'm dreaming her, I'm hearing her... I can’t close my eyes and I’m too afraid to look."  

Edward frowned, as he never did at a threat or at an insult.  The name quelled their fractiousness and they retreated from each other for a moment. 
“After I went to so much trouble.” he murmured.  “Can I ask how this has declared itself?”
“Call it womens’ intuition.”
“Sachiin, you hear bells at the thought of food, and I do not envy you that.  To paraphrase Ms Christabel, be forthright, and your angry ghosts will disappear.”  

William was forced to concede the eminence of his logic.  Edward leant forward and eased himself out of the chair.  

C O N T I N U E D   N E X T   W E E K
© céili o'keefe  do not reproduce
BUY THE BOOK.  $3.99.  240 000 WORDS.

It reminds me of a 50's mohair cardigan and brings the retro to a softer pin-up look with a black winged eye and big pony tail etc, in lieu of the usual red lip.  After some initial dubiety, I'm really enjoying it.

Having bought this beautiful jade online yesterday under extremely serendipitous conditions, I was equally astonished when it turned up this morning, and overjoyed to say the least.  Greenstone (the typically reticent NZ epithet for this mineral) should always come to you, it's said, and I feel this was the case in this instance.  It's an estate piece from the carver's family and is apparently from an historic stone discovered by the late Jean Derry, one of New Zealand's foremost jade prospectors back in the day.  I believe it; it is manifestly a taonga (treasure), strongly coloured and fine-grained and possessed of that soft, sensuous lustre that so invites the hand. 

What makes a good piece of nephrite jewellery?  Taste is a many-splendoured thing, so we apply the criteria we'd use to assess any artisanal object- is it pleasing, and is it well executed?  Price is generally some indication though we've seen some god-awful rubbish wearing a four-figure tag.  Poorly-worked stone requires a thick coat of wax to create lustre and running your fingernail over the surface will reveal how heavily this has been applied.  Too much wax = not enough elbow grease.  Is it waxy, wonky, dull, crudely-figured?  Avoid.  In a simple form like the one pictured, you should expect symmetry, a nice even taper and skillful attention to detail; laboriously polished and slightly convex on one side, this stone is perfectly flat on the reverse so that it sits flush with the skin and is almost invisibly riveted into a silver mount so tightly-fitted that I can scarcely imagine how it was achieved.  Clouding and inclusions are not an indication of inferiority but more a central characteristic of the material; those seen here are present in the thick rind of the parental chunk, so this is a partial cross-section.  Kahurangi means treasured, prized, heavenly or distinguished and usually describes this sort of medium to pale green translucent nephrite which is also known as 'flower jade' (confusingly) because of its blossom-like figuring.  I also enjoy inanga, and kokopu, or trout stone, named after our native Galaxiid fish, which is an opaque variety with a lot more of the speckles to be seen in the top third of this piece.  'Good' colour is a matter of contrast, saturation and personal preference, as it is with any other gemstone.

Though I've always loved greenstone it can be a difficult wear, sharing an intimate, almost tender affinity with the right person but visibly militating against a less sympathetic companion.  Time will tell if this pendant decides I'm cut from the right cloth.  I certainly hope so.

Oh skinny ginger bunnyboy, you can spray me with your enchanted bathwater any time.

Did I ever tell you about my Mint Chick thing?  Especially their drummer, incorrigible percussion slut that I am.  They've impressed the pants off me ever since Octagon Octagon Octagon.
Not too sure what they're up to these days since they pissed off to America like the petulant hipsters they undoubtedly are, but they sure could rock an ombre mullet and conniption chord 2-3-4 years ago.

Why the fuck can't I find the video to Crazy Yes Dumb No on Youtube, seriously?  

Edward and Opal turned simultaneously, roused by the portentous nature of the remark.  Drawn by the promise of vulgarity, the crowd massed against the balustrade.  Approximately twenty metres distant, and more visible than not due to the nature of both her apparel and uninhibited theatrics, Rachelle attempted to wrest gratification from William’s stubborn flesh, her dress flashing like the side of a fish against the darkness, the tableau rendered grotesque by the grim flourishes of rapture even in its unmistaken absence.  At the side of the house a pane cracked in the door that Edward threw back against the wall as he strode onto the lawn toward them.  Rachelle cried out and struggled free of William, losing her shoes and screaming as she fled toward the trees.  The latter sighed and buckled his trousers.

“Thanks for the save, but I'm over eighteen.” he murmured.
“So is your audience.” Edward snarled.  William fished around for his cigarettes in expectation of an extended admonition, but his brother's attention swung in a new direction.  “Have you seen Frost?” he demanded suddenly.  William shrugged.
“Didn’t know she was here.”

Edward started back toward the house without another word.  The stab of apprehension deepened while he scoured the gloomy ground floor for a glimpse of Lilian’s hair and shoulders, discovering instead the gatecrashers condensed into a smirking knot around the kitchen door, filling the darkness with their cold flesh.  Light filtered underneath it in a slim, inconstant line, the handle secured from within.  He could sense the vivid, expanding silence that pushed against the walls and smelled perfume, the new-suit scent of the pimp, broken skin and blood.  Leaning against the door he spoke Lilian's name, but received no reply, and stood back to throw his weight against it.

The kitchen was thickly stuffed with the dirty, matte-red stench of savagery, its lashing shapes preserved by the hollow flicker of the florescent tubes overhead; one had given out, its housing crushed flat against the ceiling, the other smeared with dark stripes.  The chairs had been swept out from beneath the table into a chrome-legged tangle behind the door, the refrigerator displaced sideways and resting at a heavy angle, painted with lightning bolts of red that had bled into the slick of milk oozing from the corner of the door, marbling the white with greasy pink.  Two drawers beneath the counter hung from the last inch of their lengths, their contents lying in a complex disarray that flashed white under the blinking tube.  Everything formerly stationed on the bench had found a new place in the chaos scattered across the linoleum, the cardboard boxes of cereal and pasta soaking up the blood in which they had settled.  

Orb lay where he had fallen, on his back with arms splayed out, surrounded by a slowly spreading pool of mirroring darkness on the pied linoleum.  It formed a dense, satanic gloriole beneath him, reflecting the bars overhead and soaking into his matted ivory locks.  Lilian stood upon his chest in bared feet, her pale eyes fixed on the pain twisting his features, her floating, static poise at once weightless and transfixing while he choked on the blood glutting his airway, her forearms painted with it.  Her left hand clasped a pair of scissors, their stout blades like something cast from a ruby-hued alloy, having gained the colour in the wounds struck into the man's throat, into his shirtfront and clean through the palms of his hands.  Slipping over the edge of shock and subject to its strange array of gasping, spastic contractions, Orb's plight could not keep Edward from the sight of his assailant.  A slicing whine rang in their ears, the shrill voice of a red stare.  He stepped over the chairs and pulled the curtains against the garden.

A blackening bruise encircled Lilian's neck where it had been impressed by a throttling grasp, developing on her skin like a darkroom image.  The dark, drenched satin of her dress hung about her in a slack embrace; slowly, almost imperceptibly, whatever held her began to wane with the sound in their ears and she wavered like flame, shoulders sinking as she listed toward the counter, forcing him to catch her arm.  A neat line of her own blood divided her chin where it ventured from the deep split in her lip.  He eased the scissors from her grasp.  Freed of them, she stood under her own volition, the colour of her eyes consumed by bloated, staring pupils that were the fearsome hallmark of her state while on the ground her victim groaned and jerked.  She lifted an arm and pushed it around Edward's neck, closing her mouth on his with a need that shared its flavour with her blood, whispering the black words that brought his hands to her and pulled their bodies down onto the table.  He pushed her dress over her waist, grasp sliding on the slick, dark red it left on her cold skin as he dragged her hips toward himself.  She tore his belt free and hissed another exhortation, closing her legs around his waist but the sound of her voice against his neck opened his eyes and caused him to step back from the table, where she lay down slowly, bringing her hands up to her face.  

Wresting back something of his resolve, Edward doused a cloth under the tap, coming back to take her wrists and wipe the thick stains from her arms.  Cold water trickled from her elbows.  
“Can you walk?"  She stared at him with dry, blank eyes; he struck the ends of his fingers swiftly to her brow, an ancient antidote to her immuring fugue, and Lilian came back to him slowly, looking from his mouth into his eyes as she returned.  “Can you walk?”
 She pressed her lips to the back of her hand, regarding the blood as though it was some unfamiliar substance.  
"I can walk." she murmured hoarsely.  He dropped his jacket from his shoulders and handed it to her.  
“Go up to my rooms and lock the door.”

The formica slid beneath her legs and she stood looking down at the man on the linoleum with the detachment of an incidental spectator, still feeling the stroke of Edward's hands under her dress.  The soles of her feet felt glutinous beneath her and her head ached dully from behind where it had been slammed against the cupboards.  He walked her to the door and pressed a key into her hands; Lilian stared down at it.  
“I thought no one could ever scare me, but..."  She spoke slowly, clearing her throat and the last words trailed off in her reluctance to complete the admission.  "But you do... and now you got me cold.” 
“I was never going to let you walk.”
“Smile when you say that.” she murmured, expression conceding an appreciation of the unwholesome sentiment, eyes falling to Orb once more.  “Fucking cops are looking for him.”  Bowing her head, she slid by him, walking through the onlookers as they stepped back from her.  When she was out of sight Edward returned to the prostrated man and studied his condition before leaning forward and kicking at his broken arm, satisfying himself that he was as moribund as he appeared.  Drawn like requiem sharks, the lurking presence clustered in the entrance hall waited impatiently, agitated by the prospect of blood so thickly saturated with the desperate, petrol-sweet essences of violence and agony.  Their blank, expectant faces greeted him as he emerged.
"Thirty minutes." he muttered.  "Clean it up."

The scavengers surged into the kitchen, sinking down on all fours around the dying man and immersing him in the dry, jagged sounds of the clothing torn from his body and the jerking violence with which it was disputed, addressing his slippery skin with their greedy wet mouths.  The junior participants contented themselves at the back of the scrum, wiping their hands through the congealing, wine-dark puddle and grinning as they licked the taste from them.  Some paused in their preoccupation to glance at the surrounding disorder.  In the garage Edward pressed the door closed with his shoulder and stood alone in the vacant gloom awaiting their act of disposal, the taste of her blood still articulated in his own mouth.


In its extreme decrepitude the walk-in chiller at the back of the catering kitchen had begun to freeze champagne in the necks of the bottles still crowding it, a fact pointed out to Susan by a colleague as the latter departed.  Hunching in her jersey, she shuffled in its frigid depths, hauling boxes of Pol Roger and Cristal toward the glass door.  Propping it open in the hope of defeating the malfunction, she had succeeded instead in rousing the motor to fresh exertions and cursed it heavily.  The thought of William recurred with troubling frequency; she huffed clouds of steam and paused to rub her hands together in an attempt to distract herself.  The motor shuddered to another of its erratic halts, and she heard the clatter of the kitchen door.
“I’m not doing this alone...” she called, glancing at the room reflected in the glass before her.  Susan listened for furtive activity, the rustle of a bag as someone helped themselves to food, or the clink of purloined bottles.  Slowly, she scuffed across the icy floor toward the door, hands clasped to her stomach, wiping her frosted nose and listening again.

The quietude was broken by three small, deliberate sounds, the sharp little tap of something metallic against formica.  Curiosity pulled a frown across her face; some element of its isolated artifice urged her to consult the glass again.  

A small, circular face, depleted by the paucity of tones and contrast in the reflection, floated between the rows of benches.  Inside its annular outline two dark eyes and the oval-shaped hole that was its open mouth formed the entirety of its features.  Flat and disembodied, it was as simple as a child’s mask lofted on a stick and yet it stilled her breath and clamped both feet to the ground.  She sought to drag a name toward it, framing possibilities until a match was volunteered by a glimpse of sickly, pliant gold; it was Opal La Rue who stood in such purposive immobility, gaze fixed, her small mouth open so that she appeared not to seek with her eyes but to siphon the air.  Her hand was poised upon the bench around the handle of a spoon, ready to tap another bar of feinting noise.  The idea that she was the object of such a lure settled on Susan like the crystalline cold drifting around her and she eased herself behind the boxes, relieved that they were still numerous enough to conceal her, pulling the neck of her jersey over her chin to smother the steam that billowed with her breath.  Securing the neck of a bottle with her left hand, her gaze fell to the white floor, ears tuned to any advance until the motor coughed and struck up again.

Opal sucked air past the wet walls of her palate, licking back the taste of prey, the girl's fragrant, salted warmth and the promise of the blood that it protected.  Three quarters of a century had passed since she had claimed a first unwitting victim and the hundreds fallen to her since had imparted wisdom with the contents of their veins; the vampyre knew that fear and cold and prodding disbelief were on her side and savoured ragged, oozing thoughts that curled her cold tongue against her teeth.  She failed to detect the presence seated on the counter behind her and William's stare, turned scathing apple green, met her wordless scowl with the same intent he had accorded the back of her head as he sat with his arms folded.  Opal straightened slowly and looked around herself. setting down the teaspoon and turning toward the door.  He slid onto his feet, stare remaining on her profile, and they exited together.  After a while, Susan's wary consultation of the chiller door revealed that she was, to her bafflement, once more alone, the kitchen holding no sign of occupation beyond the stacks of dirty dishes.  Rubbing her arms, she rounded a counter and leant over it to peer between them.

Opal glared blackly at William as they strode along the passage, desiring liberty from his determined chaperonage, but he shepherded her into the entrance hall and outward through the front door without obliging her.  Rage had struck her mute, her glare clutching at his face as she slapped her phone to her ear, fury burning blue-white at the sound of Edward’s voicemail but he kept her moving down the driveway, putting out an arm to prevent her darting back toward the house.

“Paint a number on that little slut." she spat.  "When I'm done with her, that is the only way you'll recognize what's left."  At the threat he thrust her out between the iron panels of the gate.  
"You go near her again and you’ll wake up in a fucking tin of catfood.” William promised as her driver drew up behind her.



A stripe of dull magenta had begun to flush the blue horizon as Susan looked toward the window and the encroaching dawn.  Her shoulders ached; the valet squad had long since gathered their equipment and departed, leaving the house in peace, and she stood alone in the smaller kitchen, frowning at the distinct impression of stickiness beneath her slippered feet.  Out in the entrance hall the stairs creaked but she was startled by the sight of Lilian in a black robe, her pale hair loose against her shoulders.  She said nothing, standing curiously distrait in the shadow of the doorway as though listening to distant conversation.  Her gaze fell slowly to the floor before Susan's feet.
“Can you smell something in here, or is it just me?” the latter asked.  “I wouldn’t come in with nothing on your feet... there's broken glass.”  She shook her head at the ceiling, indicating the blinking light.  “And I have no idea what happened there.”  Lilian remained where she stood, hands poised on the sash about her waist.  Without the kohl around her eyes or the distractions of her wardrobe, the fair and almost gentle simplicity of her features were a surprise to Susan, the differences unsettling to her eye, as were the colours marking her neck and mouth.  “Are you... alright?”
“Fine.”
“Are you with...?”
“Edward, yeah.  Whirlwind romance."  Susan’s preoccupation with the damage to her face prompted her to smile darkly.  “He's not the type to smack you in the piehole and just leave it at that.  We're on the low, so...”
“Oh... no, I won’t say anything.” Susan promised quickly.

She followed Lilian into the porch, taking out her cigarettes and offering her one.  Blackbirds had begun to sing in the garden like a chamber of tuning musicians as the eastern sky turned several shades of fuscine pink, the air already warming over the dew-cooled grass.  The paper boy rode by and heaved a broadsheet over the wall; he caught sight of the women and turned his bike in a circle before the gates, craning for a better look until Susan lifted an offensive finger, prompting him to pedal on.
“It looks the same.” Lilian murmured, taking in the gardens with a slow turn of her head.  The remark hung unaddressed as her companion struggled with its context.  
"This place does my head in.” Susan confessed.  “I see things, I can hardly sleep... half my brain is telling me to go upstairs and pack.”

Lilian took the stairs back toward Edward’s room, leaving Susan frowning after her from the shadow of the porch.  Pausing on the landing, she leant in toward a painting, struck by the impression that the glass had conveyed in passing.  Even in the darkness she saw it was her mouth that had begged notice, its half-circle of bruising already faded almost to nothing.  She closed her eyes, dissolving something of the immuring unreality but her reflection persisted in confounding her, a thin, pale stripe remaining where the two sides of the wound had fused.  

C O N T I N U E D   N E X T   W E E K
© céili o'keefe do not reproduce
B U Y   T H E   B O O K  $3.99

I prefer vintage jewellery and materials for both aesthetic and environmental reasons and just feel that most modern MOR silver outrages taste as well as representing a horrible waste of resources.  Unfortunately I'm also a size queen who likes her bling B I G, which means dealing with two warring realities.  As someone who usually makes all her own stuff and having never commissioned anything ever, I was a wee bit apprehensive, but Clare was both laid-back and helpful, going so far as to oblige me with some pics of the process.  She uses recycled sterling for these pieces which banishes MSS (Mall Silver Syndrome) to the seventh pit of hell where it most definitely belongs.  Ingenious, eh?

At about $150 USD/$200 NZD for something both custom and 7x5cm (huge), I thought this piece was muy and even hē ngā rā reasonable.  If your tastes are a little bit darksided (and even if they're not), I strongly recommend checking out Clare's Etsy shop; her laser-cut leather and handmade silver is a delight and I'm sure we'll be talking again in the near future cue evil laughter.  This gigantic little darling is winging its way across the Tasman as we speak.  Can't wait to wear it.

Support indie creativity.  SKADI JEWELLERY.COM

 david eustace

Having stood at the edge of the hater tsunami aimed squarely at World War Z (as expressed by my fanboy nephew- he was livid) I did hold some pity in my stony little heart for Brad Pitt's poor old production.  Just a little, mind you; internet tales of on-set dickwars and studio incursion while the budget spun out of control had me walking in the opposite direction while the wee fillum flopped in its afterbirth, seemingly doomed.  Then I remembered; industry commentators are often completely full of shit, which is why I review in the first place.  It's the lying I can't stand.  So all politics aside- I haven't read the book, know it only as a distant, rumoured entity and am not really aware why it is held in such esteem, so if you just want to know if the thing is worth watching, alrighty now; you've come to the right place.

I was right to pity World War Z from afar because it is the cinematic embodiment of its lurching viremic protagonists; brisk, toothy, vacant and seemingly unconscious of the damage it's wreaked on its own kind (in doing the genre no favours at all).  Let me begin by expressing my disdain for the characterization, because lo, it is crap.  See the expressions in the image above?  I cannot tell a lie- that's all your $14 will buy you in this instance.  Brad Pitt (let's not pretend he's anyone else at this point in his professionally-suicidal overexposure) is a former investigatory type with the UN turned house-husband, though still uniquely equipped to furnish all your epidemiological and zombie-evasion requirements.  There is a briefly-sketched familial unit to be dragged manfully to safety once the virus strikes because as we all know, chicks just want to lie down and/or talk on the phone, or maybe make it hard for you to get important shit done.  We haven't exactly come to where the flavour is with this lot; they run well, they look a bit tense, die quite philosophical deaths or just sort of peter out when no longer required.  The performances are mmmokay; no one stands out (except good old Peter Capaldi who does his best dead-eyed intermediate white dude, putting Brad's efforts in this direction to shame), but that's probably because the plot doesn't exactly seize anyone by the balls.  Viral conflagration>military action>mass disorder>one man's search for truth etc etc, you know the drill.

I sense the ghost of something better in all this cliché and can guess why fans of the book are gouging their own eyes out in despair at the treatment it was accorded.  I do sympathize.  We've come to a very sad pass indeed when it's only the Twihards getting any joy from adaptations but I won't bang on about this industry tailspin issue here, even if it is writ particularly large in this flick.

If the Pitt et al was meant to be some dull foil for a delicious zombie feast, the Z-horde itself a bit of a visual wet fart.  Individually they are bog-standard, stiffly motile and busily motivated rather than oozing or shambling; massed, they are, shall we say... rather inexpensive to behold, either a greyish squirming mass or a bunch of spazzy extras dashing fitfully across a carpark.  Given the resources allegedly thrown at this project we were surprised by this lack of pictorial finesse.  That a great deal of gross humour and/or whelming horror was either lost in translation or willfully disregarded is obvious and deeply puzzling.  We find the zombie narrative quite unrewarding at the best of times and scratched our heads as to why the obvious psycho-social and environmental allegories were so wantonly discarded by a yarn that offers precious little else.

But whatever.  Is the thing worth a look on a damp Monday night?  Sure, if only to the uninitiated.  Like I said, World War Z is a bit like a zombie itself, and if you sit quietly, you might enjoy aspects of its hyperventilating durr-fest, forget you paid good money for the privilege and not savage an usher.  The thing is pacy and kinetic and if it's not very smart then at least it's not boring; when we put aside notions of source-desecration, it's less of an overall turd than many of us were lead to believe, so don't sweat my nit-picking if you've already turned in your brain for the evening.  You might get a laugh out of the volume of panstick congealing on Brad's under eye bags.  I know I did.

My plant, courtesy of the lovely R

In bed late at night.  I'm woken by a loud knock on the front door.  There are two black swan people waiting to see me; they are tall and covered in matte black and red and they are strangely prismatic, anthropoid in their basic shape when looked at directly but possessing great arched necks and bird heads and folded wings when obliquely observed.  They are unsmiling and perfunctory; they say that if I want to talk to him, I have to come with them right now, as though I am one of many visits they need to perform within a given time.  

I go with them.  They give me a pliant, misted, webbed sort of cowl to put over my head so that I am compelled to follow their shapes without being able to see where I'm going.  We are walking quickly; after a while I hear a strange dry rustling and know that I am walking through very long grass; spear grass, taller than me by a foot or two when I look up and see its vague blurry presence.

When we stop they take back the cowl and I see that I am standing in a bright, directionless sort of florescent light with a silvery lavender cast, by a river that looks like the Avon in Christchurch as it used to be- that bend by the Gardens where you could hire peddle boats.  The swan people tell me I can ask two questions and remain, as though they are waiting to convey them.  I sit down on the bank.  The grass is not grass at all, but short and thorny and when I look at it the blades are shaped just like miniature bay leaves.

I see him sitting on the opposite bank, in the unrelenting shade of great oaks that meet and keep that land dark.  I don't need the swans to take the words to him, and they withdraw, annoyed, I think.  So I ask my two questions and he replies, his voice low and plush and considered as always, and grief and longing are like a piece of half-worked iron, glowing from the forge inside my chest, unendurable.

No one is ever allowed to ask anything more, and I accept this without knowing why.  

I don't remember leaving the river but the black swan people take me back quickly, telling me I have to be in the house before the birds start singing.  The rasp of the tall grass against my ears and then the walk down alone from the hills between here and Waitati.

When I wake I hear a dunnock singing his little aubade outside the window.

courtesy of the lovely R