A Woman Sphinx

That�s how Feng found him, that Sunday mid-morning, in the middle of the night of Bryn�s intercontinental body clock.

Feng came in the front door with a blow-up softball bat, wearing stuff he usually wore to work (he was unable to dress casual. It was probably an irreversible syndrome), and a cap that said, �Raiders� on it.

Bryn didn�t really notice any of that, because he was screaming, �Why, God, Why?� quite hoarsely and whimpery by now. He�d been at it for a while, since he�d spotted the postcard in the middle of the fridge. It was the only thing he could think of doing while he was by himself and was hungry and didn�t have a proper place to sleep and he felt forgotten by all the World except for a malevolent cactus.

Feng came into the kitchen, opened the fridge, got out a Limited Edition Egg Flip Big M nonchalantly from the inside of the door, and said, �Hey, cool. You�re back.�

�Oh, hey,� he mumbled, defeatedly, crumpled in a sideways football shape on the stone tiles.

Feng thought he knew exactly what to do in this situation. He hit Bryn on the butt with much force with the blow-up bat he happened to come inside with. �There you go,� he said. �That�ll get you over your jet lag.�

�Dude, wow, you�re back,� Feng said more conversationally as Bryn tried to unwind himself from the thwack upon his shocked, undeserving buttocks. �How was it?�

�You would n-� Bryn began, but Feng leant over and put a finger over Bryn�s lips.

�I had a fine time when you were gone, but I�m glad you�re back. I went and took three finished Big Ms to the shopping centre and put them in a bin there. I didn�t want these bins to get dirty. They were my memory of and my tribute to you. I wrote a song about it.�

Bryn knew that Feng knew that Bryn knew that he was about to mention the heaped pile of musical equipment and stupid lyrics sagging his bed right now.

It was hard to get things done with Feng. Especially conversations. Perhaps Feng should have been a lawyer or a politician, because intent of meaning was extremely fluid, and there were lots of interruptions and conversational leaps so you sometimes felt you�d just been abducted by aliens for half an hour and then put back again in exactly the same position but with the conversatuion having spiralled irrevocably out of control while you were gone, getting your anus probed. It was the only way to make sense of the eighteen-kilometre leaps in what Feng and yourself were talking about.

�Look, how about you sleep on my bed for the day, and us guys will clean up your room � they�re going to come over about midday-�

�- and you�ll feel great for work tomorrow. Hey, I�ve got awesome news, man! Halloween Party! Here! Next weekend! Butt Rock, right? Butt Rock!�

It meant now that the deal was sealed. Feng was very persuasive. That�s why the house was so messy. That�s why Bryn spent afternoons taking shots of The Majesty of Footscray standing around in rock poses with their unplugged instruments (or in the case of the drummer, one ride cymbal) on all small hills within a six kilometre radius.

Bryn would have to sleep in Feng�s tinderbox today. On the bed, not in the bed.

After all that, Bryn had forgotten all about The Cactus upon the fridge door. That�s how confusing Feng was. But, Bryn�s dreams did not forget about that Cactus, that wicked, malicious, insidious cactus that may or may not have been the same one he kept seeing everywhere.

No, Bryn�s jetlagged dreams that day were about mental pain and cactus spikes piercing him like an iron maiden, and being chased by something in the form of a shadow. About the shadow catching up with him, and the shadow being his own shadow, but being humanly cactus shaped, so nobody at work ever knew as the shadow slipped past everybody�s desks. And then the shadow would be his only friend, and it would wipe everyone�s phone numbers off his mobile, and Bryn would forget all the passwords he had ever made to all the social networking sites, even if he made up new ones, and he would die alone.

About being in the desert, and retching. That bit wasn�t made up. That bit was recalled accurately in dream form.

Then shapes, and strange sayings in other languages. Then that was it. He was spit out the other side, knowing that he�d be inconveniently awake for hours before work.

Feng�s room had the talent of holding its cards very close to its chest when it came to revealing what time of day it was. Bryn tiptoed out into the hall.

They had been at Graceland, and they had been surveying the huge, puffy, velvety becouched and terraced TV pit. They had been holding hands.

Bryn said, �This kind of looks like my TV pit at home, except it�s not full of off milk and DVDs.�

Bryn put his hands over his face, then dragged them down, tugging at it like it was a mask that was about to come off.

God, he wished that he didn�t have memories, and that nobody said anything nice to each other ever, because it was too hard to think about.

He hoped that he wouldn�t get that flashback every single goddamn time he looked at the TV pit in his apartment, but he probably would.

�Bleaaaargh!� came a horrible, guttural sound from beneath Bryn�s right ear.

It wasn�t a surprise at all to Bryn. Feng did that a lot. It had kind of worked when they lived together in first year uni, but had since worn off. Big time.

Yeah, they�d been housemates in varying permutations of living quarters and housemate arrangements for fourteen years. They�d shared the same room in two houses, and the same king size bed on a trip to a midweek conference about accounting software in Sydney one time. Feng rustled in his sleep. A lot. Like the child from the Exorcist. With the unexpected addition of a random female accountant attending the same conference from Perth.

Bryn had hereby banned Feng from shouting in his ear from behind and below in the mornings at least twelve times over the years. Whether he should or should not have banned Feng more often was irrelevant. Every time Feng had the chance to screech in Bryn�s ear in the mornings in the hall, it was taken heartily and with much vigour. It would have been a crime not to, thought Feng obviously.

So, it was already Monday morning. Interesting. At least he didn�t have to go back to the bed surrounded by an A4 forest to think about Marcelle against his will.

I can�t stress enough that Feng only screeched in Bryn�s ear in the mornings, so that�s how Bryn knew. That it was the mornings.

Bryn usually did not have an identical twin of what Feng had for breakfast. He usually had a proper breakfast.

There was no way that Bryn was going to elaborate on the fact that he was actually bummed out. He wasn�t even going to agree that he was. He was just going to hold onto this crap feeling as best he could, and try not to worry about cactuses.

�Come on. Let�s go to the breakfast bar,� said Feng, as gently as was humanly possible for him, which strangely enough, was at normal levels of gentle talking.

Yeah, they had a breakfast bar, all open plan and an annexe to the kitchen. It was a pretty awesome parentally owned top floor apartment with excellent views and large terrace.

Suddenly, Bryn remembered why he was lolling around on the floor when Feng came in yesterday. He remembered that Feng was wearing a �Raiders� cap, but still didn�t know what that was all about. He would just ignore that for now, if not forever.

As Feng was starting to walk to the breakfast bar, Bryn stopped him. He put a hand on Feng�s shoulder and looked at him with hollow eyes.

Bryn hardly ever touched Feng. Feng hardly ever didn�t touch Bryn, but yeah. This was unusual, because it was Bryn touching Feng.

On the other hand, I don�t know how often Bryn looked at Feng with hollow eyes, nor how often Feng looked at Bryn with hollow eyes. Probably not much, but I�m not privy to that information.

�Feng. I have to ask you something. Now. Before we go anywhere near the fridge.�

�I didn�t wipe it down the whole time you were gone. I admit that. But we got the special Fingermark Prevention Model. Remember?�

Bryn could no longer sustain this conversation in hushed, morning voice tones. He didn�t care whether his bed had been cleared off properly, or where his nice sheets went, or that his private space had been violated. He didn�t care that he was not in a state to go to work today, but was going to anyway. He was just a big ball of fear and fresh but fading memories.

�For God�s sake, where did that infernal postcard come from?� Screamed Bryn.

If this was a movie, there would now be images of all the times Bryn saw that Cactus, with boomy music in the foreground, and cuts of Bryn rolling around on the desert floor and the kitchen floor, holding his tummy. Then Feng hitting his butt with a blow-up baseball bat to bring him back to reality.

�Oh, that, heh,� said Feng, like he was trying to defend something. �That. Yes, that postcard. I wonder where that�s from?� he said, shrugging, and grinning knowlingly.

Bryn took this the worst way possible. �Oh, my God, Feng! Just tell me!� he yelled.

This nonsense led him to forget all the cloying fears of being stalked by a human cactus, or cactus, human, or whatever, and he stormed over to the fridge and tore the postcard off it. The real estate calendar magnet that was holding it on fluttered to the floor. Bryn would have to tidy that later.

Bryn�s hand was shaking with adrenalin. He couldn�t look at the pictorial side for very long. It flooded him with trauma.

If he had just paused a second, he would have maybe seen something that had made him slightly less frightened about the apparent stalking. Except it wasn�t apparent stalking.

Anyway, the postcard had some cheerful writing on it. It said in pink writing, �Greetings from Arizona!!!� Yes, it had three exclamation marks. Or, exclamation points, as I�m let to believe that Americans would say. It was on an angle in the corner of the postcard, in pink neon 80s writing.

But, yes, he didn�t see that. He looked at the other side. Sure enough, it was in Bryn�s handwriting.

A pang of relief rushed through him. He had no idea when he�d sent it. Probably drunk off his nut. Maybe at the truck stop before the airport where he�d bought the sunglasses and the shitloads of water, because it did reference a desert-based vomiting session.

having an awesome time in Arizona. Marcelle is sort of cool as [flinch], barfed A LOT ha! even on the ground & hundreds of metres into grand canyon. I�M FAMOUS!!!!!! Missing you, man, don�t mess with my bed. See you soon,

This was good news. It was merely an innocuous, coincidental, generic postcard, that he himself sent. And it did look exactly like his writing, except quite loose compared to usual, probably because he was drunk and/or dehydrated whilst composing it. He sure didn�t remember it still.

He couldn�t read the date on the postmark. He didn�t need to get all forensic-like at this point. It seemed like a coherent, normal explanation as it was.

�OK, cool,� said Bryn, as Feng opened the fridge to grab some Big Ms for their unorthodox breakfast before the morning commute. �It�s OK. I just don�t remember writing it.�

�That�s why you�re the Champion,� said Feng, pointing at Bryn while spinning around with a flourish to grab the white bread like he was in Risky Business.

Bryn assumed that by being the Champion, that entailed being so consistently drunk that he was able to fill out and send postcards to his house.

�Yeah,� said Feng. �A couple. They�re pretty much the same. Did you get it on with this Marcelle chick?�

So, it turned out that the postcard fiasco was a scare. It was his own doing. It was not a humanoid cactus supercontinentally stalking him. No, not at all.

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