#previously published

“You make it sound so final,” Seifer laughs. The sun’s just coming up and Hayner’s been up all night but he won’t say it but Seifer knows because of course he does. “It’s three weeks. You won’t even notice I’m gone.”

New Lease of Life | Lillian Francis

Publisher: Finally Love Press

Release Date: March 9th, 2020

Cover Art: Paul Richmond

Universal Link: https://books2read.com/newleaseoflife

Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/books/new-lease-of-life-by-lillian-francis-2020-03-18

Add To Goodreads:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27973790-new-lease-of-life

Blurb

There’s a fine line between independence and…

Release Blitz: Kindred Spirit by Sloan Johnson

Kindred Spirit | Sloan Johnson

Re-Release Date: 24.10.19

Buy Link: http://bit.ly/Sloan_Kindred_Spirit

Blurb

Family secrets, a surprise inheritance, and a sweet employee he can’t help falling for. Sunset Beach was only supposed to be a quick trip…

Dane learned early to not rely on anyone. He has a good job and a decent life in the city. Granting his father’s request to visit the family he didn’t…

Release Blitz: Trust The Connection by Brigham Vaughn

Trust the Connection | Brigham Vaughn

Publisher: Two Peninsulas Press (Indie/Self-Published)

Publication Date: November 20, 2018

Word Count /or Page Number: 145,480 words

Formats/Price: eBook – $6.99

Buy Links

No-preorder. Amazon/KU link coming soon

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42630972-trust-the-connection

Summary

Scars run deep but run loves even deeper.

After a lifetime of…

A short science fiction piece published for Idealog magazine, you can view it here!

Originally published in Headland vol. 3, July 2015.

I don’t like these shirts, the ones I have to wear to the office. They’re garish, falsely cheerful. They remind me of the uniform I wore when I pushed burgers as a student. They remind me of TV talent show contestants, humiliated but still smiling.

I own six shirts: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, plus a reserve. The reserve’s a happy accident, the result of only buying two-for-one deals. I like to think having the extra shirt makes out like I thought about it. I like to think it makes me look professional.

I’m ironing them. The shirts. It’s late Sunday afternoon. I feel like a traitor, letting my working week slither into my precious free time. ‘Precious’ as an adjective denoting value through scarcity.

Out the window, it’s a beautiful day. I should go for a walk.

I’m not good at ironing, that’s the other thing. Through my efforts, all I manage to do is press the creases more deeply into the fabric. People in the office joke about the thirtyish guy who lives alone and can’t iron. I laugh, but in a jagged way, in a way that says: watch it.

Sarah from next door is weeding her garden. I feel bad for her whenever I see her because she’s so old and her back is hunched, but when she’s gardening it kind of works out for her, I guess. I hang my creased shirts off the ironing board, and tell myself, “One day I’ll be old.” The thought doesn’t connect, just dangles in my brain like a spider in a warehouse.

I can tell it’s warm outside, but it’s cold in my unit. Wellington houses. I zip up my hoodie and flip the hood over my head, walking three steps to the sofa. I fall like a dead tree, hands in hoodie-front-pocket, and pull the fuzzy blanket over me with my feet and knees. My mum gave me the blanket before I moved to Wellington. I think she might have bought the iron as well. I wake up the laptop on the coffee table by nudging the trackpad with my chin. I don’t have a TV, but I watch downloaded movies. I tell people at work, “TV’s dead,” and I say, “I don’t own a television.” I say it in a way that’s casual and cool, so they know I’m not being a dick about it.

“I’m good with people.” I say this aloud, I don’t know why. I’ve only been in Wellington three months. Nothing’s downloaded yet, so I look at the roof and wonder why Wellingtonians are so hard to get to know. Maybe because it’s so much smaller than Auckland, Wellingtonians have fewer social circles. In Auckland, the city’s so big that you need different groups all over. In Wellington, you only need one or two. It’s a socio-geographical fact: Wellingtonians are less open to meeting new people. So.

I let the theory bounce around my brain. It feels sound. It gives me the energy to get off the sofa, blanket draped over my head and shoulders, and step into the kitchen. I push bread into the toaster, finishing off my third loaf in a week. After dinner, I’ll go for that walk.

Crumbs. I see them in the yellow late-afternoon light. Under the toaster, across the bench, on the floor. I realise this with a little surprise, because it’s, like, a lot. They must have been building up for — a week? Longer. A month? I step up and down, crunching the little bits under my slippers.

I click my teeth together rapidly, something I guess I do when I’m a bit unsure. I walk from the kitchen to the bathroom clutching the blanket at my breast like an old Italian woman in mourning. I stand and look, and in a horrible moment, I see. Thick black hairs curled on the tiles, dried toothpaste on the faucet. I peer into the toilet bowl. How long has it been like this? Have all my visitors seen this?

Visitors. The last one would have been Joanna, the librarian, the one time she almost stayed over (she caught a taxi at the last minute, saying that she didn’t want to rush into anything she’d regret. It seemed cute and a little coquettish at the time). That was a couple of weeks ago. No, wait. That was February. February was six weeks ago. Have I really had no visitors for six weeks? Also, what happened to Joanna?

I grab the toilet brush, holding the blanket in place with my other hand, and scrub against the scum of the bowl a couple of times; it moves like wet paint. I think it’s normal not to have visitors that often. It’s just modern life. In New York they build apartments without kitchens now. And that’s New York, so.

My toast pops. I collect it, scrape on peanut butter. If I used a plate, there’d be fewer crumbs. Good thinking. I even take a moment to grab a cloth and brush a bunch of crumbs into the sink — I don’t get them all, but it’s a good first go. I’ll get the rest later, after my walk.

Back to the sofa, blanket over head, toast in hand. The movie has finished downloading, but I don’t want to watch it anymore. I wonder: is it worse to steal something you don’t actually want? I stare at the corner where two walls meet the ceiling, chewing my toast, thinking a whole load of thoughts. Nothing important.

Tens of minutes pass, I guess. My toast is gone. Out the window, Sarah’s back, and now she’s got a whole tray of bulbs. I’m surprised — it’s almost 5pm, why would she start a new job? She should relax, make the most of the evening.

I’m underneath the thick blanket, still, leaning forward like a wildlife photographer. My teeth are clicking up and down, but it is cold, so.

Travelogue originally appearing as Noun, Verb, Kimchi Part 1 & 2 in Morph Magazine, 2009.

Here’s how it begins:

I’m in a late-model Hyundai on a sprawling motorway in a country I’ve never seen before. The heat is raw, and I’m already regretting wearing the tailored suit I bought in Bangkok on the way over. The driver next to me is Korean man in his 60s with a Bart Simpson buzz cut and a shiny silver suit, the same colour as his car. I don’t know who the man is, though the relief of seeing someone at the airport holding up a board with my name on it was good enough for me. He doesn’t talk, or smile. I’m beginning to realise that he cannot speak English, and I can’t speak Korean. I don’t know where we’re going.

In the West, we don’t talk about South Korea as much as we discuss its more influential neighbours to the left and right, its badly behaved brother to the north, or its more famously travelled cousins to the south. Prior to six months ago, I had never much considered South Korea beyond its role as the setting for M*A*S*H, and even then it was just an allegory for Vietnam.

My new friend reaches into his shiny silver jacket and pulls out a packet of cigarettes, offering me one. It’s the first indication he’s given that he’s aware of me since we got in the car. I hesitate. I don’t know it at the time, but I’m at the beginning of what will be a several day-long mix of jetlag and disorientation. It’s a very real expat phenomenon of which I had heard but hadn’t expected to be victim to myself.

I take a moment too long and the shiny silver man emphatically shakes the packet of cigarettes closer to my face. I’m not a smoker, and I struggle to remember the culture guides I had read before departing Auckland. Is it rude to refuse cigarettes in Korea? I know it’s rude to refuse an offer to drink, or to eat, or to sing in a social situation, so maybe… I take the cigarette, he lights it, I put it to my lips. I’m 28, and I’m apparently still prone to peer pressure, if said pressure is applied by mute Koreans wearing shiny silver suits.

After a couple of token drags, I surreptitiously rest my hand on the outside of the open window and let the cigarette burn down. I wait as a police car carrying two impossibly emotionless officers passes before I drop the cigarette. Just in case there’s some law I don’t know about, like dropping bubble gum in Singapore or making a crack about the king in Thailand, something that an ignorant Westerner like me would do. I don’t know why, but I have a paranoid and largely irrational fear of police in Asian countries. The officers both look at me as they pass, expressionless. They pass, I wait another 30 seconds, I drop the cigarette.

We pass an off-ramp sign heralding Seoul, where I thought I was going to be living, and I tense up. I had heard stories like this: expats arriving in Korea to teach English, just like me, and finding out after they arrive that the terms of their employment were not as clear cut as they believed when they signed the contract back in their home country. I knew a girl who got placed at a school in a remote rural area where she was the only English speaker, to see out her contractually obligated 12 months. They’d told her she’d be working in Seoul, too.

Back inside the shiny silver Hyundai with the shiny silver Korean, the Tom Jones disco cover CD that has been playing since we left the airport ticks over into its third rotation. The continued aural assault mixes poorly with the disorientation, the heat, the stomach full of bad airline food and the unfamiliar taste of cigarette. We take an off-ramp that’s written in Korean but points in the opposite direction to Seoul. The driver leans over and pats my leg, suddenly erupting in manic, wide eyed laughter. I start laughing too, I have no idea why, and he gives me an enthusiastic thumbs up. He flicks his cigarette out his window and it hits the window of the car next to us; no-one gets arrested.

My blurry mess of a mind says: This will all make sense soon. Which wouldn’t be the last time in this country that I was profoundly wrong.

Part two.

So two Koreans are having sex on a balcony. Maybe. It’s unclear. Everything is unclear at this point. Including what I’m doing watching two Koreans maybe having sex on a balcony.

It’s been an hour since my ride with the Silver Man. I know two things:

1. We’re somewhere in South Korea, and

2. It’s not Seoul.

We park in an industrial area. The Silver Man leads me through a maze of twisting alleyways tightly packed behind the massive commercial buildings that barricade the streets. The path is narrow, the doors and the people squatting in them seem randomly arranged. One plus: the disarray of these alleyways reminds me of the cheerful mess of South East Asia, and brings welcome relief from the concrete grey sterility that borders the highway.

Through the alleyway, I feel like Alice chasing after the white rabbit. If the white rabbit were, in fact, shiny silver and Korean.

As I dodge the stray cats and squatting ajumas (old Korean ladies), I wonder: where are we going? Is the school at which I will be teaching located in this weird mess of conjoined houses and meat shops, all so obviously organised as to be hidden from the street? Or is my apartment somewhere in here?

The heat is close, pressing on my skin and breath, and the smell of spices and meat somehow intensify the sticky warmth. Matching my guide’s brisk pace pours fresh new sweat into the dry sweat already encrusted into my shirt and suit, which I decided to wear only because I thought it would make a good impression were I delivered directly to my new school. The increasing mess of my external appearance mirrors the confusion, jetlag, disorientation and cluttered thinking occurring within.

Seriously though, where the hell are we going?

Eventually the Silver Man turns into a small open square amongst the alleyways — a courtyard? He opens a door, points inside. He says the only English word I’ve ever heard him say: sleep.

I squeeze past him and stop. I stop because there’s nowhere else to go. Packed inside the room is a low single bed, a small set of drawers taped shut with black tape and an old TV resting on top. There’s a toilet, a small basin, and a bucket. The God of Obvious Clichés has even placed a cockroach crawling up the wall.

I’m standing in the only square foot of floor, and I’m wondering, Where does my backpack go? Then, Wait, where is my backpack? It is, along with everything I own except this rancid suit, in the Silver Man’s car.

I turn around and peer out the door. He’s already disappeared into the labyrinth like a Korean David Bowie. An ajuma a few doors down waves, smiling. I wave and smile back. Her manner indicates she knows who I am and why I’m there. This comforts me slightly.

I wonder how long I’m supposed to be here. It’s Thursday afternoon, and my contract doesn’t start until Monday. I’m struck by the thought that maybe I’m on my own until then.

I strip off, feeling relief from the unwashed suit I’ve been wearing for two days. The toilet doesn’t work — I eventually deduce that I need to fill the bucket with water from the sink so as to simulate the absent flush action of the toilet. I return to the bed and lie uncertainly for a moment. I stare up at the cockroach, he stares back at me. Having no other options, I put the suit back on.

When I turn on the TV I’m startled by the loud sound of low, guttural moans accompanied by a picture of what seems to be a hand on an unspecified expanse of flesh. A back, maybe? I’m not sure what I’m watching. The screen cuts to a tight close-up of a Korean man’s face, clenching his teeth and grunting. Some kind of sports thing? The scene cuts again to an extreme long shot of two hazy figures ambiguously pulsating on what appears to be an apartment landing, and I realise I’m watching Korean porn.

There are a few painful moments of fumbling — with the TV — as I am suddenly conscious of the volume, and of the friendly ajuma sitting a few feet outside my door. I stab at random buttons then hastily press the power button, which doesn’t work the first two times. Finally the tube blanks and I search to find the volume controls, switch back on the TV to immediate resumption of what I can now confirm are definitely not sports sounds, try the volume controls only to find they’re actually the brightness controls. I find a remote under the bed that allows me control of the volume, and I mute. I can’t help it, I watch for a moment longer, fascinated in my semi-coherent state by this new art form: pornography without nudity, and only a passing acknowledgement that there are even two people in the same place at the same time. I wonder who, exactly, is watching this at 2pm in the afternoon. I switch it off for good when I realise the answer is me.

I venture out at one point, smiling meekly at the ajuma, whose expression I can’t read. I find my way onto the street and look around. In the chaos of signs and banners that hang off every tall building, I can’t see a single English word. In the mass of people pushing past me, there isn’t anyone I can assume I could communicate with. I feel stupid. The sensation of being a stranger in a strange land hits hard. I retreat to my room, and try unsuccessfully to sleep.

I’m in the room for around four or five hours. The Silver Man returns and drives me another 40 minutes to my school. There are nine other expat teachers, and a quick succession of revelations fall into place: the Silver Man is the school Director’s father, the room I’ve been dropped off at belongs to him, where I’m to live for a few days while my actual apartment is cleared out. We’re situated about 45 minutes out of Seoul.The other teachers either don’t notice or politely decline to mention that in my suit and sweat and wide-eyed deliriousness I look like the world’s worst hitman just off a failed mission. They’re all wearing jeans and hoodies. I am ridiculous.

When I eventually move, my actual apartment is small but comfortable. In fact, despite the shortage of space, neighbours who get drunk and shout abuse in the hallway at 3am, and an evil laundry man who arrives early in the morning to sing his nerve-shreddingly guttural laundry song, I think I’ve seldom lived anywhere where I’ve been happier.

There’s no moral to this story. Once I got a few decent nights’ sleep, I realised how much of the drama had been constructed in my own disorientated brain. Somewhere between fake-puffing on a cigarette in the Silver Man’s car and watching ambiguously-shot Korean porn with a cockroach, I lost my ability to go with the flow. It’s the beautiful contradiction of travel, in fact it’s almost Zen: you assume greater control over your life in one way, while voluntarily giving up control in many other ways.