The Turning

11

11

Matt Wilcox was crook that morning.

At around five-thirty a.m. he had thrown up mostly on the floor in his bedroom and then a little in his bed too. So tired and drained, he had almost drifted off again in the puddle like some derelict drunk on a street, but the smell and wetness of it brought him around with a groan.

He had slipped out of the room, had thundered down the hall to the linen cupboard and had been careful not to let the cupboard door fall off the one remaining hinge that was left to hold it in place. It was something his bond money would undoubtedly go towards.

After grabbing a fresh set of sheets and carefully fixing the cupboard door back in its place, he returned to the bedroom to mop up the vomit. After all the spray and wiping, the baking soda scrub and a half can of Glen 20 had finished, the smell and the faintest outline of where the puddle had been, remained. He had used baking soda before many times after knocking his bong over and flooding the carpet, and it had always come out fine. But for some reason, it just wouldn't work now. Not that he cared too much. It was too early to care too much at five-thirty am. He was tired and felt utterly drained. He crawled in under the cool, refreshing sheets with their suffused scents of lavender and dust, and tried to ignore the heavy feeling of churning sand and gravel in his guts. Soon his eyes had closed and his thoughts were fading to black like burning sheets of paper.

Fifteen minutes later, the itching on his leg began. Half asleep, he reached down and jerked his bear-clawed hand across the area. At first, it seemed to get worse and worse and then finally it began to subside to burning and then nothing.

“Christ,” he mumbled and rolled over. Snores filled the room soon after.

His alarm woke him at eight-thirty, and as he stirred he found himself bathed in sweat despite the single sheet he'd slept under. His head hurt and his mouth felt like it had been run over with a rake that had been used to clean up dog s**t. Already it was warm, the heat filling the room like a noxious gas. His stomach rumbled, not with hunger but upset. Cramps seized his guts, rippling and spasming, but it was his heart that filled him with the slow, dawning alarm. Although it beat fine at that moment, initially upon waking it had palpitated in his chest before suddenly dropping back into regular sinus rhythm after a moment or so.

Matt wondered what the hell was going on.

He propped himself up on one elbow, all strength seemingly abated from his body. He needed water but the thought of putting in the effort to duck into the bathroom and throw his head under the tap made him nauseous. Eventually, he sighed, managed to drag himself out slowly and he wandered down the hall, bare feet clapping across the warm floorboards. He performed the maneuver quickly, so as not to lose traction. He turned on the tap at the sink, cupped his hands and drank. As soon as it hit his stomach, he wanted to throw it back up. He lifted the toilet lid and lurched forward. Barely anything came up except water and bile. When he was done, he fell to one knee, wiped his eyes and tried to catch his breath. Again his heart was rocketing, harder than ever before and he closed his eyes, kept still. A full minute crawled by before it readjusted itself.

He could hear the birds tweeting outside in a day that would be blue with sky but dull with heat. He heard the muffled drone of a car passing and his neighbour's car radio belting out Help Me Rhonda by The Beach Boys somewhere in the neighborhood. Kneeling in the slanted frame of sunlight, fear mounting, Matt Wilcox began to suspect that something was terribly wrong with him.

"Aw, what's wrong mate, you go to the pub last night?" Dan Parsons, his boss, accused him of over the phone half an hour later. Matt wiped a thick wad of sweat from his forehead and shivered. He was standing in nothing more than his underwear on a day that had already climbed into the mid-thirties but he felt colder than a bare-assed Eskimo. His right leg had begun to itch again and he scratched at it, absent-mindedly. If he had bothered to look down, which he never would, he would have seen a mound of reddened flesh surrounding what could have easily passed as a pimple.

“Ha-ha, no, it's not Dan. Been throwing up and I’m burnin’ up. I’m sorry bro, but I can’t go in like this.”

Dan had considered these words for a moment, racking his brain as to what to do. Of course, there was nothing he could do. Matt was the only caretaker and he himself was the only other bloke around with the authority (and the keys) to open the Wilton dump. He’d sighed.

“Righto then,” he’d said, resoundingly. “I’ll open it up and get someone to mind the gate. We won’t burn today. When was the last time you burned?”

Matt, who was barely able to think straight, closed his eyes. He sighed, struggling to remember and wanting nothing more than to get off the phone with his pain-in-the-ass boss and go to bed.

“I dunno, can’t remember. Two or three days ago.”

"Two or three days ago? Fuckin' hell mate, yer supposed to do it every day."

“Yeah, well… I dunno, forgot, does it matter?”

There was another pause on the end. Then, “Call me later and let me know if you can’t go in tomorrow. All right?”

Matt thanked him before hanging up. Next, he'd dragged himself into the living room with the slightly wet doona under his arm, had collapsed onto the lounge and had cried out at the light piercing through the blinds. He stumbled towards them, folded them back so that the room became dark. He lay on the couch and threw the blanket over himself, wanting desperately to ooze away into sleep. The thought of how odd his reaction to sunlight had been never crossed his mind, yet in the moment it had been slanting in through the window and onto him, he had been sure that he was going to fry. The cramps started up again, stronger this time, like knives plunging into guts, and the sickness worsened.

The bong was on the table, the drugs sitting in a small green bowl nearby. He eyed it for a moment, clenching his stomach for dear life, considering whether a nice light joint might relax him and help him sleep.

Yeah, but what if it doesn’t. Maybe it’ll make me feel worse.

He took his eyes off the pipe and peered up at the walls and ceiling. The fear had returned when he began to notice the waviness in his vision. Again, he wondered what this was all about- had he ingested poison by accident or something?

He lay there, wondering if the waves were ever going to turn into pink elephants. Then at around eleven thirty, time passing incredibly fast for him, there came a heavy rap on the door. Instead of getting up to answer it he simply told whoever it was to come in, forgetting all about the bong sitting there in plain sight. His sister, Zivana, lumbered inside. She was a broad-shouldered, towering girl with a Maori tattoo on her chin and a headband. As usual, she was wearing clothes that were too small for her, so her breasts did not so much as veer out but assault anyone in the immediate vicinity. Her enormous handbag was slung over one shoulder and when her eyes fell on her brother, she ceased chewing gum and stared.

“Why you not at work, Matt?” she asked. Matt shook his head, eyes fixed on the television in the corner. It was turned off but he could have sworn he’d been eyeing the Today Show with Karl Stefanovic. He rubbed his eyes.

‘”Sick,” he muttered.

“Oh yeah, how sick, party-boy?”

“Like s**t. Look at me.”
As she drew forward, dumping her handbag on the coffee table beside the chop-bowl, he said, “Close the door, Zivana for Christ sakes. You want the whole town lookin’ in?”

She closed the door and spun back around with the delicacy of a ballerina, her expression no longer humoured but slightly serious. In the semi-darkness, she hadn't been able to see him properly but now she did, a pallid, sweating stick-figure, eyes glassy and bloodshot.

“God, Matt. You look so pale. Your drinking water, yeah?"
 He nodded, hand massaging his forehead, eyes closed.

“Well, what is it? What’s-“

“Vomiting, last night and this morning. Me stomachs burnin’ like a b***h. I dunno why-“

“Maybe you should go see the doctor. I’ll call for you.”

“No,” he said. She frowned.

“Why?”

“Cause I haven’t got my concession sorted and they’ll charge me eighty bucks and I didn’t get Centrelink this week.”

He sighed. “I think they cut me off ‘cause I’ve earned too much.”

“It’s like thirty if you got Medicare, Mattie,” she said, folding her arms. He shook his head. She rolled her eyes.

“Ah Jesus, whatever, I’ll pay it. You gotta see someone, you look like balls. You wanna go to Tormon or Grif?”

Matt was about to say Griffith but stopped. There were some boys out there he owed money to, nothing serious, but nevertheless, he didn't want to go into Central should he need to get a prescription from the chemist and end up running into them. One of them had been Stan Lester, a bloke who'd called him forty-eight times on Thursday and who had sent a dozen text messages, all of which summed up, Hey bro, I know you said you can hit me back next week but I’m a bit short, can we organise that hundred sooner?

Of course, Zivana didn’t know he was still dealing and he had told her that he had stopped a month ago. If he said Tormon she would ask why and what would be his excuse?

Because it's closer?

“Tormon is closer isn’t it?” he asked.

Fifteen minutes later she had gotten off the phone and had told him that he had an appointment with Dr Jarrah at twelve-forty. Sulkily, he had pulled himself up and had stumbled into the bedroom to get changed. Halfway through pulling on his jeans, his stomach lurched again and he rushed off into the bathroom.

“You all right, Mattie?” she called after but he heard none of it. By the time he was done he sat there panting, heart bashing against the inside of his ribcage as if pleading to be freed. He stared into the toilet bowl, shaking. In the morning light, the red stuff swirling there appeared to glow.