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Adam had always been a screw-up. He knew it, the Master knew it, and the whole damn universe knew it too. In every possible version of every possible world, there he was—blundering, fumbling, and tripping over his own humanity. Sometimes he was a drunk. Sometimes a preacher. Once, he’d been a king, but that had ended badly. The Master, cosmic and cruel, had suffered Adam’s idiocy across too many timelines, and patience wasn’t in his nature.“For your sins,” the Master said, his voice rippling through creation like a rolling quake, “I will take from you the colour red.” It didn’t happen all at once. No, the Master was deliberate. The red bled out of the world slowly, like a wound refusing to clot. Adam watched it go, helpless, horrified, as the color seeped from the flowers, the fruits, the sky. By the time it was gone, it was as though it had never existed. Time folded neatly over the wound, like a lie you tell yourself to stay sane. People didn’t notice. Of course they didn’t. How could they? They couldn’t miss what they’d never had. But Adam knew. Adam saw it all. He walked the streets of this pale, washed-out world, feeling like he’d been gutted. Roses, once blazing with romance and longing, were now dull and sickly. Lovers still exchanged bouquets, their smiles empty of fire. He passed by a fruit stand and stared at the tomatoes, greenish-gray and shriveled-looking, the kind of thing you’d only buy if you were starving. The city looked smaller somehow. Flags flapped limply in the wind, their colors muted, their messages subdued. Without red, they were just pieces of cloth, signifying nothing. Adam wandered past a café, peering through the window at the people inside. They sipped glasses of wine that looked like dirty water. He felt something twist in his chest. It wasn’t just red they’d lost. It was everything red meant. The rush of blood to the face. The heat of rage. The quick, sharp pulse of lust. Life. Wars still happened, of course. People didn’t need red to kill each other. But they weren’t the same wars. There were no fiery speeches, no vivid banners snapping in the wind. Soldiers marched, they fought, they died—but it was cold, mechanical, like a machine grinding forward because it didn’t know how to stop. Adam stumbled into a museum once, hoping to feel something, anything. The paintings were there, hung in their expensive frames, but they looked flat, dead. The Renaissance masterpieces were smudges of beige and brown. He stared at a portrait of some saint or another—probably Mary—but her robes were pale, her lips thin and colorless. He wanted to scream, to shake the other people wandering the gallery. “Don’t you see it?” he wanted to shout. “Don’t you see what’s missing?” But they wouldn’t, couldn’t. To them, everything was normal. Perfectly fine. He wanted to laugh. Perfectly fine. That was the problem. The whole world had become perfectly fine. He spent nights in bars, hunched over glasses of whiskey that didn’t burn the way it should have. His mind drifted to the Master, the smug bastard, sitting somewhere in the great cosmic nothingness, watching him, waiting for him to break. Adam wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. He wouldn’t. But God, he was close. He thought about blue sometimes. What if the Master had taken that instead? Would the skies have turned to smoke, the oceans to sludge? Would people notice the absence of calm, of depth, of infinity? Maybe. But blue was too distant, too cool. Red was life. Without it, the world wasn’t a world anymore—it was a sketch. A bad first draft. And so he kept walking, kept drinking, kept feeling the absence of red like a hollow space inside him. He tried to remember the way it used to feel, that hot, bright, unbearable fire. Sunsets that seared your eyes. The slick, dark gleam of blood on your knuckles after a fight. The way a woman’s mouth, painted crimson, could make you forget your own damn name. It was all gone now, a dream he couldn’t wake from. He met a woman once, on one of his aimless walks. She was pretty, he thought, in a quiet, pale way. They talked for a while, and she smiled at him. There was something kind in her eyes, something steady. She asked if he wanted to come back to her place. He almost said yes. Almost. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t look at her pale lips and pretend they were red. He walked away, his hands shoved deep in his pockets, his head full of ghosts. The world had adapted, but Adam couldn’t. He carried red with him, like a curse, like a memory that wouldn’t fade. It wasn’t just a color, damn it. It was the thing that made life worth living. Without it, people didn’t feel—they endured. And Adam endured too, because what else could he do? He carried the weight of the Master’s punishment, alone in a world that had forgotten how to burn.

out of bed. out of bed again. the shower sputters. where’s the uniform? the sister's screaming— "she’s a biarch," teeth unbrushed, ipad dead. “can I get tuckshop?” “do I have to eat this lunch?” who ate the last damn avocado? it’s late. it’s always late. socks on. shoes on. kids yelling, "I want the front seat!" "No, I want the front seat!" the car groans. I groan louder. dad, my sister sucks. drive. “what’s at school today?” “nothing.” “nothing.” "bye, dad." "have a good day." but don’t park close, don’t let anyone see me. stop a block away. they tumble out. sigh. drive. gone.

School Run

Saxon stood in his small, windowless kitchen, the drone of street traffic leaking through the thin walls. The town house was an island of chipped paint and shadows, and the laundry basket stared back at him from the corner. It was too full, spilling over with shirts that had seen better days, undies with holes in them and socks that had given up their mates long ago. Fold. Sigh. Reach. The clock ticked slow, each second stretching like old elastic, and Saxon could almost hear the seconds creak as they passed. He swallowed a yawn that tasted like yesterday’s instant noodles and ran a hand over his stubbled jaw. The acid was supposed to make this better, add colour to the black-and-white monotony of a day of household chores. Something, he’d thought, anything but this grey grind. Tick. Tick. The tab had hit his tongue like a lie, but it was starting to spread now, creeping through the folds of his brain, waking up corners that hadn’t been lit in years. He folded another shirt, the fabric suddenly soft, delicate. The room shifted, as though a whisper had passed just behind him, and a chill pricked the base of his neck. Then it came, slow at first — a soft thrum, a baseline to a slow rock song. The pile of clothes moved. Saxon’s eyes darted, but he couldn’t trust them; his pulse climbed, a tight, uneasy tempo. One shirt flapped, then two, sleeves writhing like fish out of water. The basket glowed, the plastic turning translucent and alive, lit from within by some unknown fire. He backed into the counter, knocking over an old mug that crashed, unseen, to the floor. With a roar, the laundry leaped, taking the air in a mad cyclone. Socks and shirts swirled, pants twisted themselves into rigid lines like referees with whistles made of belt loops. The hum intensified, shrieking into a scream that ripped through Saxon’s chest. He felt small, insignificant, staring up at the whirling tower of fabric. The shirts, now fully sentient, descended into madness. Dividing into teams, sleeves snapping and flapping, forming patterns like battle flags. Before his eyes: rugby matches were breaking out among clothes that yesterday were just crumpled, lifeless things at the foot of his bed. The socks formed a huddle, their fibres pulling tight in anticipation, and the shirts, emboldened by some unearthly spirit, charged forward, tackling each other in chaotic beauty. Buttons popped like shrapnel, small plinks on the tiled floor. “Welcome to the Laundry League!” a Bruce Buffer sound alike bellowed, resonating from deep within the basket. It was the growl of something that had no business speaking, a nightmare tone that tightened his gut and sent his mind spiralling into questions. What am I seeing? A laugh, dry and cracked, fell from his lips. The laundry, his laundry, had become alive. And not just alive — aware. Competing. Knocking themselves ragged in a knock-out competition for reasons he could not comprehend. Panic bubbled up, hot and fast. What does it mean? Saxon thought. His pulse quickened as the realization landed heavy — that life, his life, had become no more meaningful than this; a stupid, shirt-on-sock brawl in a corner of an empty kitchen. Was he nothing more than a bystander, watching chaos unfold, a forgotten referee in a game that made no sense? The acid twisted this truth, writhed in his mind like a worm gnawing at the last thread of reason. He screamed, or maybe it was the voice inside that screamed, ricocheting through his chest and throat. The fabric armies surged, scored, and regrouped, careless of his existential terror. He wanted to stop it, stop the whole thing. But how? The room shrank around him, a pulsating prison made of cotton and sweat-stained polyester, and he dropped to his knees, hands in his hair, as the cheers of the winning shirts reached a fever pitch. Then just as he thought he could take no more, silence. The roar cut out, leaving a vacuum that buzzed and echoed in his head. Saxon blinked, ragged breaths slowing, eyes adjusting as reality crawled back, piece by piece. The kitchen was still, heavy with the weight of what shouldn’t have been. His hands were shaking, fingers tangled in his hair. He pushed himself up and stared at the mess he expected to see — but there was none. Instead, the laundry was gone. The basket stood empty and still, as if mocking him. He rubbed his eyes, muscles sore with tension, and turned, stepping over the shattered mug. The fridge door was open, and something inside caught his eye. Saxon staggered back, a new wave of dread rolling over him. Inside, where there should have been condiments and half-forgotten leftovers, were neat stacks of his folded laundry, socks tucked into corners, shirts stacked like files in a drawer. The fridge hummed its usual hum, indifferent, and Saxon let out a half-laugh, half-sob. Folding laundry would never be the same again.

Laundry

I don’t fear nuclear weapons or the tools of man.the sharpest edge, the most powerful thing, is a story.the editor, king of distribution, sat once in that heavy chair, deciding who gets a voice and who gets dust.ideas? cheap. anyone can toss words like crumpled bills into the void.but who owns the press, who decides what makes the morning page? that’s the king of the universe.I can write a song about dangerous untruths, but it’ll die in the dark if the editor says so.tyrants, they wear ties called News Limited, called Facebook, saying, “We didn’t write it.” but yes, you put it on the front page of the Australian.there’s a line, barely visible, between free speech and truth.editors, they’re supposed to watch that line, give breath to freedom, but not fuel the flames of deceit.truth, it’s ugly. it takes work, bites back, and no one wants the taste.lies? they’re sweet, slick, cost next to nothing, glide down easy.so, we come to this darkest night. the biggest fear: getting so tangled in stories, deceptions, delusions, we lose the scent of truth, drowning in a global hallucination.midnight strikes when the algorithm sits in the chair, choosing the shiny things, pushing them into eyes and ears, and hiding the rest.it’s got no morals, just engagement. truth, rotting on the sidelines.and then we’re all fucked.adrift in a sea of lies, lost forever to the current that pulls us away from the shore.

The darkest night

300,000 km an hour,a rock with an inferiority complex, hurtling to nowhere in particular, dragging us all along like unwitting passengers on a cosmic bus with no brakes and a dubious driver. At 5 am. I stand here, an existential monument of half-sleep, lifting a kettlebell as if doing so might convince the universe to stop, apologize, and offer me breakfast. Up, down—again, as the mat below sucks in my sweat, sending dark circles to bloom and vanish like confused mayflies that can’t decide if life’s worth it. My body protests: a creak here, a click there, a symphony of joints staging their quiet rebellion, each micro-failure like a tiny, well-mannered anarchist reminding me I’m not quite Alice in Wonderland, who, as we know, did six impossible things before breakfast and still had time to argue with a rabbit. A sharp breath slices the silence; an inhale drags it back. This ritual, this absurd routine, as if each movement keeps the cosmos from folding in on itself like a bad tent. Spoiler: the stars don’t care. A groan escapes, half dismay, half disbelief, the sound you make when you realize the universe is probably in the kitchen rifling through your last jar of olives and muttering about late rent. The set ends. The kettlebell lowers, gravity wins another round. I look at the mat, at the sweating rings that disappear faster than a good idea. I wonder if somewhere, far, far away, the universe pauses too, smirks, and whispers— next. Because what else is there?

When the weight of the world becomes too absurd, And I stir at each sound, each trivial word, Haunted by shadows, the specter of fate, The looming disasters that knock at my gate,I steal from my bed with a sigh and a groan, Cradling my doubts like a prize of my own. Down to the pond where the wood ducks preen, Where the heron stands, aloof, serene.Ah, these are the souls untroubled by thought, Untouched by the fears that humans have wrought. No brooding on failures or worry’s cruel tease, Just ripples that dance in the arms of the breeze.And over it all, the stars in disguise, Drowsy, indifferent, aloof in their rise. They wait with a patience I’ll never possess, Untouched by ambition or mortal distress.For a heartbeat, I’m tricked into quiet release, The world and its jests forgotten in peace. And I, for a moment, allow myself glee— The scandalous luxury of feeling free.

F.S.F

Writing, Poems and Rants

Red

School Run

Laundry

The darkest night

5am

Free