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The carousel opens at 5:21am. Not with music. With a buzz in the mattress. A notification coughs in my hand. Good morning, champion. Your rankings have moved. I shuffle to the mirror. It lights up like a judge. My face loads. Spins. Buffers. Behind my eyes, a leaderboard scrolls. Sleep score. Income. Influence. Focus minutes. Unread messages. Tasks due. Tasks overdue. I am trapped on a carousel that pretends it is progress. A horse with a QR code. A plastic lion that whispers, Upgrade. Again. Again. Again. I win small prizes. A new badge. A tiny confetti burst. A number that ticks up like it owns me. For eight minutes I am acceptable. Then the glow dies. The brain returns it to normal like a bouncer removing a drunk from joy. The next task steps forward in a neat suit. It clears its throat. It holds out a clipboard. It smiles with teeth that are all deadlines. I refresh. I refresh like a nervous tic. Thumb down, thumb down, thumb down. As if the world is a one-armed bandit and I am due. My phone is warm. My thoughts are warmer. They pace the lounge room. They pick up old conversations and chew them into soft grey paste. I open the app that tells me how I am doing at being alive. It shows my soul as a spreadsheet with one cell that will not go green. There is always someone above me. Beaming in a kitchen lit for sale, not supper. With a calmer heart rate. With a partner who laughs on cue. I pretend it is motivation. It is comparison in gym clothes. I do not just fear the scoreboard. I love it. I love the clean cruelty of a number. I love that it never asks why. I love that it lets me turn my life into a contest I can lose on purpose and call it discipline. The carousel speeds up. The animals blur. The mirror throws my face back at me with the lights turned up. I see myself. I see a man taking score like a referee who hates the sport. There is a moment, sometimes, where the music drops out. Not silence. Just a gap in the feed. In that gap I do something inefficient. I sit on the floor. I put the phone face down. Inhale. Hold. Exhale. Air. In. Out. No lesson. No meaning. Just a body performing maintenance. My mind hates this. It tries to sell me out of it. It says, You could be improving. It says, Just one refresh. I laugh. Dry, short. Like a cough from the soul. For a minute, the carousel keeps spinning and I do not. Then the phone buzzes again. Not a task. A medal. I flip it over. The screen is glowing soft and proud. Breathing session detected. New personal best. Under that, a button. Upgrade.<h3> F.S.F.</h3>

Upgrade

I fell asleep in my chair at 3:14 pm on Boxing Day. Brisbane heat sat on the yard like a hand. The grass looked offended. The Hills Hoist leaned over, tired of my family. A neighbour played a song that kept starting, then forgetting the next bit. My table held leftovers and regret. Prawns. Ham. Pavlova. A warm beer that tasted like someone rinsed a can in sunshine. Winston watched me from the doorway. He did not blink. He does that thing cats do, where they look like they already filed the report. My phone sat on my thigh. Its screen glowed. Two percent. That number has a special kind of menace. It makes a grown man bargain with furniture. I tapped it once, like that helps. I promised myself I would charge it after a nap. I made the promise with the confidence of a man who will not be awake. I did not always care about battery numbers. Then I missed a pickup message. It was a Tuesday at 3:06 pm. The school chat ran on panic. My phone died. I arrived late. My kid stood by the gate with a tight face and a brave wave, like she practised adulthood early. I smiled, I apologised, I made a joke. I drove home with my jaw locked. I decided the problem was the phone, not me. I made a rule. Battery first. People second. It felt sensible at the time. Sara’s laugh drifted over the fence. She lives next door. She borrows things in a way that turns “borrow” into a lifestyle. A shadow slid over me. The shadow stayed. A voice spoke above my head. It sounded like a memo learned to talk. “Magnus of Brisbane. You have been selected for corrective instruction.” I opened one eye. Three frog-shaped beings stood on my patio pavers. They wore uniforms with sharp seams and cruel badges. The tallest one held a clipboard. I tried to sit up. “Mate,” I said, “This is private property.” The tallest frog made a note. “Subject claims jurisdiction.” The shortest frog stepped forward and held up a phone charger, pinched like evidence. “Do you recognise this,” it said, “or do we involve the forensic sadness unit.” I stared at the charger. White cable. Standard plug. The kind that breeds in kitchen drawers. “Looks like a charger,” I said. The frog lifted more chargers and tipped them into a bucket. The tallest frog tapped the clipboard. “You borrow chargers. You do not return them.” “I forget,” I said. “I live a busy life.” A fourth frog rolled in a trolley. It carried a scan of my history. Photos flashed in a neat row. My desk at work. A hotel room. A mate’s garage. A car cup holder. Chargers, everywhere. None of them mine. The shortest frog hissed. “Repeat offence. Category Four.” “You abduct people over chargers,” I said. The tallest frog nodded. “A charger is trust. A charger is order.” My phone buzzed once in my pocket, then died. The screen went black. Two percent became zero. They guided me off my chair with a gentleness that felt like insult. A black ring opened above the yard, polite and hungry. My body lifted as if gravity received a new manager. Winston watched from the doorway. He still did not blink. Then the yard vanished.I woke in a room of metal and light. Cold air cleaned the alcohol out of my breath. The frogs stood around a pod that looked like a coffin built by someone who hated comfort. A visor hung above the pod. Cables waited like vines. The tallest frog pointed. “Enter.” “This feels like the Matrix,” I said. The frog nodded. “Humans accept dread better when it wears a familiar outfit.” They strapped me down. Belts clicked in calm steps. The visor lowered. The tallest frog spoke again. “Time moves faster inside. Seventeen subjective years pass for you. Minutes pass for us.” “I do not consent,” I said. The frog wrote something. “Subject uses legal language.” Light filled the visor. The world snapped.I stood in a city that smelled like hot plastic and burned toast. A statue rose over a square. It showed a man holding a charger above his head. People knelt at its base. They pressed chargers to their foreheads. They stared at wall sockets like they were windows. A sign hung over the square in neat letters. Welcome to Chargeria City. Charge is life. My phone sat in my hand again. Its screen glowed. Two percent. A siren screamed at me. A drone dipped low. Its speaker boomed with school-principal authority. “Unregistered device. Uncharged. Unauthorised.” Two officers grabbed my arms. Their uniforms read Cord Enforcement. Their faces held the joy of small power. “This is a mistake,” I said. One officer waved a scanner over my hands. The scanner beeped. “No charger,” he said. “Clean hands. That is the dirtiest thing.” “I borrowed one,” I said. “I will return it.” The second officer smiled. “Borrower is thief with better branding.” They dragged me through the square. People pointed at me the way people point at a rat. An old man clutched a power bank like a rosary. A teenager filmed me, shaking with moral excitement. A kid in a school uniform yelled, “Send him to the dead zone.” The officers pushed me into a small booth at the edge of the square. It had a chair, a camera, and a slot for signatures. A sign on the wall read: Summary Justice Unit. Please speak clearly. A screen lit up. A faceless voice spoke. “Charge theft detected. Social risk high. Sentence applied.” A printer spat out a slip of paper. Six years. No appeal. It felt neat. It felt lazy. It felt familiar in a new way. The officer shoved the slip at me. “Sign,” he said. “I want a lawyer,” I said. He pointed at a wall socket. “Talk to that. It listens.” I signed. They cuffed me and marched me through a door. The city vanished behind a concrete corridor that smelled of sweat and melted insulation.Prison smelled like fear cooked with plastic. They lined us up in intake. Men stared at me like they were checking if I had value. A guard shouted rules in a voice that carried no hope. A bloke with a shaved head stood in front of me. A charger was tattooed on his neck, like a warning label. He looked me up and down. “Name,” he said. “Magnus.” He nodded. “CJ.” I expected a tough speech. I expected a punch. CJ only leaned closer. “Do not say ‘borrow’ in here,” he said. “What do I say,” I said. He shrugged. “Say ‘took.’ Say ‘stole.’ Honesty keeps your teeth.” I tried to laugh. It came out thin. My first night in that place gave me the lesson fast. People fight over the smallest things when fear runs the room. The riot started over a cable. One cable. Half a metre long. Black insulation. A frayed end wrapped in tape. Men gathered around it like it was food. Someone reached. Someone punched. Then the corridor filled with bodies. A tray smashed into a face. A fist hit my jaw. My teeth clacked. I tasted blood and something sharp in my mind, like burnt plastic. I fell. Boots found my ribs. I curled in and tried to protect my head. The cable whipped past my cheek and snapped against the wall. It made a clean, cruel sound. CJ grabbed my collar and dragged me up. “Stand,” he said. Another boot swung at my stomach. CJ took it on his hip and swore like it was an old habit. “Stand,” he said again, louder. A guard fired a stun pulse. The crowd collapsed in spasms and curses. The cable lay on the floor, untouched now, like a dropped crown. CJ looked down at it and shook his head. “A bit of plastic runs the whole zoo,” he said.Later, I sat on my bunk and stared at my hands. My hands shook in little bursts. My chest felt tight. My head replayed the cable snap, again and again, like it wanted to drill the sound into me. Two percent is a number, I told myself. My body did not agree. Time in Chargeria moved like a conveyor belt. Days clicked past. I worked, I ate, I slept, I watched men argue over charging time like it was oxygen. I learned to keep my eyes down. I learned to keep my mouth shut. I learned that fear can wear a polite face. They ran a prison program called Community Recharge. The title made me want to punch the brochure. It turned out to be a work gang. CJ stood in the line with me, close enough to elbow me quiet. We wore helmets. We carried hoses. We got driven out in a truck with barred windows. The guard called it civic duty. CJ called it cheap labour.On my tenth shift, we got a call to a unit in a tower block. Smoke poured from a window. Plastic stung my nose. Heat pressed against my visor. My mouth went dry in a way I did not like. We kicked the door in. Flames crawled up curtains. A wall outlet spat sparks like a possessed toaster. A woman stood in the room holding a charger to her chest. She cried and rocked it like a baby. CJ shouted, “Drop it.” She shook her head. “It is my dad’s charger.” I stepped toward her. My own phone sat in my pocket like a stone. My old reflex rose in me with a sick familiarity. Protect the charger. Save the charger. Do not be the man at two percent. I said, “Your hand is burning.” She looked down. The cable had melted into her skin. The smell turned my stomach. It smelled like a cheap toy left on a stove. She whispered, “Charge is life.” “No,” I said. “You are life.” I grabbed her wrist. She fought me. She clung to the charger like it could answer her back. I pried her fingers open. Skin tore. She screamed. It was a sharp, animal sound. It cut through my jokes and left nothing behind. CJ swung the hose at the outlet. Steam hissed. The fire died with a reluctant sigh. We dragged her out. She sobbed into my shoulder. Her tears ran down my sleeve and mixed with soot.Outside, CJ sat on the curb and ate chips from a paper bag. I sat beside him and tried to stop my hands shaking. CJ watched my fingers. “It gets into you,” he said. “I hate this place,” I said. CJ looked at the street lights and the neon charger ads and the people staring at wall sockets. “They fear emptiness,” he said. “Two percent feels like death to them.” He chewed a chip. He swallowed. “Keep the people,” he said. “Let the plugs burn.” The line hit me hard. It sat in my chest with the tightness. It did not leave.A few months later, a prison officer called me to the desk. He held a clipboard with the boredom of a man who lived inside forms. “You earned early release,” he said. “Good conduct. Community Recharge service. Responsible Charging seminar attendance.” “I apologised to a wall,” I said. He nodded. “The wall accepted.” He handed me a plastic bag with my clothes. He gave me a thin smile that meant nothing. “Do not return,” he said. I walked out into Chargeria sunlight and felt my legs wobble. I looked for a bench. I looked for a wall. I looked for something to hold.Then the visor tore away from my face and the metal room returned. The frogs watched me like scientists watching a rat that learned a trick. The tallest frog made a note. “Education delivered.” “You put years in my head,” I said. My voice shook. “You made me hold smoke and fists and screaming.” The frog nodded. “Instruction works.” “It breaks people,” I said. The frog spoke in calm pride. “Next stage. The Ego Meat Grinder.” The name hit my spine. It sounded like a joke told by a machine. They strapped me into another chair. This one looked less like a pod and more like a confession booth. A sign hung above it in neat letters. The Ego Meat Grinder. Please keep hands inside your ego. My phone appeared in my hand again. Its screen glowed. Two percent. It blinked at me like a dare. The machine activated. My breath caught. My chest tightened. My skin prickled. The metal room fell away. The feeling of my own weight shifted, like my body forgot its job.I saw everything. Stars burned in silent swarms. Galaxies spun like dust. Time stretched and folded. Planets formed, broke, formed again. A comet crossed a dark space and nobody clapped. I saw Earth. I saw Australia. I saw Brisbane. I saw my yard. I saw my chair. I saw Winston as a white smudge at a door. I saw myself slumped there, mouth open, half-drunk, full of ham. I saw my life as a thin line. My mind tried to scream. It tried to find a railing. It tried to grab a story that made me important. It tried to turn the universe into a meeting where I could argue my case. My phone screen stayed in my hand. The two percent blinked again. My heart hammered. My mouth dried out. Sweat broke cold on my back. I felt small in a way that had no edge. It had no drama. It just was.A thought arrived, plain and hard. This is absurd. Not tragic. Not heroic. Not designed for me. Just absurd. The scale did not ask my opinion. The universe did not care about chargers. It did not care about my shame. It did not care about my Tuesday at 3:06 pm. It did not care about the way my kid tried to hide her disappointment. That realisation should have crushed me. It did not. My chest loosened a notch. The two percent stopped feeling like a verdict. It started feeling like a number on a screen. It could not run my life unless I hired it.Images flashed. Not grand ones. Not the kind that end up on posters. A wet laugh from my kid at a bad joke. Her damp hair brushing my wrist in the car, and her saying, “You missed a spot,” like it was nothing. Winston’s weight on my legs at night. The smell of sunscreen on my hands. A coffee cup sweating on a kitchen bench. Sara’s laugh over the fence. Small things. Plain things. I understood something simple. There is no grand score. Those moments are not filler. They are the whole thing. My breath slowed. My hands steadied. My stomach unclenched. The machine kept showing me the scale. It kept showing me my size. I stayed anyway.The frogs pulled me out. The tallest one stared at the clipboard like it wanted to be wrong. “Second known survivor,” it said. I laughed once. It came out rough. “You tried to break me,” I said. “You made me lighter.” The frog frowned. “Your response appears irrational.” “Good,” I said. “Your whole system runs on fake seriousness.” They dropped me back into my chair in my Brisbane yard.The sun had moved a bit. The radio still mumbled. The leftovers sat on the table like a dare. My throat still tasted like plastic smoke. Winston stood near my feet, judging me for leaving reality unattended. I sat up fast and knocked my beer bottle over. It hit the concrete and shattered. The sound snapped me back to the riot. Boots. Cable snap. The stun pulse crack. My hands went cold. My throat tightened. I stared at the glass like it held a face.Sara from next door called out from the fence. “Hey Magnus. You got a charger I can borrow.” The words hit me like the stun pulse all over again. My mind flashed the chant. Charge is life. My phone sat on the table. Two percent. It blinked at me, calm and rude. I felt the old urge. Fix it now. Plug it in now. Do not sit at two percent. My hand moved toward the kitchen drawer without asking me. The drawer that held things I “borrowed.” Chargers. Adaptors. Cables that did not belong to me. I stopped with my fingers on the handle. Keep the people. Let the plugs burn. I opened the drawer. It was worse than I remembered. A tangle of white cables. Three different plugs. A charger with my mate’s label still on it. A cable with a dog bite mark. A tiny power brick I took from a hotel and kept. It looked like a museum of my small dishonesty. I closed the drawer. I walked to the fence. “No,” I said. “Not today.” Sara blinked. “Right. Okay.” “I will buy you one,” I said. “Your own one.” Sara stared at me, then shrugged. “Fair,” she said, and walked back home.Winston jumped onto the table and sniffed my phone. He sneezed, like it offended him. My phone buzzed. I looked at the screen. A message from my kid. Did you feed Winston? Two percent still sat in the corner. I did not care. My thumbs moved on their own. Yes. He is judging me. Are you home soon? I hit send. The phone buzzed again. On my way. Feed yourself too. I smiled before I could stop it. I put the phone down and did not reach for a charger. I did not check the percentage again. I watched Winston stroll across the pavers like he owned the place.That night I slept in my bed. I slept deep. I still dreamed of cables snapping against concrete. I woke once with my jaw tight. I drank water. I went back to sleep. Days passed. Brisbane went back to its normal madness. Heat. Sweat. Magpies shouting like they ran the street. Sara watering plants at the wrong hour. I kept finding chargers in my drawer. I kept leaving them there.On the fourth day, I stood in the shower and let water run over my shoulders. Steam fogged the mirror. I wiped it with my hand and looked up. A mark sat on my left shoulder. A small circle around a dot. Under it, tiny script curved like it had been written by a careful hand. Two percent is not an emergency. My mouth went dry. I turned my shoulder. I leaned closer. The skin raised under my fingertips. It did not wash off. It did not smudge. It felt old and new at once, like it belonged to me and did not. Behind me, Winston pushed the bathroom door open with his head and walked in like a supervisor. He looked up at me. He blinked once. Winston flicked his tail, slow and offended, then sat with his back to me on the bathmat. <h2>F.S.F.</h2>

Two Percent

Every summer I sit on my couch, ready for the summer cricket, doubly so for the Ashes. I set up like it is a five-day festival. Snacks in range. Phone on silent. Chores on hold. Plans cancelled with pride. Then England turned up and stole the summer. Not with runs. Not with grit. Not with any interest in staying past Day Two. Perth lasted two days. Two days. The whole thing took 847 balls. I had a full week of cricket in my head. I had Thursday afternoons mapped. I wanted long spells. I wanted the slow burn. England looked like they packed a plan, then left it at Heathrow. The first ball jagged, and England chased it like a toddler after bubbles. That is the theme. Chasing. Fishing. A noble hobby, not a Test method. I tried to keep it calm. I did the Benaud voice. “Marvellous leave.” Then they nicked. “Marvellous nick.” Then another. I ran out of marvellous. Australia did not play perfect cricket. They did enough cricket. England did extra theatre. The souvenir shop was selling “Day 3 Highlights” DVDs. They were blank. I laughed, then checked my ticket, then laughed again. The internet kicked off fast. One group called it rigged. Another group blamed Snicko. A third group blamed the pitch, the umpires, the moon, and a bloke named Baz. Who flies across the planet for the Ashes and forgets the basics? England did. And the answer is still on my couch. Fast loss has no story. It has no middle. Fast loss leaves a man alone with his own chores. I did not ask for free afternoons. I asked for cricket that eats the day. So, I am left with the true villain of this Ashes. The villain is empty time. I sat there on Day Three, remote in hand, staring at sport that was not there. I refreshed the score like it owed me rent. I opened the fridge twice and learned nothing both times. England, you stole our summer cricket. You left me with silence, and a sink full of dishes. F.S.F

Baz Ball Then Dishes

Not New Year’s Day. It starts when the sums fail. Kettle on. Bench cold. Tuesday. Mid arvo. A call marked quick sync waits. Clock already lies. Late entry. Camera dark. Praise that asks for more work. Money leaves the room. One fair question asked. Silence answers instead. Call drops. Rule breaks clean. Effort paid the rent once. Now it buys more effort. That maths ends here. Facts do not move hands. Fear gets there first, every time. Notes stop pretending. Fair play feels decent. In the minutes, it is logged. Gate learns how to shut. Quality stays mute unless named twice, out loud. Give it a ticket. Three drafts get deleted. Long reasons do not survive. Short words cost less breath. One problem stays put. Left on the bench untouched. Exit beats repair. The body clocks truth. Shoulders lower an inch. Breath clocks back in. Numbers look unfriendly. They do not lie today. That steadies things. A calm voice pipes up. Map upside down. Tone bright. “Well, now we know more.” One sharp laugh rings out. Cat bolts for safer ground. Floor keeps the proof. For twenty twenty-six the list runs shorter, harder. Ink stays plain. Facts land after fear. Signal or vanish outright. Eat first. Then decide. Laptop shuts first now. Hands stop over giving. Silence pays rent. Bin goes out back late. Lid claps. Small crowd agrees. That counts tonight. Gate closed. Kettle dry. Nothing fixed or redeemed. Recalibrated. F.S.F.

Recalibrating

Etta pressed her face to the gap under the back wall and inhaled. Smoke. Beer. Hot fat. River mud. Wet wool. The North West Never Warm. Inside, monsters drank like the year owed them money and the money squealed.Zofia held Etta’s collar so she would not crawl in. “Listen first.”Etta whispered, “I am listening. I am also starving. Both can be true.”A mug shattered. A cheer rose. Someone yelled, “Again!” like pain was a sport.It really was the pub at the end of the world squatted by the Forth River, The Forth Pub a stubborn box with river damp in its bones. It was small, and it had only the basics: a public bar, an eating area, a kitchen, a toilet out back, and two tight rooms upstairs. In December, questions got you eaten.A deep voice boomed, “Order!”Krampus. Chains first, personality later. He had horns, a sack, and a job that began with punishment and ended with screaming.Another voice answered, rough as a pot scrape, “We begin. We end it. We go home.”Gryla. A giantess shaped like hunger. Her hands could hold a child like an apple.A third voice cut in, calm as a blade on a stone. “Use the beam.”Baba Yaga. Not the loudest. Not the biggest. The one who watched faces and kept score.Zofia’s eyes narrowed. “They are starting.”Etta bit her finger to stop a laugh. “Monsters love meetings. They love motions. They love saying motion carries.”Inside, Baba Yaga spoke again. “The motion is simple. Destroy Christmas forever. No more songs. No more games. No more children who think light belongs to them.”Someone barked approval.A crisp voice snapped, “Finally.”Perchta sat near the fire with a ledger and a pen, neat as a threat. The sort of monster who could ruin you for leaving crumbs.A chorus of Kallikantzaroi chattered and argued about the word forever. Small goblins of misrule who could wreck a roof and then complain about the weather.Krampus said, “Three parts. One spell. No mistakes.”Something hit a table. Wet. Heavy.Zofia breathed, “Pigs.”Etta breathed back, delighted, “Hate pigs.”A goblin squealed, “Pigs that hate Christmas. Pigs that trample gifts. Pigs that scream over carols until ears bleed.”Gryla rumbled, pleased. “Good. Make it ugly.”Baba Yaga said, “Second part. Heart strings. Stolen from humans. Fresh.”Zofia’s stomach tightened. Heart strings were not poetry here. Monsters stole them like thieves stole purses. They reached into sleeping chests and pulled out thin red cords of care, and people still walked after, but they walked wrong.Perchta said, “Third part is the beam. Touch wood. The anchor. Without it, the spell slides off the world.”Krampus grinned. “Then Christmas turns into dread. Humans will wait for December like a toothache.”Etta’s eyes shone in the dark. “We better stop them.”Zofia whispered, “We stop the spell, we return the strings, and we do not die.”Etta whispered, “That last part feels negotiable.”Zofia ignored her and pictured the pub’s bones. The beam ran across the ceiling, blackwood, dark, polished by a century of anxious hands. Touch wood, people said, and felt safer for a second. There was one rule older than the monsters’ meeting. If a human touched the beam, monsters lost power. No magic. No violence. No claws. No teeth. No harm.But only while the touch lasted. Let go, and it stopped at once.Zofia said, “You hold the beam. No slipping. No jokes with your hands.”Etta leaned closer. “I am very serious about hands.”They slid along the wall to the staff door. It hung crooked, as if the pub got bored of straight. A Yule Cat sat on the threshold like a tax collector. It stared at their feet.Etta froze. The cat’s eyes locked on her socks. Not her face. Her socks.Zofia hissed, “Do not move.”Etta whispered, “It wants my ankles.”Zofia took off her own socks and laid them on the floor like an offering. “Trade.”The cat sniffed, pushed them into a perfect pile with one paw, and looked away.They slipped inside into the eating area. Small tables. Bent forks. A chalkboard that still read STEW like stew could save anyone. The bar noise rolled through the doorway in waves.On the sideboard sat a sack that moved, faintly, like it breathed. Zofia stepped close. Red cords pressed against the fabric. Each cord had a bead tied on, scratched with tiny marks: a gate, a bend in the river, a boat, an initial. Local. Recent. Fresh stolen heart strings. From humans nearby. From farms up the road. From kids who would wake up empty.Etta reached.Zofia caught her wrist. “Beam first,” and Etta nodded, running into the public bar like she owned the place.Silence hit the room for one clean beat. Then the room found its noise again.Krampus stood by the counter with a chair leg in his hand. Gryla hunched by the fireplace, eyes on the door. Baba Yaga perched on a table as if she had always lived there. Perchta sat with her ledger, pen poised. The Kallikantzaroi bounced on stools and argued about who got to say second.Krampus tilted his head. “Children.”Etta pointed up. “I need to borrow that beam.”Krampus laughed. “No.”Etta did not negotiate. She climbed a chair, climbed the bar, and slapped her palm on the beam.The air clicked.Krampus swung the chair leg at her. Nothing happened. The chair leg stopped mid-air like it had hit thick glass. Krampus blinked.Etta grinned, hand flat on the wood. “Sorry. You are on mute.”Gryla lunged and her claws cut air, then stalled, and she snarled as if her own body had betrayed her.Baba Yaga laughed once. “Useful rule.”Perchta’s eyes sharpened. “No climbing on furniture.”Etta said, “Write me up.”While Etta touched the beam, the monsters could not attack, but they could watch, and they could wait her out.Zofia moved like time mattered, because it did. She ran back to the eating area, grabbed the sack of heart strings, and felt it tug, not physically, but deeper, like a thousand thin lines pulling toward homes across paddocks and wet forest. She hauled the sack into the bar.Perchta stood at once. “Do not drag that. It will tangle.”Zofia said, “Good.”Perchta’s mouth tightened. “Untidy.”Zofia said, “I am about to offend you on purpose,” and she dumped the sack on the floor. Red cords spilled out in a bright mess.Perchta inhaled like she had been slapped.Zofia pointed at the mess. “Fix it.”Perchta took one step, then stopped, eyes flicking to Etta’s hand on the beam.“While the human touches the wood,” Baba Yaga said, amused, “you cannot do much, Perchta.”Perchta hissed, “I can still think.”Zofia said, “Then think. You do not serve Krampus. You serve order. Those strings in his sack mean knots, tears, waste, and you hate waste.”Krampus snarled, powerless and furious. “I heard that.”Zofia said, “Good.”Outside, a squeal rose from the yard. Metal rattled. The animal trailer rocked. The hate pigs. The monsters had brought them in on a truck, as even doom needed transport in North West Tasmania.Gryla rumbled, “Bring them in.”A Kallikantzaros darted for the door, then stopped dead at the threshold, like it had forgotten how doors worked.Baba Yaga said, “We cannot use the pigs while the beam is held.”Krampus stared at Etta’s hand like he wanted to bite it off, so he tried a different weapon. Words.“Little girl,” he said to Etta, voice soft, “your hand will cramp. Your skin will slip. You cannot hold forever.”Etta’s arm trembled. Bone and stubbornness. Sweat on her palm.Krampus continued, “When you let go, I will take your clever friend first.”Zofia kept her voice calm because calm made thinking easier. “He is right about one part. You cannot hold forever.”Etta said, “I can hold until I am one hundred.”Zofia said, “We only need minutes.”She grabbed a bundle of heart strings and looped it around the beam, right below Etta’s palm, and tied a knot that would make a scout master nod. Tight. Plain. Certain. The cords shuddered.Zofia spoke to the beam, not because wood needed manners, but because words focused intent. “These were stolen. Send them back.”The cords pulled hard. They wanted home.Etta hissed, “Zo, that is pulling my arm out.”Zofia said, “Hold. I am nearly done.”Then Zofia ran.She sprinted out the front door into the yard, and cold hit her face, and the river smell rose, and wet grass shone under moonlight. The truck sat crooked. The trailer rocked with rage. Zofia popped the latch and jumped back.The first pig hit the mud already running, hooves churning. Its eyes caught moonlight like broken mirrors. The second and third followed, bodies low, moving with purpose that had nothing to do with being livestock. They charged her.Zofia did not run straight. She ran crooked, toward the pub door, because the pub was the only safe zone. The pigs followed, hooves tearing mud. Zofia dove inside.The pigs hit the threshold, and the moment they crossed into the bar the change hit them. Their hate did not vanish, but it lost its spell bite, and they became pigs with rage, not pigs with magic. They skidded on spilled beer, slammed into stools, and began destroying whatever was closest, because pigs are honest about their feelings.Perchta shrieked, “Not the chairs!”Etta laughed, still touching the beam. “Now it is a proper pub.”Krampus leaned close to Etta, eyes bright. “Let go.”Etta did something eccentric and brave and very Etta. She licked the beam.Zofia stared for half a second.Etta said, mouth still on wood, “It tastes like old decisions,” and her grip reset, palm flat, no slip.Zofia turned back to the strings. The heart strings began to reel out on their own. Thin red lines sliding across floorboards, out under doors, through cracks, toward the dark. They were going home. Each cord snapped tight and vanished, like it had been pulled through the world.Baba Yaga’s smile faded. “Clever.”Perchta saw the cords move and finally understood what Zofia had done. Not a theft. A return. “You are giving them back,” Perchta said, almost angry, almost relieved.Zofia said, “Yes.”Perchta’s jaw worked. Her pen hand trembled. Habit fought conscience in her face, and Zofia saw it, and she kept quiet, because sometimes silence was the lever. Perchta picked up the loose cords and held them up so they would not snag. She did not touch the beam. She did not break Etta’s hold. She simply managed the flow, like a clerk who had decided the file belonged to the right person.The last heart string vanished. The room changed, not with glow, with absence. The monsters had planned to power their spell with stolen human heart. Zofia had removed the fuel.Krampus lifted his chair leg again, testing the air. He could not strike while Etta touched the beam, and even if she let go the spell was dead, because the heart strings were gone and the hate pigs were only pigs. Krampus realised it before anyone else. His shoulders dropped.Zofia looked at him. “You cannot destroy Christmas without stealing what makes humans care.”Krampus’s voice went quiet. “Christmas makes children brave.”Etta said, beam-hugging, “Yes.”Krampus said, “That is the problem.”Zofia said, “Then stop trying to destroy Christmas, we will always be here.”Outside, dawn pressed at the windows. North West grey crept in. The wind shifted. The river kept moving, because rivers had better priorities than monsters.Baba Yaga hopped down from the table. “It’s nearly dawn. Gotta Go. Bye.”The monsters began to thin, uneasy and empty-handed, as if they had been outvoted by timber and two girls with bad ideas that worked.Etta’s arm shook harder.Zofia stepped close and spoke low. “Ten seconds more.”Etta nodded, teeth clenched.Zofia counted under her breath. When she hit ten, she put her hand over Etta’s wrist and steadied it. “Now.”Etta lifted her palm from the beam.The effect stopped at once. The monsters could have attacked. They did not. Etta’s legs wobbled. Zofia caught her elbow, and they stood in the wreckage, spilled beer, broken stools, three sleeping pigs and breathed.Krampus paused at the door and glanced back, as if he wanted to say something decent and hated himself for wanting it. He said, “Next year.”Zofia said, “Next year, bring your own heart.”Etta waved. “And bring better pigs.”On Christmas morning, across Forth and Devonport and the wet paddocks inland, people woke with something back in their chests that they could not name. They touched wood on door frames without knowing why. They laughed too loud and got away with it.And in a small pub by the river, three pigs slept under a table, snoring like they had never heard of Christmas and did not care. F.S.F.

Heart Strings and Hate Pigs

I grew up in the Age of Sensible Rules. No fourteen year old smoked. No durry hid in a shoe behind the cricket nets. Nobody drank. No goon slid across a tin roof after lights out. Casinos waited for adults. No Year Ten boy swaggered in on a borrowed licence that still smelled of cousin. As boarders we never signed out for the movies and visited Nutgrove Beach where the sand steadied an esky and the teachers forgot the tide charts. We kept our halos straight. Rebellion never crossed our minds. The adults had banned things previously. Close the pubs at six, they said, and men will sip like saints. So the Swill taught the country to inhale beer before sunset. The banned plant nobody smoked spread through suburbs nobody raided. Courts yawned. Police filled their shifts with quiet reflection. X-rated films stayed rare. The Northern Territory did not post plain brown parcels. No locked drawer rattled in an office on George Street. Rock crept in on vinyl. The careful stations wrinkled their nose. Their listeners took one week to find which numbers still played it loud. Every fence held firm. No one climbed. Human nature loved a rule. Now kids carry small glowing streets in their pockets. Adults squint at the light and call it danger. So a new plan lands. Not trust. Not long talks at the kitchen bench. Instead a neat line that cuts the school roll in half and calls the bottom half fragile. They will not borrow a sibling’s cracked Android. Some lanky fifteen-year-old definitely will not run a quiet library of passwords. They will not ask the clever kid in Year Nine to make it all invisible. The family tablet will not turn into a sly grog room behind a calculator icon. School laptops will not learn that filters have seams. The rich house on the hill will not find a polite workaround. The flat with three kids and one tired parent will not be left with nothing but a pamphlet. No one will drift from noisy safe platforms to quiet unsafe ones. No one will learn that honesty kills access, so silence becomes habit. We could teach. Sit beside them. Watch the rubbish. Ask, “What do you make of that?” Let them train with home still close. But teaching has no podium. No headline. No morning interview. So the plan stands. Turn the bright square into contraband. Push the party underground. Give each twelve-year-old a mask, a torch, and the clear lesson that their stories are safest anywhere their parents are not. F.S.F.

F.S.F

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Heart Strings and Hate Pigs

The Age of Sensible Rules