Nobody but the wind and the pig man knew her name. Born of money but remitted to the antiquities in her late childhood, she lived a life of crazy hair and wind cracked skin. Never did she attend the town anymore because her third eye was unwelcome. Banished she was, to the eye atop the hill in the biggest unfenced asylum in Australia.

Once a week, the local priest delivered her a box of long life groceries and junk mail that she could enjoy the pictures of. Monthly, there was a cheque from England; a remittance to stay away lest she embarrass her aristocratic family. She had no need of paper with writing on it so she played a game of swap: one box of groceries for me, one piece of paper with writing on for you.

Sometimes she didn’t play. Sometimes her third eye warned her that the church was up to no good, that the church was hurting black children again, like they did in the time when she was sent out here. Sometimes she didn’t play because she was happy and wanted to talk with the pig man who lived in the old ammunition shelter down the hill. The priest took up too much time trying to find out her life story and write in down in his black journal. The pig man knew his life story. He used to tell her and she listened, fascinated at what he knew about himself.

The pig man killed black hairy pigs because black was a bad colour. Not on people but on animals and things. The eye house had no black because the eye house was safe. A lighthouse is a beacon of warning. That’s why she lived there. It was an eye that warned of danger. She had an eye like that too. That’s why she was banished. Nobody wanted to know bad stuff.

In the evening when the light of the defunct eye house was supposed to be shining out, her own eye took over. Bare foot on the gravel and through the steep scrub she trod. Descending through snakes, feral pigs and poison spiders, she would third eye the edge of the cliff and stand on its edge. Her toes used to digging in, she would take the assault of the wind and balance between reality and insanity. 

In the windy black she protected the ships from running aground the coral reefs, and, she called to her family. They never answered. She just wanted to know who she was and why she was sent there so that she no longer had to pretend to be crazy.

Her third eye never saw them. Her third eye was unable to tell her anything about who they were. She reasoned that her family must have been very good for her third eye only warned of trouble. Her family must have sent her to Cooktown to protect the souls of ship and shore. She had no memory of her family so her third eye had blocked all her good history to concentrate on the important job of saving others.

If only she didn’t have to pretend to be crazy to get sent to the eye atop the hill so that she was closer to the wind who promised to carry her grief and loneliness home to her family. If only her family would answer her calls. They must have been busy too, in an eye house very far away. For they were good and so was she.




If you wish to join the Writers Prompt Daily simply use the above photo as a prompt and post a short story, poem or paragraph to your blog. Leave a comment and the link here so that all participants can come to you and read/comment/encourage. Story above is copyright and is Megan Bayliss' writing around the above picture prompt.

My husband was a violent drunk. Correction, my husband was violent. He was always drunk. The night I drugged him was the biggest achievement of my life but it's hardly something to put on the resume, particularly given I got away with it.

He'd been drinking with our local head master. They'd been fishing and the salty build up around their sunglasses and chin stubble confirmed that a trip straight to the pub was in order. Normally, he'd drink at home, hit me, and drink some more again. At least on fishing night he wouldn't hit me until we got home.

In the beer garden, I sat and listened, bored but dutiful. Co-dependent I think its called. If I moved he may have thrown an empty beer jug at me. Was a fairly easy choice to just sit still and listen to them. They were both so drunk that even the words that came out of their mouths had a head on them. They were foul. Embarrassing. Abusive, filthy and not far off comatose. If only they'd pass out before the new woman heard them talking about her.

I'd seen the newcomer around a bit. She stood out because she had long hair and wore bright, silky, skirts and matching scarfs. Her hair was bottled red, straight, shiny and all the way to her backside. I think I liked the look of her or maybe it was just that she was so noticeable in average town.


Out of the pub she came and through the beer garden she moved toward me, one long confident stride after another. Her brightly painted lips smiled at me. Her green eyes held mine. My dark eyes held hers, and begged her to not come anywhere near me. He would kill me or cause an almighty scene.


She didn't understand body language. She sat beside me and offered her hand straight to me.

"I'm Carole," I think she said. My mind was so busy panicking that it took away my ability to hear.

"I'm Carole. I'm just here working for a while, cataloguing all the poisonous plants in the town area. You've got some deadly ones right under your noses. Atropa belladonna is just everywhere."

Like a dart straight to bullseye I heard her words. Like a whiff of ammonia beneath my victimology, my fear was taken away and my senses heightened. I marked Carole as a must know person.


Behind my husband's back, I met with Carole many times over her stay in average town. Carole's job was to ensure that the new Government site (Child care and a hospital) was poison plant free prior to building beginning. She would catalogue and somebody else would remove. Through field work, she taught me all about the toxic plants in our area and explained how the toxins break down and what they do to the animal that may consume them. Amazingly, Atropa belladonna mixed with alcohol, produced a quick death in humans. Even more amazing, the poison could not be traced IN the body once the person died because it passed through as the bowl and bladder let go at death.

I asked for the contract to remove and destroy the poisonous plants. On Carole's recommendation I won the job.

The night he died was the happiest night of my life. Even through my swollen shut eye and half face of a boxer, with my two broken fingers and a broken rib, I could still stir the jug of beer with the sweetest stick of Belladonna that I could find. Not enough and he would experience delirium and hallucinations. That would be no different to every other night. The right amount and his heart would stop and all poison pass from his body as bladder and bowl released.

Bowl movement, no problem. He was naked, a drunk and we were country people with a half dingo as a pet. I simply had the dingo clean up his waste. No different to any other night.


Flash fiction research: "Atropa bella donna" is derived from an admonition in Italian and Greek meaning "do not betray a beautiful lady."



If you wish to join the Writers Prompt Daily simply use the above photo as a prompt and post a short story, poem or paragraph to your blog. Leave a comment and the link here so that all participants can come to you and read/comment/encourage. Story above is copyright and is Megan Bayliss' writing around the above picture prompt.

He longed to start the day with some random bird. While busily playing the stock market (was it any wonder he was single - stock brokers are soooo yesterday) late into the night, he fantasized about the random sucking his juice dry every single morning.

Sometimes his fantasia got a little....too real. Hurrying to the bedroom, he would always pluck a feather from the gross feather flowers his Grandma gave him for the most recent Christmas past. The flowers he hated, the tickle he coveted. God, he wished he could work from home all the time.

If only he could find himself a bird whose feathers he could manipulate into performing morning delight upon his badly neglected beak. He just needed to be juiced by another human being. He'd been through the proverbial black book far too many times and he was smart enough to know that it was the same as the fridge - still the same as last time he looked. No new delights to be had.

Last Sunday, while he was enjoying his own company and right at the crucial juicing stroke, his Grandma phoned.

"Darling boy," she tinkered in her frail voice, "What can Granny get you for your birthday?"

His breathing thick and frustrated, not only with failure but also with the intrusion, he rudely told his Gran exactly as it was. "I want a bird to breakfast with. I want to beak her and ruffle her around until she lays her eggs in my hands."

His birthday card arrived in the mail. Surprised, he was, because after the way he disrespected his Grandmother he really thought their relationship was over. But, true to her nature of always giving a wanted gift, Grandma had included a voucher to Breakfast with the Birds at Rainforest Habitat. As an extra little bonus, Grandma had prepaid for two beakers of orange juice and the experience of her grandson cooking his own eggs, freshly collected from the aviary.




If you wish to join the Writers Prompt Daily simply use the above photo as a prompt and post a short story, poem or paragraph to your blog. Leave a comment and the link here so that all participants can come to you and read/comment/encourage. Story above is copyright and is Megan Bayliss' writing around the above picture prompt.

"Holy fecking Jesus Christ!" His blaspheming rattled the beads off the rosary that our Aunt, Sister Maire, was saying in front of the open plot that mother was about to be lowered into. Finally, Mother would be back with Daddy. She always said she'd make him pay for dying first. All Mother's sanctimonious and religious siblings were there to pray the happy couple a less volatile after life together than they experienced in the before life!

Affronted no doubt by such base wordage, Sister Maire, nervously clicked her beads together, and prayed silently louder. It was louder because her lips bumped together more violently. I saw she was shaking a little. I wondered whether she'd dare to nip from her holy water flask while she was in public.

Sister Maire was pretending not to be unsettled by David's outburst but I could plainly see her shaking in her boots. Apart from the withdrawals she was no doubt enduring, she'd never favoured David. When were were kids she used to tell him to be more like his lovely sister. Christ! If only she knew what I got up to! If only she knew what the Priest got up to!

David was pointing backward, toward some unknown focus of his base language. "I don't know who's buried there, but I just passed our father's grave three plots back!"

My head shot away from Sister Maire's beads like I was a marionette jerked to life. "What? What the hell are you talking about?"

"They've dug up the wrong fecking grave, Maive. They're about to plant our mother on top of some other poor sod. Oh Jesus, Joseph and Mary. Like any one else other than Da deserves her for all eternity."

I was furious. FURIOUS. Both parents died destitute and I had to credit card the funerals. If this mistake was going to cost me another digging fee I might just kill someone myself and bury them in the first hole. Shit. I was still paying off Daddy's funeral from years ago. I could not have another thing on my credit card. As it was, Mother had to be buried in Sister Maire's habit because it was the only half way decent free garment we could lay our hands on. I had no more capacity to pay for my Irish family's catholic drinking ways. Their religion and the results of their drinking were costing me the earth.

Despite David's fierceness of words, he doubled over with grief and twenty seven years worth of codependent living with alcoholic parents. He rocked and moaned while keeping himself just above ground level. Everybody was looking at him. My empathy levels had long run off to join the Protestants and I just wished he'd pull his shit together so we could get to the wake and get well and truly pissed. His pathetic crying sent me away in the head.

His rocking reminded me of something he used to do when we were kids. We'd rock bad situations into games. Oi! That bastard wasn't crying for his gone Mam. He was laughing. He was shaking with laughter. His tears were tears from belly laughs and lack of breath. He found this hilarious.

In retrospect, it was. Feck off, Mam and Da. Slainte.




If you wish to join the Writers Prompt Daily simply use the above photo as a prompt and post a short story, poem or paragraph to your blog. Leave a comment and the link here so that all participants can come to you and read/comment/encourage. Story above is copyright and is Megan Bayliss' writing around the above picture prompt.

Aka settled into the big comfy chair beside my bed. She pushed her Government issue thick black glasses high onto her thick black face. Lucky her nose was wide enough and could keep those "big glass eye up." He, he, he. Every one of us kids used to tease Aka because we were cheeky; diluted with white blood and white culture. She called us, skinny nose. We called her, Aka, grand mother.

Aka lived with her community mob but because she needed dialysis, she stayed in town with us three nights a week. We loved it when Aka stayed overnight because Aka told us stories. Aka got stolen from her mob when she was a kid and bought up in a Mission. Aka went to school and she knew how to read and write but she only did it in front of us because she said it was a shame job to her sisters and brothers who couldn't read or write.

Aka used to be an up town Murri, like our Mum, but once she got old and sick she wanted to go home all the time: to her country, to her people. Our Mum, her daughter, wanted Aka to have the Granny Flat out the back and live with us all the time. We wanted Aka to stay with us because she took the time to tell us stories.

In the big comfy arm chair on the boys side of the room, Aka adjusted her glasses, opened up some book she picked up off the floor and began, "Once upon a time, there were three," I interrupted her with my hitting hand and my sister threw a pillow at Aka.

"Aka," I growled. "We don't want book stories. We want your stories. Mum can tell us book stories. We want your stories, Aka, we want black fella dreaming."

Aka chuckled and pretended she was shame. My sister told me a girl secret though. She said that girls pretend to be shame when they are flattered by a compliment. Ah, jeez. I hated it when old people acted like little girls.

Aka picked her nose a bit. We laughed at her because we had a secret bet about whether or not all five of Aka's fingers could fit up those big nose holes.Tonight it was just one finger, but we laughed anyway.

"Aka," little Desley said, "tell us snake story."

Tucking her skinny ankles and feet up under her bony bum, Aka took the position of the long time story teller. Her eyes went all snake like and her tongue split in two and flickered out of her mouth.

"On the day that white fellas first visited my country, they came with a child. The child was a boy. White hair, white skin, white teeth. The child played alone, in the sand and nobody ever spoke to him or even looked at him. The child did not speak or cry either. His voice was frozen by bad magic.

Before the sun was even right up over them big gum trees, that white boy was covered in meat ants, biting stinging, hurting, eating. From the banish circle, far away, those meat ant smelt white boy's tender meat and they planned to eat it. They came, quickly, and they marched onto his body and sought out his scale to get beneath, to get into his inside body.

Those big white fellas did not know of our ways, our danger, our magic, our dreaming. Those white fellas did not know that the meat ant was a bad omen and they had to be stopped as soon as they crawl on you. Where the meat ant crawled, father snake, giver of life, would not. Of all creatures of the earth, the meat ant could bite father snake underneath his scale and eat through to the other side, cutting father snake in half, cut father snake's life dead.

Them white fellas went on with their business, making shelter, searching for fire wood, scooping up water, looking at rocks, but never once did them white fellas check the child who did not talk. That child was going to disappear, only his bones would remain, and nobody would know what was happening because, even before that boy came to our country, the meat ant magic had stopped that boy's tongue from crying out.

Father snake felt the rumble of thousands of meat ants devouring flesh. He came up from his sleeping place to investigate. He came up and found the white child covered with meat ants. Father snake was confused because the white child did not scream and the white fellas did not come to help the child. Father snake wanted to punish the people who would not help the children but he was scared to go through their camp, to crush them, in case the meat ant slipped under his scale.

Father snake thought quickly. He could not let that boy die in agony, eaten alive.  He sucked back every bit of venom in his body and from the safe outskirts of the camp where the meat ants could not get him, he spat his poision and it landed on the boy.

That vemon ran down the boy's head and covered every part of his body. Paralysed meat ant dropped off that boy and the crow swooped in to eat them. The meat ant who had already eaten into the boy's flesh were trapped. If they ran out to help their friends, they too would become paralysed.

As the poison sloshed its way down that silently screaming boy's throat and entered his blood stream, the inner trapped meat ants died. With all the danger gone, father snake slithered to face the boy. They boy was dying and father snake told him not to fear. While the venom was deadly to enemy ants it gave all others eternal life. The white child would die of the white fella world but be born of the snake life, as the God who cleared the land of meat ant.

White child died. He died of ant bite and snake love. He entered the spirit world on father snake's back and every spirit ancestor was there to talk with that boy, to pay him some attention and to watch over him while he sat and played. If ever he was in any danger, all he had to cry out was, "Snake," and father would be there with him, to ride him away to safety, to friends and to watchfulness."

Aka blinked at us. Her eyes returned to their normal shape and colour and her tongue knitted back to one.

"You fella go sleep now," she said in her broken lingo, "or I bin gonna get them meant ant come teach you one big lesson."

Little Desley had already fallen asleep but me, Garrett and Nazie, we all nodded our respect to Aka, pulled up our sheets and did exactly what our Aka said.

As Aka got up to turn the light off and leave us alone to sleep, I felt an urge to tell her how much I loved her stories.

I sat up and reached toward her. Her fragile arm, all hurt by the big dialysis needles,  reached out to meet mine. Our fingers entwined and spoke of our love for each other.

"Thank you, Aka," I said in a deep, hushed tone of respect. "Your stories are the best stories ever. Tonight I am going to make one up to tell you next time you stay here."

Aka smiled at me. Her big lips, cracked with years of story telling and singing, rose in each corner. A smile, a cackle and her red tongue poked through her teeth. Aka's way of saying, thank you.

That was the last time I ever saw Aka. Two days later, she was discovered, in her community, strangled by a 16 foot python. Had she called Father snake to her? Yes, we believed she had.

Little white boy now had the best Aka in the world to tell him stories and to listen to his in return.




If you wish to join the Writers Prompt Daily simply use the above photo as a prompt and post a short story, poem or paragraph to your blog. Leave a comment and the link here so that all participants can come to you and read/comment/encourage. Story above is copyright and is Megan Bayliss' writing around the above picture prompt.