StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Just a little story I finished today. I'm not quite sure about the ending. I may need to add something to it, but I don't know. It's just supposed to be an epilogue, not a whole new story. I'm not sure about any of it, actually. I've never written anything quite like this before. It's a completely new style for me.

Well, enjoy!


The Hammer of Vulcan

On this particular summer’s night, the tide happened to be changing at sunset. The jetty at the Grange beach was filled with anglers, eager to catch the crabs and fish that populated the metropolitan waters. Closer to shore, the beach was filled with people escaping the heat after a day’s work. Children as young as one paddled in the gulf waters that even at their roughest were safe and gentle enough for children to take their first furtive strokes.

Among those on the jetty was a fat man in a singlet and thongs who fished next to a slight, blond ten year old boy who threw out his crabbing nets with a practiced hand despite his youth. Although they were in no way related, even through bonds of friendship, the fat man would attempt to make conversation with the boy, whose name, he discovered, was Decklan.

“Gonna catch some crabs for tea?” the fat man asked Decklan.

Decklan grunted. “Hopefully.”

The fat man waited for him to speak some more and then, realizing that the boy was finished, tried to strike up the conversation again. “Your mum’s going to cook them up for you?”

“Nah,” said Decklan. “She’s all schitzo tonight. ‘Sides, I like to cook them myself. It’s fun to watch them boil.”

The fat man didn’t know what to say to this and sunk into silence. Further attempts at conversation that he made later in the evening reached similarly uncomfortable impasses, and eventually he gave up on speaking to the boy, who caught the bus home back towards the city, carrying several large blue crabs in his bucket.

Decklan got off the bus shortly before he reached the city, walking a few blocks south to his home. Back when the city of Adelaide was founded, the western side of the city had been the industrial district, and this was still evident in the run-down factories and warehouses that loomed over worn-out roads. Some of these, like the old brickworks, had found a new lease of life as tourist attractions or flea-markets, but most stood derelict, waiting for the inevitable time, still a few years away, when they would be demolished and replaced with blocks of townhouses, or possibly (if the residents of the few houses that had managed to sprout between the factories could be convinced to move) developed as a new Delfin project, designed to showcase the modern incarnation of urban planning.

Fitting with the nature of the area, Decklan’s house was a musty plasterboard monster with a tin roof, seemingly designed especially with the idea in mind of magnifying the heat of the forty-degree days the city was bound to have in mid to late summer and letting in all the cold of the winters, which while not frigid by any stretch of the imagination, were cold enough by local standards to be considered more than uncomfortable.

“Mum!” he called as he went inside. “I’m home! Mum!”

There was no reply, which didn’t surprise the boy, who filled up a large pot with water and set it on the stove to boil. Once the water reached boiling point, he picked up his crabs one by one with a set of tongs and lowered them slowly into the water. Then he stood on a chair, watching their shells change from the natural blue hue that they had while alive to the bright red of the cooked crustacean.

As he was about to pull the cooked crabs from the pot, he noticed his mother standing at the door in her “nightgown”. Her long hair, dyed black in the proud individualistic style of many a wannabe Goth, was dishevelled, which was normal for her, as was, for that matter, the “nightgown”, which she wore almost constantly. As far as bedclothes went, it was far from normal. The gown she wore was a once-white mediaeval style dress that only bore the title “nightgown” because she insisted on it being called such. Most people would consider it to be a costume, and a well made one at that, and a proud addition to any dress-up wardrobe, had it been properly cared for.

“Did you go to school today, Decklan,” she asked.

“Shut up, Mum,” Decklan replied. “Can’t you see I’m eating?” He began to pile the crabs onto an old chipped plate.

“You should be going to school,” his mother said weakly, her voice sounding the words as though she didn’t really understand the reason why she was saying them. There was probably some part of her mind that understood that it was important for her son to be attending school, but she had no understanding of why it was necessary.

“I told you to shut up!” Decklan screamed, throwing his tongs at her. They landed with a clatter against the wall behind her, bounced off and rolled to a halt on the ground in front of her.

Decklan’s mother’s eyes began to well up with tears as she looked down at the tongs on the ground and she soon ran off crying silently. Decklan ignored her and began picking at the meat on his crabs. As he ate, he decided that he might attend school tomorrow; not because of his mother’s request, but because the weather was hot and the school was air conditioned.

The next day, while it was spent in a pleasantly cool environment, was as unproductive as Decklan had expected it to be. Aside from the game of cricket that he played in at lunch time until a group of older boys commandeered the cricket pitch, his time at school was mostly tedious. While the rest of the class seemed to be amused by the piece of artwork he drew on the blackboard entitled Mr Zwecki’s penis, the real-life Mr Zwecki didn’t see the humour in the situation and sent him to the counsellor’s office with a stern note.

Even the counsellor, Miss Dean, didn’t see it Decklan’s way, even after he explained what had happened to her. Instead, she chose to ask him about his family life, a topic that Decklan had no interest in talking about and as a result, barely even gave minimal answers to the questions she asked.

“Does your mother know what your behaviour’s like at school?” Miss Dean asked.

“I dunno,” Decklan said.

“We’ve sent her notes,” said Miss Dean, “but she hasn’t replied to any. Is she alright?”

Decklan grunted in reply.

“And she hasn’t come to any parent-teacher interviews, either.”

Decklan shrugged, his body saying, “I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me, and I don’t care either.”

“I’d like to go to your place to speak to her, if that’s alright,” the counsellor said. “Would Thursday be alright?”

“I dunno,” said Decklan. “I never know when Mum’s going to be home.”

The counsellor made a mental note of the last statement – the only really informative thing the boy had said to her all session, and after a brief continuation of the conversation, sent him back to class, where he spent the last hour of the day standing in a corner as punishment for kicking a girl under the table hard enough to leave a mark.

After school Decklan walked into the parklands with his friend Callum. Callum’s parents tried to keep the two boys separate as they considered Decklan to be a bad influence – a high achievement given that Callum was one of those boys that most parents viewed in that very same light.

Their walk took them along the River Torrens, through Linear Park, which followed the river from the foothills to the sea. As they passed the West Thebarton cemetery, Decklan stopped and stared at it for a while, long enough that Callum climbed the bank to see what he was up to.

“Whatcha lookin’ at?” Callum asked.

“Oh, I just saw Mum, is all,” Decklan replied.

Callum looked at the deserted cemetery. “I don’t see her.”

Decklan blinked and looked at the cemetery again with fresh eyes. “Oh, she must’ve gone then.”

“What’s she doing there anyway?” Callum asked.

“Talking to Gran, probably,” said Decklan. “She does that a lot. Thinks she’s actually having a conversation with her.”

“Man,” said Callum. “Your mum really is schitzo, in’t she?”

“Hey! Leave my mum alone!” Decklan said, punching Callum.

“Well, she is schitzo,” Callum said defensively. “I seen her. It’s just the truth. ‘Sides, you call her schitzo all the time.”

“Yeah, well she’s my mum,” said Decklan. “I’m allowed to.”

“Whatever,” said Callum. “C’mon, let’s go!”

The two boys headed upstream and into town, past the display known as the brewery lights outside the West End Brewery. The brewery’s sales had dropped in recent years due to the increasing popularity of the Cooper’s Ale which was brewed further north, but that didn’t stop them from maintaining (with the assistance of Channel Nine) a display on the riverbank known as the brewery lights. The Christmas decorations having been taken away a good month previously, the display was somewhat Spartan at the moment, but the basic models were there, in particular Vulcan striking the anvil in his volcanic smithy. Decklan loved the display, and always stopped to watch Vulcan beat down with his hammer and to hear the thunderous sound that was played every time it came down.

“I wish I was a volcano,” he said. “I’d go boom over everybody!” he spread his arms in an imitation of a volcano eruption. “Boom!” Then he ran along with his friend along the bike track and into the landscaped parks that ran through the CBD, separating the built-up Adelaide city with its offices and shops from the affluent North Adelaide which remained the province of heritage listed townhouses and Italian restaurants. The two sections of the CBD were ringed with parklands in their entirety, but Decklan preferred to stay by the river where he could play with the waterbirds, which had lost most of their fear of humanity after a hundred and seventy years of being fed by children bearing bags of stale bread.

Ducks were by far the most common birds on the river, their position of dominance threatened only by the greedy seagulls, which could be found anywhere there was a chance of a cheap feed. The other animals included black swans which were rendered almost tame due to people’s natural desire to feed the graceful creatures by hand and vicious-looking pelicans which strove to snatch even unoffered food from the hands of visitors to the park.

The swans, more intelligent by far than the idiot ducks and not as aggressive as the large-beaked pelicans had learnt to avoid Decklan after he had tried to feed them bread-wrapped rocks, and seeing as he had brought no food with him, the other birds only briefly flirted for his attention and soon moved on to more promising targets. To amuse himself, Decklan challenged Callum to a competition to see who could hit a magpie’s nest first with a stone. This naturally provoked a swooping attack from the two magpies who were watching over it, and the boys were forced to protect themselves by waving sharp sticks in the air. Occasionally passers-by would join the magpies in defending the nest; when this happened, the boys would run off until the path was clear, restarting the game when there were no adults around to scold them.

Callum was a poor throw, but the competition was rendered more or less even as Decklan found that if he threw just right, he could get his stone to bounce off of the branch below the nest and hit Callum with it. This made him laugh, despite Callum’s anger. He succeeded just rarely enough that Callum didn’t suspect that he was doing it deliberately, although when Callum finally got lucky and hit the nest, he called the game to a close immediately, declining a rematch.

The two boys returned home as the sky darkened. The brewery lights were lit up in the twilight, with Vulcan’s forge glowing a vicious red. One could almost imagine that the miniature volcano was actually real as the light flashed and the hammer pounded.

Once again, Decklan stopped to look at the display. “We should go down there,” he said to Callum.

“Where? To the lights?” Callum asked.

“Yeah. We could break into the volcano.”

“Not now,” said Callum. “I’ve got tea.”

“Yeah, not now,” said Decklan. “Another day.”

“When?”

“This weekend. Saturday,” said Decklan.

“It’s my birthday Sunday,” said Callum.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, well I’ve gotta go to Nanna’s. She’s all proud I’m reachin’ double figures.”

“So? Saturday’s not your birthday, in’t it?”

“Yeah, no,” said Callum, feeling his argument disintegrating.

“And you can’t get in trouble, ‘cause it’s your birthday.” Decklan’s logic was impeccable.

“Guess not,” said Callum.

“’Sides,” Decklan gestured to the wire that barred the entrance to Vulcan’s cave, “I need someone to help me open the cage.”

“I s’pose,” Callum said.

Having gained his friend’s support in his next venture, Decklan happily went home. He even kissed his mother on the lips as she lay still on her bed in a sign of filial affection that he displayed all too rarely, before sending himself to bed.

Thursday came and Decklan was surprised when the school counsellor showed up on his doorstep as she had suggested she might do during their last meeting.

“H’lo, Miss Dean,” he said as he opened the door.

“Hello, Decklan,” she said. “Is your mum here?”

“No,” Decklan said flatly.

“Do you mind if I wait here for her to return?”

“I guess,” said Decklan, opening the door for her to step in.

Miss Dean’s nose wrinkled as she entered the dirty house. As Decklan showed her into the kitchen, she noticed the nearly bare pantry, which had one door swinging off of it with a broken hinge. The sink was stacked high with unwashed dishes and she let out a small squeak as she noticed a cockroach come out from a grimy mug. A putrid smell permeated the house, as though a large rat or possum had died in the roof and no-one had gone up to get it out. Miss Dean sat gingerly on the vinyl chair Decklan offered her, feeling as though the grime of the house could wash off on her if she touched even a thing in it.

She and Decklan sat staring at each other for over an hour, with Miss Dean making occasional conversation which was always rudely rejected by Decklan. Finally she tired of waiting and stood up.

“I’m sorry, Decklan, but I have to go now,” she said. “Tell your mother that I’m sorry I missed her.”

“Yeah, seeya, Miss Dean,” Decklan said, showing her out.

“I’ll see you at school tomorrow,” Miss Dean said.

“Yeah, seeya,” Decklan said.

As Decklan turned back into the house, his mother wandered down the passage way from her room. “Who was that?” she asked.

“Miss Dean wanted to see you,” Decklan said.

“Who’s she?”

“She’s the school counsellor.”

“Oh,” Decklan’s mother responded vaguely to this. “You really should go to school, Decklan,” she said.

“Shut up about that.”

“But you really should go to school.”

“I always tell you to shut up about that, you stupid schitzo freak!” Decklan yelled at his mother.

“I…” Once again, Decklan’s mother succumbed to tears and ran back through the door of her room. Decklan stormed into the kitchen in a rage, throwing plates from the sink onto the floor. After cutting his foot on one of the sharp shards left by the smashed plates, he swept the floor, calming down somewhat as he did so. He decided to go and placate his mother, forcing open the stiff door to her bedroom and sitting on the bed next to her still, silent form.

“I’m sorry, Mum,” he said. “I just wish you’d shut up about school.”

His mother didn’t reply; didn’t even move.

Decklan shook her vigorously. “C’mon, Mum. Don’t just ignore me.”

His demand once again went unanswered. His mother simply lay there, not responding with even a twitch of her pale flesh.

“Well, fuck you, you stupid woman,” Decklan said, punching her limp body and spitting on her head. “Stupid cunt.”

With that he left her alone, punching a hole in the thin plaster wall beside her door as he left her room.

On Saturday evening, Decklan waited at the cemetery for Callum. His mother came along, drifting amongst the gravestones talking to people that only she could see. After a long while, Callum arrived, carrying a crowbar he had lifted from his dad’s shed.

“Sorry. You been waiting long?” he asked.

“Nah,” said Decklan. “Mum’s been hanging around anyway.”

Callum looked around the cemetery. “Where is she?”

Decklan squinted, searching for her. “I dunno,” he said. “She was here a moment ago. She musta wandered off or something.”

“She know what we’re doing?”

“Nah,” said Decklan. What d’ya think I am? An idiot? ‘Sides, she’s too schitz to do anything even if she did know.”

“Man, your mum’s nuts,” Callum said.

“Hey!” Decklan punched him. “Don’t say things like that ‘bout my mum.”

“Well she is,” Callum said. “She’s cool, but.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Decklan said, rejecting out of hand the idea that his mum could be considered cool by any standard.

At the viewing area for the lights, the two boys jumped the fence and slid down the steep bank before fording the shallow river barefoot, leaving their shoes behind on the north bank. Even at this late time of night, Vulcan’s fire was still lit, illuminating the far shore. They quickly dashed over to the fibreglass volcano and made short work of dislodging the wire grille. Grinning, Decklan removed Vulcan’s hammer and swung it around.

“Look at me! I’m Vulcan!” he cried gleefully as he brought it down.

* * *

It was an early morning jogger who first noticed the vandalised volcano. He stopped his run for a moment and called the police, who promised to look into the matter later that day. The lights being a minor icon of the city, the police found a camera crew ready to film the investigation when they arrived at the site. As a result, the grisly discovery of the body was soon broadcast across Australia. The theft of Vulcan’s hammer was quickly relegated to the background in the public eye as simply the catalyst for the body’s early discovery.

The body was soon identified by weeping parents as ten-year-old Callum Wells, and in a teary preliminary interview with the police, they suggested that maybe their son’s friend Decklan would know what he had been doing out that night.

As the police interviewed Decklan at his house, one of the junior detectives noticed the stolen hammer leaning against the wall in the house’s unused laundry, prompting a later return to the house, this time with a search warrant. As they began the search, Detective Sergeant Wallis, the unfortunate man in charge of the investigation heard a large shout of, “Jesus Christ!” coming from the back bedroom. Intrigued, he left the search of the laundry to a junior and went to the source of the cry.

“Jesus Christ, that smells!” he said as he entered the room. “Whatcha found, Jack?”

“I think it’s his mother, Sarge,” Jack said, speaking through a pinched nose.

The detective looked at the body on the bed. Flies crawled over the green, leathery skin and a few maggots crawled around on the bed sheets. “Christ,” he said. “How long’s she been there for, you reckon?”

“I dunno,” Jack said. “I reckon we’ll have to ask the coroner. A while I’d say, though. What d’ya get in the laundry?”

“Well, there’s blood on the hammer, so I guess we’ll have to take the kid in,” D-S Wallis said. “God, Jesus Christ… Living here with his dead mother all this time. That’s gotta fuck you up.” He walked out of the room shaking his head. “Christ… call someone to take the body away, will you Jack?”

“Right on it, Sarge.”

The blood found on Vulcan’s hammer was quickly matched with Callum’s blood. The investigation into the ten-year-old’s death appeared to be coming to a rapid close, but there still remained the mystery of the death of Decklan’s mother. The time of death couldn’t be accurately established, but the coroner put it down as at least three weeks prior to its discovery. The matter was confused somewhat as every witness interviewed said that while they hadn’t seen the woman, Decklan had acted as though she were alive throughout the entire period since her death. Now that the boy was in police custody, he was confused and constantly asked where she was.

More interesting than the time of death – to the coroner at least – were the marks on her body, which was in miraculously good condition given the length of time she had been dead. The coroner pointed these out to D-S Wallis. “Here and here,” he said, pointing, “are bruises from her being punched. If you look at the height, they’re about a metre high – the same height as Decklan’s shoulders.”

“So he beat his mother up?” D-S Wallis asked.

“Looks like it,” the coroner said. “And the head wounds, which what look to have killed her…”

“What about them?”

“You found a toy hammer in his room, didn’t you?”

“Yes. It was inside his model volcano.”

“The size and shape of the wounds match it perfectly.”

“Christ…” said the detective, finding himself at a loss for words.

As the boy was officially charged with the second murder, D-C Wallis found he couldn’t look him in the eye as he said, uncomprehendingly, “So, when’s Mum going to come and see me then?”


ROAR!!!!! says GOJIRA!!!!!