Chapter Text
“That fucking rooster” I grumbled from my bed, pulling the doona tightly up over my head to cover my ears. The bed was old and rickety with loose bolts as it was. Every movement causing a squeal that made me almost thankful that I was alone as alone could be, sex in this bed would be way too awkward for everyone. That rooster though. It took the cake every morning. Crowing up to the rising sun like it had something to prove. Technically it did, the only reason it hadn’t ended up on someone’s dinner plate was because it was such a good functional alarm system.
Not mine though.
I am alone, nowhere to be and no company to be had, but the neighbours a few k’s up the dirt road had a family. A business. A life.
I have myself and sheep that seem to need sheering 400 times a year. Which they obviously don’t, but it feels like it out in the summer heat. It felt like it with no people around to talk to.
“Fuck it.” I whined out into the dim light of the rising sun, shucking the doona away from my body and turning off the fan that made the doona bearable in the first place. Thank God I run cold and can at least keep life’s tiny pleasures grasped between my bony fingertips.
My body was stiff as I plopped my legs over the edge of the creaky bed, wincing at the noises it made. The only thing I could do to ease each muscle was stretch up and reach to the sky like a cat, thick and matted curls drooping sleepily into my face. My whole body was trying to fight the wake-up call, but those damn sheep wouldn’t sheer themselves.
So, after I’d regained some sense of muscle usage, I trudged my way heavily toward the crappy little bathroom with chipped tiles and a cracked mirror. Only to be met with the pleasure of my bleary face, burnt nose tip and sunken eyes the only thing worth noting about my appearance. There wasn’t exactly a point in worrying what you looked like camped out at woop woop waiting for the minutes of each day to pass by.
As I brushed my teeth, I pictured a suburban life. A day that was met with meetings and laptops and people commuting in cramped public transport, the whiff of someone else’s sweat filling my nostrils.
Yeah, I think I’ll take my shitty lonely little sheep farm over all of that noise thanks. If you think a rooster is bad, you can only dread the honking of horns and constant thrum of the crossing beeps that Billie Eilish decided was cool enough to be the baseline of a song.
You can n’alf tell who comes from this hellhole and who visits as a tourist with money and freedom, because why the fuck would you find beauty in the beat of the damn cross walk?
Or maybe I’m just a cynic- I thought as I spat out the foamed-up glob of toothpaste and rinsed my mouth from a cup of filtered water left on the edge of the basin for good measure. I risk enough random parasites through my work to know better than risking it all drinking the water from the old rain tank out back. That thing has seen better days and could really do with an upgrade.
Not worth letting Ben know about that though. He only owns this farm to rent it out to stupid people looking for an escape from the formalities of life.
I sheer his sheep, I mark them, I castrate them, I help the ewes birth the lambs amongst the tiny wildflowers of spring. And in return for the tireless days of cramping muscles, I get to stay at this shithole for free and without complaints.
I guess I really should point out though, it’s not all bad.
This farm may be in the middle of bum-fuck-nowhere, but when I tell you about the view from the creek at the top of the hill, you’d lose your mind. Trees filter out the blazing sun and leave only glittering trails of green and gold out into the little clearing where the water lays. It’s fenced off with rusty chicken wire, so the sheep don’t get in and drown…or something. I mean, does that seem a bit silly given the giant damn in the front paddock? Yes. Is it worth questioning when I’m left with a silent retreat of my own fenced from the one odd random backpacker that may consider trespassing? Not even close.
It’s a home like no other. Dribbles of water cascade over lumpy rocks to make endless tiny water fountains when the rainfall is big enough. Tadpoles swim against the tide and remind me of easier times collecting frogs with Tori when I was little. Tori is my sister by the way, she moved off out with her…I’m going to say, partner? Michael. Maybe designated lifelong human would be a more realistic paraphrasing for whatever their relationship is. Anyway, he got himself into the Olympics, so they fucked off out of this dismal state quicker than a mozzie finding your bloodstream on a warm evening.
And that left me with my overbearing mother Jane and dad that wouldn’t have the balls to stand up to her if he tried, Julio. I mean, there’s Olly too, but he noped right on out of the house the day he could get into uni, and I’ve barely heard from him since.
So, then there was me. Charlie Spring.
The boy with pain in his eyes, regret in his curls and the inability to ever get a single thing right. So, when Ben’s advertisement popped up on wikki-camps, I fucked right off with the rest of them. Ben’s a bit of a leach, but he only swings by twice a year, once to check the state of the new generation to make sure the breeders are still good, and once to pack a huge chunk of them up onto a truck that looks too squashed to hold the amount of shit that falls out of them a day, let alone their entire overcrowded bodies.
But that’s not my business.
I’m not a fan of the whole process, but at least I know every minute they spend here is actually half decent with me. I don’t let them suffer. I even fought through my teeth to get one vet care when its leg was broken during birth, Ben tried to push me into a bullet, but he’s got enough money to cover shit like that if he actually wants to. So, I signed myself up to be his try at a man if you get my drift. He wasn’t sure he liked it, and I wasn’t sure that lamb was worth it. But now Gordon is my best little mate and I’m happy every day when he comes trotting over to the feed truck that I did it. I was even more careful with his castration than I was the others, and I took a few extra minutes to scratch him under the chin like he likes.
Sorry, mind running away with me a bit while I haul my body into this flanny to avoid the bitter edge of the morning air, even if I am the only person out here that would even need clothing in this weather at all.
The positives of living here, that’s what I was talking about. I mean Gordon is a pretty good thing, and that creek, but my god the stars. I am not exaggerating when I tell you how many you see popping up as the sky grows darker, each little flicker visible a million miles away from the light pollution of civilisation.
The other upside is also a downside.
There’re no people out here, in case I haven’t made that part clear. One year I was dumped with an extra backpacker to ‘share the load’, and he was the most obnoxious and arrogant fuck whit I’ve ever met. I think he came from UK, because every second word out of his mouth was mate, but not in the Aussie country way, in the desperate for validation and some kind of dominance over me way. At least, that’s what his pitchy voice sounded like. I tried to avoid Harry Green like the godamn plague until he fucked back off where he came from. One simple blowie in Ben’s direction later and that never happened again. And yes, he still swears he’s straight.
Also, I don’t know where you’re reading this from, but I suggest you get accustomed to swear words because fuck is my favourite and cunt is sure likely to crop up once at the absolute very least. What can I say, I’m Aussie born and bred, and it’s even easier to lose sight of your language when you live alone with only acres of sheep and trees to talk to. They don’t care about my language, so why should I?
“Christ, I’ve done it again!” I think to myself, pushing my feet into my Ariat’s and looking longingly on to the worn pair of converses next to them. It’s honestly harder than you’d think to keep track of your thoughts in complete silence. The rooster’s finally shut up, and the sheep are way off near the water this time of morning. So, no noises in here except the creak of old floorboards and the voice in my head trying to keep it all together long enough to make sense.
The lack of people is fantastic, amazing even, I don’t really like most of the ones I’ve come across if I’m honest. They’ve all had something to say about the version of myself that they seem to see. A version that they’d find out doesn’t even exist if they actually fucking talked to me instead of staring me down like shit on their shoe. But alas, they don’t, so I don’t get along with them.
The downside of that though, I think as I swing open the fly screen and ignore the way it crashes into the plasterboard of the veranda of this shithole. Doubt Ben would even notice an extra hole in the wall.
-The downside is that it admittedly can get a little lonely.
Maybe lonely is a stretch, but some days I feel like I’m going mental enough out here that the sheep will start replying. So, it gets, whatever that is.
The day was about to take a turn though, because somewhere down on the horizon where the sun was still waking up, some kind of shooting star hit the grass and caused a huge flashing light to engulf its surroundings. Which sent the sheep absolutely wild might I add. The whole flock was running around like headless chooks, and boy did I secretly wish the neighbour’s rooster was too.
I stood on the veranda, teetering on the edge of the steps, body frozen and unsure what I should be doing while the sheep ran in circles toward the clearing in the centre of the paddock. It took a minute for my brain and body to meet somewhere in the middle and convince me to actually move, and by the time it did, I was running too.
I nearly went head over arse sprinting with boots that were made for mud, not running. Maybe converse would’ve been the better choice, just this once.
As I got closer to where the thing had landed though, my footsteps started to betray me and slow. I didn’t know what I’d find, some kind of giant rock or something, splashes off sheep shit dousing the fence, something to symbolise whatever had fallen from the sky. Fuck, maybe even an alien to beam me up and take me somewhere nicer. I’d probably miss Gordon though…
My eyes squinted against the harsh morning light as it finally broke over the top of the dirt road, barely able to make out what was there. Obviously I couldn’t see very well, because it looked like a…well, it looked like a man. Laying flat on his back, completely naked.
The further away I got from the calming sheep though, and the closer I got to the lump on the grass, the more I could see that I wasn’t imagining it.
Some guy was laying there, probably unconscious, with what looked like some crazily crafted costume wings stuck to the underside of him. I tried my best to focus on his face, and not how impressively well hung he was, but what can I say, I’m young and it’s been quite literally forever.
My blood eventually did return to the part of me that was a bit more useful in this situation thankfully, and I rushed over to try and wake him.
There was a soft but unmistakable rise and fall of his chest, which had nearly as many freckles as his face may I add, so he was breathing. Ok. Check.
“Hey, mate, are you ok?” See how different that sounds to Harry? It’s natural out here to talk like that and somehow not sound pretentious.
“Mate?” I asked again, finding some kind of bravery in me to push the man’s sternum and see if he’d wake up. Maybe he’d had a big night and found himself here, it’d explain the weird wings and lack of…clothing…but also, I wasn’t imagining that something just came hurtling from the sky.
“Shit,” I panicked, gently turning his head from side to side to look for any blood leakage incase a rock hit him in the head or something from whatever fell.
“Ok, no blood, and you’re alive. That’s good…erm” I said out loud, maybe hoping he’d hear my voice and magically wake up, tell me it was all a joke, and he was madly in love with me. But no. He just kept right on laying there, still, eyes shut, and skin already turning from pale to pink as the sun shon down on him. Ok, so he’s going to burn to a fucking crisp if I don’t move him. Probably because he ginger. Maybe he’s British too, hopefully less pompous than Harry, because this dude is fit as fu…ok, you get the idea, I’ll try to swear less.
For now though, I need a plan.
I’m way too small and weak to haul this muscly body anywhere, I may throw around sheep like feathers, but I have ropes to help if I need them, I’m not trying to lift them dead weight over my shoulder. God I’m glad this bloke isn’t dead.
My best bet is going up to get the feed truck, which is actually a Ute that I haul bags of grain onto the back of. Ben called it a truck and it just kind of stuck, so, there you have it. Feed truck. Maybe at the very least I can roll him and prop him up enough to pull a limb in. Yeah. That’ll work. Not many other choices.
And in case you’re sat at home in your cushy lounge room wondering why I’m not just calling an ambo, did I mention that I live in bum fu…in the middle of nowhere?
Who do you think is going to arrive before this bloke suffers sunstroke of burns? The medical choppers have better places to be than this crappy farm for some guy that probably just drank too much and copped a rock to the head. He’ll be fine. It’s fine.
“It’s fine…right?” I ask myself after I’ve somehow managed to sprawl the naked man across the back tray of the Ute. It shouldn’t be too hot yet that it hurts him, so it’ll do for getting him back to the house. Once I’ve dragged him inside and…covered him, then I can work out what in the actual fuck I’m doing. Should I drive him to the hospital? Sorry sheep, I’ll send a message for Ben to send someone else, just for today. I can pay with a quick handy on a straight boy that ‘never wanted it’ and we’ll be square and then I can…
Then I can…
Then I can fucking what?
Do the rain dance to thank the stars for the random naked man with muscles like he’s played footy his whole life?
Come back home to the farm and pretend like this whole crazy thing never happened after dropping the most gorgeous human I’ve ever seen off?
“Oh, come on you piece of shit!” I grumbled, banging the steering wheel as I tried to change gears and chug the Ute that was as well past its sell by date as everything else on this farm back up to the house. “Don’t do this now!” I begged as it slowed, and as if by some miracle the engine roared back to life.
“Just…have…to…get…you…inside…” I said in slow words with each drag of the unconscious body behind me. I’d be lying a little if I said I didn’t watch the way his body moved and bounced with each forceful tug.
And after what felt like 17 hours later he was laying in the middle of the lounge room. I shoved the coffee table over to the side and in front of the couch so he didn’t wake up and panic and hit his head or something catastrophic. This did NOT need to be more dramatic than it already was. Tori wouldn’t even believe me if I told her.
He seemed ok-ish, plopped on the ground, arms still above his head from me pulling him, and a blanket kindly draped across his lower half for his own sake. The wings a little crumpled underneath him, and I kid you not, I want the details of the make up artist that stuck them on because the glue is crazy strong and I can’t even make out the seem of where the feathered wire ends and the flesh begins. So, I went off to make myself a cup of coffee in the dilapidated kitchen because it was quite frankly too early for this shit.