the patricide phoenix - a post-modern fable

this is the tool [sample only] that jack [and his wife jill] bought.

now here's johnny... with quite a different plan on the application of said torture instrument [she's a tree-lover after all and doesn't mind the driveway a little overgrown]. yes daddy, it can undoubtedly be used for a variety of purposes, i agree. if the giant jagged teeth cut through wood so easily surely they can manage flesh & bone? there's so much space out here.

finally our positions are reversed & the shoes have swapped feet. you're smaller now. you wear size 10 and a half gumboots from bunnings which you self-assuredly state will fit most men. i disagree but don't push it. i've been here before. you leave them behind on the porch: today & yesterday overlap once more. johnny's physical footprint is not so large but her sense of shelved vengeance fills out the smallest glass slipper enough to make the fairest prince shirk & shrink violet-like. some can guess, no-one really knows.

montage images see you screaming over a young defiant girl with steel capped boots smashing in her ribs as they break like falling dominoes beneath the clothes line where you caught her as she ran hoping to avoid another beating for daring to question her father's authority. you cannot control her spirited mind. unlike her mother, she is not here to serve you or any other men. one day this will seem ironic & then disappointingly cliché. her library of books which you burnt tell her so.

you caught her not long after you violently shook the locked door from the other side with your fists. she quietly slipped her gangly form out the bathroom window but you heard the bushes fall away as she fell & bludgeoned down her path as her long lithe legs began to run. she learnt to run fast young.

you roared in triumph as you brought her down. initially she fought back with flailing fists half your size then failing, curled into the smallest ball while the freshly washed linen spun wildly on the groaning circular metal hoist in the southland sun above. the amityville neighours were far.

occasionally she cries out like the yelping dog with confused eyes you treated similarly then remember with fond words as his tail slunk beneath his rear legs with reticent memory returns with hope at mealtimes. she stifles the noise because she doesn't want to give you the same satisfaction. she watches you hitting her in slow motion; your face screwed red in angry folds, eyes unfocused, arms pummeling. sometimes you beat her when she's asleep. or when she's pretending to be. still johnny does not slink.

your uncontrolled words in harsh vehement breaths delivered like a fast acing downward serve with topspin which she laughed at & double dared you to as rebellion irrevocably courses through her veins [remember the bottles she smashed over her own head to show she still had life left when you tried to pulverise it out of her with your fists?].

i now own your misdirected quote "you will be the next victim of patricide" [you perpetrating idiot] which you yelled standing over her with whatever weapon of choice you had on each given day. none so fine as my new implement photographed on this shop floor. this is the longest time we've spent together for fifteen years. i have extra teeth. your wife looks nervous as i pull out my phone & snap it smiling softly before handing it to you to take to the counter. just pop it on your credit card.

shame you became such a mediocre old man overshadowed by your own selective senility clinging onto the bureaucracy you once reviled & represented against with that shoulder chipped frustration. there can be no joy in the killing. in scientific mode i study you for what seems to be the longest time & reluctantly realise it's over. go back to hedge trimming & whinging about your tennis injuries, your fading tan and the weather whilst somewhere else invisible wounds are licked.

my hands remain unwashed. breath deep for an altogether different reason washed over by the expired salty taste of anti-climax mixed with the forgiving bush breeze. it will shield my secrets if i ask. lizzie borden is slowly released back into the light grey sky & the cumulus above takes on axe & serrated saw shapes before conveniently dissipating into the fluffy indiscernible. nothing to see here.