There have been deaths, illness, broken computers, disappointments and frustrations. And I still have moving back in with my parents to look forward to as well.

At least I have finished my studies, sooner than expected thanks to some successful complaining and bargaining. Now that my slightly dubious diploma is on its way through the mail, I am free to finally begin working on my next novel.

I had everything prepared, ready to dive right in and give myself completely to this new creative venture. I gathered books for research, watched relevant films and scoured the internet for resources. While the core concept of the novel was rock solid, I was struggling to really get a feel for it as a whole. The pieces just weren’t falling into place.

But then something very strange happened. I was seized by an entirely different idea, one that came to me fully realised right from the start. An idea so ludicrous that I don’t even want to share it just yet . If I were to say it out loud, you would laugh. Even I would laugh!

I remember in art class back in high school, I only ever got average grades for the pieces that I poured my heart and soul into. But if I carelessly squished a lump of clay together with no regard for emotional meaning, the teachers would always love it, give me top marks, and put the artless lump in the student art gallery. If HTDC was my deeply personal, heartfelt work, then this next book is going to be the haphazard lump of clay. It’s going to be superficial, ridiculous, like a pulp novel or a B movie or a bubblegum pop song.

It’s going to be fucking awesome.

This is a little hint:

Yaaaaay I’m so hardcore!

With the popularity of  games like Amnesia and Slender, there’s been a resurgence in survival horror games that emphasise the survival aspect of survival horror. No more overpowered weapons.  No more copious supplies of ammo.  All you can do is run, hide and hope to god that you maintain your sanity long enough to find a way out.

I love these sorts of games. They really compliment my play style of freaking out and flailing madly while bumping into walls and crying like a little girl.

An old favourite of mine is a PS2 game called Haunting Ground (known as Demento in Japan).

In Haunting Ground, you play as Fiona, a young girl who awakes from a car crash to find herself held captive in a mysterious castle. The creepy inhabitants of the castle are out to get you (and your ovaries, or something like that) and you have no choice but to run and hide when you see them coming. The castle is littered with hiding spots, but the enemies aren’t always easily fooled. Hide in the same place one too many times and they will flush you out.  If Fiona panics the screen becomes blurred and her movements grow increasingly difficult to control, which usually results in death. Her death is never actually shown, but the sound effects that play over the game over screen suggest some truly horrific things are being done to her.

Your only protection against these creepy bastards is a dog named Hewie. Hewie will attack enemies, help you solve puzzles and warn you of imminent danger.  But you need to actively build your  relationship with Hewie. Pet him and praise him often and he will be more responsive to your commands. Kick him too many times and he won’t come to your rescue at all, potentially ending the game early. It’s kind of like Nintendogs meets Silent Hill.

I played this quite a few years ago so I’m not sure how well it holds up today, but if you can track down a copy it’s well worth a play. The atmosphere is suitably chilling, and the soundtrack is incredibly frightening. The companionship of Hewie never feels like an escort mission (if anything, Hewie is the one doing the escorting). If I could compare it to anything I’d say it’s almost a survival horror version of Ico. At the very least it will keep you satisfied until Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs comes out.

If, of course, you think you are going to be able to handle that one!

Other people do not share my fondness for saying no. They see it as an insult. A failing. It becomes an invitation to convince you to change your mind, like a challenge or a game. People taunt you, look down on you, threaten you with guilt and regret.

We live in a society where “because I do not want to” is not considered a valid reason for making a choice. It’s no wonder that so many people fail to understand the issue of sexual consent when they don’t even know how to cope when you turn down a slice of cake.

You don’t have to justify yourself to anyone. For any reason. 

But I found a solution: Mother fucking coconut oil!

You can buy coconut oil from… shops that sell coconut oil. I don’t fucking know all the stockists off the top of my head what do I look like some kind of grocery store inventory expert? I found it in the Asian Foods section of my local grocery store, so maybe look there or go to one of those hippy food stores.

So you take a dollop of coconut oil, I dunno maybe a tablespoon or so? Mix it with  a buttload of sugar. You could probably use salt too if  the cannibals you live with prefer savoury human flesh. I like to use sugar and add a bit of lemon juice too because I like to pretend I am a pancake.

Take your sugary coconut oil concoction into the shower and rub that shit all over your body. Once you feel adequately sandpapered, wash off all the sugar and the oil and the layers of shredded skin. Scream as your epidermis nerve endings are exposed to the cold night air.

You should probably clean your shower now that it is coated in oil and sugar, but I haven’t cleaned my shower in about six months and it hasn’t killed me yet, so whatever.

Now, throw your naked body down your hallway like a penguin belly-sliding on ice. If you slide all the way to the other end of the house, you’ve probably used too much coconut oil.  Rub the excess slime off with a towel before you sit your greasy arse down on the furniture.

Once you are properly dry and the remaining oil has been absorbed into your skin, you will feel as soft and smooth as a sexy earthworm.

Enjoy!

Edit: I should clarify that, as stupid as I’ve made it sound, this body scrub is actually awesome.

I made Game of Thrones house sigils for my HTDC characters, because why the hell not? You can make your own here.

I don’t get many reviews for my novel, but this week I just so happened to receive two, and I couldn’t help but be amused at how perfectly they complimented each other. The first reviewer said they disliked the beginning of the book, but enjoyed the ending more. The second review liked the beginning, but disliked the ending.

It helped to remind me that everyone has different opinions, tastes, likes and dislikes. You will never please everyone, and if you try to you will end up pleasing no one.

I think it is important for writers to keep this in mind. A writer is going to face a lot of rejection and criticism throughout their career. You just have to keep it in perspective.

buried in the deepest corners

her knees bend backwards

she walks on all fours

but I am not afraid of her

I coax her out of the darkness

her fingernails click click clicking on the floorboards

come closer

together we are unbreakable

if you will only trust me

if you will only let me in

(I  am very tired and I don’t know what this is but something really needed to be said on the subject of girls with backwards knees.)

(I promise one day it will make sense.)

Thanks again to Dan for featuring me.

Things began going wrong the night before. HTRK were doing a secret show two doors down from our hotel and we had free tickets. When we got to the venue, the security guards kept going on about ‘no pass-outs’ – once you go in, you can’t come back out. I suddenly felt uncomfortable, like they wanted to trap me. I know that’s not what they  meant, but the thought just got under my skin. I remained uncomfortable for the rest of my holiday.

The venue for ATP was oppressively hot and crowded.  There were no grassy hills to lie on. There was nowhere to sit at all except the hard floor. My sense of being trapped persisted. I sought refuge in an air-conditioned beanbag-filled cinema, fighting back tears as I stared at the projector screen and chastised myself for not appreciating the amazing bands I was seeing.

A security guard crouched down beside me and asked if I was okay. I assumed he thought I was drunk or on drugs and he was checking to make sure I wasn’t going to pass out on his watch. It’s not the first time security personnel have regarded my occasionally uneven mental state at concerts with suspicion. I assured him I was fine, composed myself as best I could, and ventured back outside.

By the second day of the festival I was feeling slightly better and was able to enjoy myself a little more. Still, when it all became  too much for me I would go back to the cinema to calm down in the dark for a while. One time, I found the security guard blocking my path up the stairs. He said the cinema was full, but as I turned to leave he stopped me.

“Why you always look so sad in the face?” he asked.

“What?”

“You have very sad face. Yesterday you look like you in tears. And I wonder, why is that?”

I was so surprised that for a moment I was honest with him. “I’m always a little sad, I guess.”

“Why?” He asked again.

I didn’t know what to say.  How could I possibly explain to him my history of mental illness, my struggle to cope without medication, my continued grieving for my little bird, my immense guilt that I was in the presence of universally revered musicians who had not graced my country’s shores for decades, if at all, and all I could care about was getting home to bed?

So I told him the same thing I have been telling everyone for my entire life.

“I’m tired. I’m just really tired.”

And he let me into the cinema.

In the holidays before my final year of high school, a very special little creature came into my life.

I gave my birds a nesting box in the spring, knowing Tina and Alex would waste no time in laying a clutch of eggs. I timed it so that the babies would be growing up during my holidays. I would have six glorious weeks to spend with the chicks, taming my favourite to become a pet.

I chose the youngest. It was a bit of a runt. I tried to hand feed it on occasion  but it always kept its head to one side so it was almost impossible to get a spoon in its beak. As the older babies began to leave the nest, the little runt would sit at the nesting box door, poking its head out, but never having the courage to leave. Eventually, I had to take it out myself, and sat the fat little baby in the seed dish, forcing it to learn how to perch.

I named it Bernard Fanning, as I was a huge Powderfinger fan at the time. It takes a year to know the gender of a cockatiel, so in the event  that the baby didn’t lose it’s yellow feathers, I would change her name to Bernadette.

She was always just Bernie, though.

The oldest photo I have of her. She is probably about one or two.

Bernie was by nature an anxious bird. She never liked sitting on shoulders or being left to her own devices in large open spaces. She preferred to be held, or to nuzzle under your chin, or find a nice little corner of the couch to claim as her own. For some reason though, she found heavy metal music and violent television calming. She was weird like that.

Bernie never really seemed like a real bird. The fluffy feathers on her tummy always stuck out at the sides, giving her a decidedly non-aerodynamic silhouette. She was more like a plush toy.

My collection of plush bird toys, including Bernie.

And I could cuddle her just like a plush toy, too. She would let me hug her and squeeze her and put her head in my mouth, all without complaint. She returned my affections by trying to bite off my freckles and chew on my eyelids.  It was her way of preening me.

She had better luck preening my boyfriend’s beard. He would tolerate her until the gentle preening turned to hair pulling, which it always did after a few seconds.

They had a sassy step-daughter/reluctant step-dad sort of relationship.

She liked to look at the world from strange angles,  flipping her head upside down over her back like something out of The Exorcist.

In the spring, she would become clucky, but didn’t really understand what it all meant. She would do this bizarre mating dance where she would flatten her back and whimper seductively, hoping to entice a male. Sometimes she would do this under my chin, despite me telling her repeatedly that I just didn’t feel that way about her. But most of the time she did her dance while submerged in her water dish. One time she went straight to the seed dish after performing her sexy dance and ended up getting seed stuck all over her soggy undercarriage. You could see the conflict in her little face – discomfort vs. portable snacks.

Bernie performing her seductive water dish mating dance.

Despite lacking a partner, she would still lay eggs from time to time. She didn’t know what to do with them once she laid them though. I once saw her attempt to incubate an egg by clasping a foot over the egg and licking it.

My favourite memory of Bernie is the time she laid an egg on the couch. She had been happily watching tv with me when suddenly she became distressed. She hurried to the corner of the couch and huddled there, fussing over the upholstery as she tried to create a nest. Little eyes bulging slightly, she lifted her tail, shuffled backwards, and popped out an egg. This in itself was incredible to witness, but the best was yet to come. Suddenly finding herself a whole egg lighter at the back end, she lost he balance, and tipped forward like a see-saw right onto her face.

The ever-elegant Bernie.

Besides failing at reproduction, Bernie’s other favourite hobby was eating things. Especially things you didn’t want her to eat. I spent many meals passing my plate from hand to hand as she ran up one arm and then the other, trying desperately to get to my food. Her favourites included brioche, pizza and sherbet. We gave her a little bit of sherbet once to see what would happen and she got so excited you could almost see  her pupils dilate like a scene out of Requiem For A Dream. We didn’t let her form a habit.

One time she got her very own pancake.

Weekends are the hardest now. That was when I spent the most amount of time with Bernie, watching TV together as she sat contentedly on the coffee table, enjoying the breeze from the fan. Sometimes we played video games together, but she would get annoyed that I wasn’t petting her and would bite me until I stopped playing and gave her more attention.  She could be really annoying sometimes. Even my other birds seemed irritated by her. But that was what made her so awesome. She had no fucks to give.  She was weird and unconventional and completely unique. She did things birds weren’t really supposed to do.

Like pose for halloween photos…

… and ride on rotating Christmas trees.

When I was home alone I would tell people I was having a girls night in, which actually just meant me and Bernie, taking silly photos together and hanging out like two best friends.

She was my best friend.

I bought a rose bush to plant over her grave. It has flowers that change colour, from pink, to yellow, to white – all colours that were part of Bernie. If  I ever leave this house I can take the rosebush out of the garden and take the rose, and part of Bernie, with me.

People understand the heartache of losing a cat or dog, but few people realise that a little bird can hold just as much love in its delicate body as any animal five times its size. She was small, but her character was gigantic. Her loss has left an incomprehensibly huge hole in my heart. Yet I am glad to have known her, and loved her. I will remember her always.

Bernadette Fanning
2003-2012