White Light (11 page)

‘You cooked a lovely meal,' she says, ‘my dear, sweet adventurer.'

‘Me? It's all I can do to get the car started in the morning.'

She must have looked adorable with braces. After she washes her hands, she gives me a sleepy hug, her mouth humming against my neck, which I take to be a manifestation of her love, love that is not humming against the neck of her old school flame.

‘Did you enjoy seeing your pal?'

‘What a dreary man,' she says, yawning again, as content as I've seen her.

These stories have previously appeared, sometimes in slightly different forms, in the following journals and magazines. My thanks to their editors. ‘Red Shoes' co-winner,
Patricia Hackett Prize
, 2008 and ‘Tales of Action and Adventure' highly commended,
Shoalhaven Short Story Award
, 2009.

‘Bulldozer',
Muse
, Oct, 1996

‘Loaded Dice',
Siglo
#
6
, 1996

‘Drip, Drip, Drip'
Australian Short Stories
#
64
, 1998

‘Banjo'
Southerly Vol 60
#
2
, 2000

‘A Good Break',
Overland
#
171
, 2003

‘Lovely Outing',
Meanjin Vol 64
#
3
, 2005

‘Bridie',
Wet Ink
#
6
, 2006

‘The Ingot',
Island
#
109
, 2007

‘Stealth',
The Big Issue
#
269
, 2007

‘White Light',
Heat
#
13
, 2007

‘Red Shoes',
Westerly Vol 53
, 2008

‘Iago'
New Australian Stories 1
, 2009

‘Tales of Action and Adventure'
New Australian Stories 2
, 2010

‘Beneath the Figs'
Going Down Swinging
#
30
, 2010 and also in
The Best Australian Stories
, 2011

‘The Isthmus',
Southerly Vol 71
#
3
, 2011

‘Ping-Pong Principle',
Review of Australian Fiction
Vol 3
#
3
, 2012

on both sides they advanced against each other. But the willow-wren sent down the hornet, with

Born in Melbourne, Mark O'Flynn now lives in the Blue Mountains. His first novel, Grassdogs, was published in 2006 after winning the Harper Collins/Varuna manuscript prize. False Start, A Memoir of things Best Forgotten was published by Finch Publishing (2013) and his latest novel, The Forgotten World, by Fourth Estate/HarperCollins Australia (2013). His short stories, articles, reviews and poems have appeared in a wide range of journals and magazines both here and overseas including Australian Book Review, The Bulletin, The Good Weekend (Sydney Morning Herald), Heat, Westerly, Meanjin, Southerly, Island, Overland, New Australian Stories (Scribe) and Best Australian Stories (Black Inc). Mark works as a teacher of English and ESL in a NSW prison.

Short stories

Iago
‘It is feisty, edgy and challenging writing that works superbly.'

—Helen Elliot,
The Age

The Ping-Pong Principle
‘A perfect exemplar of the short story form… By the end… this frame is itself blended with the story and transfigured into a principle, a code to live by. Brilliant.'—Matthew Lamb,
Review of Australian Fiction

Beneath the Figs

‘Subtle layering of detail that seems casually incidental… Mark O'Flynn's skilful use of tone has you smiling right up until the story reveals its poignant underside.'

—Cate Kennedy,
The
Best Australian Storie
s 2011

Grassdogs

‘Mark O'Flynn paints Edgar with such sure and savage strokes that he is the novel, and the novel is him.'

—Barry Oakley,
The Bulletin

‘The enduring image of
Grassdogs
comes with the title: a tidal wave of dogs–mutts of all breeds and conditions –surging through the grassland like fleas through fur, just below the undulating blades… a lyrical literary novel…'

—Katharine England,
The Adelaide Advertiser Review



‘His writing is more than accomplished and there are moments when it sings with the confidence of a writer in complete control of his craft.'

—Liam Davison,
The Age

‘There is precision and muscularity in his writing; an admirable tendency towards understatement; a pleasing musicality; a sense of narrative shape. O'Flynn can conjure up scenes that are almost magic-realist in their melodrama, off-beat humour and casual grotesqueness… The closing chapter is a minor masterpiece…'

—Chris Boyd,
Australian Book Review

‘Mark O'Flynn's novel crackles with a desperate energy...
Grassdogs
is full of arresting imagery and unusual turns of phrase.'

—Cameron Woodhead,
The Age
, Pick of the Week

False Start

A Memoir of Things Best Forgotten

‘… as this unreliable memoir of many things best forgotten gathers pace, Mark O'Flynn's laconic Australian comedy exhibits a voice and a compelling timbre of its own... The last fifty pages of
False Start
, set in Sydney, Portugal and Ireland, are deeply touching and utterly hilarious.'—Ross Fitzgerald,
The Australian

‘Spiked with humour and fine observation…'

—
Ross Southernwood,
Sunday Herald

Spineless Wonders

ABN98156041888

PO Box 220 STRAWBERRY HILLS

New South Wales, Australia, 2012

www.shortaustralianstories.com.au

First published by Spineless Wonders 2013

Text copyright © Mark O'Flynn

Edited by Annie Parkinson. Layout by Bronwyn Mehan

Cover image with permission from unrestrictedstock.com

Cover design by Bettina Kaiser

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be produced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval sysem, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher of this boo

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry White Light/Mark O'Flynn 1st ed.978-0-9872546-2-7 (pbk.)A823.4

978-0-9872546-4-1 (ebook)