The Damp Duck in Flood

Furious Fiction 6 March 2022: David Muscio

Context: Prepared for submission to Australian Writers’ Centre Autumn 2022 Furious Fiction competition. Challenge criteria include creation within 55 hours of a short story of < 500 words that must (i) include a character that commits a crime, (ii) include some kind of door being opened and (iii) include the words chalk, talk and fork.

The Damp Duck in Flood

Some obstruction behind it was blocking the attic door but it yielded to my more determined kick after a tentative push failed. I sought refuge above the rising waterline. I started this business after reconstruction from the last flood three years ago. The Damp Duck had become a good business. It was now covered in slime and silt and will take years to recover.

This was now to be my higher place to wait it out. My family had already been rescued in what I’d call a longboat, a flat-bottomed dingy, more like a barge or pontoon, adrift at speed with the current. Passengers were taken to a school gymnasium where others arrived and settled into traumatised clusters on the floor. They watched anxiously as the names of the missing were scratched in chalk on a large portable board below the sports honour roll. Safe and dry was all that mattered then.

This claustrophobic space, despite its elevation, was dungeon-like. My “working in confined spaces” certificate was about to be tested. It was dark and, frankly, smelly with the odour of unidentified bugs escaping the rising water as I was. I could talk on my mobile, friends knew I was here, and I could sparingly use the torch app to explore my surroundings. Some illumination was possible with a press of my fit-bit. The phone charge read 47 percent.

Among the surplus equipment stored up here was an antique cutlery canteen. I thought canteen a curious collective noun, evocative of an imminent banquet. My thought then led to Alanis Morrissette’s ‘ironic’ with ten thousand spoons when she just needed a knife. I mused how forks don’t float, not even among the slick and slimy flotsam below. Alone with my thoughts and what I have left undone.

Just before I entered the attic I sensed movement below in the unsecured restaurant, suggesting looting taking place I was in no position to challenge. The retiring figure, out of the corner of my eye, I recognised was Bernie, carrying my antique clock. An occasional customer, I thought “you’ll keep”. Crime doesn’t pay well when little you can steal has enduring value and risk of detection is high. My phone charge now reads 28 percent.

Outlasting the swirl is a solitary terror, reminiscent of the Drover’s Wife’s wait, self-reflective and wary of the snake’s intent and timing. This liquid stench is my allegorical snake. Possums were here, I can smell their excrement. Charge now 19 percent.

Alone, getting cramps and wanting a toilet. Not like the movies at all. Reflections of self can wait. First be rescued. I hear the chop, chop, whirr of a helicopter above. I think of Billy Joel’s ‘Goodnight Saigon’, mimicking that same sound and the quiet prelude to the refrain “and we will all go down together”. Not this time Lucifer. I stumble to the skylight, kick it out. I’m wetter now on top but more visible, a dangling rope ladder my uplifting passage.