Figure 1: my wallet. Peeling navy pleather, scratched and scuffed by years of being handled. Inside, my cards and coins are stashed, and a single stick of spearmint gum. I still carry around the black and white photo strip we took in the city, the summer before we started our final year of school. I don’t even have to look at the photos, folded neatly between my ID and myki, to feel that moment all over again.

My therapist said I should write my mother a letter. A letter to say thank you, go fuck yourself and I love you – not necessarily in that order but that’s the gist of the assignment.

So here I am, Friday night, alone. I open a bottle of red wine. I don’t particularly care for the taste, but it will ease my irritation. I drink because my therapist told me to write my mother a letter.

Keith stood in the doorway of his old bedroom. All was quiet, except for the synthetic-blend carpet, which was loud and proud in both colour and pattern.

It was brighter in the corners where the furniture used to be, a little flattened and faded elsewhere.

The place where they brought him back to life was worse than the place where he almost died. 

At first, the hospital seemed safe and clean. Everything in it was made of rounded pastel plastic, like a kindergarten scaled up to adult size. But David’s perceptions had sharpened in the jungle, and he could smell hidden decay. Bodies.

Iris fumbles with the clasp of her handbag and rummages inside. She pauses, adjusting her bifocals to inspect the contents – coral-pink lipstick, embroidered handkerchief, keys for the Corolla and the house, bankbook and purse. Her fingers land on a shopping list, neat cursive script outlining the week's errands. There’s a quickening of her heartbeat in anticipation. 

I walk to the kitchen, the cupboards empty but for a jar of instant coffee. With a bent spoon I stir the murky brown liquid, sipping its bitter distraction by the sink. Outside the sun is glaring at me. I stare right back into it, wanting the white light to bleach my veins and make me heavenly again. But it’s no use. It’s spread too far now, in between my toes, my groin, behind my knees.

I’ve decided to carve your face. Oh, not literally, of course. Guinevere, our clay sculpture teacher, said we should try making something familiar. And what’s more familiar to me than your face? 

The homeopath talked and talked and talked. Of miracle cures and deathbed recoveries. Amongst it all, there was something about him being sued by the family of a young girl who’d died, but he didn’t care about that because he was right about cancer and everyone else was wrong.

A virgin, it said. The book in the library told me what she was, and what I was, and why I could see and touch her. She’d chosen me because I was a virgin. Someone pure, the book said. I smiled at that. My sister read the book beside me, while I stroked her hair.

‘Calm down. He’s fine. He’s fine,’ I say at least three hundred times before she stops yelling, but she’s still crying, the crazy bitch. ‘Fuck, Mel, it’s not like I’ve left him on the side of the highway! I can look after my own son!’

A small angry woman, no doubt Bundy’s wife, suddenly stormed through the department. Barefoot and equally red-dusted, she scuttled to the bedside and punched Bundy in the upper arm.