Have Gun Will Shoot

The real estate agent nods at the slanted worker’s cottage. It’s the black soil and flooding that tips them sideways, he reckons.

He opens the gate, closes it behind me. Next door, a woman shoves a broom across the verandah. She halts, watches us for a minute, goes back to sweeping.

I sign a year-long lease.

A torn red curtain hangs from the cracked window. German cockroaches scuttle over stained benchtops and tumble into the sink. I set my computer on the kitchen table. From here, I can see jacarandas in the church yard.

The neighbour appears at the fence while I’m pegging washing.

I’m Marion, she says, fishing a packet of White Ox from her pocket. She rolls a smoke, lights up. Sucks hard, watches and waits.

I spare her my life story, hang the T-shirt. Grab another.

See over there? She jabs towards the street behind me. Druggy cunt Walter’s joint. Walter ain’t his real name, but. They just call him that after the fella on TV who makes meth.

Clothes pegged, I grab the washing basket. Ready to cut.

She nods towards the church. Them Jesus mob on ya yet?

No, I don’t believe…

Before I can finish, she wanders off laughing.

Across the road, a rusting sign flat against high barbed wire warns, Have Gun Will Shoot. A brindle mongrel in a studded black collar wanders through overgrown grass patched purple with thistle.

A bloke appears, shoving a bawling woman along the driveway.  She stumbles, rushes forward. He lunges, snatching a chunk of flying hair. Kicks her legs until she buckles and crashes face down on the gravel. Walter.

I slide back years. Four doors down, different house. Whimpering in a puddle of piss on the kitchen floor. His knuckles had slammed shut my eye, ripped open my top lip, loosened my teeth. Black sluts like me just ask for it, he’d said.

Hands clenched, I jump to my feet.

Leave her the fuck alone!

He stares across at me a beat, heads back indoors.

The woman hauls herself up, touches her bleeding forehead. She falters out towards the road, halts, bends down and grabs a bottle on the footpath. Motherfucker! she hollers, hurling the bottle at the house. Then she pivots and pelts away, down the street.

Walter’s place pulses dusk till dawn. Metalhead music thumps against my walls, bolts me upright in bed. Squealing car tyres burn rubber on the road against the sound of male voices, shouting, Smoke it! It’s a battleground. The men are like chemical-fuelled gladiators slamming bodies on the blacktop, gouging eyes and booting heads.

People stammer down Walter’s driveway every day. A teenage boy in his school uniform, lugging a backpack, a young couple pushing a pram. It never ends. I call the cops anonymously. They don’t come. I’m too skint to move house. Besides, there’s no guarantee the next place will be any better. Walter’s kind are everywhere. Cooking meth in sheds or caravans hidden in thick bush outside town.

Marion’s at the fence clutching geraniums.

Cuttings, she says. Arty reckons they’re weeds. He don’t see the lovely. She hands me the stems. Pauses and looks me over. Most don’t last here, she says. Couple before you, pissed off three weeks in. She grins. You won’t survive, says her expression.

I knew a woman who once lived on this street, I say.

Bad places do that to people, she snapped.

She gazes at the scar above my eyebrow.

Marion doesn’t need to know. That’s another story, about another woman.

Back inside at the table, I think about the other woman. She left school, hardly able to read and write. But stumbled over words anyway. Promised herself she’d be a writer one day. Stupid, someone said. Books aren’t for Aboriginal girls who can’t read proper.

She remembered herself. Mopped houses, picked and piled flung wool in shearing sheds, watched whiny kids, everything she was meant to do. Love came, and a daughter followed. Sickening school yard names silenced her before her thirteenth birthday.

The woman staggered. Strung herself upside down.

Sunday morning. It’s already bladder blistering hot. I grab a bottle of water from the fridge, sit at the kitchen table. Boot my computer, start typing a story. Church music wanders through the window. A woman sings about love and rescue. A smiling group clutching bibles crosses the yard and huddles beneath the jacaranda. The church music sounds hopeful, at least. I throw my head back and laugh.

This is a runner-up of the KYD Flash Fiction Prize 2026. Read the winning story here.