Abyss
By Chelsea Chong
‘Josiah know about this?’ The bookie tilted my mother’s ring, so the diamond flashed under the morning sun. He brought it close and studied it with a bloodshot eye.
‘Course he does,’ I said.
He fixed his eyes on me, drilling in. ‘These your folks’ rings?’
I nodded, eager to snatch the rings and run. Underneath the threadbare fabric of my t-shirt a bead of sweat leaked from my armpit and trickled down over sharp ribs.
‘Some of the fellas talk trash about him, but Raymond was good to me, taught me the trade,’ he said, inspecting the scratches in my father’s gold band.
I scanned the crowd for signs that Josiah had pulled his drunken body from our bed and followed me here. ‘Sure. Good egg, old Raymond.’
The bookie flipped open his notepad. ‘Should get a decent return. What’s your bet?’
If the sky’s clear and the item’s shiny, it’ll bring in at least twenty bucks. If it’s a precious metal, say jewellery or high-quality cutlery, up that to at least forty.
My father’s voice rolled around my head as the rings rolled around the bookie’s hand. A cloudless blue dome stretched above me, and dust whipped at my shins. The sudden roar of laughter stole my focus. To my right, a group of men sat around the perimeter of the abyss soaking in the first round of drinks and the morning light.
I turned back to the bookie, honed in on the rings, and tried to conjure the wisdom my father has passed down to me. ‘I reckon I’ll get eighty-five bucks for both. Double or nothing on this.’ I pulled a thick wad of cash from the waistband of my jeans and slapped it onto his open palm.
‘Done.’ He scribbled the numbers in his pad, passed the rings to me and moved on to the next punter who sidled me out of the way.
Once again, I joined the ravenous pack circling the Exchange.
--
A few hundred of us were gathered around the gaping mouth of the Exchange that day. A strong wind blew hot and dry, the breath of a raging demon trying to push us over the brink.
Wheelbarrows, carts and arms were piled with items, mostly decaying pieces of junk and the occasional shiny object glittering amongst the rubble. Those who brought their sparkling, plastic-covered goods straight from the store to throw into the abyss were violating the spirit of the Exchange, but no one cared. Like the grass that used to blanket the perimeter of the hole, the spirit had been trampled into dust. We came for the money.
Our fate would have been different if we had used the Exchange in moderation; if we had simply thrown in items we didn’t need and accepted the meager cash it gave in return. But we gave ourselves no limits. We lingered all day and gambled, trying to predict the exact size of the returns. From dawn to dusk we performed our ritual dance, huddling together, arms jutting out to slap notes into waiting palms while voices sang out bets. The bookie called ‘break away’ and we scattered, pacing around the abyss, watching the goods fall in and the cash flow out.
With our days spent by the hole, the fragile industry of the town was failing. The factories and businesses were boarded up. The school was empty, left to echo shrieking children who had grown middle-aged and passed away. Only the Morrison family and their grocery store held the community back from extinction, opening their doors for a few hours each day.
As a bookie, my father profited from the town’s obsession. A few of his regulars—nasty, pungent old guys—told me he used to cheat. He’d stand by the dispense machine that spewed out the cash return and steal the wad, replacing it with the amount that served him best. But that was half a century ago and wouldn’t happen today. If my father were there now, he’d get himself shot spitting at the armed guards or calling them fascist mules.
Before he died, I spent every day with my father at the Exchange, but I can’t remember him throwing anything in. They said that once, in his younger years, he left town. Some said that he stumbled out with the vacant eyes of a drunk. Others said that he planned to go, carrying a backpack with him as he marched along the gravel road. There were arguments about the length of time he was away—some insisted it was only months, others swore he was gone for years—but either way, he came back and everyone agreed it was after his return that he stopped throwing.
I can still see him standing with his toes hanging over the precipice while my mother heaved an old toaster into the abyss. That day, dense black smog rose from the depths, pouring out over the rim. It transformed the hole into a smoking cauldron, and no one could see the falling goods shrink through the solid, closing darkness.
As the battered appliance flew from my mother’s hands, I leant towards my father and whispered my bet. ‘Four.’
He ran a rough hand through my hair, destroying the ponytail my mother had laboured over. ‘No way, kid. Two at best.’
My mother elbowed her way through the crowd to the dispense machine and stuffed the two dollar notes into her back pocket. She used them later the same day to buy pancake batter for dinner, thinning it out with water to make it stretch until she was ready to sacrifice another possession.
--
My mother tried to educate me at night after spending our days at the Exchange, but she became frustrated with all the questions I asked, for which she had no answers. She left the task to my father, who seemed to relish the unknown.
I remember one evening sitting with him on the floor in the living room, a flask in his hand, a mug of tea in mine.
‘There’s a country out there—a tiny island country—where all they eat is fish and coconut,’ he said.
‘And they wear seaweed skirts with nothing on top,’ I said.
My father’s laugh filled our run-down shack. ‘I’ve told you this one before?’
‘Yep.’
‘Did I tell you they whittle sticks into needles, cover them in ash and carve patterns into their skin.’
‘Really?’
‘Stop it, Raymond,’ my mother said, clanging around the kitchen. Her right arm, pushing a tea towel around with great force, was lost inside the depths of an enormous pot. ‘Don’t fill her head with rubbish.’
‘I’ll take you there, my love. You’ll see.’ He held his flask towards her in a mocking salute.
She ignored him and wiped a rolled-up sleeve across her forehead before squatting below the bench top to stow the pot away.
My father crinkled his leathery face and shook his head while she was out of view.
‘Raymond,’ she called out.
He grunted and took another swig from the flask.
‘Time to read.’
Setting my mug on the floor, I scrambled to my parent’s bedroom and lifted their thin mattress to reveal several old books stowed underneath. Amongst the paltry collection was a mouldy children’s Bible.
They said the few Bible books that remained came from a time when the people congregated at the chapel and not the abyss, but I doubt that was the case. It was more likely they were relics from the old school donated by travelling missionaries, the kind who rolled through town once a decade handing out stale bread and pity.
I chose this book for one tale alone, Daniel and the Lions’ Den. The pictures depicted a cartoon man falling headfirst into a pit, hurtling towards the open, salivating mouth of a lion.
‘Always this one.’ My father snatched the book from me and examined the picture, shaking his head. ‘You’ve got a good brain, kid. Don’t tell me you think this is our pit?’
‘How do you know it’s not?’
‘They’re not the same.’
‘But it looks like the Exchange.’
‘It’s not.’
‘Why?’
‘Nellie.’
‘Come on Raymond,’ I mimicked my mother, ‘just read to her.’
‘Watch yourself.’ He snapped the book shut. ‘This story’—he waved it in the air—‘says the guy got out alive. Bullshit.’
Storming to the front door, he thrust it open and flung the book out into the night. The sky visible through the doorway was devoid of light, a black slab hanging over the town. He turned and began to close the door, but stopped when he saw my face buried in my mug.
While my father waded through our overgrown lawn to find the book, I sat and stewed on his words. I decided he was right; the giant holes weren’t the same. The hungry creatures at the Exchange weren’t prowling below. They circled the perimeter, waiting for their reward.
Despite my endless questioning, no one could tell me what lay at the bottom of the abyss. The secrets of our ancestors were buried in the town graveyard, and their stories had been distorted by centuries of inebriation and despair.
Still, rumours and myths permeated our community, slithering into ears, coiling around minds and escaping out of mouths on a daily basis. The tales had a way of settling into something that resembled truth, even as they contradicted one another.
They said there was a founding community, a wholesome gathering of scientifically gifted men and women, set on regenerating the planet and achieving social equality. They said that half of the founding members died building the Exchange, an immense sacrifice of talent for the greater good.
They said there was a generation of townspeople who forbade the use of the Exchange. They said the fear of the hole ran so deep that anyone caught lingering there was considered mad and locked away to contain the disease.
They said, if you listen carefully, screaming can be heard coming from the hole on the night of a full moon.
They said once every fifty years a mammoth cash return is set to occur.
They said the town used to be filled with dogs.
They said one day it would dry up.
We used these myths like magic carpets, flying above the days lived on repeat, refusing to look down and watch ourselves scrounge for food, gather items and make our way towards the hole. We didn’t see ourselves trudge day after day; the men walking with wheelbarrows and small handfuls of cash; the women carrying bony children and their fading hope.
--
Our graveyard was bursting. It had spread far beyond the picketed boundaries of the chapel yard, leaking into the gardens of the surrounding homes. As a child, I set myself the challenge of tracking the combined years of life represented in that sprawling patch of death.
I was updating my tally the day that I found Josiah there, his bruised little body huddled in front of a cement headstone. He sat on a cascading mound of fresh dirt. The words etched into the stone behind his back read: Harlon Green 4301-4352. Dedicated Townsman. Waging Enthusiast.
It was summer, and there were no trees in sight. Strands of damp hair stuck to my neck and cheeks and a collection of new freckles bloomed on my forearms.
‘Was he your friend?’ I said, pointing at the ground.
‘Who?’ A wobbly red line trickled from his nose to his upper lip.
‘Harlon, who died last week.’
He looked around as if noticing for the first time that he was propped against a tombstone. ‘Nah.’ He hung his head and tucked his hands behind his neck, sniffing and coughing as he shifted his weight around in the dirt.
I stood up again and watched him, not knowing what to say. ‘I’m not gonna be buried here when I die.’
He shielded his eyes from the sun and frowned.
‘I’m gonna win big and then I’m gonna leave,’ I said.
Josiah stared up at me with a puckered face.
‘It’s true. My father got out once. He said it’s as different as you can get from this shithole.’
He picked up a worm that was wiggling by his toe and held it in the palm of his hand, poking its body with a grubby finger and watching it writhe and twist against his skin. ‘What’s it like?’
I crouched down next to him. ‘People actually do stuff, stuff that’s not just throwing junk over.’
He ground his feet into the dirt until they disappeared, his calves protruding from the soil like stumps of flesh. ‘Reckon my mum’s out there?’
I knew she wasn’t. Her body was likely at the bottom of the Exchange, where his father had thrown her after a drunken rage. ‘Yeah. I reckon she’ll be out there.’
--
Josiah grew into the town. Not long after my mother died, I came home and found him tearing up the floorboards of our shack.
‘I know it’s here,’ he said, and ripped another board away with a piercing crack. Finding nothing underneath, he let the board fall and slam against the floor. He stomped towards me and stabbed a finger in my face. ‘I know when you’re hiding shit from me; when you’re being a selfish bitch.’
A rodent-sized cockroach emerged from the exposed hollow and scuttled through a gap in the wall.
I studied Josiah’s appearance: dirty brown stubble, a trail of broken capillaries laced across bloated cheeks, an angry pink patch of dehydrated skin on his forehead. I took a step towards him and steeled my body for what was to come. ‘Is this what you need to feel like a man?’
His fist shut my mouth with a slick uppercut, the crunch of my teeth exploding in my head as I fell to the floor. He stood over me. Blood trickled from my mouth onto the grimy floorboards and I watched the dark pool of it grow and glisten.
‘You gonna throw me over?’ I said, closing my eyes. ‘Guess I’ll finally meet your mother.’
He threw his head back and screamed as he laid a heavy boot into my stomach.
--
The day I took my parents’ rings to the Exchange, Josiah stayed home. I left his sweaty, snoring body in bed and crept outside to the carcass of my dad’s ute. The hollowed-out vehicle sat rotting in our front yard. Josiah was taking it apart piece by piece to throw and every day getting closer to the bundle.
I crawled underneath the belly of the car and found the stub of the exhaust he had cut off and thrown. A small portion of pipe remained, and the opening was just large enough to slip my hand inside if I had greased it first with cooking oil. I stretched out my oily fingers, grasped the drawstrings, and dragged the bundle out of its metal burrow.
Months before we buried her, my mother had pulled me in for a drawn-out embrace. She turned us to block me from the sharp eyes of my man, snuck her hand up my top, and tucked the bundle under the clasp of my bra. Feigning a goodbye kiss, she whispered, ‘We saved this for you. When I die, take the cash, throw the rings and leave. It’s enough. Don’t make a bet. Just go.’
I lay underneath the car and emptied the contents of the bundle on to my palm: a chunky wad of cash secured by a rubber band and both my parents’ wedding rings. Rubbing my father’s faded gold band, I could hear his voice as clearly as if he lay there next to me.
Move, kid.
--
They said there was once a town minister who warned the people against the abyss. Shortly after his sermon, an angry mob ripped him from the pulpit and threw him into the Exchange. Rumour had it that his body produced the largest return the town had ever seen.
The day I stood on the brink holding my parent’s rings, the hole was clear of its intermittent smog and I felt I could see the bowels of the earth. I wondered if the minister’s God had saved him like Daniel in the den. I wondered if he stalked amongst the decaying goods and set the value of the returns. The people had noticed the returns dwindle year after year and a tale of righteous revenge had whispered its way through the town.
As I gazed down into the pit, thinking of this fictional man punishing us for the sins of our fathers, I saw how deeply the roots of this place were buried in me. The thought hit me as a gust of wind lashed at my back, tipping me forward, so I teetered on the edge. At that moment, a hand wrenched my t-shirt tight against my body, bunching the material and using it to drag me from the ledge.
The strength of my limbs disintegrated, and my body spilled onto the ground like my mother’s watery pancake batter.
‘Get out of here, kid. Go before Josiah gets here.’
I stared up at the puffy face of the bookie. He bent over me, red eyes watering from the relentless wind. I smelt the mix of stale spirits and bile on his breath.
‘Raymond told me you’d come here with those rings,’ he said.
My breath came in rapid, shallow spurts, and I put a hand on my chest to steady myself. ‘He would have wanted me to win.’
‘Bullshit. He told me not to take your money and to kick your ass if you didn’t piss off out of here. So go.’ He jammed the wad of cash I had given him back in my hand and walked off through the crowd. I slipped the notes under my waistband.
Go. Go. Go.
Even with my father’s words churning through my brain, the abyss held me. I lay beside the edge and the darkness of it pulled at my mind, ebbing clarity and stoking a hunger passed down from generation to generation. The hole wanted more than the goods we sacrificed. An insatiable thirst for human devotion spilled over the rim, lapping at my will.
The crowd began to holler. Mangy children scurried through legs and squeezed between the mass of bodies on their way to the dispense machine. I heard the familiar sound of fists crunching against bone and the guttural rumble of fighting men.
Pushing up from the ground, the round form of two rings dug into the earth underneath my hand. The roar of the crowd faded. I could see my parents hustling, my father honing his skills at the game, stealing and cheating, my mother cutting down her portion of food, throwing her kitchen appliances over the edge, both of them stashing notes, forging a way out.
I scooped up the rings and the dirt, shoved all that was left of them in my pocket, and ran.
THE END