Mr

Mr

He is picking his nails and they’re coming off. He is sweating and worrying and wishing, but he can’t move. He feels as if he is sprinting, hiking, rowing, climbing the largest mountain in the world, but he is still, silent and weak, and he is picking his goddamn nails. They start to hurt. James Darling is a bit of a mother’s boy. He drinks occasionally and he swears. But he gets homesick, yes he does. And hates to think it, but he wants his mother. He wants his mother to tell him he’s a darling, take him away from Noona Glun, and back to the sweetheart of Sydney, and tell him he’s a darling
You’re my darling, James.
I’ve got you James.
James Darling, you are a darling.

He is in a house (that he thought was a shed) and starts to wonder how, if he was murdered, this forty-something year old father would explain it. The daughter of this Billet’s household, Emma, told him that they were poor this morning, and asked if that’s ok with James.
“Yes. I’m not a snob” he laughed.
“Do you drink?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. Smoke?”
“No.”
“Ok”
But there’s a lot Emma didn’t tell him. About her father, for example. Wayne Holden. Wayneoooo, or Wayne-Doggy, or Big W. Wayne has dark skin, (as if he’s just fallen down a chimney), a beer gut -   accentuated even more by his short stature - and large black, portal hole-like eyes. A coffee mug of what looks like a few days old milk, has “top-dad” plastered on the front of it, and is so fittingly placed next to the four packets of cigarettes and empty beer cans that line the coffee table. So fittingly. He is the opposite of James’ father. Wayne Speaks.
“Who the fuck are you?”
“I’m James, I’m staying with you tonight”
“Oh. I thought you’d be a girl.”
He laughs. James doesn’t.
“Well thank you for having me, where should I put my bag?”
“Wherever mate, ‘slong as ya don’t need a maid to carry it for ya.”
He walks up the hallway. There are putrid...