Seth Malacari
For the record, we sit in the shade of the peppermint trees. The branches hang low, dark green leaves cocooning us in. Wind blows the clouds to paint-swatch streaks above us, but down here it is calm and smells sweetly of summer. Are you ready? Tell it from the beginning.
It was summer, 2045. They lined us up across the top of the scarp, floodlights multiplying and warping our shadows. We wore matching white t-shirts, stained with sweat at the armpits and collar from the march up. We stood in the freshly turned dirt, a path cleared days before by the prep crew: the men who didn’t make the final cut. It was evening, just past sundown, but the heat stuck. The cameras stared, unblinking. There were no clouds that night, but also no moon, and the stars were washed out by the lights. A blank sky. We faced east, out over the scrubland, tired eyes fixed on the only meaningful landmark in that endless waste: a copse of trees clustered thickly together, green tops visible even in the fading light. Matthew appeared from behind a dying acacia tree. He was a short man, but burly, and he stank of unwashed clothes.
‘The rules are simple,’ he shouted at us, though we stood centimetres from him. ‘Your goal is to reach The Grove. You may not desert your mission. There is no rescue. Those who reach The Grove will be rewarded. Do you understand?’
We all parroted that old slogan back to him. I don’t want to say it now.
‘You arrived here as boys, but you leave as men.’
I hated that. I was thirty-three. I was already a man, any way you looked at it.
Matthew blew that silver whistle he was always carrying. I can still hear that whistle in my sleep sometimes, the shrill of it, the spit flying out. We, the ten of us, charged as one, like we were a singular body, surging down the rocky scarp in sync, until the body began to disintegrate, separate, and we scattered into the night.
As soon as I reached level ground, I tried to distance myself from the others. There was nowhere to hide. No trees, except those we were heading for and those we had left behind at the top of the scarp. I thought I could see Matthew up there, a shadow figure, pacing. The vegetation around me was knee-high at most, spiky and dry. It cut through my trousers, pricked my ankles until they bled into my socks. The ground was baked hard, cracked clay and granite rock that glittered under the lights, but burned to touch. I ran through the scrub until I found a clearing to pause in. Out in the night I could hear the other men howling, yelling, high on the adrenaline of it all. As soon as I stopped moving, I started to cry. Big, heaving sobs that rattled my chest. I tried to be quiet, not out of shame, but out of fear of being found. I didn’t trust anyone else. It took me maybe an hour to regain control of myself.
Can you explain the contest?
It was my old man’s idea to sign up. He wanted the money, plain and simple. That’s what we all thought was at the finish line: money. What else was worth dying for? Maybe it was because my dad had been so sure I wouldn’t qualify that I’d agreed. Maybe I wanted to prove that just because I hadn’t been born a man didn’t mean I couldn’t hack it. Every year, ten men from inside the Boorloo City trenched zone were selected to compete. The appeal was that all ten could win. There was no first place, or rather no value placed on being first. There was no time limit. You either made it to The Grove, or you didn’t. Ours was the sixth year. Nobody had ever won. In the inaugural year, a bushfire took out most of the contestants. The rest were never heard from again. Last year they had allowed weapons in for the first time. Nobody survived past the first night. We didn’t understand that we were pawns. That not even they — Matthew, and the other leaders — had reached The Grove before. It was unobtainable. That was what fuelled them.
After I stopped crying, I tried to focus on the present. I was there. No going back. Might as well try to win. I took steady breaths in and out, scanning my body. Anxiety was having a boxing match with fear in my gut. I told myself that all I had to do was walk. I walked through the night, always keeping The Grove in my line of sight, but rounding to the south, rather than walking directly toward it. It was easy to keep on track; even at night The Grove seemed to glow, lit from within. It was like looking at the faint light of a candle upon the windowsill of a far-away cottage. A signal of home, calling you out of the dark.
When my legs failed me, I stopped and slept, fitfully. I woke to the orange-grey light of morning on the eastern horizon. I wanted to walk as far as possible before it heated up. Out there it could reach fifty degrees in the shade. There was no shade. Before I set off, I walked a few paces from my bag and squatted down to pee.
And that’s when you met me.
Like something out of a movie.
‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you!’
Scared the hell out of me. Can’t believe I was about to piss on a fire ant’s nest. I considered running from you, pants still half down, but where would I go? There was nowhere to hide. I remembered you from the trials. You were quicker than me. Then you said something that surprised me.
I asked you to team up.
Your voice was so soft, and sad sounding. I wanted to hold you, make you feel better or something. I couldn’t comprehend the feeling. I’d never really felt that for someone before, but I think it was the circumstances. Death and life dancing together on my frontal lobe. Something about the way you were looking at me, the way you were clinging to the straps of your backpack. I recognised something of myself in you. I agreed to team up. Everyone warned me not to, before I left home. That even though we all had a chance to win, nobody would actually want to share the prize.
I’m glad you didn’t listen to them.
Me too.
Talk about how we realised the trees were moving.
We’d been walking, what, two, three days? And then you said, ‘The trees are moving.’
I thought you meant the wind, but there was no wind. Everything, including the trees, looked stagnant.
‘Nothing is moving out there,’ I said.
‘I mean they’re moving, moving. Every step we take toward them they move two steps further away. Watch.’
You ran full speed across the plain, screaming with the exertion of it. You looked so cute, despite the horror of the realisation. Your arms were flung out at your sides like streamers. You were correct though, the faster you ran toward The Grove, the faster it receded, like trying to chase the sun to the horizon.
Is that why you kissed me? Because I looked so cute?
One of the reasons.
Tell them how we won.
Well, you wanted to give up. I’d kissed you, after the running, and you were shaking, and I was holding you there out in the middle of nothing, the sun going down, and all your hope with it. I didn’t know what to do, so I just held you. I knew we had to keep moving. We couldn’t live out there, not with the meagre rations they’d given us. I figured if The Grove was impossible to reach, the logical solution was to walk away. Far behind us was the city, home, I guess, as it was then. I didn’t fancy going back there, back inside the trenched zone where all the trees were artificial, and all the water was rationed. To the north was nothing but swamp. I’m scared of crocodiles, you know. So, we went south.
I barely remember it.
You were out of it. At one point I had to carry you on my back. It happened in the middle of the fifth day. Birds had started circling us. My skin was burnt all over. Yours was worse. I was at my limit; I’ll admit that now. I was ready to end it. What was the point? What was the point of walking endlessly to nowhere? I fell to my knees in the dust, a dramatic unravelling of all that had held me together up until then. That’s when I felt it. The euphoric sensation of shade, as though the sun had dipped behind a cloud. Droplets of rain on my scorched neck. I looked up, but instead of a rain-soaked sky I saw the canopy, saw dappled sunlight and swaying leaves. Saw how the trees, The Grove, had curled itself around us, absorbing us into its centre, embracing us. And then the hands, soft human hands pulling us gently up, pouring water into our chapped lips. Paradise. It took them days to convince us we weren’t dead. Are you going to interview them, the others?
Tomorrow. Today, I just want to sit here with you, under the trees. It’s our anniversary, remember. One year since we met.
Of course I remember. Turn that off now, I’m done talking. I want to kiss you.
End of record.
Seth Malacari (he/they) is a nonbinary trans masculine author and editor living on unceded Whadjuk Noongar land. Their first book, An Unexpected Party (2023) was published by Fremantle Press. They are currently undertaking a creative PhD at UWA, researching transmasculine history across twentieth century Australia.
Long Trek Press 
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