I never thought I would end up like this – like a tabloid horror story. Someday I bet I'll be discovered dead, here in my tiny, piss-scented apartment, being devoured by my seventy cats. Thing is, I ... [+]
Rashida Murphy is an award winning writer from Western Australia. She has published several short stories, poems, book reviews and essays and her debut novel, The Historian's Daughter, was shortlisted in the Dundee International Book Prize. Rashida lives in Perth and sits on the literary committee at the KSP Writers Centre where she also sponsors an annual CALD Fellowship for emerging writers. Rashida has won several writing residencies and appeared at national and international writers' conferences and festivals. "Burns Beach" is part of Short Édition's series, The Current.
It rains continuously as I drive north along Marmion Avenue. ‘It's just a shack,' Julia had said. ‘Don't say you weren't warned.' I turn the key and push the door inwards, leaving my bag to rest on a small square of bricks by the door. She's right. This is a shack. It smells old, cold and empty. Something has lived and died here. I stand by the door, trapped between the smell inside and the cold outside. I choose outside, take heaving gulps of air, go in again. It'll have to do. There's a couch in the corner, a broken table lamp, a footstool. I didn't expect white sheets and patchwork qu