This is not the way I understood cold. Not the biting morning frost, glasses steamed up, fingers fumbling from numbness and sharp shocks of sensation from the heat of the coffee cup, the mist and early morning sun, seagulls scream and the gentle clunk of the boats nudging their moorings, a hallow of cigarette smoke around where we work, untangling nets, raising sails or refuelling the outboard on those days when Joe’s managed to procure some fuel on the black market and his wife puts a black dot sticker in the bottom right hand corner of their shop window, so that everyone in-the-know knows. This is not that kind of cold. It’s not that fresh early morning cold shared in silence with the boy, the boy who throughout the day looks on the world with fearful eyes, but throughout those early morning rituals, and also for the rest of the morning, bobbing on that benevolent ocean, all the way through til the afternoon when we find ourselves confronted by the landlocked world of man, that fear leaves his eyes, and all that’s there then, in those eyes, in the cold and as the sun thaws the world, is a peacefulness, a contentedness, and when his gaze falls upon his fathers’ face, trust.

But this cold is different. It’s empty. Impervious. It’s not a cold that one feels on the tip of ones’ nose. It’s everywhere, equally, at once. All throughout this space…space? What other word is there for it? This vast, senseless, subaquatic limbo. This mindlessness. These thoughts, these words, drifting by like jetsam. These things I never thought before. I only ever owned one book. I owned some magazines when I was younger. The paper doesn’t interest me and I’ve never understood the internet. But not all these thoughts are mine and I don’t think all these words are either. These thoughts that nudge up against me, some latching on like barnacles, others drifting right through me, and others sit there, alien thoughts quickly assimilated. And the faces. There’s a constant flow of memory here, parents, school, friends, wife, son, and others, one man I only ever saw once on a bus on the way to visit my dying mother, snot through his beard and sucking on a tinny, and all those blackened faces of other miners, those sour, spiteful faces, but not just as I remember them, weathered, beaten, but also as young men, in school uniform, in nappies, and the faces of their mothers and the nipples they suckled on. And faces with no memory attached as an explanation, as justification for their existence, alien faces, foreign faces, races of people I never knew existed, gung-ho young soldiers and bearded guerrillas, charred corpses, men and buffalo in rice paddies, women at looms, fat men and fat cigars, screens with numbers scrolling across them, graphs, pie charts, babies disfigured by fist and machete, by scalpel, by nuclear fission and tidal wave, brothels and women raped against a backdrop of burning villages…these aren’t my memories, these aren’t my thoughts, my thoughts were simple, I remember my thoughts, they were gentle, like rain, I want my thoughts, I want my body, I want to die like people always have, like the boy did when they put a bullet through his head, I want my memories back, my dreams and nightmares, I want to tell my story, I want a witness.

In two thousand and ten, or eleven, I’m not sure, the boy was about three or four, a massive tanker capsized in the bay spilling oil and killing all the fish. It got everyone down, it wasn’t just the economic hardship, fish were our life, our livelihood, everything. Then, to make things worse, the fish, no, all aquatic life, even kelp, in an ever-increasing radius, were found bobbing to the surface, dead, pustulant and real smelly. An environmental department report identified the culprit, the Aristotle Beetle, a South American stowaway in the ballasts of the tanker that sank, and the same report claimed nothing could be done about it, there’d been infestations all across the globe, it had no natural predator and no disease killed it. Well, some of the boys and their wives got some city lawyers onboard and launched a class action, which of course the government crushed immediately, no explanation, no compensation, nothing, silence, denial, just that we were ungrateful, living off welfare whilst others died for their country, then the introduction of the Acquiescent Labour Bill just to make sure we didn’t get too comfortable on government hand-outs, and four big blokes in suits banging on the door at five in the morning, wrenching the coffee cup from my hands and cigarette from my lips, pinning the boy and shoving Mary, my wife, when she came to his defence, no guns, not even batons, just force, but not even that much force, me and the boy acquiesced easily, walked to the waiting van without fuss. It was a rattly old refrigerated van with milk crates on either side. There were eight men in there already, some sat shoulder-to-shoulder on the crates, others hunched or squatted on the floor, a couple of them were smoking and the space was heavy with smoke, I felt like choking. They read us our rights when we stopped for morning tea, there wouldn’t be any guards with us when we stopped for meals or toilet breaks or even when we got to the mines, we hadn’t done anything wrong, we weren’t prisoners, we could come and go as we liked, but we had to work for our bread…and if we didn’t work for our bread, if we ran from one of those truck stops into the desert, they wouldn’t have chased us, they wouldn’t exert themselves, they’d simply wait until they arrived back to the comfort of their city offices, they’d sit in their ergonomic chair in front of an ergonomic screen, and terminate our payments, our vouchers, but not only our food vouchers, our wives’ and children’s, our mothers’ and fathers, brothers’ and sisters’ and all of their families. And underlying all this, between the lines, sat twelve years service, no jury, no right to response, no right to remain silent, it only got one mentioned at that morning tea, ‘the law’, no-one knew much about the law then, not that we do now, that malleable beast of a law, but we’re a little more familiar with it, with the Censored and the rest of the Sedition Legislation…

You see I’ve got to capture this chronologically, pin it down, tack it down, it’s like when you scramble across the deck struggling against a wicked wind to pull down the sails before they’re torn off and snatched away. I’ve got to collect these thoughts, these memories, and grasp them close, grasp them tight, order them, categorise them, define them, define my self again, always mindful of those other thoughts, those parasitic thoughts, I think all these thoughts are mine.

We worked hard. Well the work was hard, not like fishing, fishing’s a pleasure. I worked nights and the boy worked days, not that it made much difference underground. I awoke every evening to the boy sitting sullenly at the foot of my bed. I’d beat the stiffness out of my trousers, pull them on, put the water on to boil, open the door of the cabin and tip the silt out of my boots, make two cups of tea, sit on the chair opposite the boy sipping the tea and watching him let his go cold. Every evening there was another wound, or black eye, or missing tooth. I’ll be the first to admit that the kid’s a bit slow. Always has been. Didn’t speak a word til he was ten, and only then when he was out at sea, then he’d talk his little heart out, and he still does, or did until they took us away, but only to me, and only on the boat, mostly just questions, what it was like for me as a boy and to tell the story of how Dave rescued me from the storm again, he did talk about himself too, such a sensitive soul, a vulnerable little thing, he’s always been picked on…I’d pat him on the head, sling the pick over my shoulder and join the solemn procession of miners out the camp gates, down the hill, past the equipment gathering dust since the Fuel Crisis of two thousand and nine, and into the mouth of the mine.
I found him by the creek, the creek that runs black from the mine. There was blood pumping from a gash across his face. He lay there, too shamed to scramble the six hundred metres up to his father’s cabin. Silent as ever. I dabbed at the wound with the whisky from my flask and tore a length from my shirt to bind his head. I dragged him into the scrub and waited for them to begin the search. They never did. We must have had some benevolent bureaucrat smiling down upon us that day. The next day we left. In full daylight and no-one stopped us. We walked until we were faint from thirst. We sat arm-in-arm in the dust, amongst the saltbush, two wedge-tails circling above us. We hadn’t seen a soul for as long as we’d been walking. I’m not sure how long we sat there before we did, both slipping in and out of consciousness, punching each other to keep us awake. A battered old truck pulled past with a couple of forlorn, ragged donkeys in the caged tray. The vehicle sputtered to a stop. There was silence for some time. A wiry old fellow stepped out, so weathered he might have been made from clay. He spoke all the way back to Adelaide, but I didn’t listen much.

When we walked in Mary didn’t speak, but she was pleased to see us. Before we were married we spoke a lot, late into the night, about everything, fish, the mortgage, the television news. When the boy was born she spoke to him all the time even though he never said a word in return, just smiled. But no one speaks much now. I noticed that her garden was thriving. Everyone in town’s garden was looking great. I suppose the women just had more time for things like that.

I’m not like the others in here. I’ve never been political. I had a family to feed. We’d only taken the boat out a couple of times when he approached us. The boat had fallen into disrepair and it took a couple of weeks to fix, the only materials we had were those we scrounged from the beach or, yes it’s true, other ships. The boy stopped making eye contact and took to muttering under his breath. Me and Mary started fighting, she said to leave the boy be, but I needed his help, I’m not as young as I used to be, and we needed that boat, we needed a livelihood, our diet needed more than just the lettuce from her garden. I was sitting at the end of the pier, we’d had an argument and I was swigging on a bottle of whisky when he emerged from the shadows. He was a young fellow, stooped and lanky, dressed in black. He was carrying something in a potato sack. Apparently he had a thousand dollars for me if I took this sack, and its contents, to a certain latitude where an unlit trawler would be waiting for me, five hundred now, five hundred when I returned. Normally I would have laughed, the boat wasn’t designed for that kind of depth, but I’d been taking it almost as deep in search of fish. so when he produced the five hundred I nodded my agreement. He didn’t want to know my name. He told me to tell no-one. I told my wife when I got home and she just looked at me from the bed with slitted eyes, but didn’t disagree. Me and the boy left at five the next morning. It wasn’t a refreshing cold that morning, it was heavy and suffocating, I could hardly move my limbs.

A day out from land I opened the sack. The man said never open the sack and I wish I never had. At first I couldn’t make out what they were. Five pinkish shapes fell from the bag and bounced on the floor. I bent to pick one up but pulled back. It was a brain. They were all brains. Human brains. I didn’t know for certain at that point. I talked, I don’t know what I said, I’m not sure if I was talking to them at that stage or just to myself, but the silence had to be broken. It was some time before I was aware of his presence. I turned and the boy was standing silently in the doorway. I pushed passed him and went up to the deck to light a cigarette. He was down there for ages, I’m not sure what he was doing, I never asked him. We ate our beans as if nothing had happened. We went to bed without saying a word. When I woke up his bed was empty. He was down there again with the brains, just standing with them at his feet. I put my arm around him but he pulled away. I’m not sure why, but I grabbed him by the elbow, dragged him from the cabin and locked the door. I think it was the look in his eyes, an obsession I’d never seen before. He snatched at the keys but I wouldn’t give them to him. He took me by the shoulders and began pounding me against the wall, he’s a big young boy and I’m just a little old man. He let me go and I fell to my knees. He lurched above me as if to kick me but pulled away, pounding the locked door a couple of times before slumping against it, sobbing. I stood up and dusted myself off. I wanted to comfort him, but I was afraid of him, of the thing that had taken hold of him. I just went up on to the deck and lit a cigarette.

My dreams were incredibly lucid over the next few nights. Some were of the boy, he was a baby again but he was bigger than me and playing with me like he used to play with his teddy, sometimes cuddling me and at others bashing my head against a rock. But I also dreamt of the brains down there in the hold. In these dreams I’d wake suddenly and lie there, staring at the ceiling. Then I’d slip from the bunk and tip toe to the door, careful not to wake the boy. I’d unlock the door and stand there in the darkness. Sometimes I’d pick one up, hold it to my cheek, to my lips. In those dreams I knew who these people were, I greeted them by name. But I’ve forgotten now. All I see is silhouettes…no, they’re black, their skin is black, at least one of them is, he’s well spoken, he’s drunk in a pub talking with his mate of landrights, he’s standing at a podium in an English Museum calling for the return of his ancestors skulls, he’s running with his uncles through the scrub and they’re being shot at, not with bullets but tranquilliser darts.

The radar didn’t pick up the pirate ship, it appeared out of the mist a few hundred metres from starboard and they clambered up wielding rifles and machetes and hoisting their mangy dogs aboard. The boy appeared from the hold carrying a bucket that, on seeing the pirates, he dropped at his feet spilling soapy water across the deck. He turned and ran back into the hold. One of the pirates gave a whoop then gave chase and the rest followed, I beat off the one that was holding me and ran after them, but I was too late, there was a shot as I rounded the corner and the boy was lying there in a pool of blood and one of the men was using the butt of his rifle to beat down the door. I was thrown to the floor and pinned there. I could only see a little of what was going on. They’d found the brains. They were playing soccer with one of them, two of them jostling as the brain bounced off their boots, then a victorious whoop and a shot at goal and the goalie blocking with his machete, I’m sure I heard the thing scream as he sliced it in two. And one bloke strutting about with the brain balanced on his head and another couple of guys chasing after him trying to trip him up and everyone laughing uproariously. And still laughing one bloke pointed to the dog who was eating the halved brain, the truly bipolar brain, which inspired a new game, feed it to the old bloke lying in the corner. They had the good manners to cut it into bight-sized chunks before forcing it down my oesophagus as four other guys held me down.

Then a horn and the coastguard calling for us to identify ourselves on a megaphone and suddenly I’m alone, lying amidst pieces of brain, spattered in blood, listening to the laughter, gunfire and screams up on deck. Then silence. Just footsteps. I sit up shakily. I gather the brains in my lap talking all the while, baby talk, comforting talk, I can’t remember what I said but I was still talking when the coastguard entered. Look at this sick bugger, he called to his mates who weren’t far behind, Too right, he’s a fucking degenerate, Let’s blast his brains, see how he likes it. Then an older man entered, pushing the younger men aside and approaching me, he patted me on the head before injecting me, he had gentle yellow eyes, he whispered something in my ear before I passed out, something that made me like him. My only memories from that point on are random, a woman’s voice speaking French, a figure in white, bright lights, an airflight, an a aquarium, a shark, an octopus, a beaker and a vile on the bench at head level, a momentary pain, short and sharp, then an infinite, senseless plateau stretching out before me.

One thing I do remember though is a visit, in a cabin painted white, the floor still rocking so we were still at sea. A visit alone by the one who’d injected me. He was pouring sugary water into my mouth when I sputtered into consciousness. He said something about dolphins, or else I misheard him. He placed a hand on my forehead and smiled. You know you’re just a prawn. I smiled too. The robbery of the brains from the Institute was all staged, when the nightly news camera sees you wheeled into maximum security it will see a broken, battered smuggler and a triumphant government, the question will no longer be whether or not the preservation of living brains is ethical, it will be about security. But I was thinking about the Mary cooking prawns. About her curled up in bed like a prawn. About the baby boy curled up like a prawn. I smiled and he smiled too.