Notes: This story contains lesbians, some language (mainly poetry!), alcohol, a drug reference, some misplaced thoughts, terrible money management and references to mental illness. There is no sex (mainly because the main character seems incapable of getting any) and no violence.

For the geographically challenged, there are at *least* 2 major cities in the world called Newcastle - I'm referring to the one in New South Wales, Australia where I was lucky enough to spend most of my University years. The landmarks are real, as is the pub (the Wickham Park Hotel) where I drowned many a sorrow and celebrated many a victory, so I was determined to write it into a story eventually.

As usual, many thanks to my editor-in-chief Lela Kaunitz. All poetry by Christina Rossetti - here's an interesting site about her.

When I Am Gone Away
by Poto

I looked at the checkout girl who was holding the EFTPOS machine. "Third time lucky?"

Her face had bypassed forced politeness and was headed towards open hostility. "Don't you have any other bank cards?"

"This one should be fine." I insisted.

"Do you know what your balance is?" She snapped. The queue behind me was getting restless.

Sighing, I pulled out my wallet and handed her a well-worn credit card. She zapped it through with indecent haste, shoving the pen under my nose for my signature.

I skulked from the supermarket with my bottle of coke tucked under my arm and headed for the nearest ATM..

I usually press no when the machine asks me if I want a receipt printed. Hell, who wants to know how poor you are, anyway? So I got a nasty shock when the balance the machine spat at me was minus thirty seven dollars. I have always been bad with money - earning it, keeping track of it - but I couldn't remember having ever been in negatives before.

I wandered home the long way, trying to form a mental picture of my finances. The cash I'd just pulled from my credit card sat burning in my pocket and I was suddenly thirsty. Nothing like the pub for nursing a drink and a black mood.

To top it all off, the silly season was coming. I could almost smell the money in the air, hear the saccharine music, see the flashing neon fairy lights. These were the days when you discovered just how many different shades of purple tinsel actually exist while wrestling with the concept of snow-covered sitcom Santa specials while you sit in front of your TV nursing a cold one and a bad case of Christmas heatstroke.

The negativity inside of me felt wrong, but wrestling it out of my system was going to take some effort. As I entered the pub and plonked myself down on a stool at the bar I contemplated what I needed to do to turn my mood around.

Sex was always a good bet.

"Hey, what'll you have?"

A good fuck, I almost said without thinking. I looked up at the bartender, Cathy I think her name was. "Schooner of VB, thanks."

It was hard not to check her out as she bent over to pull a glass from the fridge. I mentally slapped my libido. Down girl! Besides, she was way out of my league. Bartenders had heard every pick-up line in the world already. You had to be truly original to snag a bartender. A pick-up pro. I was a rank amateur.

Actually, I had never tried to pick up anyone in my life. I'm not sure why. All my relationships had just kind of happened in that accidental, mutual delirium - or mutual drunkenness - sort of way. To physically make the effort to score was an alien concept to me.

I surveyed my assets, trying to look at the positives. I'm usually pretty happy with myself - a shade under five foot nine with short, dark hair that curls around my ears. I'm a bit large through the hips, or "roomy" as Hannibal Lecter would say, but I hadn't met many dykes in Newcastle who weren't.

Three beers and a tequila later and I was ready to try it out. Why the hell not? Everyone had slept with everyone else in this pub anyway. It was expected. Christmas was a good time for upholding traditions, like screwing complete strangers and stumbling home drunk.

I sauntered over to the jukebox with beer in hand, nodding to a slightly femme girl who was picking tracks. I'd seen her come in with a couple of friends who'd obviously been a couple. To my reckoning that made her the vulnerable third wheel. I looked at the jukebox as if I was trying to pick something out, peering indelicately over her shoulder. She moved over to give me room beside her.

"So…" I started in the age old tradition of pick-up lines. Then I lost my nerve. "Umm… can you hear the music from here in the back?"

She nodded. "Yeah, they pipe it all the way through to the beer garden."

We were quiet for a few seconds, and she punched in the code for "Barbie Girl". I cringed. Strike one for the femme girl.

"So…" She started, looking up at me shyly. I raised an eyebrow. "Can you play pool? We're kinda trying to play with three, we could play doubles."

"Sure." I smiled, encouragingly. "I'll just pick some songs and be right out." I took note of the beer she was drinking.

She smiled back and wandered off. A few minutes later I followed her, two beers in hand, one of them the kind she liked. The back room was empty except for the girl and her two coupled friends. I could hear snatches of conversation and smelled the faint odour of pot drifting in from outside.

I walked up to the girl and handed her the beer. She thanked me, flashing me yet another one of those smiles. Then she asked my name.

"Rachel Blarney." I replied.

She laughed. "Oh, so it's good luck to kiss you, then?"

Strike two for the femme girl. I threw her my best fake smile and an aren't-you-so-witty nod. Jesus, like no one had ever said that before? It was like New Zealanders and sheep jokes.

After that everything she did annoyed me. Strikes three, four, five and six came within minutes. I never thought chalking a pool cue could be an inherently irritating act. I played the best game of pool I've ever played in my life, clearing the table in just a few turns, and excused myself, bolting out of there as quickly as I could without actually breaking into a run.

My chest felt tight, and I could feel the vaguest, irrational sense of anger creeping into my bones. I walked along Maitland Road, over the bridge to Hunter Street, turned the corner through Hamilton and just kept going.

After a while I started listening to the steady rhythm of my feet hitting the pavement. The streets were strangely deserted. It wasn't even late yet, barely nine. I looked up. A cloudless night and still no stars. Newcastle didn't have stars anymore. Not with the steel plant spewing out its garbage and all the lights from the city. The night skies were like enormous black holes, sucking life up into the void.

The city always felt smothered and contained somehow, like some great glass walls surrounded the whole place. We could see out, but I wasn't one hundred percent sure that the rest of the world could see in. The air tasted recycled, like a badly air-conditioned office building. Claustrophobia tore at my brain. I needed to get somewhere high up where the air was a bit thinner, cleaner somehow.

I knew that there was one place where you could at least see city lights and the lights from the ships in the harbour. In the absence of stars that had to be the next best thing.

I headed for the obelisk.

The white, pointed stone jutted up from the hillside, eerily light in the pitch darkness, a beacon for vagrants and night wanderers like me. It was a town monument - a tourist attraction, a place where teenagers shared first kisses and drunk, homeless people camped out at night. Standing in front you could count all the ships waiting for entrance into the port, anchored just outside the bay. On the left you stared down on the central district of the city, down towards the foreshore and the restaurants and cafes along the edge. Everywhere else was the endless chain of suburbia, stretched out seemingly across the horizon. The malcontents and dissidents mixed up with the Good Honest Respectable People and the I Was Born Here I'll Die Here stalwarts in one long, glittering mass of houses and street lamps.

The obelisk was some kind of memorial to something, just this big piece of carved stone surrounded by concrete and a ring of bright white smaller rocks. I knew there was a plaque somewhere that could tell me what it was, but I'd never bothered to read it. I sat on the edge of the concrete base, looking out across the headland. Silent. Peaceful.

"Oi!"

I looked up, right into the face of a woman who'd managed to sneak up behind me. I looked away without saying a word, just hoping she'd go away.

That obviously wouldn't do. "Whatcha doing here staring at nothing?" She moved in even closer, her knees almost resting against my shoulder. I shifted off a little. She adjusted, coming in closer again.

"Do you mind?" I snapped, rising to my feet. She grinned stupidly and a lock of long blonde hair fell over her face. She was pretty, dressed neatly in jeans and black Bonds t-shirt, obviously clean, not your typical street derelict. Then of course there was the absence of alcholic breath that could fell a person at five paces.

Her head twitched to the side, and her eyes twinkled. "Actually, I was going to ask you the same question. You're sitting in my spot." Her tone was light, like I could expect her to burst into song any moment.

"It's a public place." I replied, more stiffly than I intended.

"True, but I should think regulars ought to have some rights, otherwise what's the point of coming here night after night staring at the same lights, counting the ships and generally being bored witless? I mean, if I can't expect to at least get a decent seat, then why bother?"

I stared, clueless. "What on earth are you raving about?"

"I don't rave, I talk fast, there's a difference." She replied haughtily, stepping up the concrete to fetch a jumper she'd left at the base of the stone. She wrapped it around her waist, tying the arms. With a dreamy look she leaned back against the obelisk, her dark shirt standing out almost grotesquely against the pure white.

She was silent a moment. I ran my eyes quickly over her. Even though she was standing still, there didn't appear to be a muscle in her body that wasn't moving. Her body was alive, active, but perfectly still at the same time. The paradox fascinated me.

Then, quietly and with passion, she spoke.

"Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay.
Remember me, when no more day by day,
You tell me of our future that you planned."

I couldn't help staring. It had been a while since anyone had quoted poetry to me. Actually, it was a tad egotistical to assume she was quoting it to me, even though just seconds before she had been speaking to me. Or rather, at me. She could just as easily be quoting poetry to the fairies who inhabited her universe.

"Who are you speaking to?" I asked, just to make sure. I looked around to double-check that we were alone.

"Oh? The air, the spirits, the trees, the lights, the sounds…"

I stared at her dubiously. OK, air there was, and trees and lights. But sounds and spirits?

"There's no sounds, and I don't know about spirits. Do you hear voices?"

She turned to me, eyes blazing. "No, I don't hear voices! Only crazy people hear voices! You must be stupid to think that." I backed off warily, but as quickly as the fire had come over her it was extinguished. The girl crooked her head again, eyeing me curiously. I couldn't imagine what those probing eyes were seeing.

Then she jumped forward again and grabbed me roughly by the hand. "Come on!"

I cursed, kicking my foot painfully against a rock. "Where the hell are we going?"

"The roundabout. Let's go to the roundabout!"

Roundabout? I'd lived in Newcastle for almost five years and I'd never seen a roundabout up there. There weren't even any roads to put a roundabout on.

There was a park just below the obelisk, with a steep incline before it that I knew was there, but couldn't see in the darkness. She was obviously headed right for it. I panicked and pulled back on her hand but that just spurred her on, making her run faster and faster down the slope towards the sharp drop I knew would come.

Suddenly she pulled up, so fast I almost crashed into her back making us both tumble over. About a metre before us was the drop. I panted, gasping for breath, blood pounding. She just stood there, a flush rising to her cheeks from exertion, breathing heavily, looking not the least bit concerned.

"I guess we'll have to go slower, huh?" She said, innocently.

I nodded, still shaken. "Look. There's a path with stairs just over there. If you're determined to go down, let's take that." I tried to loosen the vice-like grip she had on my hand. It was no use. "But I still don't know about any roundabout…" Just as I said that I spotted what she must have meant. A round, tiled pavilion was in the middle of the park. The Rotunda. I don't know why I hadn't thought of it. People got married there all the time.

That must have been the thought she had too. Suddenly she tucked my hand under her arm and started marching solemnly towards it humming the wedding march.

"Dum, dum, de, dum… Look, they even left some streamers there for us. How considerate." She picked up a piece of discarded wrapping that looked like it had once contained someone's ice cream and tried to put it in my hair. I rebelled, shoving it aside. She didn't take offence, but put the paper in her own hair. It stuck ludicrously up in the air.

"I hate to tell you this, but I'm not really in the mood to get married." I tried using my soothing voice, thinking perhaps the lower tone would get through. If wrenching my arm away didn't work soon I was going to have to consider gnawing it off at the elbow. The blood had already stopped circulating in my hand.

"Nobody ever wants to get married you know." Her voice was softer too, but still contained traces of the same frenetic energy. "But you can't grow old still looking for the one. You gotta settle down sometime." She looked at me oddly up and down, her eyes scrutinized each part of me as they went. She squeezed my hand even tighter. "I guess I'll take you. You seem nice. And you're cute."

I nodded at the compliment, while trying not to laugh at the pure absurdity of it. She'd picked up the pace now, her marching getting faster and faster. The Rotunda loomed, the blue and black tiling barely visible in the darkness.

Suddenly she stopped and turned her face upwards towards the stars. She dropped my hand and shoved both her arms skyward. My brain told me to run while I had the chance, but I didn't. I stood, mesmerised. Her face seemed suddenly calm and distant, yet still so warm and flushed with activity. She seemed to reflect the moonlight.

I'll call you Moonface, I thought giddily, after that funny little Enid Blyton character in the Faraway Tree who always seemed so happy. As I stared at her I couldn't imagine that face ever knowing fear, or longing, or darkness, or pain. She seemed so innocent, but restless.

Without warning she bolted up the steps and twirled around, her jumper flying from her waist and landing in a heap in the corner. I watched her spinning around, a maelstrom of hair and eyes and arms and feet. Then she stopped still with her arms raised, like a marble statue, poised and elegant. I could tell even from where I was that inside her head the world was still spinning.

"Come here, quick, you have to get married right when the moon is above the pavilion!"

Without the faintest idea why I was doing it, I ascended the stairs and reached for her hand again. She was visibly shaking. As soon as our hands made contact the vice-like grip returned and she was rock-steady again.

"Who says you have to?" I replied.

"Who says you have to what?"

"Get married when the moon is above the pavilion."

"They say." As if that explained everything. "Do you… what is your name, anyway?"

"Rachel Blarney." I said.

"That's a nice name, Rachel… anyway, do you Rachel, take me Abbie… that's my name, did you guess?…as your lawful wedded wife." She stopped, giggled. "Oh that's right. Not lawful, they don't let women get married. Umm…what the hell, you can be my wife anyway. Will you be my wife anyway?"

I was just amused that she knew I was a dyke. Maybe she didn't and it just didn't matter. I nodded, humouring her now, having fun despite myself. The blackness I'd been feeling seemed to have dissipated into the air.

She smiled the widest smile I think I've ever seen on a human being. I mean, some dogs have smiles like that, all gums and teeth an adoring eyes, but never people. People aren't that trusting. Abbie was like a surrealist portrait, everything out of place yet somehow making sense as whole, if you looked close enough.

"OK." She continued. "I Abbie take you Rachel. So there, you're stuck with me. Now, let's write our names on that tree over there."

"Which tree?" I asked, glancing at the woods surrounding us. She seemed to pick one certain tree out because she dropped my hand, raced down the steps and ran right for it. I followed, jogging easily across the dew soaked grass. I gave a vague thought for my cold feet now the night dew had soaked through the thin canvas shoes.

When I reached the tree I pulled my pocket knife out of my jeans, extending the blade. She reached over as if to grab it off me but I was quicker and snatched it away. "Uh uh, no way. If we're going to carve on the tree, I am doing the carving."

She nodded obediently, a mischievous glint in her eye. "But you have to write what I want. You have to write Rachel and Abbie forever."

Again I looked dubiously at her, but her determined face said it all. I was going to have to write this on the damned tree.

After much sweating and swearing, plus a shallow slice across my index finger, I got the names carved out. It didn't look too pretty but Abbie was satisfied, touching the bark of the tree with quiet longing.

Taking backwards steps, I moved away to stare at my handiwork. Abbie couldn't stop touching it, running her fingers along the letters, feeling the texture of the bark under her fingertips. She was fascinated. I was about ten metres away, laughing, watching her impulsively hugging the tree. Underneath her chuckles I heard her soft chanting.

"Remember me when I am gone away, gone far away into the silent land…
"Remember me when I am gone away, gone far away into the silent land…
"Remember me when I am gone away, gone far away into the silent land…"

And then she fell.

Actually, crumpled was more like it. Slowly, painfully, like a shot from one of those bad TV shows where they over-use the slow motion effect. I was just metres away but by the time I reached her she was unconscious.

"Abbie!" I slapped her face a few times. " Abbie, talk to me! Wake up!"

My refresher course in First Aid from two months before kicked in. I checked the airways, checked she hadn't swallowed her tongue, put her into recovery position and whipped out my mobile phone to call the ambulance. I'd never had to call an ambulance before. Up until now all my friends and family had refrained from collapsing for no reason.

I was mad. Why was I mad? How could she do this to me, just collapsing in the middle of nowhere - didn't even know who she was.

She was twitching slightly under my hand. I could feel a well of panic rising in my gut. A female voice finally answered. "Emergency services, which service please."

I stammered out details. I had a mental blank and couldn't remember the name of the park. I mentioned the Newcastle obelisk. Nearby there. There's Newcastle bowling club, a headland… The operator soothed me with her low voice, she knew what I was talking about, she said.

I didn't know whether to hang up or stay on the line. She obviously couldn't hang up until I did, but if I hung up the phone, what was I supposed to do then? Stare at the unconscious girl in my lap? She wasn't twitching any more. She wasn't making any sounds. She was breathing. Small, shallow breaths. I kept telling myself that. At least she's breathing. Check her pulse all the time. Check she's still breathing.

An eternity passed and the ambulance arrived. I said no, I didn't want to ride in the back. I wanted to go home. No really, I don't know her, why do you assume I know her? I mean, I just met her. We got married and all, but… No, not really married, what do you think? I'm sorry, I think I need to lie down. I didn't even know who I was babbling to.

I was hustled into the back of the ambulance after all, mostly because I was their only connection to who the girl was, and because I was babbling and panicked. But I didn't know anything, and I felt fine.

I told them her name. That was all I could tell them. Everything blurred. They ushered me into a seat in the waiting room at emergency, surrounded by a bunch of strangers, some of whom were holding bandages to their bodies to stop themselves bleeding onto the stark, white floors.

I spent the night sleeping in the emergency room. When I woke up I looked around and didn't recognise anything. Panic rose up in me again.

The distinct hospital smell woke my senses up to where I was. The pounding in my head was worse than any hangover I'd ever felt. I stumbled up to the desk, and the nurse smiled patiently at me.

"I came in last night, with a girl. Abbie… I don't know her last name. Can you tell me where they took her? Is she OK?"

The nurse seemed to know what I was talking about, even though I only vaguely knew myself. She shuffled a bunch of charts and files in pursuit of some information. Finally she found a manilla folder. "Ah, yes, Abigail Mitchell. She's fine, she came to about ten minutes after they brought her in. She had a file. We've notified her family."

But you just let me sleep there? "Can I see her?"

"Sorry, they transferred her over to James Fletcher early this morning."

I thought about that for a second. "Isn't James Fletcher the mental hospital?"

"That's right. They have visiting hours in the afternoon. Why don't you go home first? You look like you need some proper sleep."

My rational mind knew that she was trying to be kind, but I was just getting over why I was left to rot in the emergency room if Abbie was no longer even in the building. What was wrong with Abbie? I mean, apart from the obvious of harassing strangers in parks in the middle of the night.

When it was clear the nurse couldn't, or wouldn't, give me any more information, I left. It took a long time to get home. I got on two wrong buses and gazed tiredly out the window, staring at the passing cars.

About six hours later, after three hours restless sleep, a shower and some clean clothes, I caught the bus to the centre of town. I'd never been to a mental hospital before. I wasn't sure why, but it was daunting, more so than a normal hospital. Like you never knew what you would find there and your head fills with images from Girl Interrupted and To Kill a Mockingbird, even though your common sense tells you that movies are all crap.

But I had to go.

Maybe I just had to convince myself it wasn't some elaborate delusion. She'd happened. A jigsaw puzzle was half completed and it was already obvious that too many pieces were missing.

I got directions to a room from the nurse who walked me halfway and pointed me down a corridor. The place seemed really open, like I imagined a boarding school dormitory would be like, only more regimented and still with that hospital smell. Yet, the feeling in the air was repressed.

I rapped twice on the door I knew was Abby's. A small voice answered for me to enter. I halfway recognised it. Not giving myself any time to back out, I opened the door, peering cautiously around it.

"Yes?" She asked, not looking up. I looked at her lying in the bed, her pyjamas on and a book lying open in front of her. This wasn't the same girl. I mean, it was obviously the same person but she was so different. She was still, quiet, two-dimensional. It was almost like she'd been ironed.

"Hi, umm… do you remember me?"

Her head rose and she seemed to drink me in, this ghostly form that was standing in her doorway. "Oh my God, it's you." A flush rose to her cheeks. The colour seemed to accentuate her fragility, her skin so porcelain white.

"Yeah, I managed to track you down. You scared me. They left me sitting in that emergency room and wouldn't tell me anything." I didn't know what else to say. It felt odd, just hovering in the doorway, like I was intruding on some sacred space. She didn't ask me to come in, just stared in wonderment.

"I... I can go if I'm making you uncomfortable." I stammered.

"No, please, don't go. I just… I can't believe you're a real person. I thought you were… I mean I thought I…"

"Imagined me?" I finished for her. "Yeah, for while there this morning I thought the same about you."

She nodded. "Come on in, please. There's a chair. God, I guess I should apologise for putting you through that." I was confused, so I just smiled weakly. She seemed together, maybe a bit rattled and nervous like I was, but utterly devoid of those sparks of pure energy that had been flying out of her eyes last night. Plus she seemed to understand my confusion, that was a good sign. "The girl you met last night is kind of my alter ego."

"Alter ego?" I repeated, finding the chair she pointed out and dropping myself into it.

"Yeah, the happy-go-lucky free spirit who pops out to visit when I don't take the pills." She sighed. "She can be a real nuisance."

"I don't know, I kind of liked her." It was out before I could stop it. "I mean, I… oh shit, sorry."

"No, don't apologise. I know what I'm like. I mean, I can't remember all of it, just faces and voices and lights. There's always all these bright lights. It's weird, like everything is so much more illuminated. You were like an angel." She blushed again, realising she was maybe saying too much. She didn't even know me.

I was silent for a second, though I knew she was expecting me to say something. Finally I looked up. "If you don't mind me asking, this is just a guess because I really know nothing about it… you're bipolar, right?"

"Otherwise known as manic depressive. More manic than depressive, but yes, good guess. Does it show?" She laughed softly, a self-deprecating chuckle. I stared harder, to see exactly what was going on behind the eyes.

Her face lit up as she smiled and for a second I could see some of that energy that had been so fascinating in the girl I met. This girl was so different though, more browns and greens and earth colours, despite looking so frail. That girl last night had been all fire and sparks and flashes. I was impressed that she could laugh at herself in front of an almost complete stranger, especially about something so personal. I wasn't sure I could have.

"I just wanted to make sure you were all right." I said.

She nodded. "I'm fine. Really that doesn't happen so often. Sometimes I just feel…" She stopped, glancing over at me nervously. "I'm sorry, do you even want to hear this?"

"Yeah, I do." And I meant it. "I wouldn't be here if I didn't."

"Sometimes I just need to let it out, you know? The drugs make me feel so small, so lifeless… I mean look at me."

I thought she looked beautiful. I didn't say it. I didn't know how to say it. "You look fine," was all I could manage.

"You have no idea. I mean, the highs you get when it kicks in? Lights start flashing, things start spinning, your feet get lighter and you feel so…free."

"And now you feel trapped?"

"I am trapped." She sighed. It was statement of fact, not a plea for pity.

Without really thinking, I got up and walked over to the bedside. I picked up her hand, cradling it in both of mine. "You didn't look free then. You look free now." I kept going, cutting her off in spite of her looks of protest. "I can't imagine what it would be like to live life like you were last night. It was exhausting just watching you." I smiled, trying to remove any sting there might be in my words. "You seem much more at peace now."

She squeezed my hand, with not a fraction of the strength I knew she was capable of. "Thanks."

"I'd like to see you again." I blurted. She seemed stunned, but pleased at the same time. I wanted to laugh, to tell her I was no great catch. I didn't though. I figured she was definitely a person who understood that everyone has their own demons. She'd figure mine out soon enough.

"I'll probably be here a couple of weeks, kind of standard procedure, but everything should be fine then."

"Can I visit?"

She blushed. "Of course. You know, I usually just go to Uni, live with my parents, live normally most of the time…" She was babbling again.

I shook my head. "I don't really care if you're always fine. I just want to see you again." She smiled that smile again; the open, honest, puppy-dog smile, a tenuous link between that girl and this one. "I'd like to show you our tree."

Blank look. "Our tree?"

"You don't remember our tree? Well now, that's a story I can save for later." I teased, reaching over and pushing the errant lock of hair from her face.

She was tired then. I stayed for an hour or so and watched her fall into a deep sleep. Even after she was snoring gently I kept watching her for while, thinking that I definitely preferred this Abbie after all, the Abbie who didn't have energy flowing from every pore.

It was both brilliant and frightening to know that the other Abbie was in there somewhere, lurking. I was pretty sure though that when she walked in the dark, her face would still reflect the moon.

The End

Back to Poto's fiction index