Chapter 2
He was sitting in the Katherine shopping center car park after buying a range of food for the overnight camp and the road trip back home, food that he was thinking might not actually be eaten, when his mobile phone rang.
Hi darling how are you doing, his wife replied after his mumbled hello in a way that sounded to him as if she was asking how the doctor’s appointment went expecting that the result would be in the affirmative that he had terminal cancer.
Ok, was the dower, solemn reply. I sourced the internet on writing porn in Australia pertaining to someone under eighteen and it is true that it’s a capital offence to write about, show pictures of or draw images of anyone under eighteen in a sexually promiscuous or sexual scenario. I contacted a lawyer in Alice Springs and they said to wait and see what happens but that I did not have to talk to the police on arrival back in Pennant.
Silence.
He continued; I will still go to the house in Newcastle Waters and do an assessment on the things we need to repair before we can rent it out and… continue on as normal I guess. The “I guess” ending in a sigh.
Oh darling This is terrible for you, and the kids don’t have any idea why the police came and took their devices. Well the eldest thinks they took his computer because he’s pirated movies but I told him I didn’t think that was the reason, a slight nervous giggle giving an anxious edge to her forgiving nature.
Normalized small talk brushed the issue to the side as one would brush ants from a picnic blanket in expectation of their annoying return. They professed their love and disconnected. The man sat for a while hollow and empty inside his gut while his head swam with anxious thoughts tearing at the moment like vicious animals at the hide of innocent pray.
He drove out of Katherine to his overnight stop an hour up the road. The excitement and joy of being free from the confines of work or home responsibilities and the original anticipation held for the night ahead, swaging out at Mataranka, thermal pools, quite beers, camp fire; had been replaced by thoughts that bounced around his consciousness striking targets and hitting alarms like a crazed, sinister pinball machine built from the worst remnants of his imaginings.
He thought over the story that he wrote and had placed online over six months ago. A silly story about young lust and adult desires seen through the eyes of an under eighteen-year-old girl. The first chapter incestuous and lewd building through the following three chapters into an escapade of masturbatory and bizarre “What the Fuck” as the walls of normalcy broke down to introduce a wider plot of adult manipulation and internet grooming.
It was placed online, a writers page for those interested in Lolita stories where they could read and share with others of like mind. However, the “likeminded” delved into areas that the man saw as being even too messed up for his own, warped imagination and he left the site after putting the initial four chapters up for perusal, never to venture back onto it again. That was it, the end. He never really thought about the story again, instead focusing on writing and sourcing grants for “the great Australian novel” equally sexually messed up with a great plot and not anywhere near as pornographic.
And so went his thoughts chasing its tattered dog of a tail around, around, around as he unpacked the van, rolled out the swag, mechanically gathered wood for a fire and changed into bathers ready to soak his tense, bruised psych in the therapeutic bathes of the thermal pools.
The sun had nearly set and the man had the pools almost to himself with just a younger couple sitting further downstream huddling together and murmuring quietly. He wished he could still his mind as readily as the silent, sweet couple but even the warm, balmy waters and calming current couldn’t shut down the static storm reverberating in the confines of his pulsing skull.
Another couple arrived, a burly man with his plump happy partner. They splashed loudly into the pool with her complaining about the thermal heat not being as hot as the Dalhousie Springs that lay in the remote South Australian outback. The burly man said a happy G’day to the lone sad figure wallowing in the center of the crystal clear spring and started explaining that he was a fireman on holidays with his wife and that they were on a round trip through central Australia on their way back to Darwin. They asked the lone man where he was from and when he told them Pennant Creek the couple started talking about who they knew there, mentioning fireman and police acquaintances that the man had never heard of.
He became acutely aware of how inadequate and removed he felt from the normal aesthetic of his former self. He felt as if the couple would soon find out about his transgressions, point fingers and start talking to others behind his back. He found he had little to say and that the less said the better he felt about not incriminating himself.
This was completely unwarranted from a meeting of two random couples whom he would never remember or lay eyes upon again but this dread, this feeling of being observed and singled out, would haunt him through this, the most tumultuous event in the near half century history of his existence.
(Chapter 1 https://steemit.com/childabuseimmaterial/@admc/2hj3ec-child-abuse-immaterial)