The pained caw of a grease-craving seagull tears through the cold, moonless Wednesday night at the Fishing Boat Harbour, laying an electric jolt over the softgurgling base line of lazy water. Three men are present: two bronze fishermen, rigid in pose, and the coach of the Fremantle Dockers, who leans against the wooden railing with locked arms and with legs intertwined, himself statuesque. Groans and clicks escape from the timber that supports him. What weight does this man bear? What density his flesh? Not that of an ordinary man.
Light blue-grey beams project from his eyes, illuminating still black ships and the wine-dark sea. A fluid tangle of baby squid bubbles up through the phosphorescence as it sweeps. Normally, such a sight would cause him - he who was, at least, absently amused by his ‘difference' - to sniff and faintly smile. But not now. No, now his bottom lip slides further into his mouth, and his top incisors bite down on it ever harder.
He aggressively pushes away from the railing, sending it splintering into the sea. The resulting surge of water is matched, and now bettered, by a wave of sickly protest from the restless junkie gulls, who cry, it could be said, from under-the-bridge. He points his beams towards South Terrace and the juvenile squid sink down, the foolishness of their ecstasy realised.
Treading heavily through the deserted streets, the coach curses his newfound weight and the dull insistence of gravity. From a chain around his midriff he drags an immense, rusted-iron kinder egg - his personal egg - containing such ‘surprises' as strands of hamstring and cruciate ligament, screwed-up newspaper articles, and a small Korean-Australian lawyer, all floating like shreds of clam in a thick purple chowder of expectation and Dockerliness. But is that enormous egg real, or is it imagined?
The main street is in darkness. But now Zeus, that unscrupulous sprayer of lightning, does his thing and a neon sign explodes to life: ‘The Clink'. An ominous stairwell beckons. Sighing heavily - the inevitability of Olympian incursions into his life is beginning to grate - the coach submits. Dragging himself over is a strain, but the descent is easy: now, slipping down towards the hot liquid core of the earth, the terrestrial Mecca of weightlessness, the only place where a heavy soul can be completely at ease - yes, now gravity is a splendid friend indeed.
Inside that warm black womb of the underworld, a malfunctioning Bundaberg Rum sign provides the only sound and light, buzzing to a crescendo, popping to life, and returning to dark silence. Its slow strobe reveals a single hooded figure at the bar, his orientation and inclination varying greatly between snapshots. Uncontrolled movement, and inebriation, are implicit.
"Haar-a-fee, harfeee", calls a voice from the present dark. "Cumovareer".
A curling finger and loose grin are revealed by the next yellow-white burst of the bear. The coach groans - those Gods! - and wanders over.
"What?"
"Umgonnagifyoosum... adfice."
The coach's eyes have just finished a secret exaggerated roll, when the bear suggests a round of rums and the hooded man's face is exposed. Only, it's not a man: it's a boy. The child's head is absurdly large and triangular, and fine tufts of regularly washed hair fan out from under the hood.
"Yep", he hiccups from the dark, "Shoo need ta gerridda Paflisch. Heesh only goddanuvva shix sheashons innim."
Who gave this boy a beer, wonders the coach. Look at him - all over the place, drunk for the first time, gibbering some nonsense.
The bear insists, and the face under the hood has dramatically changed. It's now drawn and sullen, and lacking a chin of any note. None of these features are at all disguised by the small diversionary beard that covers them. Resident specks of drying vomit further rob the patchy mat of its intended nobility.
"Yagodda become more Fictorian Harfs," the wise man gurgles through a mouthful of carrot, "and stand for Fremantle. And play Paflisch in the shenta, and up forward. And in defensch. And trade im."
What's hiding beneath those whiskers, the coach asks himself. In removing that hair, would one be exposing an absurd labradoodle? Peeling back the moss from a shallow (for they are never deep) bush grave? Scraping the fly-strike from some rotten, undersized flathead? His creeping nausea is heightened when the desperate bear calls lasts drinks, revealing a clean, bespectacled Greek beneath the hood. Before a word can escape those keen headmaster's lips, the coach spins and marches away.
Every step back up is heavier than the last; the lure of sinking back strong, but not strong enough. The density of the coach's flesh has, in recent months, passed that of iron, of lead, of gold, its exponential rise smashing through glass ceilings of physics like a streaming white tiger. But with greater density comes greater potential energy.
Stepping now onto the street, he is a rapidly collapsing purple giant. He will shrink and shrink, growing denser and harder. He will draw in and feed on the weak matter that surrounds him, until he is nothing but a tiny, shaking ball of Big Bang fury. He is Mr Fahrenheit. He is a collapsing, shooting star. He is an atom bomb. And he's about to whoa-whoa-whoa explode.