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In the park on a sunny Wednesday Laurel threw down her handbag onto the lunch bench, and got frustrated at the way the handle of her bag tangled round her elbow. Sitting at the bench, she rifled through her handbag and dug out an iPod, a knotted headset, and a packet of Peter Stuyvesants.
A Moreton Bay fig tree leaned in overhead as if it was looming to see what she was doing. There was the idle sounds of cicadas rubbing their legs. The sweaty smell of mulch and leaves pressed forward. Laurel ping-ping-pinged the sound up louder on her iPod and swooshed her finger around to choose another song. She felt like some funk. She felt like some R&B. Hell, she didn’t know what she felt like.
Another drag in on the cigarette. It shouldn’t feel good, she thought, but God it does.
The trees groaned and sang to each other around Laurel, and the ridge of root in the park bed shuddered. A tangling mess of vines and yawning branches overhead knickered, laughing at the brightly coloured young woman sitting below them at her park bench. They giggled at her nail polish and her spraytanned arms. The old treated wood of the park bench tittered along with them, smirking under the coloured PVC of Laurel’s bag. She was a cuckoo in their nest. The consistent muttering and sniggering of the glossy dank leaves of the strappy rainforest plants that edged the park went quite unnoticed by Laurel as she flicked her ash off her cigarette.
The ash fell in a gentle arc.
The hot fallen cigarette dust fell amongst the grass. This set up a mumbling and grumbling within the shoots, their waving bodies swaying away, repelled like a sea anemone. There was a ripple of discontent that crossed the grass tips at Laurel’s feet. The grass bent their heads to each other and passed on their dissatisfaction like Chinese whispers.
Not nice, they said as one. Not nice.
The mulch and dank heard the complaint, passing it up the torso of the tree like a breath. Not nice, they whispered back with their flickering dark tongues. Not nice.
Laurel’s iPod let out a tinny swish and beat, and she tapped her fingers against the table. Her cigarette glowering. She breathed deep and vaguely appreciated the sweet smell of earth and bone. She felt a flicker of something happy. Above the trees groaned, and there was a thick-voiced crack amongst the branches. Not nice, the tree said to itself. Not nice. The plants breathed in together, and then out.
Laurel didn’t feel the branch fall.
Before the ambulance came, the park keeper stood over Laurel’s prone body and reached to turn off her iPod where it lay stained in the grass. The hissing noise stopped. His boots pressed into the warm soil where Laurel’s hand now rested, her pale flesh dappled by the green light. It was quiet. The tips of the grass were flat now, lying underneath Laurel’s chest, her bent neck and head. They had been stroking her ear and cheek, reaching up to her unseeing eye. They would spring back when her body was removed. Laurel’s cigarette had burnt a few of the leaves of the strappy plant when it fell. There was a shiver of electricity that could still be felt.
Not nice, the dark mulch said one final time. Not nice.
The treated wood of the table giggled quietly.
