The central block of my suburb was a ‘paint-over’ job: finished millennial-grey. Stripped back, past the layers of glass shopfronts and townhouses, an industrial heart was encased in cement, sealed, and regarded as dead. But I heard pistons pumping and wheezing with life. ‘Retired’ machinery idled and whirred, like its workers were never laid off. Faint heartbeats, all heard through the air ducts and vents. By age twelve, I’d discovered a way into the relic, and how Max and I could make a quick buck collecting scrap for the last bloke inside. The rusted chimneys poking over tin rooftops became the markings of a trade route we’d follow each month when our neighbours dragged their junk out for ‘council collection’, piles we could rifle through for treasure. I still remember the rattling noise of our trolley and the dull ancient hum in the air.
One wheel had seized up from the sheer amount of weight and it took every bit of strength that we school kids could muster to push it the last leg of the way. We were sweating, still dressed in our uniforms and bags, and the light sparkling off all the trinkets we’d stashed meant we had to squint just to see clearly.
“A TV,” Max gasped, “Let's break it open for wires!”
I wrapped my hands around a splintered bedpost and swung, crying out as it shattered and the glass pricked against my shins. Max keeled over in laughter beside me.
“You should’ve thrown it, Oscar. You stood way too close.”
“I’m bleeding. Why the heck did I do that?”
I stood aside, fighting tears, while Max browsed through the wires. He picked a wad in one palm like a floral bouquet and a tub that read ‘toxic’ in the other.
“What’s that?” I asked him, peering over at the tub. “Looks scary. Are you sure we should touch it?”
“We shouldn’t,” he explained, in his bright, high-pitched voice. “I’m only touching the packaging, see?”
Max pierced the tub with a fork and poured it over the ground, holding it away from his face. I gasped at the sight. Terrifyingly beautiful. Flowing like water, but sparkling chrome; as though he’d melted a mirror somehow.
“Mercury,” the kid whispered. “In the tub, it’s like rock but turns to liquid in the air. Don’t touch it, and don’t get too close.”
I cowered back, still transfixed by the shimmering blob, watching it weave into the cracks in the sidewalk. Max grinned. As I watched the iridescence dance in his eyes, Dad’s words scratched at the depths of my mind.
“That Max kid, I tell you, is bad fucken news. Shifty bugger. Always up to his mischief.”
- My Dad - unprompted, the first time he met Max.
“He’s got rocks in his head where his brain’s meant to be. Mark my words, that kid’s gonna get you killed, or expelled!”
- My Dad - after finding out Max made fireworks from scratch and owned a magnet that could break through a lock.
“I mean honestly, where’d his parents go wrong after Hunter? Now that’s a smart boy: hard worker… slick job…. You tell Max to be more like his brother!”
- My Dad - unaware of what Hunter became, not knowing where he ended up.
Hunter was as close to The Heart as Max and I ever got, and he’d always pay well for our trouble. On that day, we met him for trade at ‘the binlet’: a shallow alleyway that indented in between townhouses and stored all the residents’ bins. We tied a rope around one unused bin at the back, and one by one, taking care not to damage the goods, we emptied our trolley inside. Our haul ranged from everyday stuff to enigmas. Gadgets and gizmos. Thingamajigs. Even Max, with his savantish knack for electrics, was perplexed by a few of the finds. A spherical circuit board, hollow inside. A four-armed bronze lever that had oxidized green. A complex chain of rings with a wire running through, wrapped around a scarlet crystal and glowing. We stashed them and sat on the sides of the bin. Max tossed the rope through a wide open window above, mimicked the sound of an elevator ‘DING’, and on queue the bin started to lift.
With a pulley, Hunter hauled us to a concrete-slab room, with just a mattress, some milk crates, and a duffel bag on the floor. His clothes were irreparably worn-out and singed, like a businessman exiled to the mines. He rolled the burnt hems over his pallid, shaking forearms, helped us off the bin, and poured it over the mattress. Perusing the sprawl in his usual silence, I watched for a glint in his eyes. Hunter spoke in expressions: chaotic, untamed. His skin writhed around with an alien energy that reshuffled and recomposed his whole face as he gazed. Insane, but not scary or threatening at all. Hunter’s madness seemed pure and convinced of itself - the kind you’d see in a street-preaching prophet.
Overjoyed at our sprawl, he reached into his sock, then handed us three fifty bills. He rose to his feet and scooped the goods into a bag, then approached Max, unusually calm in the face.
“Thank you. It’s enough, I won’t need any more.”
He kissed Max on the forehead, ruffled my hair, and left the room motionless, cold in his wake.
Through an inwards-facing window, we watched him descend a concrete staircase to a vast indoor courtyard beneath. Four concrete walls and a damp junglish floor. Every surface was covered in moss. The few sunrays that prevailed onto packed mulch and scrub seemed to meticulously light Hunter’s path through the gloom, towards two rotting gates at the innermost wall. He heaved them open, then The Heart seemed to swallow him up. Its deep steely hum had an echo.
“He’s not serious, is he?” I turned around to ask Max.
He stared holes in the ground, unsurprised and unmoving.
“He’ll be fine for a while. I made sure he was sorted.”
“We aren’t gonna come back? We haven't even seen inside!”
Then he sighed, like a heavy, deflated balloon.
“I’m in trouble in school again."
“So…?” I demanded. Max was always in trouble for something.
“So I'm out of second chances.…. I’m getting expelled. Mum’s sending me off somewhere more strict.”
My heart sank the same second the words croaked from his chest.
“Okay,” I said, stifling the shake of my voice. “But we’ll still see each other on weekends?”
“We won’t. It’s a boarding school, far overseas. We won’t see each other again.”
I whipped around, hoping to see Max’s face grinning back to announce he was pulling my leg. But instead, I was met with the back of his head. Turned away, he trudged over to the pulley, defeated. I couldn't see his face as he slid out of sight, but I was sure that he reached the ground crying. My tears never fell, but I was utterly broken. For hours, I listened to the hum at the window, while darkness slid out over everything.
I snuck a first-and-last glimpse into The Heart before I left, heaving open the heavy gate with all the strength I could muster, and slipping my frame through the crack. Inside, the ancient hum emerged biblically deep, and its cavernous hymn bounced my bones. Wisps of chrome led my eyes through the depths of the dark, to a feast laid out bright in the center. The world hissed as I spied, nestled in with the gloom, the sparking silhouette of a man-made-machine, and behind him, his beast – ever-seen, ever-seeing – made of every moving part ever smithed. Its exoskeleton embraced all the ceilings and walls. I could feel it glaring down from the hall’s highest corners to me – a mere ant - on the flesh of a god, before its luminescence led me away to the dark, never to visit again.
I never saw the two brothers again. When I returned I found the ‘binlet’ filled up with cement. It’s been almost fifteen years since that final seal set. I point out the rusted chimneys to my wife and kids when walking past and they joke that I’m the only one who remembers or cares. But I know that’s not true. I know Hunter’s still there, because I hear The Heart's hum now and then. As I listen, I’m sure it’s outgrowing its cage. A prophet: its hard-working slave.
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