A simple farmer receives a horse from the gods, a man sells ice creams named after missing schoolkids, the demolition of a hotel brings an old horror to light, a wounded soldier finds the real enemy is in his own camp, a family inherits a peculiar r...
Sooner or later my sister would get home from band practice. As much as she annoyed me, she was still my sister, and I didn't want her eaten by a rug.
How could I warn her?
I felt in my pocket for my phone. Then I remembered I'd put it down on the bench in the kitchen to watch a stupid video when I made my sandwich. I groaned.
There was only one thing for it: I would have to kill the rug.
I had never heard of anyone killing a rug before. I wasn't even sure it could be done. But I had no choice.
I looked around the shed for a weapon.
The axe? I'd be lucky to even wound it with that.
The chainsaw? I could probably get it started, but what if it was out of fuel? I'd still be frantically pulling the starter cord when the rug snaffled me up like a piece of popcorn.
I spotted a lantern and a box of matches on the shelf above the chainsaw. What was I going to do with that? Blind it? It was already blind.
Think, you idiot.
My eyes fell on the ladder.
I took a deep breath, steeled myself, then let go of the door handle and dashed across to the shelves. I grabbed the box of matches and was up the ladder to the loft in seconds.
I heard the rug burst through the door. I thought I'd have enough time to push the ladder away before it sniffed me out.
I thought wrong.
The rug was already climbing when I threw my weight against the top of the ladder. It was too heavy to budge.
I retreated to the back of the loft. I could hear the rug snuffling as it made its way up, and the creaking of the ladder under its weight. In the distance currawongs cawed and magpies warbled: outside the shed it was a normal summer's day. Inside it I was about to die.
There was a row of shelves at the back of the loft, lined with tins of paint and kerosene, and oil and fuel for the mower and chainsaw. I grabbed the tin of unleaded petrol and whipped the lid off. Petrol fumes wafted up to my nostrils. I went to the edge of the loft and looked down. The rug must have smelled me because it squealed with delight.
I upended the petrol can on it. The air rippled with fumes.
The rug put on a burst of speed and I felt its edge lap at my shoes like a tongue. I pulled back from the edge and fumbled for the box of matches.
As the rug rose from the edge of the loft I struck a match. The match broke in half.
The rug reared up before me, brushing the ceiling, its foul stench wafting over me, mixing with the petrol fumes and making me lightheaded.
I fumbled another match out of the box and struck it. Without waiting to see if it caught I flicked it at the rug.
For a moment nothing seemed to happen. Then there a great whoof! and a sheet of blue flame ripped up the rug's belly. It screamed and stumbled backwards off the edge of the loft, flames enveloping it like a cloak, sucking all the oxygen out of the air and sending a wall of heat crashing into me.
I crept to the edge of the loft and looked down at the smouldering mess on the floor. I'd never smelled anything so bad in my life. I hoped I never would again.
The rug's scream subsided into a long, horrible moan that sounded almost human: a weird and windy voice that I recognised at once.
It was the voice of my Great Uncle Alfred.
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I'm not an autobiographical writer. I've never been attacked by a rug, for example - not even once. However the miner's cottage in this story IS based on my place. I love living there now, but I'm sure I would have been bored out of my brain when I was twelve.
