By Wes Parish
Rosemary Farrow-Polanski held her little finger out to her little baby, Roman, and waved it in front of his hands. Sure enough, little hands reached up to grasp at her little finger. She cooed and tugged experimentally, and her baby coed and gurgled back at her.
She looked over her shoulder at Uluru, dark reddish grey in the twilight, and smiled. Escaping that mad bunch of loonies in New York City had been a great idea! She felt more at peace with the austere beauty of the Australian Outback than she'd ever felt in New York's concrete jungle. At least out here, she was not likely to meet that stranger in black, who had seduced her and left her with this baby. His eyes were funny — bright red, hadn't they been? And he had kept his ears hidden. At least he hadn't stalked her ...
Still, playing with her baby wasn't going to get the evening meal done, and she moved away from her tent, to the barbecue standing next to her car, and then opened the esky to get at the food for baby. She put some steaks on the barbecue, and mixed the grated pumpkin soup for Roman. He was in the early stages of weaning, and the pumpkin seemed to calm him down. And, no, she did not want a repeat of the weaning tantrum she had endured on the flight from Honolulu to Sydney.
She rose to take the meal to him, and as she did so, she saw a tail whisk past her, in the direction of the tent. A dog? There were no dogs within a hundred miles, she was prepared to swear. What could it be?
She went into the tent and screamed. The dog? No, a dingo, she remembered — they lived out this part of the world, and weren't choosy about what or who they ate — was reaching with its jaws, to bite her Roman! How she screamed! And the dingo looked contemptuously at her!
What could she use to beat it off her baby? Her knives were beside the barbecue, she didn't have a gun, she ... Her baby, her beloved little Roman who had only just learned to grip her little finger with his hand, was grabbing at the dingo's tail.
Then it was the dingo yelping, as its tail was dragged ever closer to her baby's mouth.
He opened his mouth and chomped down on the dingo's tail, and its yelps became frantic with terror.
Little by little, the tail was eaten, and the rest of the dingo dragged closer to the hungry maw of her little baby ... only, when she looked again, he didn't seem so very little. By the light of the tilly lamp, his teeth were sharp, and his eyes seemed ... bright red? And no matter how hard the dingo struggled to escape, it couldn't, and before she knew it, all that was left of the dingo was bright red streaks on Roman's baby clothes and a set of parallel scratches on the tent's floor.
Roman smiled brightly at her, displaying his sharp teeth, and burped. Then it all faded back, and he was an ordinary-looking baby once more.
She could never fit the pieces back together in her mind as to why she broke and ran through the campground, but she was recorded as screaming, "Help! Help! My baby's taken a dingo! My baby's eaten a dingo! Help! Help!"
About the Author
Wesley Parish is an SF fan from early childhood. Born in PNG, he enjoys reading about humans in strange cultures and circumstances.
His favourite SF authors include Ursula Le Guin, Fritz Lieber, Phillip K. Dick, J.G. Ballard and Frank Herbert.
Wes lives in Christchurch, NZ, is an unemployed Java and C programmer, and has recently decided to become a mad ukuleleist, flautist and trombonist, and would love to revert to being the mad fiddler and pedal steel guitarist.. "Where oh where has my little pedal steel got to ... ?"
Merri Andrew writes poetry and short fiction, some of which has appeared in Cordite, Be:longing, Baby Teeth and Islet, among other places.
Brian Biswas lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA.
Tom Wrosch is a retired policy analyst with the State of Oregon, and resides with his wife in Salem.
Alistair Lloyd is a Melbourne based writer and narrator who has been consuming good quality science fiction and fantasy most of his life.
James Walton was a librarian, a farm labourer, and mostly a public sector union official.
Emma Louise Gill (she/her) is a British-Australian spec fic writer and consumer of vast amounts of coffee. Brought up on a diet of English lit, she rebelled and now spends her time writing explosive space opera and other fantastical things in
Tim Borella is an Australian author, mainly of short speculative fiction published in anthologies, online and in podcasts.
Geraldine Borella writes fiction for children, young adults and adults. Her work has been published by Deadset Press, IFWG Publishing, Wombat Books/Rhiza Edge, AHWA/Midnight Echo, Antipodean SF, Shacklebound Books, Black Ink Fiction, Paramour Ink Fiction, House of Loki and Raven & Drake
Ed lives with his wife plus a magical assortment of native animals in tropical North Queensland.
Sarah Jane Justice is an Adelaide-based fiction writer, poet, musician and spoken word artist.
Mark is an astrophysicist and space scientist who worked on the Cassini/Huygens mission to Saturn. Following this he worked in computer consultancy, engineering, and high energy research (with a stint at the JET Fusion Torus).
Tara Campbell is an award-winning writer, teacher, Kimbilio Fellow, fiction co-editor at Barrelhouse, and graduate of American University's MFA in Creative Writing.
