David Herkt's Summer Short Story Season: D.C. Browning enigmatically explores a dreamlike world of animal-transformation and sexual exhilaration. I was kissing him on a grassy roadside verge that looked like it was somewhere in an Australian National Park because the eucalypts hung over the road and there was some orange rocky-cliffed mountain in the background. My mouth was moving over his and I could taste him. He was lying on top of me. We were having fun kissing there in the bright sunshine when I opened my eyes and I could see his father standing there, looking down at us with a scowl on his face. 'Tristan,' his father said, 'I want a word with you.' It turned out that he didn't say anything about us kissing and he just wanted to remind Tristan about coming to a family gathering, which I thought was strange. So later we were at his father's house in Rawene, eating an outdoor lunch with all their relatives. We were sitting outside at white-painted wooden tables with red-chequered tablecloths. I could see down a slope which was grassy and there were trees and two horses at the bottom by the creek. It was idyllic. Then Tristan's relatives all turned into kangaroos. So we had all these kangaroos around us with their big dark-lashed eyes and soft noses. I was giggling because their noses were damp when they pushed them at you and nuzzled at your thighs. 'We've got to let them out,' said Tristan, and so we went and opened one of the five-bar gates and the kangaroos all jumped out while Tristan and I both stood on the gate's lowest bar, swinging a little on it, laughing. There was this bare patch of dust at the back of the house and Tristan was catching doves and pigeons. He'd hold one in his hands and he'd run at me and I'd be on the ground saying 'No, no, no,' and be trying to get away from him. He would straddle me, sitting on the lower part of my body, and he'd insert the dove's beak into my ear and when it went plu-plu-plu it would tickle, a sensation at once delicious and unbearable. Then Tristan and I went to our flying lesson that took place in the assembly hall of my old High School in Hamilton. First of all we'd have to bounce on our feet and then we'd soon find that we were bouncing higher and higher until we were weightless. Both of us were expert at it now. When we lifted off, it was always a wonderful feeling. At first we'd just float and then we'd get control again and then we could really do things. I really liked being able to lie in the middle of the air like I was on an invisible hammock, and just roll over and rotate longways, while singing. Afterwards we went to Tristan's friend Anton's place. Tristan was jealous of Anton because I once said that I thought he was attractive. However Anton was anxious. Dead things from his past had started arriving in his messy dining room, just appearing. 'Listen,' he said, 'you can hear them behind the skirting boards.' I listened but I wasn't sure I could hear anything. Then a white cat appeared. It was all blurry but you could see that its fur was messy and stuck out. It ran crazily around the edge of the room and leapt up on table and leapt down again. Anton was disturbed. 'That's our cat,' Tristan cried, 'and if it's here it means that it's dead and you killed it.' Tristan seemed to quickly recover from this upset and when we got home, he took off all his clothes. We started kissing again. His body felt really solid and I was touching his chest. Then I discovered that I could put my hands inside of him. It felt really nice and Tristan gasped. He wasn't disturbed or anything. He said it felt good. I discovered I could hold his heart as it pulsed. It was soft and hot in my hand. It wasn't messy or wet, like you'd expect. Then I went lower and Tristan really liked that. He wanted me to make him cum from the inside, so I moved my hands down and found that by touching things inside of him, the strange little cords and small bulging things, I could play his body like an instrument, taking him closer to pleasure and back from it. When I finally brought him off, his semen was filled with sparkles. 'They're alive,' Tristan said, 'and we should keep them warm.' He wrapped them in his handkerchief and put it in his pocket. Afterwards we went outside for a walk. Even though it was dark, the moon was out and the moonlight looked just like daylight except it was sharper. There was a glossy-leaved mandarin tree on a flat-mown green lawn and there were lots of fallen bright-orange mandarins around it. It was very beautiful. Tristan sat down on the lawn and took his shirt off again. I took mine off and lay beside him on the short grass which felt tickly on my back. 'I think I'm getting a suntan by moonlight,' I said to Tristan and we both laughed. Then Tristan said we had to wait there because the burning giraffes would come soon, and so we waited and they did. D.C.BROWNING lives in Wellington where he is a 26 year old graphic designer and a painter. 'Words don't come easily to me,' he says. When he writes it is usually after midnight. 'I like quiet houses at that time,' he comments. Copyright ©David Herkt. All Rights Reserved. D.C. Browning - 2nd February 2008