across the carpet which smelt of stale booze, and a stiff ocean breeze was blowing items of rubbish haphazardly around the room.
She walked into the kitchen and filled up the sink with hot water and detergent. The ice had melted away and the only evidence of it was the empty plastic ice bag lying near the toaster. Looking around the room she grimaced at the task ahead of her. She already had two garbage bags full of rubbish tied up and ready to take down to the rubbish bin, and the next morning was garbage collection day. Kylie grabbed the garbage bag roll from underneath the sink and started filling it with rubbish. Working in a clockwise direction from the kitchen to the dining area to the lounge room, she then broke off to her bedroom, the spare bedroom, the toilet, the bathroom and finally the laundry and filled up two garbage bags worth of rubbish. Then she got out the vacuum cleaner and vacuumed the carpet, the tiles in the kitchen and the bathroom, and finished up with the mop and bucket. She followed her nose to find a damp, bourbon-stained mat in the lounge room which she picked up and threw into the laundry tub.
Kylie found the smiley face toast maker and put it on the kitchen bench ready to use the next time she bought bread. Gathering the remaining gifts from her dad’s emergency parcel into a basket, she placed it on the kitchen bench to remind herself that she came from a loving family that really cared about her. After cleaning the entire flat she felt a renewed energy and decided to start the day off with a positive action seeing as she had spent most of the weekend in misery.
Grabbing all the rubbish bags, she headed downstairs and placed them all in the bin. The bag with the torn and crumpled Wish Lischt, now in three pieces, sat on top of the pile. After retrieving her bike from upstairs, she pointed the front wheel in the direction of the Strand, deciding to head out towards Rowes Bay and Pallarenda. Kylie wanted to hug the coastline as she was hungry for the thing she had missed while living in the Outback of North West Queensland, the ocean. She pedalled along the road then swapped over to the bike path, sweating out pure bourbon as she powered her way along the northern coastline. She had enough time to ponder how to make last night never happen again. “Okay, you might be single for the rest of your life and never marry. That doesn’t mean you can’t find friends and start enjoying your life here,” she told herself as her legs pushed her along the winding cement path.
By the time she arrived back home she stunk on the outside but felt renewed on the inside. “Starting today, you are going to make small changes. More exercise, better food, and open your eyes to new things, take every opportunity that presents itself, even if you think you will fail at it. See the difference these small and simple changes can make. See how that goes, just make the commitment to have a go,” she said to herself as she wheeled her bike back through the gate that led to her staircase. Kylie parked her bike against the stairs and took her wheelie bin out to the kerb ready for collection the next morning.
She carried her bike upstairs and wheeled it over to rest against the linen cupboard then she put the bourbon soaked mat and her pyjamas into the washing machine with some washing liquid. Undressing at the washing machine, she threw her clothes straight into the barrel. On removing her Lycra shorts she felt something sticky. Unable to see what it was, she walked to her bedroom mirror and turned around to see a flattened smiley face.
“Bum Face!” she said happily, putting her hands up to her mouth as she flashed back to the previous night’s comical conversation with her rear.
“Wow. That was a m-ASS-ive effort you put in today. I’m proud of you!”
“Thanks Bum Face. But you gave me the kick start I needed this morning so it was a team effort,” Kylie replied.
“And I’ll continue to do so. You’ll turn from Nottie to Hottie in no time!”
“Sounds good. Well these duds need a wash so I’m going to have to deface you.”
“Mm-kay.”
Kylie removed her Lycra bike pants and peeled off the sticky tape face. As she slipped off her underpants she felt a very pronounced welt that seemed to take up half a cheek, on both sides of her bottom. “What the?” she said turning her head around to the mirror and giving herself an atomic wedgie so she could see both welt marks clearly.
“Cor! That looks like the fricken Millennium Falcon cockpit! How did that get there?” she said in total awe. Grabbing her handbag from beside her bed, she rustled through it to find her camera and her mobile phone. She took photos of each cheek separately on her phone and then again with her camera, plus full shots from the reflection of the mirror. None of the footage was gratuitous, it was only skin. Although both cheeks were sore, she was in awe of her new bum prints and couldn’t believe the image that had presented itself on her behind, having been a life-long Star Wars fan.
After ditching the rest of her clothes, she walked naked to the bathroom. Opening the shower door, she nudged an overturned bottle of shampoo away from the middle of the shower with her foot. This action exposed the shower drain. Kylie paused, and stared. The source of the imprints on her gluteous maximus was now clear – they were an exact replica of each half of the shower drain.
“Holy shit. I must have planted myself on that last night in my drunken stupor, talk about using the force!” she said out loud. “Wow, I need to quit drinking alone.”
Kylie turned on the shower, closed the door and gently washed her body. She remained standing the entire time and even made sure her feet didn’t touch the drain. After all, she had been branded enough for one weekend.
Dried and dressed, Kylie looked in her fridge for something that had some nutritional value. She grabbed the eggs and a tomato then opened the freezer and found her vegetarian-friendly soy-based Not Bacon. She poached some eggs and cooked the Not Bacon and the tomato in a frypan and once cooked, decorated her plate making a smiley face with all the food.
Feeling much better than when the weekend started, Kylie washed up and had an early night. She set her alarm for 6 am so she could go for another ride to Pallarenda before work the next day and start a new habit.
At 7.45 am the garbage truck collected the rubbish from all the wheelie bins in Kylie’s street. She was on her way to work just as the truck pulled up at her apartment but decided to make a U-Turn around the roundabout at Gregory Street and The Strand and take a new route to work, heading back up Gregory Street to the traffic lights at Warburton Street where she stopped for a red light. “Today is the start of my better life in Townsville,” she said to herself as she waited for a green light.
Meanwhile, back at the garbage truck, the automatic arm had miscalculated the grip on Kylie’s wheelie bin and not grabbed it as tightly as it should have, resulting in the bin being wrestled in mid air as it slipped down from the initial grab point. The top rubbish bag holding the three-piece crumpled-up Wish Lischt was flung against the top corner section of the garbage truck skip bin, loosening the tie on the bag, the three pieces of crumpled paper were forced out of the rubbish bag and caught by the stiff sea breeze coming from the Strand towards the traffic lights where Kylie waited. The list remained in its three part entirety, still crumpled but floating effortlessly with the wind and landed on the first car waiting at the traffic lights in the opposite direction of Kylie.
Still waiting at the lights, Kylie vaguely noticed a piece of rubbish in the air land on the windscreen of the car diagonally opposite her. She watched the windscreen wipers come on and some water being sprayed onto the paper, making it cling to the windscreen, before the wiper blades moved it over to the driver’s side window. An arm appeared from the now open window, grabbed the rubbish and threw it inside the car on the empty passenger side floor.
Kylie watched it all unfold and laughed. “Ha, what are the odds of that happening? That sort of thing would normally only happen to me! It’s a great day for me already!”
