My creativities.
“His name is Agony”
By Torie Owen
(A piece of writing based on one of the characters I created for my comic book)
His name is agony, Stripped from the womb in a violent rejection, His sole purpose is descruction.
His name is greed, heart after heart devoured, every soul left tarnished and grey.
They Named him Jaboc, 18 years being tossed and ricocheted from life to life, story to story.
And his name is heartsong.
A teller of fortune and bringer of light in the minds of dark, cold girls.
His name is justice, his actions he percieves as moral and righteous.
And they call him rapist, liar and thief and murderer.
He is the punisher, Imoral and empty with a longing for the breath of those struck down by mischief and violence.
They call him lover, regal and holy he casts a spell, plagueing and menacing with his godly charm.
I’ll call him offender, his crimes and illusions only edible to those who seek to believe in something beautiful.
And his name is agony
”DARCY CAN’T SWIM”
By Torie Owen
(This is a story inspired by the true event of the murder of Darcy Phillips by her father Arthur Freeman Phillip in 2009. I wrote this for an assignment in my 3A english classed based on the Novel “Australian tragic”. We were told to write a true Australian tragedy based on an actual event. I tried to keep every detail accurate only drawing personal details and quotes from the news reports I read.)
In the sweltering heat of Melbourne’s inner City in the humid month of January, It’s expected that once in a while someone will snap, and do something just a little out of the ordinary. Wether is be the heat itself or the air like a thick blanket of warmth draping, and suffocating ordinarily bearable issues. The sticky nights can often make us delirious, cloud our judgement and impair our reasoning.
I suppose you could say that on January 29th, 2009 Arthur Phillip was feeling the weight of the heat on his shoulders as the drove across the West Gate bridge back into town with his three children in the back seat. The crawl of the morning traffic was naught but a still image in comparison to the speed his mind was racing. The woman he had once loved but a stranger to him, a gateway to his only treasure in life, his babies. Who, for the first time this morning were inspiring hate in his heart and not love. Peta had failed to excite him in the end and he had failed to provide for her the security a woman needs. The IT specialist of just 36 was now showing the wear and tear of life’s daily grievances. Worry lines marked his face as evidence of his trials and his receding, unkempt hair and scruffy beard, like a wild animal gave him the resemblance of a homeless dog.
This morning is different to most, as the traffic creeps slowly by, the lack of movement is frustrating, feeding Arthurs anger and resentment. How could she do this to him? How could she try and take away his children? His angels. She’s going to worry, she’s going to wonder why her daughter isn’t there for her first day of school. He can make her pay. He realises he can make her see what she has done.
The phone rings. His mind races. He hears her voice, the woman who took everything from him. She wants to know where they are. His heart beats faster, he could do this, he could get his revenge. In a moment of clouded black judgement and what felt like the only solution, He slowed his white land cruiser into the left lane and halted to a stop. “Say goodbye to your children”, he says. The air grows thicker, beads of sweat roll down his face like heavy rain. He gets up and opens the back door, picks up four year old Darcy, a petite little girl, with fine blonde hair and full rosy cheeks and caries her to the rail of the bridge. She doesn’t move, she doesn’t speak. Her brother Ben watches from the back seat as his dad stands stoic at the edge. Why did his dad stop Darcy from playing with him and his little brother? Arthur reaches over, the little girl in his arms, he has reached the point of no return. In a crystallising moment of horror that seems to play in slow motion Ben watches his little sister slip from his fathers hands and disappear behind the railing. Everything goes numb. Arthur calmly returns to the car as frantic commuters thing the police. “Go back and get her, she can’t swim”, He pleads with his father as they drive off, He pleads over and over, But dad doesn’t listen.
Darcy Phillip was pulled from the water a few short minutes after, she was rushed to the nearby children’s hospital by devastated paramedics. She clung to her life for hours. Her mother oblivious of the events. It wasn’t until she received word of her boys being found that she realised what happened. Darcy died beside her mother that afternoon suffering severe internal damage and eventual drowning. People often wonder what crossed her mind in those few seconds and the plummeted that 58 metres to her death, Was she scared? Did she understand? Maybe in her innocence she thought is was a game, that daddy was just joining in and wanted to play with them. Most people just pray she was asleep or unconcious. And in those first of her final hours those who knew the family prayed for the boys to be found that they didn’t meet the same fate as their sister.
The handful of distraught police were at last put at ease at 10:30, the search coming to an end. Arthur and his boys were found at the law court, him crying like a hurt child, shaking uncontrollably, the boys clinging to his legs. He couldn’t say his name, he couldn’t state where he lived. It was his scared 6 year old son who told the authorities his home address. Ben says he wanted dad to let him climb in the front seat. He wanted them to go back to save his little sister, Who didn’t move or scream as she fell. He had just finished a certificate in swimming. Perhaps he thought he could have saved her, If only dad went back. Phillip’s was arrested on scene and his children collected by family friends. Still in deep shock, he was charged with murder and remanded into custody until his hearing. Inevitably the verdict read guilty. An unemotional Peta sat quietly as her family beside her openly wept.
Old toys and a swing set now lie untouched in his back yard. Finger paintings tacked on the wall. DVDs and Childs clothing and books strewn on the floor, draws with the kids names on them and small chairs one for each all sit in the lounge. The neighbours can no longer hear the laughter of these perfect children, the Spartan house is left even more empty than before. No one close to home seems to want to talk about it now, everyone who new the children just want to forget the shocking event.
This seemingly devout father imprisoned and alone, now spends his nights in a cell, trying to piece together the event he claims to have no recollection of. The boys, forced to grow up fatherless, sat and watched as their sisters small coffin was lowered into the earth. Their mother, living with the what ifs of her babies death, wondering if there was anything she could do and the traumatised paramedics and police left to remember the image of the near lifeless, soaking body of the tiny girl. Most people say it was a revenge killing, but we will never truly know what drove Arthur to do what he did. All we do know for sure, is that this is a tragedy we all hear about too often. An issue that pulls on the heartstrings of every mother and father. There is now one less laughing child, one less bed to tuck, one less story to read and cheek to kiss. And one more bike left to rust and fade in the yard, One more family left shattered.
“Gospel Hymns and Mango seeds”
By Torie Owen.
(Before you read, some of you may see alot of similarities in this story with an actual life event I have no doubt described, This is based on a true experience of mine a year or so back that I utilised in my 3A english exam this year because It fit with the question asking my to incorporate a Malcolm X quote into a piece of writing. Events and conversations have been manipulated enough to fit this quote, so much so that we might as well just assume this is a work of fiction.)
It was dark in the evening as i stepped out of the hall and into the cold night, the sweat cooled on my back as i walked to the car, my arms laden with baskets and bags and coats. It always shocks me how in the moment, on stage, in front of a few hundred people everything can feel so suffocatingly hot, When in reality, The sky is almost raining and the audience below is draped in coats and blankets and winter shoes. But i guess thats how summer nights get in Australia, cold one moment and warm the next, warm rain then cold rain, cool air and air so warm its like being inside of an oven.
But it was more warm than strangely cold this summer. And almost every second day him and I took a drive ti the lake, or the ocean, And his car was like a furnace, Our legs stuck to the seats when we moved, And out hair to our faces. But I loved that geep.
It was shorts weather now, And it always got me thinking how he never looked at my tanning legs, not even a second, I thought to myself: “Anyone else would have looked”.
But instead he looked at my face, commenting on the rich dark of my hair and the green of my eyes. So we did alot that summer. We swam, and ate mangoes, He played guitar and I listened. He looked into my eyes and I looked into his. And It always amazed me how he never let them wander. He let them linger instead.
So we grew closer. We sang gospel hymns together in church and I attempted to ignore the judging glances his parents left on my skin. And we were never left alone that summer. Be it his parents, or his friends, the pastor or his sister. Curious glances and warning looks. Its asif his whole family, his whole congregation had a secret language, a secret plan that they hid in their loving smiles and “its wonderful to see you again”s.
But he swore he thought he loved me, he swore it in his poetry and his songs, he swore it in his respect for me and in his integrity. So i never let myself be afraid it would end. However, with closeness comes trust, and with trust comes secrets, And with secrets comes knowledge.
And thats where so often we go wrong. We let the knowledge of each others past change the person we see standing before us until we see something different to who we fell in love with. And that night, then the sweat cooled on my chest, when I peeled the Bindi from my forehead and felt the calm of another performance complete, he made sure to let me know how different in his eyes I had become.
“lustful and decietful:. His words stung like pins. He let choir hymns turn to nothing.
“I can’t trust you…I can’t trust myself around you”. He let love songs turn to crumpled pages in an old shoe box.
“It’s not right”. He let, “I think I love you” turn to, “I hate your past”.
My past that makes me who I am? My past that makes me strong? My past that sayd, she was burnt and now shes strong enough to stand the heat?
And with knowledge comes anger.
“You don’t know me then, and if you hate my past you hate my now and my now is all i have to offer you”.
And my now was summer, it was mangoes and guitars and choir hymns. But his now was yesterday, and tomorow, and I vows and I promises.
So I didn’t talk, I let the nothing wash over us.
Until…
“you can’t hate the roots of a tree and not hate the tree”.
“But I love the tree, I just wish I could find a way to sever the roots”.
“Well sometimes roots can be severed, dig deep enough into the earth and you could remove them all, but do you know what would then happen to the tree?”
And with this he turned his back, knowing what i meant. And he got into his car and left me standing there. With the cool breeze on my shiny skin. And the now stuck in the back of my teeth.
And all i had was now, until it became then, Poems, and a mango seed, sheet music and choir hymns on the back of my hand, In a shoe box.
That summer, And that car…
And the secrets that turned into knowledge,
That turned everything…
Into nothing.
