Celebrating Student Achievement: Inner West Young Creatives Awards 2022

This year, we would like to celebrate the achievement of our Year 11 student, Les Prest, who was shortlisted within the 16-18 years category.

He composed a piece of short fiction influenced by Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, capturing the experience of the sublime.

Les was invited to read his work aloud in front of a live audience at the Chrissie Cotter Gallery. You can read his work below:

Mary

I’d sought to convince Dad not to go, but nonetheless, I was lying in the dimly lit tin shed helping him patch Mary’s battered fibreglass hull. I was nervous for him, nervous to the point that my hands trembled as I brushed the Gelcoat along the cracked and jagged edges. In a stupid way, that brush held Dad’s life in its bristles. All it takes is one rough storm in a boat that small, and bailing the hull out is the least of your concerns. Whatever I told him, he wouldn’t budge. As stubborn as a mule, like Mum used to say, not that I ever understood what that meant. I finished the patch and slid out from underneath. Mary stood raised off the floor by a stack of wood blocks on either side. While she seemed enormous, crammed inside the claustrophobic shed, she was tiny in comparison to the grandeur of the open seas. A mere sixteen feet. She was built in a lapstrake style reminiscent of early 70’s vogue with a miniature cockpit preceding an even tinier cabin. Everybody says he’s loopy, I don't disagree, crossing the Pacific in such an inadequate boat is not the least bit sane.
She was named after Mum, the boat that is. She was just one of Dad's projects back when mum was still around. but after Mum left it became a full time obsession. I guess for him he needed someone to keep loving, and it wasn't going to be me. Marvelously you can put a lot of love into a boat while being secure in the knowledge it is unlikely that that boat will leave you. So that seems to be where this whole thing started. We don’t talk much so it's as much a guessing game as any, but I imagine that the only time Dad ever felt whole was with Mum and the closest he can get to being with her now, is out there in that water. So while I think he's crazy, at least his crazy makes sense. Then again that might just be the lie I'm telling myself. I think he’s earned that reputation, and it's not that I care about reputation I just wish his dream wasn't something that could take him for good.
Dad stooped through the roller door clutching an opaque 50L plastic container packed to the brim with supplies. “I finished patching the crack,” I said in a resigned manner. He gave me a brusque nod accompanied by a grunt whose inflection indicated approval as he huffed his way up the ladder. He ducked into the tiny cabin and reappeared soon after a thud of supplies could be heard on the cabin floor. “Forecast for tomorrow is a little rough but nothing Mary can’t handle,” he said, cracking a smile, “I’ll set off before first light”. My vain attempt at mustering words resulted in a hoarse croak; I nodded mutely; the time for arguing had passed. “Dad,” I said as he swung himself under the roller door. He paused. “You will wake me up, won’t you? Before you go,” I asked tentatively. He nodded and continued on his way. I reluctantly returned to my room.
I rose from sleep with a pounding head, disoriented by an irregular strobe of light. Through further investigation and orientation, I determined the strobe was indeed a storm purging the garden of its soil as the water thundered towards the cliffside.
I hawked on what felt like a mouth full of cornstarch and then trudged to the laundry sink for water. After gasping at the steel faucet for the time it took to appease the dry sensation, I recalled fondly moments ago when the only problems I was capable of comprehending were the immediate physical ones. Rain lashed at the thin window pane, which seemed a trivial veneer against the power of the storm. For a moment, I watched in awe as full clouds tinged with green churned the sky and as bursts of thunder momentarily illuminated this magnificent process. It brought me a sense of ease that at least Dad wouldn’t be going out today. I began to walk back to bed when out of the corner of my eye, a light caught my attention. The shed light. A thick knot began to form deep in my throat as my pace increased. I burst through the back door. The rain pelted down like mortars around me as I sprinted for the shed. Panting and saturated, I ripped the roller door open and scrambled inside.
The absence tore through me. Mary was gone. The knot in my stomach was gone and with it, the rest of me. Absence left only the wet, the cold and a wish to feel whole once more, a wish he would come back. I stomped through the slushy mud, that once was the hill my house lay on, and ran through the torrential downpour to the headland across from my house. I gazed down from the precipice on which I stood into the raging waters which flung them self at the craggy cliff face so violently the headlands integrity seemed jeopardised. It was there, as I stood watching the vehement waters, that I realised as isolated as I was at this very moment, the majesty of the storm would not permit me to feel alone. I hope Dad felt like that.