Sunday Short: 'The Elements' by Laura Elvery

A few years ago, in the summer of 1916, shark attacks made big news along the Jersey Shore. It was during the heat wave while families were on vacation in July. The polio made it worse, Father read in the paper, because everyone wanted to go into the sunshine and too many people were in the water. There was absolute panic for whatever was down there—some said they weren’t even sharks, just fish or sea turtles. Barbara and I heard about the attacks and spent a day laid out on our towels in her back garden. Barb’s blouse was dotted with tiny blue fish and her thighs were elastic brown in the sun. I borrowed her sunglasses and we talked about Robert Wade in my English class, and about James Barclay who was handsome but whose mother had run away with a man from the brewery. Barb’s mother brought us sandwiches on a tray. I said I wasn’t hungry and Barb ate them all, and then she lay back on her elbows and her neck arched in the sun.

Laura Elvery is all over the place in Queensland writing recently - she won the Josephine Ulrick Prize in 2014 as well as the QUT Postgraduate Creative Writing Prize. Both are wonderful achievements and reading her short story, 'The Elements', for which she won the latter prize, it's easy to see why she was awarded. She has a beautiful sense of character and time, letting the story unfold around a young woman working in a factory - her history, her future, just her becoming more compelling and rounded with every interaction or stray thought. It's pretty magical.

You can read 'The Elements' over at Kill Your Darlings.