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forty (The grave of the Barbie doll)

by nike, December 21, 2014

Barbie & BarbieToday’s marvellously creepy guest post in the 200 words/200 days series is by the fabulous Lucy Sussex.

Lucy is a wonderful writer, and a multiple award winner, with Ditmar and Aurealis Awards  littering the shelves of her hideaway.

In 2003, Lucy was awarded the A Bertram Chandler award, an award for “Outstanding Achievement in Australian Science Fiction”, for the enormous variety and depth of her achievements in writing, research, editing and teaching in the science fiction, fantasy and related fields in Australia since 1979. And she’s still at it – an inspiring and hard-working woman of letters.

She recently spoke (unsurprisingly eloquently) at the Wheeler Centre as part of a panel on ‘Science Fiction Addiction’.

You can read more about Lucy and her work on her website, where she also keeps a  blog.


A recurring dream always takes you back—to a nexus of fear, guilt, pain, but never pleasure. Each time it seems new, although with an increasing deja vu as you near the inevitable end, always the same.

Emoh Ruo in summer dusk, when even flowers seem muted. You walk, silent on the mossy grass. Tomorrow the bulldozers, blocks of flats. You have unfinished business: the grave of the Barbie doll. A devious plan: the mock burial, and afterwards, after Sis had gone to bed, disinterring Barbie, the reburial in another spot. Despite tears and wails, the doll could never be found again.

Except by you, Miss Envious. Follow your trail under the great oak to your hidey bush, hollow inside. Here you watched a thrush slowly decompose into twiglets of bone. A grave under a grave, your personal DIG.

But dig with what? and as you ponder, summer rain falls, so spattery it misses you altogether. Or does it? The drops are not falling on you, they are falling through you. Unfinished business, left far too late.

And as you rouse, sobbing breath, you know this dream will return, and return, until you can no longer wake from it.

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