In his old room Caleb pulled out the sketchbooks he’d packed. The style of his graphic stories had changed. With large tubes of black and red ochre watercolour he prepared pages with a bloody wash, planning a painted landscape the colour of scabs. No matter what he drew, the bloodstain would always be there, guilt always leaking through.

His art was brought to life with water! Weird. Water could once have saved everything. Angrily, Caleb scarred his paper with details – the wind’s spiral, a bruise of tight and tighter circles, vertiginously climbing through an unholy black rapture of ashes while he recreated another replacement for his art that the police had stolen. He’d seen a snake sleeping like a flickering flame in the long, dry grass. Long and lean as Caleb’s own limbs before he stopped riding his bike everywhere and ate so much pizza. Moving gently, like a warning. Fear prickled down his spine. That was what had inspired him to get the snakebite piercing – fear. When the guilt monster stopped devouring him, it was only because fear had taken over.

Even in Hawthorn, Caleb felt the pressure of Mum’s thoughts, like she had psychic powers that Marvel comics hadn’t yet converted into a character. Life was bleak, like he was viewing it through tears of blood. Survival was not always the best result. Caleb hadn’t tried to tell Mum he felt this. Mum had been there, she had seen his accident. In fact, he could have avoided it, if only…

But, no. He wouldn’t think that.

‘What are you drawing?’ Dad stood in his doorway. Spying, like Mum.

It’s my art, Caleb didn’t say. He’d tried that before. He stared at his sketches like he stared at burn scars on his hands. Like they masked secrets. Dad took Caleb’s pencil (gently) from his hand. ‘Mate, you need to stop this and get some sleep.’

And far worse than struggling to explain his drawings to Dad, was Mum… she hated it when Caleb said he was doing nothing, even when he wasn’t doing anything. She didn’t believe nothing was something anyone could do. Her awareness of him, doing nothing or not, was an entity with a life of its own. Like his fear. Fear of his own flawed nature – the impulsiveness that had made it so hard to sit in his school seat. Fear he might one day forget the power of his own guilt. Guilt itself was Caleb’s own superpower. Though power, of course, was the wrong word. Born in Caleb’s accident, his guilt had been nourished by everything that happened afterwards. It grew stronger around Sadie, around Rosie, and it was strongest around Mum, because even more than the woman who wanted Caleb to be a news story, and the woman who hated him, Mum just wouldn’t leave him alone.

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PROSERPINA | Goddess of Fertility and Spring