Imagine the smile on your face as you check the website results and see your story in the list: You, Stuart Bush-Harris, published at last! Then, picture it dropping as you notice that a “Shane Bush-Harris”—whoever-the-hell he is—has gotten the credit for it!

You learn a new word that day: misattribution.

A writer’s name is an essential element of their brand, an identifier for their writing. My first brush with publishing success was, naturally, a diluted experience. Despite this, I took no steps to correct the error. Instead, I considered adopting the pseudonym!

Rereading the story years later, however, my editorial eye saw flaws in the writing, so part of me, then, was glad that Shane had his name on it. Perhaps I should have left the story in obscurity with him.

Anyhow, here it is, the new improved version, by STUART BUSH-HARRIS!

Falter

The fisherman’s a Godless man, and even this won’t budge him. You haven’t got long, old boy, he tells himself, eyes to wrist—11.05. Fever, sweat, sun. They say remain calm. As if, he thinks, visualising the dual puncture wounds, so seemingly benign. Must reach road.

The fisherman strides through the rainforest with silent tenacity. Luminous mosses saturate his vision. Roots thread his path like serpents. Death lurks vulture-like in the shadows. 11.12. His dismembered T-shirt forms a makeshift compression bandage above his right ankle. One word is scrawled down his bare leg in permanent marker. ONE WORD. It could make the difference.

The landscape changes. Lush becomes barren, becomes flatter, dryer. Sun bleached grasses sway in the wind. A kookaburra cackles. Naked trees stand here like crucified forms. 11.27. He feels a perverse excitement at the challenge. Ahead, the trapper’s hut appears, a tree corpse fabrication. Come on! You’re almost there. Metallic mouth taste induces vomiting. 11.49. His gait deteriorates with inebriation as the road materialises like a desert mirage. A devil lies fused to the asphalt, flies feasting on its spilled intestines. He collapses in sympathy beside it, nose to the sky. Be saved or die, but still must I lie.

Car brakes screech. He hears footsteps and then a disembodied voice: “...lying in the road… a bandage on his ankle… something written on his leg… ‘Tiger’… snakebite!”

The fisherman wakes to the whiff of disinfectant, white coats rushing around, and puts his hands quietly together.

A version of this story was first published in the Tasmanian Microstories anthology as part of Tasmanian Living Writers’ Week.

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