Artwork by Victoria Bahana

The violet sea snails arrived in December. They washed ashore after a storm—a scattering of periwinkle on the endless beige. Two hours later, they drowned in the sea breeze, gasping for the water they were spewed from—science says so.

But there were no storms in December. Not in Gull Point. Only a heatwave that made the sand a torturous bed of hot coals. The invertebrates should’ve fried before they suffocated, but they did neither. On unpractised feet, they crawled up the dunes, creeping across the vacant cusks and bleached bones of their distant relatives. They tottered along in a purple swarm—aimless, loose, happy to feel the sun on their shells.

Some were lost to the mazes of beached seaweed. Some, mourning the loss of the ocean’s buoyancy, writhed and wriggled in search of the familiar, burying themselves into an early grave. The important ones—the miraculous survivors—found themselves in the throngs of a well-manicured hydrangea bush 100 metres from the shoreline. In time, they would adapt and evolve and spawn, smearing the town in a silver-slick mucus.

They were Ilse’s; they left only after she was already gone.

*

The guy behind the desk has sweat stains reaching his waist. The elongated crescents cling to him like a second skin. He can’t be much older than Stevie. He’s all crisp lines in his collared shirt and polyester pants, but his face is doughy, elastic-looking, like he’s one growth spurt away from moving out of his mum’s place. She watches him search for the booking on an old desktop computer. It groans in protest, leaking hot air.

“You’re one of the biologists?” He must sense her surprise because he waves her off. “There’s always one of you guys around. Always booked in the same place too. Does your boss know the owners or something?”

Stevie shrugs. “I’m not sure.”

“Like a revolving door, that place.” His hands are light on the keyboard. Spindly fingers, delicate wrists. Pretty, if they weren’t so hairy. “And it says you’re here for three months?”

Stevie nods. He seems to consider something privately, head tilted like a dog. Sweat pools like dew drops on the downy hairs of his upper lip. They threaten to spill.

“Right!” He claps once. “I’ll go get you your key.” He pivots behind the desk and slips into a back room.

This is Stevie’s first time inside a real estate agency; owning property was a faraway concept she’d long since abandoned. It feels a lot like an airport. Sterile overhead lighting, framed stock photos, carpet resembling the dull dance of phosphenes behind closed eyes. A sense that time is dawdling. Though she imagines that’s just how time feels in Gull Point. She’s still yet to see any gulls.

The guy returns, a set of keys encircling his index finger. He spins them absentmindedly. He gives Stevie something to sign, which she does without question, and passes her a map of the local area and some takeaway menus. He points to a list of numbers to call in an emergency and scribbles down the agency’s landline, in case she has any issues with the house. She thanks him, expecting the keys, but he stalls. Whirl of silver. Muffled clink of metal on skin. He assesses her, eyes dragging, before he splays his hands on the desk, keys caged in the prison of his right palm.

“Are you here for the slugs?”

“Sea snails,” she corrects.

He hums, drums his fingers. “You know, there was another guy here a few weeks back, one of you lot, also here for the slugs. Barely lasted two days before he hightailed it outta here. Left the key in the door and took off in one of our rentals. Very sus.” He pulls at the damp fabric of his shirt. It billows and puckers with trapped air. “Anyways, just let us know if you’re gonna disappear, yeah? It’s really fucking inconvenient otherwise.”

Stevie nods, “For sure.” She shuffles the pamphlets he gave her into the crook of her arm and extends an open palm. He smiles and surrenders the keys. They’re wet in her hand.

*

She wouldn’t call it a house, more like a decked-out shack. The bed, kitchenette, and bathroom are all within a couple metres of each other. There’s wood everywhere: on the floors, the walls, the ceilings. It’s a fully furnished birdhouse, but the owners are clearly rabbit people. It seems that, at a certain age, people will designate themselves an animal and then plaster it on every available surface. For Stevie’s mum, it’s bees. Here, the taxidermied bunny on top of the dresser speaks for itself.

She sits on the edge of the bed and tries to imagine herself living here for the next ninety days. Everything is within walking distance: five minutes to the general store, ten minutes to the beach and the sea snails. She needs to figure out the food situation, see if there’s anything in the pantry that could get her through the night. Needs to visit the snails, should probably unpack. She eyes her suitcase in the corner: a sleek hard-shelled thing she doesn’t register as her own. A birthday gift from Asha that now feels like an omen—a heavy confession.

She gets up and inspects the kitchen cupboards: salt and pepper, an unlabelled oil, stock cubes, Vegemite. The bench top holds a selection of home-brand tea bags and instant coffee. There’s a bread canister next to the sink—rabbit-themed, the lid ajar. She opens it and finds salvation: three packets of Mi Goreng, a lone Curly Wurly and a box of Twinings English Breakfast Tea, half-full. She grabs the Curly Wurly. The chocolate-coated caramel has softened in the heat, flexible in its plastic packaging. She tears it open and watches the thin bar fold in on itself: a sad, wilted thing. She scoops it into her mouth, pleased it still has that tough, taffy pull—sweet and chewy and fusing to her back molars.

There’s a strange quiet. Nothing beyond the wet smack of her mouth. Not the peaceful alternative to the city—the sleepy purr of a life without sirens and commuters and thin apartment walls. But a quiet more like an absence. Something emptied, something missing. For a coastal town, there’s very little wind, barely a breeze. Through the windows, the outside appears still: trees unmoving, sedges like a fixed, indistinct mass—a theatre stage awaiting its actors. She looks long enough to see the minute rustle of leaves, a vague confirmation of life, and hopes this isn’t a permanent thing, this heat without relief. It’s different here, not quite the Australian sun she was used to. It still burns like the ozone layer is nothing but a gaping hole, but it feels muted, heavy, weighed down with moisture. The clouds above seem to be a permanent fixture, a dewy breath on the back of her neck. The result is a kind of tropical humidity unnatural to the landscape, to its burrs and bleached rushes and salt-washed rocks.

She considers the sea snails and their oceanless existence, their newfound desire for oxygen and garden beds. Janthina, janthina. Dr. Murray had already been here to scout the habitat and take the necessary samples. All the interesting work had accompanied him back to the lab. Like her previous assignments, Stevie is here to observe and monitor. A familiar process—people and creatures and places condensed, absorbed into tables and figures and footnotes. She thinks it’s likely she prefers them that way, transparent and succinct, then decides that isn’t a helpful thought.

*

She pauses at the edge of a gravel driveway. The map on her phone is outdated, showing outlines of buildings and bus stops that no longer exist. It tells her she’s arrived at her destination, the blue dot swallowing the screen as she zooms in. She checks the address that Dr. Murray sent her and repeats it back to herself as she looks around. All the houses sit above street level, on hills or stilts. There are no signs or mailboxes below, nothing to confirm she’s in the right place.

Ilse would be expecting her; she’d been informed of the research process and had surrendered three square metres of her backyard to accommodate it. Stevie knows that Ilse has lived in Gull Point for almost thirty years. She moved here from somewhere in Europe and is in her early seventies. When Dr Murray had briefed Stevie, he’d said, She’s very interesting, which felt significant considering his lack of interest in anything terrestrial, but it was difficult to know whether he was talking about Ilse or the gastropods colonising her garden. He had a habit of referring to most specimens as ‘she’ or ‘her’.

Stevie walks up the steep incline of the driveway and hopes she has the right house. Her hands are heavy, thrumming, too hot. She hazily registers a note of panic and ignores it. Slip of gravel. Cloud of dust just below her knees. She doesn’t know how to talk to older women. Often ends up mirroring them, regurgitating their vocabulary, expressing only vague truisms that they’re sure to agree with. A shameful performance that she’s entirely aware of: her exaggerated lilt, her compulsion to pepper in nonsense like Once in a blue moon or Better safe than sorry. She spins herself into a cocoon of palatability; an apolitical, sexless spectre.

The gravel ends and she is enveloped in shrubs. Wattle, wild rosemary, saltbush. They’re unruly and overgrown, crowding her torso, ghosting her arms. Mottled eucalyptus trunks dot her vision; a blockade of manna gums trapping her in place. She feels like prey caught in a snare and briefly wonders if this is a test, if Ilse is watching, waiting to see her next move. Asha’s mouth, a kissed thing, teasing: Yes, Stevie, everything is about you. She trudges forward, pushing her weight off the gums, trampling the plants in her path. They bounce back in retaliation, thwacking and scratching her legs. A sliver of a structure ahead—painted wood, a duck egg blue. She stumbles into a patch of clearing, a slippery mix of sand and dirt, the house revealed in front of her.

She’s sweating, breathing too loud in the quiet around her. The house is big, double-fronted, a veranda at its entrance. The painted exterior is peeling and weathered. It glistens in the overcast glare—dappled wet with moisture, a dotted film of damp. A twig snaps to her left. At the edge of the veranda, a woman kneels on the ground, nestled in the shrubs. Stevie makes out the sharp glint of metal—gardening sheers.

“Are you Steve?” The woman has her back to Stevie. Her hair is long, reaching her lower back. It’s dark and marled with streaks of grey.

“Stevie.”

“Steve-ee.” Snip, snip. “Like the blind man?”

Not a common comparison, but she’ll take it. “Yeah.”

The woman turns towards Stevie. Her face is all sharp angles, peaks and pinnacles that shine with sweat. Her eyes travel across Stevie languidly, pausing at her shoulders, her hips, then back to her shoulders. She raises herself up, sheers abandoned in the dirt. A flowy skirt swallows her lower half, grass-stained and muddied. She sighs and shirks off her gardening gloves. “You have scoliosis, Steve-ee.” She steps up onto the veranda, light and swanlike, and disappears into the house, flyscreen door wailing behind her.

A great blankness. Brief but sweet, like those moments between sleeping and waking. Stevie closes her mouth, has no idea how long it’s been open, and adjusts her spine, her hand reflexively resting on the small of her back.

A flood of feeling: a wave crashing at her feet before settling, syrup-like. It marks her like a stain, trailing her path as she inches forward.