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ran down the stairs. Eventually an ambulance crew followed my trail up the stairs and rescued me, as I feigned unconsciousness.
     No kind tourists would find me now. No ambulance crew would save me. I forced myself to assess my situation coolly, and was glad that I was able to—that I had matured since the staircase incident.
    I'd signed the contract, but the Devil hadn't provided anything. I could break it off, and this Devil business would be just like the staircase incident, just like other times when my body cruelly let me down, just like the journals, just like the book—something to forget and get beyond.
    He was five long strides ahead when I stopped. Turning, I strode back over my own footsteps, my mood instantly lightening. Within a block, a wild regret even made me giggle. Those beaut horns and tail—such a waste on him .
    As I walked, the air smelt less polluted, more frangipani'd, and my thoughts felt cleared of muck. Tomorrow I would wake and go to work, and tomorrow night, maybe think about saying yes to Gordon.

—6—
    'You can't,' I heard him say.
    He was stalking—too far back for me to hit him, just close enough to speak in a conversational tone.
    'They're no good to you,' he said, as I went into The Troppo.
    My sheets were gone. Some bastard had nicked them!
    The dunny was out back, so that's where I went, passing it and the chaos of rubbish, to open the back gate.
    Lost him!

    ~

    I walked the back alleys knowing that he would look for me at home, and then, not finding me, leave to hunt elsewhere.
    By 3 am, I missed bed so much, I decided it was safe to return.
    On the corner of my street, the same obnoxious but comforting streetlight shone. I slid the key in the door and the key turned smoothly, and I shoved the door and it opened. Nothing jumped out at me in the hall. No fiends lurked in my room.
    I threw myself on the bare mattress without even taking off my shoes, to sleep the sleep of forgetfulness.

    ~

    He climbed the stairs on all four feet, his tail slashing against the railing. At the top of the stairs, he stood, six feet tall, and his forefeet became hands, and he pulled a handkerchief out of his jeans and wiped it against the wall, and the pea-green paint blistered and gasped. He waved his cloth and flames galloped across the wall, galloped toward my room.
    I woke to the sound of breaking glass. Rough hands grabbed me, knocking the wind out of my solar plexus as they flung me over a shoulder, like a sack of wheat. I was handed out of my window, to be loaded onto another shoulder and carried down a ladder.
    A stretcher, noise. Flashing red lights. Suck, suck, suuuuck. My lungs finally pull in air, my mouth tastes the acrid bite of wet ash. City ash—eucalypt, plastics, electric wires. An oxygen mask grips my face, and I shove it away. Professional words urge me down, and hands shove me flat onto the hard stretcher mat. Medics slide my stretcher into an ambulance faster than a sheep into a race, but I'm no sheep.
    'Hey!' I crack my skull rolling off the stretcher, but I have to be fast. They're closing the doors already, ready to drive off. Not soon enough to keep me in.
    They're not insulted when I hit out, resisting their assistance. I'm just a situation that fixed itself. They walk toward the fire truck. I feel bad momentarily that I didn't thank them.
    A cacophony of noise, lights, confusion, purpose.
    Firemen aim hoses. Fierce water shoots, thudding into the house. One hose is firing into my bedroom window.
    I recognize some of the people in the crowd, but not many. None are my housemates.
    'I told you,' he says, into the back of my neck.
    He sounds gentle, but his next words chill. 'Where do you want to go from here?'
    I didn't dignify him with an answer.
    'Come,' he says,  and I let him lead me towards the crowd's back, and away.

    ~

    'You didn't have to burn it.'
    My teeth felt furred, my stomach contorted, I ached too much for this to be the dream.
    We were sitting on the grass