This Was Not Written by Me.

“Tap-tap-tap-tapa-tap-tap-tap-tapatapa”

The sound punctured the silence of Sunday morning Sydney. The tapping was uneven, echoing out over the Leichhardt street, picturesque in its peace. The noise was punctuated and accented by heaving breaths and shrieks of mirth. It could belong to only one breed of monster . . .

two young boys.

They raced up the steep street from the harbor, their effort going almost completely to waste, climbing the hill at little more than an adult’s walking pace. They dropped when they reached the top in a burst of panting and laughing. Resting for a moment, they look back down the slope.

The heat radiated off the sticky asphalt, creating an ethereal shimmer, but there was a relief from the heat in the warm breeze rising up from the ocean. It presented an early summer morning full of promise. Even with the breeze, the two boys were sweating profusely, their white t-shirts glued to their backs.

”Would you like a drink?” one of the boys asked, pronouncing each syllable, in a careful accent at odds with the goofy grin on his tanned face. The other responded with a quick nod, damp strands of blond hair clinging to his face and neck.

”Where d’you live?” he panted.

The first boy replied with another goofy grin, stretching his features wide and showing all his teeth, a few of them missing and all of them crooked but pearly white nonetheless.

”I’ll show you.”

It was a house on a hill, just a block from where the boys were now walking; an old house and a small house, but a nice house. A single-storey terrace block, handsome in it’s Victorian architecture, despite its size.

They approached the house with cool glasses of water drifting through their minds.
Noise wafted from the open windows; a fast and excited discussion was going on in the front room that the blond lad couldn’t quite understand.

”Močiutė’s eating with friends, let’s go quietly.”

With the tanned child acting as lead sleuth, the boys crept past...