Jigsaw Part Four

She walked along Moggill Road, into Toowong, along Coronation Drive by the river, stopping once or twice to watch something float past. She dodged cyclists as they rang their bells at her, and studied one piece of anti-safe sex graffiti. She walked up onto Victoria Bridge, across the river, past the large concrete buildings, into the Southbank precinct. She had a swim in the lagoon.

After a short sunbathe on the beach, she dressed and walked into West End. The locksmith looked at her locked pocket and shook his head.

“Can’t you give it a bang or something?”

He looked at her with a pained expression.

“You don’t have to go to a locksmith to get something banged on,” he sniffed. “This is what they call a Hooley lock. Only the person who made it can unlock it. Unless.”

“Unless what?”

He didn’t answer her. He tried to open it, just to show Alice how impossible it was. After all of his various instruments failed, he resorted to giving the lock a good wallop. That squashed it flat, but didn’t open it. Alice and the locksmith smiled exhaustedly at each other, and agreed to give up.

When she got home, she took a pair of secateurs and crunched the battered lock apart. Fragments of metal flew everywhere. At least, that was what she thought they were, until she looked down at the pocket and realised the fragments were coming out of it. She stood up from the table and took a step back. Bits and pieces of strange objects were spurting out, at an ever faster rate. She tried to catch some of them, but they seemed to disappear into the corners and crevices of the room, like sparks from sparklers.

She got a broom and began to sweep the floor. Amongst the dust, dried cockroaches, corks and biscuit crumbs she found the fragments. They looked like jigsaw puzzle pieces. When the pocket finally ceased its production, she took all the bits she had found into her bedroom, and shut the door.