Fin banged on the door but he wouldn't answer. She walked toward the house dejected and worried. If he didn't let her in, she couldn't say sorry. If he didn't let her in, she would lose him just like she had lost Findlay. He had locked her out when her mother died and had never opened the door again.

She burst into tears, ran the rest of the distance across the yard, inside the house and threw herself on the bed. Maybe she should have called his real name but didn't know what it was.

He didn't have any food and would be very hungry. Fin pulled herself together, she'd make him something to eat. While she turned his leftovers from the night before into Bubble and Squeak, she checked to see if the shed door opened. It didn't.

Without the generator on the fridge had lost its coldness. Fin put the food into a container, set it outside the shed door, knocked, and then went to look at the generator.

It was run on diesel so she checked the tank to find it full. She looked for a switch to turn on the fuel but couldn't find one so she pulled the cord. It chugged and splattered but didn't start. Fin tried again. The engine refused to kick over.

Tears welled in her eyes again. She hoped Cody heard what she was doing and came to help her. In the end, she gave up and went into the house. All she could do was sit by the window and watch the door.

Fin watched the shed all day but he didn't come out. The container of food would be ruined now but she didn't go and get it because she wanted Cody to know she was thinking about him.

She hand-washed some clothes. While she worked in the light of the oil lamp the generator roared into life. Fin dropped the shirt and ran to the back door. She saw the outline of Cody's body as he made his way through the light rain towards the door of the shed.

"Cody!" she called but he didn't answer. He lifted the container she had left then opened and shut the door. Fin regretted not making him something fresh to eat.

A rush of panic surged through her with the thought he might eat it and then get sick. She went to the pantry and gathered some biscuits and fruit, tins of baked beans, braised steak and tinned stew into a bag. Then she ran through the rain and banged on the door. "Cody!" He didn't answer her so she left the bag and went back inside.

The container of steak and Bubble and Squeak had been rancid. The hits of resentment and hate came back. It was his house and he was locked in the shed like a mongrel dog being fed scraps. He slammed the food on the ground for Max and cooked himself more fucking eggs.

Cody discovered the bag of food outside the door when he went to turn off the generator and threw it onto the back of the truck.

Two more days Cody stayed away from her. He hadn't dreamt of his brother's death again. Just her. In some of his dreams, he loved her and in others, he hit her and called her a fucking bitch.

On the fourth day of his isolation, Cody walked. He needed to get out and clear his head. To think about the woman and what he was going to do.

He followed the road towards the gully to see if it was possible to drive the Landcruiser across it and into town and beyond.

The mud was thick on the soles of his boots. It made walking hard but it was dry in places. Max trotted beside him and let out an occasional whine.

It took Cody most of the morning to walk the eight kilometres to the gully, a distance covered in five to ten minutes in the truck when the road was hard.

The creek had receded. A small flow of water snaked its way through the stones and gravel. Cody sat on a damp rock and watched the water trickle past and disappear in the distance. He tossed rocks into the flow while he thought about her.

He was the one who had taken her from her home. What had driven him to do that?

Loneliness and hatred of his soulless past. The power of it had somehow planted the seed that if he helped this girl the odium for his inner spirit would go away and take the solitude with it.

It had worked for a while.

The isolation and contempt for his core had been filled by something else. A need driven by his sex to be a complete masculine being. One who would be forgiven for all his sins if he took this girl and showed compassion.

Now she controlled him. Her femininity dominated him and his maleness obeyed. It cried out to be possessed. He hated it, loathed that his body continued to impress its want for her in his mind.

Anger surged in his belly once again. It sickened him to think he had told her he loved her and wanted to take her home to meet his family and that he had glorified the idea of having a baby with her. How could he trust an interloper with his child?

Malice drove Cody's mind. It rambled and thundered on and on. Reason had betrayed him.

There were no thoughts that perhaps it was better she had opened the box and let the dead and the past rise from within.

There were no thoughts she would have to know the truth about him before he could have taken her to meet his family or to be unified in the decision to produce a child.

He saw her as being poisonous like the discharge of a festering sore.

She had to be got rid of.

He fed his essence with the malice of his mind. The Bell Ringer chimed. He had to be rid of her.

How?

No plan would form as he laboured home. No plan formed as he ate cold baked beans from the tin or lay in his swag staring at the roof.

The blackness of the night drove his mania. The rain had stopped. The silence cried out, told him what a fool he was to be governed by the woman as she lay warm and snug in...

His bed.

While he lay in the cold dampness of a musty swag.

Copyright for this picture belongs to Hexen. Who happens to be my nephew. If you study the picture closely you will see tortured faces, one bottom right, the other near the inside of the wing. A Milky Way like image sweeps from the left side of the drawing to the right implying the tortured man is being swept around the angel.

I thought it portrayed Cody's state of mind perfectly.