Published in Overland Issue 205 Summer 2011 · Uncategorized Fresh Kill Cath Drake Set off later than we meant to. At home, we’d been nagging about dishes, shopping lists, the bike with the chain hanging. Now, with the light going, we flash our mobile phones to find a path in the forest back to the train station. Pure white feathers flare across black mud. The blood is cold, solid, no splattering. So it doesn’t look fresh. I’m not sure if we came past this spot earlier. Its body opened, luminous red, neck gone, eyes empty; abandoned to death. We stand over it. Each fine-boned feather perfect. There’s no evidence of a criminal, no tracks, only soft blank mud; we heard no struggle, no screams, no scuttling away in the dark. We keep walking, become disorientated, walk past it again, this time only white feathers strewn in pitch dark. The body is stolen, and still we’ve not heard or seen anything. When we get to the sturdy well-lit bitumen I can’t look at him. Just say: I can’t see you anymore. Cath Drake Cath Drake is an Australian from Perth who moved to London in 2001. She has been published in anthologies and magazines in the UK, Australia and the US. She currently works in communications for a children’s charity, focusing on life stories. Her website is www.cathdrake.wordpress.com/. More by Cath Drake › Overland is a not-for-profit magazine with a proud history of supporting writers, and publishing ideas and voices often excluded from other places. If you like this piece, or support Overland’s work in general, please subscribe or donate. Related articles & Essays First published in Overland Issue 228 28 March 202428 March 2024 · Main Posts Why we should value not only lived experience, but also lived expertise Sukhmani Khorana In the wake of this year’s International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, I want to extend the central idea of El Gibbs’s 2022 essay on 'lived expertise' and argue that in media accounts of racism, analytical expertise and lived experience ought to be valued together and even in the same body. First published in Overland Issue 228 27 March 202427 March 2024 · Cartoons Visas for Palestinians: let them in Sam Wallman Sam Wallman makes the case for a visa scheme for Palestinians fleeing the war on Gaza.