Up until five years ago, Victoria’s approach to bushfire risk management had been lauded. But then in 2040 the community-government partnerships responsible for land protection broke down after the government’s failure to prevent the deaths of 800 people across the Greater Bendigo region in the wake of the devasting reprise of the 2009 Black Saturday fires.

Building regulations were overhauled in the aftermath of these fires and new laws implemented regarding home insurance, land-occupancy and building standards for homes in high-risk fire areas.

As a result, no persons were allowed to build in high-risk fire zones. Extreme protective measures were enacted to ensure safety. Persons already living in high-risk fire zones were compensated with alternative housing, Penalties were enforced and included measures such as refusal of permits and certification, professional deregistration of contractors and, in certain cases, local council and state government fines and removal of building works.

**

I never thought they would actually take us away. Rip us from our beds in the dark of the night. Jolted out of sleep like a fish pulled out of water. It sounded like one of those pranks your boarding school buddies would play when one of you got a girlfriend. All the adverts were nothing but sloppy, AI-generated environmental propaganda. I kept telling myself, “There’s no such thing as Climate Police”. They simply do not exist.

**

I had spent the better half of a decade saving up for what I thought would be the perfect home. Somewhere with birdsong and acreage for days. We’d start from the ground up. You were the one who kept telling me fixer-uppers were so twenty years ago. That we didn’t want the bones of what was once someone else’s. You weren’t after anything massive, just enough to have everything we needed. Three bedrooms, two lounges, a study, a wine cellar.

We sacrificed getting married. You said your parents told you it was either a lavish wedding or our own home. Not both — they said it would draw too much attention to us. You said we’d be stupid not to take the latter. We could ring the bells and call it a wedding in our backyard sometime down the track. No venue fee and certainly no fifty-percent deposit to secure it for the coming summer. No need for decorative florals when we had our own landscaped backyard. No need to warn the neighbours about the noise of our party — what neighbours? We could save money on what most people would sell a kidney for. With our own home our options felt infinite. They were once, weren’t they?

**

The men who took me away don’t send letters. There are no phones. No TV. They send food and toiletries every few days. There are no keys to open the doors or windows. I never see anyone drop the items off, but they are always waiting for me in a cardboard box in the kitchen when I wake up. A personalised delivery system, like Hello Fresh or Marley Spoon. I’m sure there are cameras in the windows. Sometimes I swear I can see a diminutive green light blinking at me above the kitchen sink.

**

Whose idea was it, anyway? Did you lure me into thinking we both needed to live amid greenery in what is now a high-risk fire zone? Like the time you talked at me for so long about how you wanted a Jeep just because you thought they looked so cool that in the end it was easier to buy you one so you would shut up about it.

Your parents once told me about the way you used to cry if you didn’t get your way. They said you’d rip chunks of your hair out. That you would go outside, find a puddle and stomp your muddy footprints across the carpet. If it wasn’t wet out, you’d turn on the hose and shower your feet until they were soaked. They told me about how you once threatened to set the house alight to protest against them not letting you go to a sleepover party. You lit a match and shook a can of hairspray. They laughed but all I could think about were the times you would shout at me when something inconvenienced you. The story doesn’t sit that well now. Does it?

**

I’m certain I’ve found a way to lessen the sentence. The green light above the kitchen sink flashes rapidly each time I do it. The throat of the sink growls as it inhales garlic skin and banana peel. It hums as I pour the coffee grinds and week-old salad dressing into it. I could have sworn I’ve heard it say thank you as it gobbled them up. I’ve started giving it everything. Leftover spaghetti bolognese, the furry avocado in the fruit bowl. My scraps in exchange for sunshine. Give back, get out. I’m sure that was what they said to us when they took us away from our home. Wasn’t it?

**

I can’t help but consider that you were aware this would happen. That you’d seen the adverts and posters and blatantly ignored them all. That you knew what B.A.L., B.M.O. and land buy-back meant. I never thought twice about taking charge of construction — about talking to the contractors — I was happy with being fluent in interiors. Japandi. Coastal. Boho. Hamptons. Shabby Chic.

I flaunted my signature on every piece of paper your parents put in front of us like I was ready to give my life away. We were going to have a home. If I had made choices about how thick the concrete slab was, whether we were using glass wool for insulation or whether we were opting for cypress over ironbark, perhaps I would have seen it coming. You just told me to sign it all. I didn’t ask any questions. You always got to choose and for a long time I thought I was content with that.

**

There are so many things that bother me about the situation we are in. For instance, when they have decided that we have learnt our lesson, do we get to go home? Will the building restrictions still be in place? Will our home still be standing? Will we?

**

I never had what you did when I was growing up. I realised this the first time I met your parents. I was so nervous in their big house. They asked me about where I was from and if I visited home often. When I finally told them the truth about my parents, they filled the silence by fidgeting, sitting centimetres taller as they clenched their assholes against the pillows of the French dining chairs they adorned. I noticed your mum catch your eye with a nervous glance and I remember her telling me that one day I’d have a home of my own. You winked at me when she said that.

**

The men came in hard and fast screaming bloody murder when they ripped us out of bed. I can still feel the synthetic fibres of their black vests scratch the surface of my skin. I wish I’d taken the time to write down the things they said before I forgot it. Sometimes I think I can hear them when I drift off to sleep.

“Nine-hundred-thousand hectares burned!”

“Liar! Liar!”

“Climate denier!”

“Have you no respect for the law?”

No matter how hard I try I can’t remember what they said. I haven’t got the faintest idea.

**

Part of me thinks you did this on purpose. That there was no government response to rebellious thirty-somethings building outside their means and ignoring the restrictions. Just like that time you told me we were out of boysenberry ice cream, even though I found you bent-double over the freezer at midnight scoffing it like a possum, all teething and feral. Maybe this was your plan all along? Maybe you just wanted our house all to yourself.

**

Most days I struggle walking around this tiny home. Everywhere I step I feel like I’m an arm’s length from the next room. My steps are heavy and slow, as if I’m wading in quicksand. I’ve got nowhere to be and nothing to do. I go into one room and circle back out of it and into another. I am a CD with a thousand scratches, skipping and hopping back into a chorus, then the bridge, then the chorus again. Do you do the same where you are? Most days I struggle walking around this tiny home. Everywhere I step I feel like I’m an arm’s length from the next room. Got nowhere to be and nothing to do. Do you do the same where you are?

**

Something strange happened today. My mind must have been playing tricks. Usually when I stand by the kitchen window, there is nothing to see. Just bushland. Acres of black, rotted branches. Remnants of lived-in burrows. Ash scattered for the wind to pick up.

I was trying to alert the green light by tipping coffee grounds into the sink when I saw it in the distance through the blue-and-white gingham of the kitchen curtains. The amber of a flame burned into the sky as if it were trying to leave a mark. It remained steady — a reminder of what was fighting against us, what was keeping us apart. A lime-coloured balloon sat above it, harbouring a half-dozen people. It floated inexorably skyward as if its home was heaven. I beat my hand against the window until it turned black and blue. They couldn’t see me and the glass didn’t break.

**

I am certain eighty days have passed and in these eighty days I can’t remember if I told you I was sorry. We shouldn’t have done it. And while I cannot remember who suggested the build, I know I am partly to blame. Sometimes, when you love someone, you forget where you start and the other person ends, and then these decisions end up making themselves.

**

If you hadn’t been so adamant about keeping your name out of it — if both our signatures were on the floorplans — then maybe they wouldn’t have separated us. Maybe we’d be here together. Then I would at least know where you are, and you would be able to tell me that yes, the other day I did see a hot air balloon outside the kitchen window and that it wasn’t a miracle or rescue resource. You’d tell me that real people have jobs, and some of these real people jobs involve navigating a hot air balloon to inspire sunrise proposals for loved-up couples. Remind me again why we never got married?

**

Perhaps one day there will be no need for tiny house prisons for felons and other Neanderthals. Maybe our taxpayer dollars will be spent living abroad — in outer space or under the sea. Maybe in the future we will ride on the leather seats of new-wave Harley Davidsons and glide insistently upwards into the sky as it pumps its smog behind us. We’ll drive through a McDonalds on Mars and pay for our McChickens in moon dollars. We’ll revolt from the Earth in the same way the Earth revolted from us.

Fight fire with fire.

Maybe in the future, when I’m tired and old, I’ll relocate to Serenity on Saturn and live out my days playing a space version of lawn bowls and watch four o’clock movies with all the other oldies. Perhaps it will be there that I’ll think of you, my love, and wonder if you ever made it out of your tiny prison, and whether you made it back to the house we built together in Kinglake.

Perhaps it will be at Serenity on Saturn that an image will flash at me as I drift off to sleep. The blinking of a little green light, the blue-and-white gingham of the kitchen curtains, a cardboard box of food and cleaning supplies, sink incinerators, triple insulated windows with hidden cameras. Perhaps I will wake up with a yearning, a hole in the pit of my stomach, a word on the tip of my tongue, and I’ll begin to question if I ever belonged anywhere else.

Image: Dhritiman Barman

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