Felony Farming

"You don’t need jewels or gold to feel like a thief—two bales of hay will do the trick."

The drive out of town made me feel like I was unspooling into nothing. Broken Hill in the rear-view was subdued enough, its streets still stretching and yawning awake, but at least it had shape, corners, the rhythm of human life. Out here there was only scrub and sky, two vast canvases pinned together by a road that unravelled without end, daring me to keep going. The kind of landscape that didn’t give a damn whether I existed or not.

The hire car shuddered over corrugations, each rattle vibrating up through the steering wheel until it set my teeth on edge. Behind me, a plume of dust unravelled in lazy spirals, dissolving back into the endless pale horizon like I’d never been there at all.

I’d rolled the window down despite the bite of winter air. Anything was preferable to the lingering odour inside: the faint, sour tang of some disaster involving a meat pie, wedged deep enough into the upholstery to outlive the apocalypse. Cold air whipped at my hair, sharp and metallic, the kind that scoured the inside of your lungs clean.

My thoughts rattled along with the tyres. Paul’s hollowed-out house, rooms stripped of sound. Gertrude’s knowing eyes, too sharp by half. Charlie, bundled unwilling into the back of a police ute, her bewilderment gnawing at me every time I imagined it. And Vincent. Bloody Vincent. The goat I hadn’t asked for, hadn’t needed, but who’d looked at me with that strange, regal stubbornness only goats possess, as though he had chosen me. Now he and his scrappy entourage of half-alive chickens were waiting in Clivilius, probably plotting mutiny if breakfast didn’t arrive soon.

The Gumtree ad replayed in my head like a coded chant: past the tin shed, red gate, bales stacked against side wall. Half-fictitious, I’d thought, slouched on Paul’s sagging couch. But then the shed materialised out of the horizon exactly as promised — corrugated iron slouched with age, its paint long since stripped to bare dull metal. The red gate leaned wearily into its hinges, the kind of structure that looked like one good storm could topple it flat.

Whoever wrote the listing hadn’t exaggerated. It was all here, as described, waiting.

I cut the engine before I reached the gate, the car stuttering once before sinking into silence with a last, reluctant cough. The absence of noise was immediate, almost aggressive, the way the scrub seemed to lean in the moment machinery stopped. Cicadas rasped faintly even through the winter chill — stubborn, persistent — their song threaded thinly through the brittle air.

I stayed with my hands on the wheel, staring out at the sagging red gate, heart ticking up a gear as though I were about to storm a bank vault. It was absurd. Ludicrous. I wasn’t here to lift diamonds or walk away with armoured bags of cash. I was about to steal hay. But apparently my pulse hadn’t been briefed on the distinction.

Finally, with a sharp exhale, I shoved the door open. The cold slapped at me, crisp and biting, carrying the faint metallic tang of dust baked into rust. I dragged in a lungful that felt like it might sandpaper my throat on the way down. Boots hit gravel, crunching far louder than seemed reasonable, as if each step were advertising my intent to the empty land.

At the gate I stopped, listening. The silence had weight here, elastic and waiting, stretching around the sound of my breath. The shed loomed, corrugated iron sheets groaning faintly as the breeze nudged them. Dry weeds rattled against the base like brittle bones. No dog barked. No human voice called challenge. Just the restless, skeletal noises of a place long past caring whether anyone came or went.

I slipped through the gate, its hinge giving the barest squeak, and rounded the shed’s corner.

And there it was. The prize.

The bales leaned against the wall in uneven rows, bulky and golden, like a hoard of misshapen treasure left unguarded. Sunlight snagged on loose strands, setting them alight in pale flashes, straw turned briefly to fire before dulling again. The smell rolled out to meet me, dry and insistent, a scent like summer caught and pressed into blocks — sharp, earthy, almost sweet in its coarseness.

I stood there a moment longer than necessary, staring. Hay. I’d risked nerves, lies, and a drive into nowhere… for hay. And yet, absurdly, it felt like victory waiting to be claimed.

“Well,” I muttered to the empty air, “you’ve gotten yourself into another fine mess.”

My voice sounded ridiculous against the stretch of scrub and silence, thin and brittle, vanishing almost as soon as it left my lips. But it steadied me, somehow — proof that I was still here, still doing this, however idiotic it seemed.

No point lingering on the thought. I bent, wedged my hands beneath the coarse twine, and hauled. The bale resisted like it had every right to stay put, an obstinate block of compacted summer that wanted no part in my schemes. My shoulders shrieked in protest, tendons tugging, palms grinding against the rough weave until heat built in the skin. Inch by bloody inch, I wrestled it forward, dragging through the dust, the dirt whispering and straw scattering in untidy trails behind me.

It rasped like sandpaper across the ground, every scrape and shuffle loud enough to make my nerves spike. Each drag might as well have been a flare announcing thief in progress. I stopped once, halfway there, frozen with my fingers cramped tight on the twine, pulse hammering as though I could already hear boots pounding or a farmer’s voice, furious and sharp, cutting through the stillness. But nothing came. No footsteps, no shout. Just the thin whine of the wind tugging at the shed’s iron skin.

Only me. Only the bale. Only the colours — vibrant, impossible, and waiting — shimmering behind the shed.

With one last grunt, I gave it everything I had. The bale lurched, toppled forward into the glimmer, and was swallowed whole. No sound, no trace. Just gone.

I staggered back, chest heaving, hair prickled and itching with loose straw. My breath left me ragged, fogging the cold air, and then — absurdly — a laugh broke free, too sharp, too high. I’d done it. I’d actually done it. Stolen hay. Dragged it through a Portal to another world. For a goat called Vincent and his feathered entourage.

If the version of me who once fussed over antique shelving and argued with customers about lamp finials could see this… she’d probably be screaming into a cushion by now.

The sensible part of me murmured: That’s enough. One bale. You’ve fed them. Job done. Walk away before someone notices.

But another part — the one that had been getting louder, bolder, as though Clivilius itself was rewiring me — leaned in with a different voice: While you’re here, Beatrix… wouldn’t it be stupid not to take another?

I stared at the stack, the rows of bales leaning into one another like silent jurors. One missing made no difference — a tooth gone from a mouth that still grinned wide. Whoever owned them wouldn’t notice. Not yet. Not until long after I was back on the other side, safely anonymous.

And Vincent… Vincent was a goat with the single-minded appetite of a small god. One bale would barely slow him. He’d eat through it faster than I could muster regret.

“All right,” I sighed, resigned, the words puffing into the air like smoke. “Two. But that’s it.”

Back I went, straw crunching underfoot, my shoulders already aching at the thought. The twine bit into my palms as I crouched and dug my hands in again. This bale was meaner, heavier, like it had dug its hooves in. It resisted me at first, refusing to yield, then inched forward in grudging scrapes. Each drag was a war. My arms trembled, my back screamed, but stubbornness had its claws in.

Halfway, I buckled, bent double over the bloody thing, panting, hair clinging to my damp forehead. A straw strand stuck to my lip; I spat it away, muttering under my breath, swiping at my face like I could wipe the indignity off. Then I set my jaw and shoved again.

The Portal shimmered up ahead, patient as ever. Almost smug.

With a last desperate heave, I tipped the bale into its waiting light. Gone in an instant, swallowed without fuss. Only the smell of straw and the gouged dirt testified it had ever been there.

I sagged back against the shed, laughter breaking out of me raw and ridiculous. “Completely ridiculous,” I told the air, breathless, shaking.

But the humour curdled when the thought struck me — what else had I just sent through? The bales weren’t clean. Dust clung to them, yes, but also spiders, beetles, maybe even a snake curled snug inside. For all I knew, Clivilius was now hosting its first outback menagerie.

The image of Vincent squaring up against a redback spider — horns down, legs bristling — set me off again, laughter tumbling loud enough to rattle the shed’s corrugated skin.

When the last of it dissolved, I pushed upright, brushing straw from my jacket, shaking it loose from my hair. Enough. Two was plenty. Any more and I’d cripple myself or end up inventing an explanation for a farmer watching his haystacks evaporate.

I commanded the Portal closed, its shimmer snapping out like a light gone dark.

For a moment I stood in the cold stillness, lungs filling with sharp air, the landscape stretched wide and blank around me. Behind me, the shed sulked in silence. Ahead, the paddocks waited, indifferent. And somewhere else — impossibly elsewhere — two awkward golden blocks now sat waiting for Vincent’s judgement.

“First family photos,” I muttered. “Now hay. What’s next — tractors?”

A half-smile tugged despite myself as I trudged back to the car. Gravel popped under my boots, adrenaline ebbing in slow, unsteady waves. My hands still trembled as they closed on the wheel.

The engine coughed alive, loud in the emptiness. Dust curled in my wake, the farm shrinking behind me until it was nothing but scrub and sky.

A stray straw strand clung stubbornly to my sleeve. I flicked it off, watching it drift to the passenger seat, golden against the grey fabric — a ridiculous little trophy of the morning’s burglary.

Vincent had better appreciate this.

---

The drive back into Broken Hill carried none of the drama that had fuelled the way out. No pounding pulse, no illicit rush. Just the stubborn cling of dust in my hair, the sting of straw itching at the collar of my jacket, and the slow ache that had crept into my shoulder. A protest, perhaps, from muscles unaccustomed to hauling contraband hay across dimensions. The thrill of “felony farming” had drained away, leaving only the absurdity in its wake.

The road straightened into the outskirts of town, and the sun had fully risen by then, climbing high enough to scrape its glare across the corrugated roofs. Mid-morning light in Broken Hill had no softness to it. It stripped the place bare, tugged every flaw into view. Where twilight might have lent mystery, daylight gave only blunt honesty: rust fanning over letterboxes, curtains sagging in tired windows, paint peeling like old sunburn. Nothing was hidden; everything was laid out, stark and unembellished.

Even the hire carpark seemed to sulk under it. A scatter of sedans and battered utes huddled behind a sagging chain-link fence, their windscreens dulled with dust, their tyres sunk half an inch into gravel. Vehicles waiting not so much to be driven as tolerated.

I turned in, tyres crunching over stones, the sound loud in the stillness. My chosen car gave one last shudder as I steered it into a crooked space that might once have been a marked bay, though the lines had long since surrendered to weather and neglect. The gravel coughed up a cloud, settling back with all the grace of powdered rust.

The office waited at the carpark’s edge, a squat fibro box pretending to be respectable. Its walls were painted a beige so tired it might once have been cream, the colour drained by years of dust and resignation. Above the door, a faded sign declared CAR HIRE in lettering that looked hand-painted, as though someone had lost interest halfway through and decided legibility was good enough.

I killed the engine. The silence rushed in. For a moment, I just sat there, hands still gripping the wheel, absurdly aware of the straw flecks scattered across the passenger seat like evidence of my crime.

Inside, the air hit me with that sterile, faintly sour blend of carpet cleaner and instant coffee — a smell that didn’t so much welcome you as insist you behave. A man sat behind the counter, fifties, balding crown catching the fluorescent light, spectacles slipping low on his nose as though they’d long given up on holding position. A crossword puzzle lay open in front of him, pen poised. He looked up with the wary sluggishness of someone who’d seen every kind of rental disaster imaginable and had stopped hoping for pleasant surprises.

“Returning?” he asked. His tone suggested he half-expected me to say no, that instead I might confess to torching the vehicle in a ditch and coming here for absolution.

“Returning,” I echoed, dropping the keys on the desk like they were evidence.

He picked them up, gave me the kind of look that moved in slow motion — eyes flicking from my face to the car outside, sitting crookedly in its bay, dust still settling around it. “Fuelled?”

“Full tank. No scratches. No chickens in the backseat.”

One of his eyebrows twitched upwards at that last part, a flicker of curiosity that died almost instantly. He didn’t ask. He’d probably heard worse, or maybe Broken Hill had simply taught him not to follow the thread when a customer offered it. He bent back to his clipboard, scrawled something quick and illegible, then stamped a form with the bored precision of someone who measured out his day in ink pads.

“All good.” He waved me off, already lowering his gaze back to the crossword. Transaction over.

That was that. No ceremony, no suspicion. Just the faint whiff of instant coffee and the sound of a rubber stamp sealing another small absurdity into the day.

Outside, the light hit me hard — no shade now, no protective fluorescents muting the world. The glare felt sharper than before, pressing against my eyes until I squinted. Without the car key in my pocket, without the responsibility of someone else’s metal box on wheels, I felt lighter, though not freer. My boots grated against the gravel as I walked, the winter air carrying its metallic tang into my throat, as if Broken Hill itself wanted reminding of what it was made from.

No car. No excuses.

The Portal Key warmed in my palm as I ducked into the narrow alley off Oxide Street, the one I’d learned to favour. Its walls still pressed close, bins lined in neat ranks like silent jurors, their lids clamped shut against anything they might witness. The shade cooled the air instantly, sharp after the glare.

I curled my fingers tighter around the Portal Key. Reality shivered, colours bending until they lost their edges, light folding as if someone had pulled back a curtain. The shimmer yawned open in front of me, patient and impossible, waiting for me to decide whether I belonged on one side or the other.

I stood there a moment, caught by the weight of it. Two bales of stolen hay were already waiting in Clivilius, absurd proof that I could keep ferrying fragments across whenever I chose. Paul’s family frozen into a photograph. Jumpers, socks, mugs. And now straw, destined for a goat I hadn’t wanted but couldn’t leave.

Where did it stop?

A laugh twitched at the edge of me, brittle, as though the only other option was panic. I could close the Portal here and now, swear off it, bury the Portal Key at the bottom of some forgotten drawer. Never step through again.

But I wouldn’t.

I already knew that.

So I stepped forward. The shimmer closed around me like water, swallowing the glare and the grit and the faint smell of iron.

And just like that, Broken Hill was gone.