4338.208 · July 27, 2018 AD
The Shake That Settled Everything
The Smith family gathers around a backyard fire pit on Friday evening, moving carefully around what nobody's saying. Greta is distracted, Noah builds the fire, and Charles eats everything in reach. Then Millie discovers something magnificently dead behind the compost bin and commits to it with her whole body. Jerome hauls her inside for a bath that becomes a one-armed ordeal of lavender shampoo, soaked socks, and full-body dog resistance. By the time Millie explodes from the bathroom to terrorise Charles and his BBQ Shapes, the evening has found its rhythm — loud, damp, and almost convincingly normal.
The evening opens with a backyard fire and the family performing ordinariness around each other. Nobody mentions the phone call, Paul, or Luke. Greta's eyes don't quite match her smile. Jerome asks Noah whether Millie has a complex emotional palette and gets redirected, the question landing nowhere.
Then Millie bolts for the compost bin and rolls in something dead with total commitment. Jerome drags her inside, and the bath becomes the chapter's centrepiece — a one-armed, jug-by-jug ordeal against a dog who resists every stage with escalating indignation. The wet bandage, the soaked socks, the bathroom floor becoming a lake, the second shampooing because the first barely touched it. Somewhere in the repetitive work of soap and water, the day's weight recedes just enough to breathe.
Millie gets the last word with a full-body shake that covers the mirror, the walls, and Jerome's face. Released from the bathroom, she tears through the house in a post-bath rampage, using Charles as a drying rack before collapsing on the carpet in exhausted triumph. Jerome changes into dry clothes — the old Adelaide Zoo shirt from Year 10 work experience — re-bandages his arm, and joins Charles on the couch for BBQ Shapes and bad television. The brotherly banter is easy, warm, and almost enough to make Friday night feel like it's supposed to. Almost.
