Free Carousel by Brendan Ritchie

during the night. Gusts of moist southern wind whistling across the ageing patchwork of steel that made up the cinema roof. Wind was our best reminder that a world still existed outside. Carousel had cracked and groaned with the hot easterly in the summer, and now it buckled tightly under winter’s gusty bursts from the south.
    The sky had been clear when I ventured up to David Jones at sunset so I was surprised to be woken by such force during the night. Of course the view only offered a short-range forecast. If I had the internet I might have seen a huge brooding low spitting out cold fronts that stretched all the way from Geraldton to Esperance.
    As usual, the first one was the angriest.
    I sat up in my bunk for a while, listening to the wind and wondering when the rain might start. There seemed to be an unusually long build-up. Tucked back into the north-east corner of the centre, Myer was relatively sheltered. I could hear the dull hum of wind, with the occasional echo of some loose roofing or gutter smacking against steel somewhere on the sprawling roof. But, for a long time, no rain. I had drifted back tosleep by the time the first spatterings began.
    By morning the noise was immense.
    I walked downstairs to join the others at breakfast. Lizzy and Rocky were already eating, keen to get out to the back entrance and watch the storm roll through. There was half a bottle of Shake ’n’ Pour ready for me on the bench so I dripped out a couple of pancakes and watched them cook. Taylor arrived looking tired with a big fluffy robe pulled over her jeans and t-shirt. I held up the mix. She nodded so I poured out two more. The noise of the rain drowned out all sounds so there was no point talking. Before long, Lizzy and Rocky were cycling off to the back entrance.
    Taylor and I sat through a pretty lazy breakfast. After the pancakes we swallowed a selection of daily vitamins put together by Lizzy. A multi. Some fish oil. C with echinacea. These were altered due to what was still in code and what new condition she considered posed us the most risk. On top of these we piled coffee. In contrast to the first day, time and practice had developed our coffee skills to a barista level. Even now that we were well out of fresh and frozen milk we could still churn out pretty perfect lattes using powder. Taylor sipped hers and read a
Gourmet Traveller
magazine. I worked my way through some Sylvia Plath.
    When we were done Taylor packed together her tools to head out and check some doors. I decided to tag along given her usual assistant was busy watching the storm.
    As we walked westward through the centre we noticed several patches of wetness on the floor where rain had blown in under gutters or gathered too heavily at fissures and seeped inside. The noise changed as we approached the front entrance and the dome. The echo disappeared, replaced by the sound of direct rain. We hadn’t erected the winter awning over the dome when the season started to turn. There was a control panel by the sushi place, and a good chance Rocky could figure out how it worked, but the idea of adding to our confinement and losing our only real patch of sky didn’t appeal to any of us, regardless of the weather. With today’s rain the floor was wet and slippery all the way back to the Apple Store.
    Taylor led us upstairs past the cinema. Halfway across I reached out and tapped her on the shoulder. She looked back and I nodded down at the entrance.
    The scene beneath the dome was pretty surreal.
    A miniature tornado swirled down through the opening to the tiles below. The falling water was condensed and circular at the top, but fanned as itlowered and the wind swirled in every direction. Leaves and dirt littered the floor, carried outward by tiny rivulets of water. The whole thing was backlit by the daylight seeping through the large windows at the entrance. Our centre had its own waterfall.
    Taylor and I shared a smile. It was beautiful and