Omar wins 1st and 2nd place in Newcastle Short Story Prize 2024!

In the 2024 Newcastle Short Story Award, Omar Musa won first prize for his story ‘Langsat,’ a fictional story based on his real-life experience after a kickboxing fight in Malaysia, and second prize for ‘Boogeyman,’ about a book theft that leads to an unlikely friendship.

‘I’m over the moon to have won two prizes in the Newcastle Short Story Award, and that my writing has resonated with the judges,’ said Musa. ‘I hope it also resonates with readers. Langsat is definitely fiction, but it’s closely based on a scary experience that actually happened to me after my first (and last) fight, in Kota Kinabalu. It got me thinking deeply about issues that have been preoccupying me for the past few years: statelessness in Sabah, entrenched inequality and injustice, migration, violence, chance, and at times insurmountable gaps in understanding. I suppose I wanted the reader to experience a form of vertigo, just like the characters do, as they stare down into a dark, swirling vortex.’

Read the winning stories "Langsat" and "Boogeyman" below. Buy the Newcastle Short Story Prize 2024 anthology HERE

Langsat

by

Omar Musa

The pay sucks. The promoters seem like scumbags. But it’s your 42nd birthday, so you jump at the chance to fight in Kota Kinabalu. Return Economy plane ride from Sydney to Malaysia, and a hotel room with sea views. Not too shabby. As far as you know, the fighters aren’t great shakes in Borneo, where your mum’s from, so you won’t even have to train that hard. ‘Put on a show, collect the cheque, spend a few days island-hopping,’ you tell your mum, Ligaya.

‘You’re a fighter cos I’m a fighter,’ says Ligaya, then adds, typically anxious, ‘Be careful over there!’ She was born stateless, neither Malaysian nor Filipino, in a canoe on one of the islands, just opposite where you now stand on the balcony of a mouldy hotel room. In the early 1980s, she scrapped tooth and nail to buy her Malaysian citizenship, by paying someone off in an office. With the right stamp on the right papers, she got a new name, ethnicity, and nationality. ‘The things I had to go through,’ she said: ‘Hell.’ Even once she married an Aussie and migrated to suburban Gosford, she’d still wake up crying, scared the Malaysian authorities would arrest her. Sometimes you wish you were smarter, and could get a better job, pay her back for her sacrifices, let her brag to her mates more; but sometimes, you wonder if her story was exaggerated. You stare out over the glittering green sea and the hazy islands, then down to the concrete, six storeys below. You start to sway.

Stepping away from the edge, you pinch open a langsat; it’s a fruit you haven’t eaten since a childhood trip here with Ligaya who, despite everything, wanted you to know your homeland. She guided you through the market: tourist tat, sea cucumbers, piles of dried shrimp, purple and red rice from the hills. Her tentativeness fell away when she picked up a langsat:

‘The sweetest flesh,’ she said in Malay, smiling. ‘The bitterest seed.’

You feed the sweet gelatinous flesh, segment by segment, into your ruined mouth, and before you realise, you’ve eaten half the bag. You’re ravenous: weight cuts are getting harder as you get older. You sweated out three kilos in water yesterday, running up and down the road in a sauna suit, and nearly collapsed twice.

Now, you stretch languidly, shadowboxing in the mirror.

“Journeyman”, “tomato can”, fed to more talented fighters on the way up to pad their records–you know your reputation and couldn’t give two fucks. Long as you get paid. As soon as the fight starts, you know you’re in deep shit. Your opponent is a slippery young featherweight from Labuan, peppering you at will with a piston-like jab. You can see the punches coming, that’s not the problem: you just can’t seem to get out of the way. In the first round, a gash opens up on your left brow, where amassed scar tissue now splits at the slightest touch. In the second round, you’re bludgeoned by a right hook that cracks a molar, so as you shake out the cobwebs, you decide to make it ugly. Dirty boxing on the inside, grabbing and holding, weighing down on his neck, you turn it into a dogfight. The crowd screams for blood, and blood is what they get. You wade into the darkness, delirious, a noctambulist seeking holy punishment. The fight is waved off in the sixth round. Rinsed in claret, you stumble in circles, and don’t protest. The crowd cheers your slurring attempts at a speech in Malay afterwards. You take selfies with some cops and skaters and girls in hijabs, then buy a vanilla soft serve cone, eat it slowly and painfully, then go back to the hotel alone.

Your record now stands at 19 wins and 23 losses.

With both eyes nearly swollen shut, you stand on the balcony, taking in the lights of the islands, stippled through in the blackness. You stare down at the concrete below, think about jumping, but instead, slide the glass door shut, sit back on the couch shivering and watch YouTube clips, laughing softly, rubbing Tiger Balm into your shoulders and joints, then eventually drift off.

You dream of the islands. Your mother is paddling you in a canoe, towards a tilting, bronze horizon. You reach into the blue-green saltwater and lave it over your face, which begins, miraculously, to heal in fast forward, bruises evaporating, cuts closing up. You fill up with pale green light–

Suddenly, you sit upright. Something’s wrong. Squinting out into the darkness of your balcony, you can see something crouching, a shape even darker than the shadows. A dog? A dog couldn’t have climbed this high. The shape shifts on its haunches. A monkey? There aren’t any monkeys in the city… No. The shape is human. Holy fuck. You stand up, rush to the glass door, then shout whatever comes into your head: ‘What the fuck are you doing here? Get the fuck off my balcony!’

The figure, shocked, stands straight up, and in one motion swings onto the railing of the balcony, then, climbing downwards, boneless as a ghost, slips off the front edge. Gone. Have you just scared someone to jump to their death? You picture them, broken, on the concrete six storeys below, a dark pool spreading beneath them.

You think about opening the door to look, when you see two more figures out of the corner of your eye,  climbing down rapidly from above, ledge to ledge, past your balcony, then disappearing from view. Has there been a fire upstairs? You picture people jumping from the Twin Towers on September 11th.

Just as you’re wondering whether they too are lying dead on the concrete below, pressed to the glass, you see a fourth figure making its way slowly down the front of the building. They climb gingerly, clearly terrified. They too go past your balcony, but then you see their hands grip the edge of the railing. They can go no further. The hands, clutching and slipping, clutching and slipping. They don’t seem to be able to hold on much longer. Without opening the door, you watch as the person clambers back up, with every ounce of their strength. Once on top of the railing, with a final effort, they pitch forward into your balcony.

It’s a woman, in her twenties, in a black hijab, T-shirt, and underpants. She is petrified, hopping from foot to foot, gesturing frantically to let her in.

‘Saya takut,’ she mouths, weeping: ‘I’m scared, Abang.’

You don’t like her calling you “big brother”. Is this a set up? Are you getting robbed? You look to see if she could be hiding a knife.

You watch her, running back and forth now, petrified. No. You trust her fear. You know fear: your own and others’. Your whole life you’ve shaped it, lathed it, exploited it, had it used against you.

You unlock the door and slide it open.

As soon as there’s a small gap, the woman squeezes through it, then runs as fast as she can into the corner of the room and hides in the dark, crying. Any time you try to talk to her, she hisses,

‘Shhhhhhh, they’ll hear you.’

‘Who?’ you ask, but she won’t reply.

At last, she draws her phone from somewhere and begins to type, pock-marked face illuminated by the screen, and this seems to calm her; an expression appears on her face that seems either quizzical or business-like. It’s too dark to tell. Your own face feels like it needs stitches. Finally, she speaks:

‘The cops are upstairs, Abang. There was a big fight. They arrested my brother.’

‘Drugs?’

‘Not drugs.’

‘The others?’

‘Friends–,’ she starts, then again, ‘Shhhhhh.’

She creeps to the window, and peers out.

‘Ada police di bawah,’ she says.

She’s right. Red and blue lights flash downstairs, refracted on your window. Cops above, cops below. Leaning back into the shadows, she tries to call someone. No answer. You ask again,

‘What was the fight about?’

She looks away, like she won’t reply, but then stares at you hard,

‘I’ll be straight with you, Abang. I’m making money in a room up there. I have customers…’

‘Okay. One of your customers hit you? So, you called the cops?’

‘No, the police were already there.’

‘Already?’

‘Ya… The police are our customers.’

‘Shit.’

She goes to the window again and peeks out, but this time, doesn’t seem to be looking at the street, but across at the islands. You look, too. You want to ask ‘are you from there?’–damn, you might even be related–but instead you ask,

‘Do you have papers? IC card?’

She shakes her head slowly, then seems to correct herself,

‘Ya, I do, but not here…’

‘You’re a bad liar,’ you say in English.

‘Apa itu?’ she asks. ’What’s that?’

You sit in silence. You remember the bag of langsat. You offer her one. She shakes her head. You shrug, start peeling it for yourself, then catch her staring, and suddenly remember what your face looks like. You touch your eyebrow. The cut has opened up again, blood pulsing down your cheek. You wipe it half-heartedly but it doesn’t stop.

‘Abang,’ she says, ‘if the cops come knocking, please don’t answer. Just stay quiet, okay?’

***

When you had your first pro fight, still trusting in the meritocracy of violence and veneration of the matriarch, you yelled something spontaneously. You raised your fist high as you entered the ring, as if holding up a severed head, or the flag of separatist nation, and yelled that you were ready to die. It became your catch cry, but it changed shape and timbre over the years, as you started to lose, and lose, and lose.

***

‘Ten more, minutes, k, Abang?’ she says, looking at her phone. ‘Someone’s gonna come get me.’

You offer her another langsat and, this time, she takes it. She expertly splits it open, then chews it slowly, wearing the same quizzical, business-like expression as before. She reaches out her open hand for another, which you give her. Instead of eating it, she hides it in the folds of her hijab.

Right then, her phone lights up.

‘Open the door, Abang,’ she says.

You stand up to let her out. You want tell her good luck, but don’t know how to say it in Malay, so instead, you simply open the door. A small man with a crew cut is standing there, carrying a huge backpack and some clothes. In a flash, before you have a second to think, the man strolls in, casually, and the woman shuts the door behind him.

‘Holy shit,’ you think, ‘This is it. I’ve been set up.’

Your body a coiled spring. The man is way smaller than you; you could easily take him. But something about how he walked in, regally, without even looking at you, completely at ease in another person’s space, terrifies you. This man would have no problem slashing a throat, or selling a woman. You remember that you have the fight payment, in cash, on the table. And you now know something else: you don’t want to die. You’ll give them whatever they want, as long as they let you live.

But the man is paying you no mind, nor looking around at the hotel room for something to rob. He’s focused on the woman. He hands her some pants, nods briskly, and she puts them on. He then hands her some shoes, nods again, and she puts them on, as well.

‘Okay,’ you say. ‘Both of you. Get out.’

The man looks at you for the first time. His face is vacant–a stateless graveyard, a ring after a fight–as he takes you in, all of you, in less than a second. He sees what he needs to see, then, touches the woman on her elbow, opens the door, and they leave without saying a word.

Boogeyman

by

Omar Musa

Boogeyman

There is one surviving photograph of Sulaiman Si Keris, a pirate who terrorised British and Dutch cargo ships on the Makassar Straight at the turn of the 20th century. It shows him in the centre of a retinue of sailors and warriors, marked by a white  “x” above his head. His hand rests on the serpentine keris he was named for, the dagger’s scabbard studded with jewels.

In a second-hand bookshop in Newtown, Timun was flabbergasted to find, towards the back of the shop, in a self-published, leather-bound diary, by one Matthew Cunningham (a deckhand from Kent), a photographic portrait of Sulaiman Si Keris. As far as he knew, none existed. Although the photo was in black and white, it was so clear that it resembled a modern digital image. In the portrait, Sulaiman Si Keris is in full regalia–embroidered jacket, patterned turban, bejewelled keris on waist–perched on a rock next to a seething grey ocean. He stares at the camera with an expression halfway between longing and amusement, a white slave holding a silken umbrella over his head.

Underneath, etched into the plate, unmistakably, is Sulaiman Si Keris. Pirate.

Timun stood, mouth agape, and looked across at bookshop owner, Ducky Longyear. A man in his 60s, he was over 150 kilograms (maybe even 200), perched on a tiny wooden stool. He had white pork-chop sideburns and was wearing a green tartan golf cap, scratching his balls with one hand and holding The Complete Stories of Franz Kafka with the other, reading; totally engrossed in both activities. Timun turned over the leather-bound diary to see the price: $1500.

He groaned.

The price immediately triggered a flash flood of memories and faces, of all of the people who’d wronged him over the years. First, his parents, harbingers of a lifelong ennui, then his useless mates who couldn’t ever be on time to games night; his historically uninformed girlfriend Matilda, keener to listen to Ariana Grande and persuade Timun to have sex than discuss the question of whether Blackbeard the Pirate classified as a resistance fighter or not.

The world is simply not worthy of me, he thought.

He looked back at the book in his hand. He couldn’t afford it but he had to have it. He looked again at the bookshop owner, Ducky Longyear, and decided he was going to steal it. The place didn’t have cameras and, in any case, Ducky Longyear was enormous: he’d have trouble getting off his stool, let alone giving chase. Timun knew Newtown like the back of his hand, and exactly what route he’d take down King Street to the train station. Back before his friends all let him down, he used to have a party trick on the train: they could name a stop, however obscure, anywhere in the Greater Sydney region, and he could point to it on the train map in less than two seconds. He smiled, knowing that he’d be back in his flat in Burwood in approximately 28 minutes, poring through the diary of Matthew Cunningham.

Timun walked out of the shop with the book under his arm.

As he began to walk briskly down the street, the world went silent, as if the mute button had been pressed on all of King Street. A rare euphoria went shuddered through his body, he, in a world of fools, was exorcising all of them while also exercising his greatness. The picture of Sulaiman Si Keris materialised in his head, before the pirate became animated, swiping his dagger around in the air menacingly. Timun knew there was conjecture over use of the word “pirate” to describe such a man, and some argued it was a colonial construct. He also knew that the English word “boogeyman” had originally come from “Bugis man”, as scary, swarthy “Bugis Pirates”, like the man in Timun’s mind, were used by British and Dutch parents to terrify their kids. Grinning, he ran his hands through his long hair until that bubble was burst. A loud voice was shouting behind him. He turned around to see that Ducky Longyear was chasing him down the street.

Timun began to run.

He ran, as fast as he could, past the tobacconist, past the pie shop, narrowly dodged someone carrying a bouquet of tulips, copped an earful from a tradie as he ran a red light, huffing, puffing, he slipped on a spilled ice cream cone (bubble gum), then ran on towards the train station. He already had his Opal card in hand, ready to tap on, but when he looked over his shoulder, he realised that Ducky Longyear was right there, two metres behind him, sprinting, yelling, never catching him, but never falling back. Always keeping pace. Timun was breathing raggedly now. Without knowing why, instead of going into the train station, he veered right, into Macdonaldtown, scuttled down some stairs, two by two, but was alarmed to see, reflected in the window of a passing car, Ducky Longyear leap down whole staircase in one swoop, floating through the air like a pillowy, rotund cat. He barely seemed to have broken a sweat, green tartan hat perched on his head. Timun skidded on a purple patch of rotted jacaranda flowers, twisted his ankle, and hobbled on into the darkening streets, losing hope. He’d never been more tired, his lungs ablaze, but Ducky Longyear was not slowing down. He was closing in. 

Timun realised, terrified, that he wasn’t going to outrun him.

With a final effort, and almost all hope lost, Timun flung the diary of Matthew Cunningham behind him, like a piece of meat to a ravenous dog. He glanced over his shoulder as he ran, and saw with relief that Ducky Longyear had come to a halt and was reaching down to pick up the diary.

Late that night, book-less, Timun lay in bed, his thighs on fire. Thinking of the encounter–the race–with Ducky Longyear, Timun’s face burned even more. How could that corpulent tome vendor have kept up with me? thought Timun. It wasn’t possible! The shame was manifest. He couldn’t sleep.

He turned on the light and rummaged in his closet, through his board games and pirate Lego, and eventually rustled up an old pair of ASICS running sneakers.

The street was dark, rain-slick, pasted with fallen leaves. He took it slow at first, a casual jog. His hammies grumbled, then his knees, but he soon got into a good rhythm, and managed to run from his house to Strathfield and back. No problem. Invigorated, he started to run at the same time every day. Then he doubled it, to two runs a day. Then three. As the weeks passed, Timun’s body reshaped itself. His buttocks became like boulders, his lungs became roaring bellows; he even shaved his head so there was less wind resistance. Timun started taking public transport less and running everywhere, all over the Inner West, even all the way to work at the casino. He ran with a jaunty freedom: the world, and all that was in it, was finally worthy enough for Timun.

Proud of himself, he decided to download a running app so he could keep track of his times.

Soon, Sulaiman Si Keris was a distant memory. Timun started to get back in touch with old friends, forgiving them with Zen-like magnanimity. Some of them even downloaded the app and they formed a running club. He made love to Matilda for the first time in months and asked her if she could play him Ariana Grande’s new album. He prepared his parents a meal he’d found in a cookbook of ancient Roman recipes, replacing pheasant with chook.

On his running app, his times were getting faster and faster. Over several months, his time for a 5-kilometre run descended from 36 minutes to 30, to 27, and finally, to the blistering pace of 22-and-a-half minutes. He strutted to the blackjack table, where he worked as a dealer, with an extra pep in his step.

But the good times couldn’t last forever.

Timun was feeling joyous as he uploaded his latest run–5 km in 21 minutes and 59 seconds, a personal best–but then he saw something that made his blood run cold. In the “suggested friends” section of the app was a name he hadn’t thought of in months, one he’d tried to forget: Ducky Longyear.

He stared for a whole minute. Two. Tears welled up as he gazed at the picture of Ducky Longyear, gigantic, perched on a stool, wearing a blue tartan golf cap. Timun inhaled deeply into his newly expansive lungs, summoned his courage, then clicked Add Friend.

Timun and Ducky Longyear began to compete, digitally, at a distance. Every day, they would upload their times and routes to the app. Their routes never touched, but they got close every now and again, somewhere around Petersham usually, as if they were playing a game of cardiovascular chicken. Their times were also uncannily close, but somehow, Ducky Longyear was always that tad bit faster. Timun was flummoxed, then crestfallen. Then enraged.

He ran more and more. He began to pump weights; he even went on a steroid cycle. He paid a personal trainer who had ten times run the City2Surf, and thrice the New York Marathon.

But regardless of how he felt, every day, he would unfailingly “like” each of Ducky Longyear’s uploads. And Ducky would unfailingly “like” his posts, in return. If one of them ever missed a few days, for whatever reason (ie, Matilda finally broke up with Timun, to his great relief), the other person would post a sad face emoji on their profile.

At times, he felt like he’d finally found a worthy adversary; at others, Timun thought he was going insane. Had he been possessed? Was he being pursued by a ghoul? He finally decided to face his fears and confront the corpulent bookshop owner, in person, to put an end to this malevolent vendetta. He walked in the door and, this time, Ducky Longyear was wearing a red tartan golf cap, perched on the same little stool, reading a book on rhododendron cultivation with an erudite pout on his face. He was not surprised in the least to see Timun walk in.

‘You and me,’ said Timun, almost growling. ‘Five km race at Sydney Olympic Park Athletic Centre. Timed, with witnesses. Let’s end this once and for all!’

‘Not interested, mate.’

‘You’re scared.’

‘You need to learn not to steal other people’s property.’

‘Tell me how you do it. Tell me how you run so fast! Tell me!’

‘You don’t need to know how. You need to know why.’

‘Okay, then. Why?’

‘Because,’ said Ducky Longyear, ‘nature abhors a vacuum. I’m simply filling a vacuum in the universe.’

A year later, Timun read about Ducky Longyear’s passing in a free Inner West newspaper. He’d died of lung cancer, having been a two-pack-a-day smoker since the age of 14. Timun went to his funeral, of course. He had to. He was shocked when one of Ducky’s daughters stopped him, with a gentle tap on the arm.

‘You’re my dad’s mate, Timun, aren’t you?’

‘That’s me.’

‘Our dad left you this when he died… It was in his will.’

She handed him a book, wrapped in paper printed with an Olympic gold medal motif. Timun knew what it was immediately.

As he sat in bed that night, reading the diary of Matthew Cunningham, this particular passage caught his attention: Sulaiman Si Keris, to some of the Natives, is a freedom fighter of great repute, a brave warrior and hero. To others, he was an evil and exploitative rogue with no morals. The Boogeyman, he who keeps us up late at night and hides under the bed, shows us exactly who we are.

At that, Timun peeked under the bed, just in case his friend Ducky was there.