I bought a bottle of red wine for the risotto I am going to make for dinner. I put the bottle of red wine on the kitchen bench when I got home from the supermarket.

I got the fan out of the cupboard last night using it for the first time since last summer. The fan was covered in dust, so I leant over to the power point to unplug it, so I could take it outside to brush the dust off it.

My arm moved as far as it takes to pull a plug out of a power point. How far is that? A few centimetres. My elbow just caught the edge of the top of the bottle of wine. Looking over my shoulder, I watched the wine bottle rock on its base, in slow motion, backwards and forwards. Then it rocked back, and over it went.

I watched the neck break off the bottle as it hit the granite bench top.

As though the jugular vein was severed, it was suddenly a crime scene, blood seeping quickly out from the body. I had wine going in all directions. Away from me, heading to the far side of the bench and the carpet in the lounge room. And it rushed back towards me. One water fall, two waterfalls, three waterfalls, as I caught one, another started to flow, down the kitchen cupboards and onto the kitchen floor.

I grabbed kitchen paper towel, unravelling huge strands, and dumping it in clumps on the kitchen bench to stem the flow of wine heading towards the carpet, as the water falls gushed over the kitchen bench pooling in great lakes on the floor at my feet. Looking back now, I think the ‘great lakes’ stopped the flow of wine onto the carpet.

“Ah! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”

Buddy ran to the back door thinking I was yelling at him.

I madly started lifting things out of the sea of blood. My phone, the wooden garlic bowl, the onion basket, envelops, jars with pens in them, tea tree oil, bills, biros, tweezers, scissors, air freshener, my wallet, a plate with Buddy’s red meat defrosting. I pushed the red wine paper machete towel dripping mess towards a supermarket bag I had grabbed, it clumped together as if it was clotting. More paper towel, more murder scene bandages.

The cupboards were streaked and I scrubbed them madly with a sponge so they wouldn’t stay that way.

The base of the wine bottle still contained wine, and it was cracked down all sides. I picked it up and it crunched and ground, like a body with all of its bones broken, a bag of skin threatening to let go of its remaining bodily fluids at any moment. 

Then there were the splinters of glass, shattered fragments spread across the bench top. I picked at them one by one. I got the vacuum and sucked them all up, once the fluid was gone.

Our bins hadn’t been collected by then, so I was able to take it all out to the street and have it taken away. Just as a side note, when I was out at the bin disposing of the mess, these two hot guys approached me, dressed in singlets and shorts. Hello, I thought, who are you? They were the rubbish guys. We have really hot garbage collectors in Fitzroy. I watched them collect the bins, momentarily… with a whistle on my lips. I watched them walk to the other side of the street. A silent whistle.