You Want It, Don’t You, Billy?

Bill and Billy are having marital problems but these pall when compared to the problems they have to face from their next door neighbour. If that wasn’t enough, there is the general alarm put out to be on the alert for a serial murderer thought to be in the district. In the heavy night of the Mornington countryside, their weekender cottage offers scant protection from what is determined to befall them from the outside and what is determined to torment them from the inside. It is not as if they find themselves living in some scripted fiction where the fear comes driving at them intermittently but can be pulled back from with a flick of a light switch. No, this night they find themselves within the clutches of an evil that is constant, unharboured and unanchored. This night the pretend-fear becomes the real fear… the production gallops towards reality. It is difficult to tell who is who, or what is what. The only thing Bill and Billy - and anyone else - know is that all becomes very real dead mad. ——————–Bill Reed is a novelist, playwright and short-story writer. He has worked as editor and journalist both in Australia and overseas, and has won national competitions for drama and for long and short fiction. He now spends his time between Australia and Sri Lanka.