Mel O'Connor
Bio
I'm a PhD candidate of Deakin University, researching representations of asexuality in Young Adult literature, but in my personal time I'm a D&D fanatic and pro Dungeon Master. I love all things horror, especially a spooky narrator!
Stories (15/0)
Piñata: My Asexual Coming-of-Age
My first kiss, alone with someone in their bed, was devoid of lust. It started chaste and kind. I knew how to decipher it until my lover laid a hand on my waist and tugged me closer into her. For her, the moment became adrenaline-fueled. This was a part of our relationship that I think she had looked forward to for some time.
By Mel O'Connorabout a year ago in Pride
"Soulmate": A Queer Ghost Romance
At five o’clock, the gunshot scattered the birds into the southerly’s Antarctic chill. Sunshine magenta guided the receding stars. The servant girl ran for the homestead with her skirt bunched in her hands, bare feet collecting the bindii.
By Mel O'Connorabout a year ago in Fiction
The Witch in Every Woman
Man’s hands, Natania has man’s hands. The children laugh as they run by her and the witch looks up from the linens in the bucket just to watch them as they go through the courtyard. She turns over her fingers in the water to analyse her deformity.
By Mel O'Connorabout a year ago in Fiction
Songs That Break Into My Home and Mug Me at Gunpoint
We all know the feeling. The one where it feels like the song was written specifically for you, like somebody's been looking over your shoulder. The kind that makes you feel a little too seen. Whenever I hear one of those songs that makes me say "oof", there's one special playlist I add it to. Here's a glimpse behind that curtain.
By Mel O'Connorabout a year ago in Beat
Aboriginal Life in Full Colour
'Deadly': Tell-All Aboriginal Memoir Breaks Silence Released alongside a companion music album with the same title, Archie Roach’s Tell Me Why is a brave tell-all memoir, shining a light on sixty-three years of passion, love, heartache and trauma.
By Mel O'Connorabout a year ago in Humans
Murder in the Bush: The Kangaroo Western, or Australian Noir
Peace, Garry Disher’s evocative, unmissable sequel to the award-winning novel Bitter Wash Road, combines the gritty isolation of the Australian bush with the tense, nail-biting thrills this author has made his trademark.
By Mel O'Connorabout a year ago in Criminal
Earthdeath
Madrid meets me with embarrassment. It blushes and ums and ahs and wrings its hands, knowing it hadn’t meant to be seen this way, congested after the worst of Lisbon’s acid storms. When Portugal splintered, the metropolis underwent a corrosion. I know this. I can see the cracks in Madrid’s foundations, those heavy lines of fatigue.
By Mel O'Connorabout a year ago in Fiction
Shatner
Bruce Dessner hadn't seen anything like it in his twenty years of teaching: Johnny's text response essay was solely composed of the repeated word Shatner, fragmented to match the number of characters each word would have had, had Johnny written with any degree of competence.
By Mel O'Connorabout a year ago in Fiction
The Dybbuk Box
When she first tries to get rid of me, I pluck the hair from her scalp. I do it quietly, painlessly, while she sleeps. At first, I think it's a little joke between us. That she doesn't really mean anything when she starts to google things like 'wine cabinet sales' and 'teak wood box Amazon'. I even feel a little guilty when she stands at her bathroom mirror, a clump of red hair in one hand, silent tears down her cheeks. But that night when she tries again, when she creates an ad for my box on eBay, I scream until I burst every lightbulb in her house. They hum with brightness, then shatter as one. Sparks burst from her overloaded power points. She shrieks and covers her face as her computer monitor goes black but for a single thread of white light.
By Mel O'Connorabout a year ago in Fiction
