3 Short Stories About Byron

I have a couple short stories, which, frankly, aren't really much of stories at all. If I put them on their own, they would be the waste of a post, but I figured if I combined them into one super-post, then they might squeak by as something that can be classified as "entertaining" or "edutaining". So strangely enough, two of the stories involve my friend Cameron, who I never get to hang out with much. He lives on the other side of town, and is married, so we basically get to talk during our break at class. So, naturally, I wasn't there when these things happened, but I don't think that even really matters. So I'll start with him....

1. Cameron was walking down the beach, taking a dip and body-surfing some. The sun was hot and the beach was crowded, and it seemed like nothing was wrong. And there was nothing that anyone should be concerned about. Sure, there's sharks in the waters around Byron, but there haven't been attacks, but like it or not, ever since Steve Irwin died, there has been a lot more reports down here of people getting stabbed by stingrays. One happened just up the road at one of our fishing spots, in fact, we always see them swimming past, where they'll lift up one of their wings out of the water, and wave as they pass. Maybe they were trying to lure us in. I don't know.

Cameron was just walking through the knee-deep waves, and when he took his next step, he felt something slimy underneath his foot, and as he lifted it up, there was an unbelievable pain that shot through his foot, and could feel it climbing his leg. He dragged himself back up out of the water and looked down at his foot, where there was a small hole, clean through. His wife was lounging in the sand, so he called out to her. She helped him up the beach, along with the help from some concerned on-lookers, and took him to the hospital. I guess these things are normal. The doctors shot him full of this and that, and something containing an anti-venom, and sent him on his way.

2. Cameron again. This time he's walking down the main street in Byron. He's good friends with the owner of Sharky's Tattoos, so he rocks up there every once in a great while to say hello. This day he walks in and starts talking to his friend who's sitting down, concentrating on giving a tattoo. The man who's getting his skin inked has his head down, looking at the work that's being done, but when he hears the conversation between the two, he look up at Cameron. "Hey," the man says. "Hey... HEY! You're Ryan Reynolds." "Yeah," says Ryan Reynolds. For those of you who don't know Ryan Reynolds, he's best known as Van Wilder, but has been in several other amazing movies such as Blade Trinity and Waiting....

So Cameron strikes up a little bit of a conversation with him. I don't know how this conversation goes. I don't even know about the "Hey"s. I made that part up. Pretty good, eh? So they talk for a little while while Ryan's getting his tattoo, and I guess Ryan's on a motorcycle trip across Australia with his friends, and just happened to drop in to Byron.

3. The last story. I was gonna do a fourth about how Chirag spray painted the street, but it started to fizzle out the more I thought about it. So the last story. I wasn't here for this either. Maybe this is why I can't make a complete story out of these things. But this one was big news all over Byron. There's a biker gang called the Nomads that come and go through the area, and a lot of the members are settled down here. Well, apparently, this isn't just any biker gang. I guess these guys are bad. Real bad. They don't settle for just beating up puppies, I guess they also deal drugs throughout the region and have built up enough money to radically modify their bikes. Sweet. Totally.

Well, people can only deal drugs for so long before the fuzz catch a breath of what's going on. In one hour, over 20 houses were raided in New South Wales and Queensland where the police found lots of drugs, money, and chrome. So what does this all have to do with me? Apparently the lady that my friend is living with was the person that all of the bikers had called the most. I don't know what that really means in the grand scheme of things. She's a very nice, creative lady, so maybe they just wanted to talk. But either way, the cops rocked up (they do a lot of rockin') to my house because they were lost, and wanted to know where building 5 is. I told them "I don't know where building 5 is." That's the truth. I have absolutely no idea. Half the people here don't know where they live. So I guess that was my contribution to the case. Confusing an officer. So I guess they eventually found the house and asked the lady some questions. I don't know what she said, or how she killed the cops, but she's still around today, so I guess all is well at Cape Court.

Just another day in Byron.