During peak-hour traffic, the man in the Audi drives so close to her bumper that it feels as if he's actually inside her car. She can feel his rage radiating outwards like the heat from his overworked European engine in the hot sun. She can see how his mouth encircles the words ‘stupid bitch' over and over again, forming and then cutting off the syllables as if by rote. Her scratched and faded Toyota, most loyal of all cars, if not the most beautiful, is the next obstacle, the next opponent. She has come to anticipate the moment of rare joy that comes when a man like this underestimates her; loves the confusion in his fishbowl eyes when she steps out of her car and walks between the idling cars on the Kwinana Freeway carpark. Then she waits, standing beside his rear tyre, for him to unbuckle his seatbelt and slide his suited arse along the leather, exiting with some difficulty from a vehicle which is too low to the ground.

‘What... what are you...?'

She smiles at him and unhinges her jaw.

She eats the man, suit, tie, leather shoes and all, though these synthetic fabrics give her indigestion. And then, because she hates to litter, she eats the car as well.

Later that night, she lies on her bed clutching her stomach, and burps up a hub cap. Ahh, she thinks as it clatters to the floor. That's better.