Fiction

Dominion

A man stands by the sink in his sunlight-filled kitchen, vivid green devil’s ivy running along the timber window frame above him. Whatever he was thinking about moments ago – a trivial misunderstanding at work, a slightly condescending remark from his wife – has escaped him, so he turns his attention to the tepid post-washing-up water in the sink and whether it’s clean enough to wipe the benchtops with, thus concluding his kitchen tasks.

The water is a dull grey, though there are few visible flecks of food floating in it. There are still pockets of small soapy bubbles here and there, but they’re pallid, almost invisible. He quickly calculates these myriad biological factors and decides the antibacterial properties of the water, while weakened, must still be intact, and that to empty the sink and wipe the benches with fresh water would be a waste of not only time but precious resources. He soaks a near-new yellow sponge, backed by a forest-green heavy-duty scouring surface, in the water and then squeezes most of it out to achieve a moist but not dripping instrument. Then he sets to work on the surface of the benchtop closest to the lounge room, moving slowly yet methodically towards the sink.

The first casualties are the bigger bits of food – breadcrumbs, diced vegetables fallen from chopping boards, two errant kidney beans – which are swept directly into his cupped hand and then tossed into the compost bin beneath the sink, before he repeats his sponge soaking and squeezing routine. He gets to work on the smaller bits, lingering with circular motions in areas where condiments and other semi-liquids have begun to congeal and stick to the white, engineered-stone benchtop. During this phase he feels the stakes being raised. Occasionally, he flips the sponge to apply its rougher green side, attacking the toughest of stains.

He imagines that each wiping motion has innumerable and untold ramifications for a civilisation he doesn’t see but knows is there. He’s aware that in some sense this is an objective fact, considering the clusters of germs and microbes with names he can’t pronounce that he’s destroying with soap and his omnipotent hand. But he also intuits a deeper, less biological, game taking place. He imagines that each wipe of the sponge, each banished spot of grime, chips away at something more significant (crime, injustice or evil), and that each decision he makes – how long it takes him to remove a stain, why he chooses to prioritise one area over another – is being scrutinised and agonised over by a populace who may or may not have the power to remove him. If he devotes too much time removing crumbs from one area of the benchtop, he’s bemoaned and reviled for taking too long to get to another. If he works too long on a stubborn dried foodstuff with the yellow sponge, his critics lambast him for not flipping it over to grind the green scourer into it.

Fortunately, he’s armed with a politician’s tongue, which he employs to deride his opposition. He patiently describes how their alternative, half-baked plans would waste much more precious water than his regime’s clearly effective systems. He calmly and meticulously explains, via broadcasts that reach every corner of the benchtop, the ways he has rapidly improved their way of life, removing the constant threats of grime and pestilence that had, until recently, forced them to live in fear.

It’s unclear whether he’s aware, even subconsciously, that much of the populace remains terrified of him. They cower at the sight of his callous hand and recoil at the memories of once-thriving neighbourhoods destroyed alongside them. They lower their heads. They plot.

Occasionally he addresses his subjects in their towns or villages, smiling down at them from the stage. He is struck – during a speech at a well-manicured park – by a young child clutching a placard adorned with his official portrait. Their eyes meet and they chuckle at her clumsy attempt to clap while holding the sign – a dimple forming on just one of her perfect little cheeks. He is far, far away by the time the girl sees the sponge block the sunlight from her town.

After 30 seconds or so, the white benchtop begins to sparkle, at least to the naked eye. Only when he inspects it up close can he spot an occasional fleck – a problem neighbourhood or two – holding on post-annihilation. He allows himself a moment’s reflection, recalling the jungle of food and crumbs that confronted him when he assumed power. But now, the afternoon sun on the benchtop increasing in strength, the spotless surface momentarily strikes him as barren, lifeless even, and he briefly wonders what has been lost in his pursuit of perfection, the folly of sameness.

The man’s wife calls out to him from one of the kids’ bedrooms – she needs a hand to lift something heavy from inside a wardrobe – which jolts him from his kingdom. A fly lays its eggs on a tiny piece of chicken behind the espresso machine. A colony of E. coli grows on a spot near the stovetop. A former stonemason a thousand kilometres away takes his last breath in a hospital bed, having succumbed to the horrors of silicosis. The man places the sponge alongside the sink and walks down the hallway to his daughter’s bedroom.

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on May 3, 2025 as "Dominion".

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