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A half-acre is a slither of land which cannot be conquered. Shaped like an off cut of craft paper. Wholly unproductive, unprofitable except to the insects in the summertime. They are everywhere if you remember to look for them. There was half-acre at the end of Drumming Way. It was triangular, squashed between the highway and its turnoff into a new residential development, where it was severed by an empty plot of real-estate possibility that had just been listed for sale.

A common myna dove into the half-acre. The needle grasses and thistle sliced its feathers and the yellow skin that swooped around his eyes. Its leg was wounded. It was exhausted. But then it sprung out from the grass. Its body was renewed. Nobody witnessed soar up and away. The nearest houses were down the hill, and the streetlights on Drumming Way illuminated an empty street.

That half-acre was a shapeshifter, too. Rushil didn’t know this at the time, but he knew the plot beside it seemed to change widths at night. Each new plot was advertised as eight metres across. But when he was on a walk to calm himself down, and with an experienced glance, Rushil knew this plot at the end of the street was under eighty thousand. He even went home to retrieve his tape measure.

Harneet was packing the kids into the car, about to run off to her sister’s again. “Oh, you’re back and finally ready to talk? Well guess what?” she taunted. “You know what, Rushil? It’s too late for that.”

Rushil’s eldest glowered at him from the passenger seat. They hadn’t spoken in weeks.

He returned to the empty plot. What he suspected was true. Fencepost to fencepost, the plot was seventy-eight ninety. What a cheap rip-off. He was on a walk again days later, still in a fluoro vest, again after a fight with Harneet. The plot seemed wider than before. He measured eighty forty. The next night, eighty-one hundred. A six-centimetre increase, overnight.

Last night, the plot was eighty eighteen across. He thought he was going crazy, or his tape measure was somehow faulty. So, he tied yarn between the posts, so it stretched across the plot in a straight line.

Now, Rushil gazed over the blank hill behind his street, twinkling with a grid of white streetlights like a god’s fishing net had fallen over the land. He was alone, again, inside the duplex, standing in his wife’s turquoise dressing gown, which she hated him wearing. Harneet had taken the kids to her sister’s. But at least it was Friday and they didn’t have school tomorrow.

The immutable silence of 14A’s grey walls was crushing him. Yes, Harneet was out again tonight, airing their laundry out to her sister and inevitably reaching her whole family. So, instead he wondered about the yarn he had tied last night. He thumbed the tape measure in his pocket. He was ready to go. It was probably nothing, but it was nice to have something to think about other than work, his wife, and his kids.

He saw his young neighbour, Vera from 14B, slip out to the front yard with a rubbish bag. Finally, a way to break the silence.

“Hello, Vera!” His slides slapped the driveway as he approached the fence.

“Oh, hi, Rushil.”

“Lovely night. I might go for a walk, since the wife and kids are visiting their aunt.”

“That’s nice.”

Vera kept her head down, retreating up her driveway. Fumbling for the keys to the front door, before slipping back inside.

Stuffing his hands in the dressing gown pockets, Rushil made his way up Drumming Way. The half-acre waited patiently as he approached, cowering in the darkness past the last streetlight. Rushil took no note; only gaped at the yarn he tied in disbelief.

It hung low in an arch that touched the ground. Rushil jostled it. He hooked the tape measure over one fencepost and slowly dragged out its shiny, yellow tongue until it hovered over the other fencepost, just as he’d done in prior nights. Seven six six eight. Thirty-five centimetres narrower than it had been last night!

Rushil measured the width of the other plots on Drumming Way. All were exactly eight metres across. He whipped is head about, somehow scared he was being watched, but knowing no one was there. There were probably cameras to catch trespassers. He thought against trespassing to measure the length of the property.

Vera was alone, too, in 14B. She’d bought the duplex a few weeks ago, and now it was ready for when Jared returned. Then, they would start forever together. Most rooms were half-empty for now. But soon, they would be filled with usefulness. With kids and their toys and pets and Jared’s stuff, of course. Her bedside lamp cast stretching shadows up the bedroom walls like petrified trees. It made the pictures in the Wikipedia article she was reading feel even creepier. She scrolled through the pictures about a 13^th century massacre. Was that job really worth it? All the way in Singapore. Each time she called, Jared was too busy to talk. It’s hard to find a good time, with the time difference. But she was only three hours ahead.

But something metaphysical was aligning. She felt like she was ascending. In videos, people would repeat words she was just thinking of or discuss topics that were on her mind in that moment. Or when she thought of Jared, an ad for flights to Singapore would come up. She felt outside of herself, on her own shoulder like a parrot.

The scene of a 13^th century massacre shot on a Sony video camera is lush and green with morning glory. The banality of the picture was unnerving. If not for written documentation, nobody would know such atrocities had taken place there, however long ago. Who knew what hidden histories lay in this new development, which had lay almost undisturbed, nurtured by the indigenous peoples, until it had been completely upturned just a few years ago?

Maybe Rushil was right. It was a good night to go for a walk. She needed to clear her mind. She stepped out onto the porch. Rushil was gone, thank goodness. The crystal streetlights over the new development twinkled like diamonds on black velvet, like engagement rings. It was a sign.

The grass was melting under Rushil’s feet. Downwards towards a single point, like honey sliding down a funnel. He didn’t move, only stared as weeds passed underneath his slippers. He was transfixed and felt nothing. Rushil followed the movements towards the centre of the half-acre.

Shrubs and thistles caught onto his wife’s dressing gown. He threw it off. It hung, discarded behind him, over the taller weeds. If Vera had looked up, she might have seen that bright, turquoise gown and believed it was frozen mid-fall, floating in the darkness. But she was busy thinking about Jared.

The half-acre stretched on before Rushil like a corridor.

Vera made her way up Drumming Way. Cars were turning off the highway. They thread themselves through the streets of their neighbourhood below. The milkweed blooms nodded in a gentle breeze.

She arrived at the end of the street and jolted. The half-acre stretched out further than an airport landing strip, running parallel to the highway. Its end disappeared into the night. Vera felt the same queasiness gush through her like that from the picture of the 13^th century massacre site. A man was wading through the weeds about 300 metres away.

She noticed that the floor was being pulled beneath her like a rug, but still, she didn’t move. She stomped her feet, hoping it would stop. The soil was also expanding, slowly, then compressing. The earth was a lung, and it was breathing.

Vera pulled her phone from her pocket. She didn’t know who else to call. It was a long shot, but she had to try. The dial rang in her ear. Please, pick up.

“Vee?”

She gasped.

“What the heck, Vee. What time is it over there?”

It had been so many weeks. The sound of his voice felt like release. The ground where she stood rushed faster towards the half-acre, like sand receding into a tide withdrawing. She shed a tear.

“Vee, are you there?”

“Babe,” she murmured.

“Are you okay? Why are you calling?”

The naked man in the half-acre stumbled towards her but he wasn’t getting closer. The breeze blew against her back.

“Babe, can you talk now?”

“Vee,” he sighed over the phone. “I really thought you –, you need to give me time to prepare for this conversion. You can’t just spring this on me, okay? Just go to sleep, it’ll be better in the morning.”

Beep beep beep. Vera looked down at her feet. Weeds were gushing below her. She remembered looking down while she was being pushed on the swings as a kid. The man ahead reach of a turquoise dressing down lying deep in the field. It was the one Rushil was wearing earlier in the evening. She walked towards the half-acre. Rushil dressed himself and waved his arms, beckoning her. She complied.

When she was close enough, she saw his face had changed. The nose or maybe the mouth; it was a face she didn’t recognise. She stepped back, but again, like sand beneath the waves, the soil rushed to lull her back to where she had been.

“Vera,” said the man. “It’s me, Rushil.”

Vera felt each skin cell being pulled into two. The hairs on her head, on her arms and legs, splitting, duplicating. She brought her hands to her face, pressing one against each cheek. When she pulled them away, four palms were outstretched. Vera saw in two directions. Before her, her four hands trembling. Behind her, Rushil’s strange face was smiling. Vera took a step forward and crushed the brittle bones of a small bird.

*

They were alone together on Drumming Way. The street was restored. The wind did not blow, and each plot looked an identical eight metres in width and Rushil’s tape measure confirmed this. Rushil’s face had returned to normal, but still Vee clutched at her turning stomach. The way Jared had dismissed her, when she might have been in danger. Maybe he was truly busy. Vee had called at the wrong time. And what could he have done from Singapore, anyway?

Rushil’s yarn still hung in an arch between the fenceposts, but its lowest point now hovered above the ground. Eight metres across. He retied the yarn so it stretched straight across the plot. He was eager to see how it would change tomorrow.

Neither noticed that no cars shot down the highway, and none were parked in any driveways or along any streets. Not a single light was on inside the houses in their neighbourhood. Only a grid of white streetlights twinkled as far as they could see.

*

They were alone together on Drumming Way. The street was restored, the half-acre returned to its original triangular shape. Rushil’s face still appeared strange to Vera. Altered.

Rushil talked to Vera about his children. He and his wife Harneet had been married for fourteen years. His eldest was starting high school in two years’ time, and he was thinking about which to send her to.

The following evening, Vera put on some nice clothes and went out to a bar nearby.

Rushil researched as his soup bubbled over the stove. The nearest high school had a crumby reputation, but one of the religious ones nearby seemed alright. He’d talk to Harneet about it when she came home. He’d called her in the morning. Things seemed smoothed over for now. They’d fall apart again, but maybe next time they’d be better at figuring it out. The turquoise dressing gown was lain on her side of the bed. This was the rhythm of life.