Deathwish Darren

Deathwish Darren was a daredevilish fella.
But nobody noticed most of the time.

Darren did normal death wish things like mowing the lawn in thongs, swimming in lightning storms, jumping from the roof into the pool, enjoying high speed rides in the back of his ute and fishing with a carton of tinny’s to pass the time and one too few life jackets in the boat.

But Darren also performed activities that only a person with a death wish should. Darren went after ladies with large boyfriends. Not large like double-whopper-fanatic large, these boys were large like captain-of-the-wrestling team, work-out-thrice-a-day, eat-egg-whites-for-dessert large. There was no telling why Darren was only attracted to ladies in relationships with large men, but there it was. Fact. He was constantly leaping from bedroom windows, ducking down under car windows, and hiding in bedroom wardrobes and under beds. There was also no telling why multiple ladies were attracted to Daz with a death wish but there we have it. This story is not really about the ladies.

Daz lived with his mother and she was always getting steak out of the freezer to slap on her sons eye. “What this time Dazza?”
“Tree branch mum,” He would say sometimes. “It was hanging really low- I didn’t stand a chance.”
“Hmph,” She would reply, knowing better because she was his mother and they always do know better.

Darren enjoyed cow tipping, but with crocs. And he didn’t tip them, he poked them. He snuck out to the swamps on his own late at night and waded amongst the mud and reeds and poked crocs while they were sleeping. Daz really had a death wish. He poked the biggest crocs and he poked them with small sticks. Once he poked a monster croc with his flip flop. That night Dazza’s mum had to put his foot in an ice bucket while the rest of him hopped about packing an overnight bag for the hospital. He had to be flown in with helicopter because he lived in such a remote area and while the chopper was up in the sky he hung his head outside to feel the wind on his face. Ooowee the paramedics were mad.
“Daz!” They yelled. “Get your head inside the bloody chopper! Do you have a death wish or summin? Remember you now have one less foot for us to pull you back in by if you slip.”

The doctor back at the hospital was confused when she saw Deathwish Daz and his foot in an eski.
“I’m sorry, Darren,” she said. “You said your foot just fell off while you were out for a lazy stroll? And you think it may have snapped off after freezing in a puddle of ice water you came across in the billabong?”
“Dayum straight Doc’,” Darren grinned. “You wouldn’t read about it, ay?”

But you would read about it, if you lived there. A lady from the paper came to do a feature about the phenomenal occurance, she thought it was important to warn people about the dangers of small, chilly bodies of water.
Daz was instantly attracted to the lady journalist. Her name was Bella and she was engaged to an Incredible Hulk of a man named Gargantuo (it was almost as though his parents had always known.)
By a phenomenon almost as strange as puddles that snap feet off Bella was unconditionally in lust with Daz almost instantly.
“Oh, Daz,” She whispered as she brushed the bandage that contained his freshly re-attached limb. “We’ve just gotta get freaky, babe.”
Daz was not really the type to say no to a proposition like that, even after significant blood loss. So he draped a dressing gown over his head and loaded himself into a wheelchair. Bella pushed him down the hall, bumped him down the emergency staircase and they bazza bolted across the carpark to the helipad where Daz had initially landed, footless.
Now, Deathwish Dazza did not know how to fly a helicopter in the certified sense. But he sure did know how to take a risk- so up she went, in a hobbledy way and Dazza and Bella were on their way to find a suitable destination for kinky business.

Dazza landed, with a few major dings to the choppers nose, on a rocky precipice next to a golden eagle nest. It didn’t really look like a comfortable place to be but it did look dangerous and that was just intoxicating to Daz.
Bella didn’t even notice the rocky ledge, the sheer cliff face or the cheeky mountain goat peeping at them as she jumped out of the chopper and ripped off her shirt. Dazza was so entranced that he couldn’t look away from his borrowed Bella. Almost. Dazza did look away and he looked right into the eyes of a Bunyip! Up here, on the side of a craggly cliff, so far from the Billabong. You wouldn’t read about it.
And you wouldn’t. Because, enraged by Bella’s siren red bra the Bunyip charged from the mouth of the cave out of which he had so suddenly emerged, and he knocked Bella off the ledge and she landed, quite well broken, 300 metres below. She would never write a feature to tell that particular tale.

Darren, completely freaking out, looked around for a random escape from danger and, as was usually the case, he saw just the thing: A vine, which really shouldn’t have been growing in the rock, was growing in the rock. Just like in Jack and the Beanstalk (but without a goose and golden nuggets) Darren shimmied down the vine as fast as he could, bashing himself on rocks and soil and mountain goat horns all the way to the bottom. It was a long vine.

The base of the cliff was a thick, wild forest and Dazza wandered, tired, hungry and with his newly repaired foot throbbing for five days before they found him. They’d already found Bella’s body and- having great difficulty believing that she was thrown from a cliff by a Bunyip after willingly flying away with a novice chopper pilot- they charged Dazza with manslaughter.

He really wouldn’t have minded jail too much, it was certainly a dangerous place but the Judge, having reviewed the testimony of several character witnesses and having been presented with Death wish Darren’s medical history, ruled that Daz was clinically insane.
And they sent him to an institution. Darren spent the rest of his days in a fluffy white padded room, with his arms bound to his sides. He woke each morning, sweating in the memory of nightmares filled with marshmallows and monogomous relationships.

Deathwish Darren