‘Well she does look like a dog!’ Jack yelled. ‘It’s not my fault if she’s an ugly moll!’

She looked extremely embarrassed. She intended on having a nice meal for the oriental guests, to help them fit in. Unfortunately her husband wasn’t exactly being himself tonight.

‘Please, Jack, try and show a bit of courtesy,’ she begged. ‘You know what it’s like to be an outsider!’

Her guests waited in the dining room, whispering to each other quietly. The Vietnamese couple had recently become Australian citizens and were trying to blend in with the culture. So far they had been given the impression, via Jack, that the Australian dialogue consisted mostly of words such as ‘fucking wanker’, ‘fucking bitch,’ and ‘cocksucker’. All of which had been aimed at them.

Jack was going through a bit of a rough period. He was being treated for post-traumatic stress that was the result of his experiences in Vietnam back in the late sixties. He had never been the same since he ate that ice cream all those years ago.

Janet knew the story all too well. She was working as a nurse for the Australian troops and saw, first hand, the offering of the ice cream to her soon-to-be husband. She had witnessed the terrible suffering Jack endured when he was plagued with a brain-freeze. She watched him fall to the ground and roll in pain. He was seconds close to taking a pistol out and ending the miserable experience when he saw her. Janet lay her hand on his forehead and the pain stopped. His head no longer ached, and he decided that it was purely as a result of their meeting. He vowed never again to eat ice cream and proposed to her on the spot. A year later she accepted.

It was when the couple returned to Australia and got married that things went awry. The ice cream had more of an effect on Jack’s psychological well being than any one would have thought. Soon he began to have dreams about ice creams. These were followed by nightmares about ice creams. He would see children eating them and would launch himself into depressions that would last months. Months soon became years, and being hit by an ice cream van in the late seventies did nothing to help matters.

Moving forward from twenty years of therapy, Jack had seen himself get his life back together. He and his wife had an eight-year daughter who, apart from being banned from certain dairy-based desserts, was happy and well adjusted. Psychologists really thought that Jack had overcome his problems.

But it was merely suppression of desire. It was agreed that nothing could be done until he faced his fear.

‘Are you sure you won’t have a little ice cream?’ she asked him.

‘Never!’ he roared and rushed back into the dining room.

She hoped that he would be more pleasant than he had been so far.

‘So, cocksucker,’ Jack smiled at Mr Nguyen. ‘How’s Australia?’

‘It’s very good thank you,’ he smiled back.

‘That’s good to hear,’ Janet smiled.

‘So, Mrs Nguyen, ever been a prostitute?’ he asked with a nasty glare. His wife covered her eyes.

‘I’m sorry, I do not understand,’ she replied.

‘Of course you wouldn’t you stupid bitch!’ Jack growled. ‘And as for you, Mr Cocksucker, I don’t know for sure but I reckon you’ve had sex with a few dead bodies. Am I right?’

‘You are a very rude man,’ Mr Nguyen burst out.

‘If you don’t like it here, go back to where you came from, you fucking ching-chong’

‘Please, calm down!’ Janet urged him. ‘Just have some ice cream! You have to!’

‘Fuck you!’ Jack pointed ferociously. ‘That stuff is lethal!’

Something had to be done. Janet was trying her hardest to keep the conversation pleasant but her husband and his condition wasn’t helping anyone. She tried one last time to divert the conversation before calling it a night.

‘Have you seen our budgerigar?’ she asked. ‘We got it for our daughter’s eighth birthday.’

‘That is a very rare budgerigar,’ Mr Nguyen pointed out. ‘What are the colours on the back of its tail feathers?’

‘You’re a fucking dickhead,’ Jack mumbled to himself.

‘See for yourself,’ Janet replied. She opened up the cage, allowing the blue budgie to perch on her fingers. She put it on his palm.

‘Oh, wait, it isn’t so rare now I see it closer,’ Mr Nguyen smiled. ‘Sorry.’

‘What the fuck are you doing?’ Jack roared. ‘This is how we hold it in Australia you Vietnamese prick!’

He jumped over the table, took the budgerigar from his hands and bit down on its head. Three shocked faces stared at him. He laughed and spat the head onto the ground. ‘Ah, fuck all of you!’

‘For god’s sake, what have you done?’ Janet cried. ‘You’ve stepped over the line Jack! You’ve stepped over the line!’

‘He stepped over the line when he greeted me dressed as an SS officer,’ Mr Nguyen said angrily as he and his wife took their belongings and left the house.

‘Look what you’ve done,’ Janet sobbed. ‘Why can’t you admit you have a problem and have some ice cream if it is hurting you that badly?’

‘Because I made a vow!’ he cried.

‘Fuck you, I’m leaving. See you around, bitch,’ he snarled and left the house. The car started and he drove away.

Janet picked up the cordless phone from the couch. ‘Hello, police?’ she sobbed, ‘I’m afraid that my husband might do something he’ll regret later. He’s like a time bomb, ready to explode!’

‘I see,’ a calm voice said on the other end of the line. ‘Thank you for being alert but not alarmed. Could you give us some details?’

Jack drove his car through the rain. The gear stick looked like an ice cream cone, just as the steering wheel began to resemble and ice cream venting machine. He honked the horn but nothing came out from the bottom.

He had driven to East Malvern Dairy Bell by the time he stopped the car. Something about a shop selling ice cream amazed him. It was like a forbidden fruit. Would he succumb to temptation and apply such a sweet delectable gelatinous substance to his tongue?

No, as it turned out. He had but one cure for this sort of temptation. He sat down and began hitting his head painfully on the wet, black, concrete footpath. Passing cars tooted their horns, driving past with a splash of water on him.

When he heard sirens in the distance, he lifted himself up and stared like a kangaroo in a spotlight. Looking up at the ice cream store with child-like adventurousness, he clambered up a windowsill and, taking a grip of the guttering, lifted himself up onto the flat, white roof.

Life wasn’t going how he thought it would. What happened to all of his dreams? Why was he sent to Vietnam, where he was forced to endure horrible act of torture such as ice cream consumption?

Now he was living in a city which couldn’t commit to a climate, where he worked as a nursing home cleaner where it wasn’t only the toilets that needed scrubbing. He was forty-five and knew, at least subconsciously that he hated himself and everyone around him. But there was one thing he couldn’t decide on. Does he like ice cream or not? Sure, he tried to convince himself that he hated it. But there was always a desire there, an urging.

As he looked from the roof onto the ground, a shiver ran up his spine. He didn’t really feel like jumping. He couldn’t even jump off the two-metre diving board. He then looked down at the police spitefully. Only a week ago he had refused to give a breath test unless they offered him some chewing gum. When they ordered him to comply, he responded by getting out of the car and flashing his genitals at them. He was taken down to the police station where he made the mistake of sticking his finger up the constable’s left nostril and telling him to bark.

‘They’re going to ask me to eat ice cream,’ he mumbled to himself. ‘Or tell me not to jump or some shit like that. It’s so fucking typical of them.’

‘Take off your clothes!’ was not what he expected to hear. ‘We have you surrounded. Just drop the clothes, leave the time bomb and come down here and no one will be hurt.’

‘What the fuck are you morons on about?’ Jack called down. ‘You think I’m a terrorist or something?’

‘Listen, we don’t need another nine-eleven. Get down from the building!’

‘I’m not eating ice cream!’ he called down. ‘Go to hell!’

The police talked amongst themselves. ‘Suicide bomber. Thought so. A time bomb ready to explode, just as we were told.’

‘Come and get me shit eaters!’ Jack laughed, exposing himself on the top of the ice cream buildings.

‘Take everything off!’

‘God, this is fucking discrimination!’ Jack called down. ‘I don’t know why you want to see me naked so bad but I wouldn’t want to come between you and that other guy in that car over there!’

Nonetheless, when the policeman aimed at him, he did what he was told. Within seconds he was shot with a tranquillising dart.

‘Are we allowed to do that?’ asked an officer.

‘He’s a terrorist. Sure we are,’ the constable replied.

Janet waited nervously outside the in the cold for her husband’s return. Hopefully he hadn’t got into too much trouble. She had a tub of ice cream waiting for him in her arms.

‘Let go of me you fucking pigs!’ she heard as a police car pulled up. Jack was naked and screaming – she expected worse and was relieved.

‘Please, come here,’ she asked Jack and approached him with a scoop of ice cream.

‘Fuck off! I’m never going to touch that shit again, you hear me! Never!’

And with that he proceeded to urinate on a nearby officer. He was quickly given a good spray from the capsicum can.

‘Oh, you fucking arsehole!’

Jumping on the opportunity, his wife took the scoop of ice cream and shoved it into his open, screaming mouth.

‘No! I can’t! NO!’ he squealed. Vanilla ice cream dripped off his face into the grass. He blinked his eyes a few times and stopped struggling. ‘Oh no, what have I done?’

His wife wept. ‘It’s okay, everything’s fine dear.’

‘I haven’t caused any trouble I hope.’

‘No, not at all,’ she cried and gave him a hug.

‘Ooh, isn’t that nice,’ the police smiled to themselves warmly. ‘This is why we became officers.’ They sighed to each other and drove away.

Janet took her husband and led him inside. ‘You killed the budgie, but don’t worry, I got Emily a new one. She won’t know the difference.’

‘I killed the budgie?’ Jack asked nervously. ‘Oh God, I’m sorry I’ve caused so much trouble. You know, I spent so much time avoiding ice cream. I never stopped to think what it was doing to me.’

‘Well everything’s fine now. Let’s get some sleep,’ she said and took Jack to his bed where he collapsed, an ice cream laden wreck.

The next morning the couple woke up to the sound of their daughter Emily opening the door.

‘Mummy! What happened to the budgie?’ she asked, holding a headless green bird in her hands.

‘I thought you got her a new one!’ Jack tried to say as a budgie head rolled off his tongue onto the carpet. ‘Oh, I see.’

‘So basically,’ Janet groaned, ‘you’ve killed two budgies in less than ten hours. Do you feel proud?’

‘I think I need more ice cream,’ he replied.

‘Can I have some too?’ Emily asked.

‘No,’ they replied together.