Chatswood Ghost Story

To me the Chatswood Interchange feels like an enclosed place where you could spend your whole life. You could live and work in a pod there and come out occasionally to eat, never needing to go anywhere else.

The Interchange has a Bladerunner-esque, futuristic feeling, although not as polluted. That feeling continues as you head up escalators to the District Dining area through a world of glass, metal struts, reflections and images.

This is the District Dining logo.

The shapes in between District and Dining remind me of stylised glasses. They could also be stylised tulips and are echoed by the 3D red cup on long stalk sculptures planted throughout the Dinning District foodcourt area.

When I decided to enter the Microflix literary competition, I immediately thought of the Chatswood Interchange and how it would be interesting to set a mircrofiction story there.

I looked through my photos of the Interchange and I was struck by the images of creatures that appeared to be trapped in lightboxes, birds, butterflies, carp and even a woman’s face. In fact, the Interchange felt like a giant lightbox that people were constantly entering and leaving.

I imagined my character running through the corridors of the District Dining foodcourt to escape the woman in the lightbox calling out to her. Was she hallucinating or was the woman real? Could she escape her own mental torment?

Due to the coronavirus, foodcourts are shutdown and we’re all in lockdown, trapped in our own lightboxes searching for ways to stop feeling like we’re imprisoned.

One way could be to create a video and enter the 2020 Microflix competition.

To read my microfiction story, Chatswood Ghost Story go to Microflix