Fear and Leasing

A regional real estate conference in Brisbane promises professional growth, valuable networking, and absolutely no unpaid emotional damage. In Chapter 10 of Fear and Leasing, Macready escapes a keynote speech, finds Ray on a roulette-fuelled hot streak, and wakes up back in Cairns with no shoes, a casino chip, and several unanswered questions.

Macready’s first staff meeting as Head of Property Management is already circling the drain when the fire alarm abruptly improves proceedings. In Chapter 9 of Fear and Leasing, a leadership speech is derailed by panic, Ray’s illegal cupboard jaffle station, and the unexpected discovery that nothing brings a team together quite like smoke, sirens, and avoiding PowerPoint.

A rare compliment from a landlord sends Macready’s career lurching in the worst possible direction: upward. In Chapter 8 of Fear and Leasing, a desperate attempt to sabotage his own promotion somehow convinces management he’s a visionary, leading to haiku reports, an office ibis, and the terrifying discovery that corporate success may be completely meaningless.

A corporate retreat in the bush promises connection, collaboration, and personal growth. What it delivers is blindfolded workplace sabotage, interdepartmental guerrilla warfare, and Ray disappearing into the wilderness only to return with a possum skull and a spiritual breakthrough. In Chapter 7 of Fear and Leasing, team-building becomes survival.

A flat Wednesday drags Macready into the quiet horror of emails, office rituals, fake professionalism, and the kind of exhaustion that doesn’t make noise. In Chapter 6 of Fear and Leasing, the chaos briefly gives way to something worse: stillness, fluorescent dread, and the creeping suspicion that the job has started hollowing him out from the inside.

Ray Williams has a drill, a toolbox, and the terrifying confidence of a man who once nearly passed wood shop. In Chapter 5 of Fear and Leasing, a simple cupboard hinge becomes a hostage situation, before the office descends into a heatwave-fuelled civil war over air-conditioning, coconut water, and the very limits of workplace diplomacy.

Hungover, overheated, and trapped in a Grafton Street rental with a parade of increasingly alarming prospective tenants, Macready endures an open home from hell. In Chapter 4 of Fear and Leasing, termite hunters, fermentation influencers, drone-wary crypto nomads, possible ghosts, and eight allegedly well-behaved cats turn one Saturday morning into a slow-motion collapse.

A 2:47 a.m. phone call from Henderson, the owner of one very ordinary rental property and several extraordinary anxieties, drags Macready into a fresh circle of hell. In Chapter 3 of Fear and Leasing, shrinking skirting boards, surveillance-fuelled paranoia, and a blurry photo of a cloud push one property manager dangerously close to the edge.

Back at the office, Macready is summoned by Chad, his procedure-loving boss, for a post-Trevor debrief that quickly becomes less “professional reflection” and more fluorescent-lit interrogation. In Chapter 2 of Fear and Leasing, workplace diplomacy, tribunal fallout, and one truly cursed breach notice collide in another day at the property-management coalface.

It begins with mould, a hangover, and a phone call from the office: Unit 3 has gone feral again. In Chapter 1 of Fear and Leasing, John Macready meets Trevor, the tenant who turns a routine inspection into a full-scale descent into tropical rental madness. A darkly comic opening chapter filled with mildew, mushrooms, ferrets, and the creeping suspicion that this job may eventually kill him.