AFORETHOUGHT
The Mood
We weren't sacrificed. We hadn't even been heard. The voices carried on, but in a far off place. As if they had finally taken heed, and left him alone. It had been a long, cruel and disorientating journey. He didn't like where he was, or what had happened. He was disapointed in himself, and disappointed by everything. The mood had taken over. There weren't many ways to stop it. Catastrophe after catastrophe came beckoning. He thought back to people he had cared about, but they had disappeared in a mist. The cruelty of what they had done was up to them to discern. He didn't think they cared. He knew they didn't care. It was easy to laugh when you were in a comfortable space.
But these trials were tribulations he was not meant to bear. Things he was not meant to have seen. Ignominy he was not meant to have reached. He crawled under cupboards and found nothing but dust. "I used to think people were basically good, well intentioned, but I don't think that anymore. The last few years have bashed it out of me."
There were silent streams. There was the each of a scream that had died down. There was embarrassment over everything. Two steps forward and one step back became one step forward and two steps back. Hard work wasn't enough, you had to be shrewd. But he wasn't shrewd. He was just dissembling into a place without a home. A dark force without a focus. An ache that never went away. He couldn't control his moods, he couldn't control anything. Lotto tickets were not an appropriate investment strategy. The city no longer welcomed him. Everyone knew of his mistakes. The propaganda machine had destroyed him. No good deed went unpunished. Psychopaths crawled through the rafters. He was disappointed beyond disappointment.
"Why couldn't they have just left him alone?"
"Not in their nature."
And so he washed from one remnant of an old life to another, and he held back what should have been tears. They weren't going to die today, that's all he knew. He was more alone than he had ever been; and none of it had been intentional. The laughter died down to a ruthful cry, a grimace at the stupidity of others. The madness of foreigners. He had painted the sky; and drowned.
THE BIGGER STORY:
Searing temperatures that have set new heat records in central Queensland are heading to the state’s southeast.
Four weather stations recorded their highest ever January temperatures on Thursday as a stagnant mass of hot air in central Australia continued to affect inland Queensland.
In the state’s northwest, Century Mine reached 44.5C and 45.6C in Camooweal, while further south temperatures at the Monument hit 45.5C, and 46C in Bedourie.
However, it was Birdsville residents in southwest Queensland who endured the hottest temperatures in Queensland when the mercury reached a scorching 48.1C at 4pm.
Forecasters say a trough coming from the west is pushing the hot air southeast, and Brisbane and surrounding districts will be affected in coming days.
The temperature in Brisbane is predicted to soar to 37 degrees on Friday and 41 on Saturday.
West of the capital, residents of Ipswich and Gatton are set to endure 43-degree heat on Saturday.
The Bureau of Meteorology’s Pradeep Singh said Queensland’s wet season was unusually late in arriving for the second year in a row.
‘‘Normally the monsoon starts affecting northern Australia around late December/January but it didn’t happen last year and it hasn’t happened this year, so the heat’s just been building up over inland parts of Australia,’’ he said.