Birdboy: The Forgotten Children
His father's will had been the final act of bastardry.
The sadness seeped out of his elderly mother until it became unbearable.
The bliss of a kiss of dementia was gone: the truth was out.
The second wife was sitting in a million dollar house with magnificent views and atop a substantial share portfolio.
She was subsisting on a pension in a house that was not even her own.
And it played in the poor woman's mind: over and over.
No bequest. No acknowledgement. Nothing.
His father had always been a bastard to his first family, even in death.
His first thought when the news came through had been: "He can't hurt you anymore."
But it had not been true.
Even in death the man was a vicious bastard.
He had spent much of his life trying not to be his father; and that too was a waste.
But he would never forget the psychotic bashings he received from the hands of that man.
Never.
In that man's final years there had been some attempt at reconciliation -- after the suicide of his youngest half brother in very similar circumstances to his own; bashed, terrorised, undermined.
At that point, not one of his three sons from his first marriage had been on talking terms with him.
He knew perfectly well that the bastardry extended well beyond trails of memory; had speared into the present day.
The private detectives of his youth had revisited.
These bastards.
Humans: if you are vulnerable they will attack. They are a disgusting species.
And yet so capable of soaring heights.
The truth, the truth about everything, was even more extraordinary than even the science fiction writers and post-apocalyptic fantasists, the futurists and the opportunists, could possibly imagine.
And so, in a sense, the truth about this.
As he shivered and cried in the corner he had been chased into, and the belt stung across him again, and again, and again.
Psychotic.
THE BIGGER STORY:
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has described as "regrettable" his own senators' decision to back a motion declaring "it is OK to be white", while the Coalition's leader in the Senate has apologised and blamed an "administrative error".
Key points:
The Coalition's decision to endorse the motion sparked immediate backlash
Senator Mathias Cormann later said the Coalition had actually resolved to oppose the motion
Labor voted against the motion
The motion, moved by One Nation leader Pauline Hanson on Monday, was narrowly defeated 28 votes to 31, despite the Coalition's backing.
It called on the Senate to acknowledge the "deplorable rise of anti-white racism and attacks on Western civilisation" and that "it is OK to be white" — a phrase commonly used by white supremacists.
Facing an almost immediate backlash, Attorney-General Christian Porter, whose office directed Coalition senators to vote in favour of the motion, defended the move on social media.
"The Government senators' actions in the Senate this afternoon [Tuesday] confirm that the Government deplores racism of any kind," he said.