THE HAUNTING
Australia's Nanny State
He had deteriorated rapidly since returning to Australia. For one, he hadn't wanted to be there. He didn't have a job or a home there anymore, and floating from one location to the next was not his idea of fun. And two, the haunting hadn't stopped, it had just dissembled into finer forms. There was no compensation forthcoming, the thieves of Thailand's criminal milieu regarded it as entirely within their purlieu to rob tourists, to do as they do. And to haunt anyone who dared to object But his own heart had gone now, in a swirl of depression. He couldn't keep going, having climbed one mountain too many; only to find another mountain behind. Or that's how it seemed some days.
"I told you to watch him, not haunt him," a senior officer said. But perhaps his brain was only making sense out of nonsense; and he shrank and he shrank, trying to be invisible. Instead he watched first, all the six seasons of the Supranos, then After Earth, Frozen Ground, and was already half-way through the 4400. It hadn't been easy dealing with The Haunting from the very beginning, when they had surrounded his house, infested it with cameras, laughed at his every move, followed him everywhere. Ridiculed him at every opportunity. It hadn't been easy being back in a country where he did not want to be, in diminished circumstances, trying to make a project work. Just working and coping with the eternal ache; and the eternal surveillance.
They might have finally got the message, but it had been a long time coming. You could shred someone's heart and feed it to the masses. You could act in mobs and hunt to kill. You could be more base than he could ever possibly have imagined. And you could sing sick reason for the rest of your days; you die for sure, you die for sure. But if the haunting had gone on for ever, if they had pursued him from one place to another without any reason but vengeance, he could be forgiven for wanting to forget. "They'll find him in the harbour one day, I suppose," they said, as if he was at fault, and the out of control Thai mafia could do as they liked. Did do as they liked.
He still wished he had never come across the story. He still wished things had never happened the way they had happened. He still missed his funny little place in the country and flogged himself for his own stupidity. But none of this was useful in forcing him to move on. Nor was the surveillance; sometimes minimal, never non-existent. He wanted to be free but they never let him. He wanted to face the world on his own terms but did not have the resources. He wanted to go to a place where he was not known and would never be known, but there was no such place. And so, instead, he retreated into a tiny room and pulled a sheet over his head. And let the world swirl by in its unrelenting way. No kindness goes unpunished, as the saying went.
THE BIGGER STORY:
http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/12/31/thousands-of-police-troops-tighten-security-in-russian-city-hit-by-2-suicide-bombings/
Vladimir Putin vows to obliterate ‘inhuman’ terrorists responsible for bombings ahead of Russian Olympics
Gary Peach, Associated Press | December 31, 2013 9:04 AM ET
More from Associated Press
AP Photo/Denis TyrinRussian soldiers patrol the Battle of Stalingrad memorial in Volgograd, Russia, Tuesday, Dec. 31, 2013. Russian authorities ordered police to beef up security at train stations and other facilities across the country after a suicide bomber killed 14 people on a bus Monday in the southern city of Volgograd. It was the second deadly attack in two days on the city that lies just 400 miles (650 kilometers) from the site of the 2014 Winter Olympics.
HL:Thousands of police, troops tighten security in Russian city hit by 2 suicide bombings
Eerily empty buses lumbered through the streets, police weighed down with body armour warily watched pedestrians near a fast-food restaurant, and members of Cossack units stood guard at bus stops. Volgograd was an ominous and jittery city on Tuesday, after two suicide bombings in two days that killed 34 people.
We get a feeling that a war has started
“People are afraid it will happen again; they’re trying not to go outside if they don’t have to,” said 20-year-old Yulia Kuzmina, a student. “We get a feeling that a war has started.”
That is a worry that extends far beyond Volgograd.
Although there has been no claim of responsibility for the bombing of the city’s main railway station and a trolleybus, suspicion falls strongly on Islamist insurgents, whose leader ordered his adherents this summer to do all they could to derail the Winter Olympics, which start Feb. 7 in the Russian resort city of Sochi.