Posted on by astyrra_713s8o

Australian Gothic

disdainfulavenger:

  • It is hot. Sweat runs down your neck and makes your back itch. Your shirt sticks to your skin. “It will be winter soon,” people say wistfully. “The weather will turn.” The weather does not turn. The sun blazes overhead.
  • You walk barefoot on concrete until your feet burn and crack. You keep walking on. You are strong. You do not know where you are going, but you keep walking.
  • “Beware,” they teach you as a child. “Beware the spiders. Beware the snakes. Beware the crocodiles. Beware the emus and the kangaroos. Beware the trees. Beware everything.”
  • “Nice day for it, isn’t it?” people ask. You are not doing anything. You do not know what it is. But you nod and smile and say, “It is.”
  • The Jehovah’s Witnesses have come again. You hide in your bedroom and hope they will go away. Eventually, you know, they will stop knocking at your door and move on. They will return, though. The cycle will continue.
  • There’s an old man who lives in a small town in the middle of nowhere. “Bloody tourists,” he says. There are no tourists, not here, yet he curses them still.
  • “I remember the bushfires a few years ago,” says someone who has lived in a city all their life. You do not tell them that there are bushfires every year. There are bushfires now. You can smell the smoke. You smile.
  • Tony Abbott is on tv again, speaking robotically. You wonder what he has done now. His image ripples. You see scales instead of skin. You change the channel.
  • It is winter. At last. You ask the teacher to turn on the heater. “It gives off toxic fumes,” the teacher says. “We have to open the window above it.” She turns the heater on, opens the window, and the temperature of the room drops by five degrees. “One day the department of education will replace the heaters,” she tells you hopefully. But you know the truth: the toxic heaters will remain.
  • The bonfire blazes. You stand in a ring around it. “Tell a scary story,” someone begs. “Alright,” you say. You take a breath and utter the dreaded name. “Pauline Hanson.”