Part One : My Final Year In Australia

In which the masquerade ended and the curtain was pulled aside

“And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.” 

• The Masque of the Red Death, Edgar Alan Poe

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I’m not going to draw a lot of conclusions for you in this article. That’s because I know in advance that what I am going to tell you is unbelievable. I’m going to try to relate it to you without me implying anything into this account - maybe in fact you could do that for me because I lived in Australia for thirty years and I am still not entirely certain what happened there. Many days, I could scarcely believe I was there in that situation and I had not imagined the pain that I would endure for three decades.

I’m not a good person. No man is, we’re all filthy rags before God. I still don’t understand how anyone could be as cruel, as evil and as monstrous as my Australian wife. She stayed in character for three decades and never once broke form. I don’t believe I had ever done anything in my life to deserve what happened to me there. It’s so nightmarish it seems like it happened to somebody else.