Adam Michaels sat in the lounge room of his house and waited.
The smoke from his cigarette danced about him in vanishing wisps much like his thoughts.
He had just killed his wife and child in a lost moment filled with insanity.
The pressures of debt, a loveless marriage and a life going no where had been too much for his fragile mind that finally cracked.
When the pieces came back together again, he phoned the police, pulled down the cream coloured blinds and sat in the dark on the old lumpy couch, lit his cigarette and waited.
He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison where he died after being stabbed in both kidneys by another prisoner.
*~*~*
Samantha Dayle received her award with a mixture of pride, humility and embarrassment.
She had never enjoyed being the centre of attention.
She thought of what her husband had said before they had left for the award ceremony.
“Remember, your discovery is something that will change the lives of millions of people and you deserve to be applauded for all the work you’ve done and I will always love you.”
She smiled at the memory and would always love him for that.
After years and years of research, she had discovered a way for the cells of the human body to be used in the production of anti bodies against a range of cancers.
To do this she would use stem cells from unborn foetus’s to produce the anti bodies.
As she graciously accepted the warm applause from her scientific colleagues for her discovery, outside across the street from the building where the ceremony was taking place, a lone man stood waiting in the light rain, caressing the hand gun he held in the pocket of his jacket as he prayed to his lord Jesus Christ to give him the strength and courage to do his will and smite the sinful who would kill the unborn.
*~*~*
Mukti Al Ben had gone for a walk to escape his nagging wife who never seemed to shut up, much like his nagging mother in law.
He lived in a poverty stricken part of Egypt, a badly built mud brick house, some rangy chickens, his prize donkey and a leaking roof were all he had to show for fourty eight years of life.
He walked through the bright heat of midday to a canyon he knew of where ancient caves were dug into the side of the canyons walls.
These caves were a good place to lie down in and sleep for a while, as they were cool especially in the heat of the day and
because they were ancient tombs of the dead, no one apart from Mukti ever went there.
For breakfast, Mukti had eaten leftovers from the previous nights meal that had gone bad, he knew this but hadn’t cared, he was a gluttonous and lazy creature and this was a source of constant irritation to his wife.
She had tried to convince him of these blemishes to his character but he had refused to accept the truth of the matter.
As Mukti was climbing up to one of the caves for his daily rest, his wife had packed her meagre belongings and rode their only donkey to her mothers house where she spent the next three years trying not to outstay her welcome.
When Mukti woke up from his rest he felt queasy and could feel an urgent need to empty his bowels.
He knew at the back of the cave there were old, clay jars that contained some well preserved sheets of papyrus.
He quickly shuffled down to the back of the cave and pulled out some sheets of papyrus from one of the clay jars.
He was not a particularly superstitious man but he preferred not to offend the spirits of the dead by relieving himself in one of their tombs.
So he found a spot outside and let the breakfast erupt from his bowels after which he wiped his arse with some of the sheets of papyrus.
He was an illiterate man so the writing on the papyrus just seemed like pretty squiggles.
Had he been able to read, he would have discovered that he had been wiping his arse with the unknown and long lost gospel of Jesus.
Such is the humour of life.
*~*~*
Joan Sitcomb lived a very ordinary life in which the drama and tragedies lived by others seemed to have past her by.
She had three children who had left home to begin their own lives and a husband who worked at the local hardware store and was cheating on her with an impressionable young girl he worked with.
Her home, in which she spent most of her days pursuing her career as a housewife cleaning and re-cleaning, was a house in a respectable, leafy, middle class suburb.
Its contents were orderly and neat with the shelves, tables and sideboards covered with useless nick nack’s that she had collected over her uneventful life.
Her one joy was to escape into television drama’s that kept her company as she waited up for her husband who was always working late.
*~*~*
In the playground of a local park in Baltimore, Maryland, 5year old Timothy James was rudely pushed off the slide by one of the older children.
He broke his left arm in the fall.
This set up a belief in his thinking that if he tried to join in with other people he would be hurt.
Living with such a belief and its consequential loneliness, drove him to a point of desperation where insanity took over his thinking.
He hated his life just like he hated that older boy who had pushed him off the slide all those years ago.
It was his fault and everyone like him that had caused Timothy’s life to be so miserable.
Timothy could see only one solution to the problem, he went to a playground and shot every child above five years old.
He then fell to his knees, put the revolver in his mouth and puled the trigger.
His actions had altered the lives of twenty six people, who had to live the rest of their lives with the constant ache of loss and the senseless horror of his actions.
*~*~*
Jimbo was a good mate to everybody in the group, one of the boys who was always up for camping and fishing on the weekends.
They had all gone to school together and shared the rites of passage most teenagers go through, getting rotten drunk and daring each other into doing dangerous, stupid things.
Now in their late twenties they all had wives and girl friends except for Jimbo.
He would say he was too busy for a relationship or give some other reason why he didn’t have a girlfriend.
Sometimes his mates at the urging of their partners, who for some reason all liked Jimbo, would invite him around for a bar b q or a dinner and there was always some single woman there who Jimbo was expected to talk to and from which hopefully they all thought, a relationship would blossom.
But Jimbo wasn’t interested in women because he was gay and he didn’t know how to tell his mates.
It was an agonising secret that twisted about inside of him.
He had known at school that he was attracted to boys.
At first he was shocked and then horrified if anyone found out,
so he told no one and assumed his role as one of the boys.
Two weeks ago, he met someone at a club and his whole world was tipped upside down by this attractive, beautiful man.
They had spent the night together just talking and over the next week they gave in to their passion for each other.
It was Jimbo’s first time and the first time in his life he felt normal, because he was in love with someone who could love him back and he didn’t have to pretend.
After being together for four months, Jimbo finally mustered up the courage to tell his friends.
They were all sitting around the pool after eating a wonderful meal and in the middle of the conversation Jimbo blurted out ”Everybody I’m gay”.
At first the conversation continued until one by one, his friends stopped and looked at him.
Some had a look of disbelief on their faces and others looked at him as though he was joking.
When they realised he was being fair dinkum, an embarrassed silence fell upon them.
Some made polite excuses and went inside the house and those who stayed waited for Jimbo to explain himself.
When he told them he had been gay since school days, one of his mates got very angry and called him a damn perv and a stinking bum fucker, then threw his beer all over Jimbo, grabbed his protesting wife and left.
The rest felt sorry for Jimbo that he had to be gay and after a while they made their excuses to leave, saying they’d catch up with Jimbo again tomorrow but they never did and he never heard from them again.
The only person who didn’t feel sorry for Jimbo and called him up the next day, was Ross whose house the party had been at.
Ross had known for years that Jimbo was gay and it didn’t bother him. He was a good mate and unlike the rest, Ross didn’t feel threatened by homosexuality.
If guys turned Jimbo on, so what?
He was still Jimbo, one of his beast mates and a guy who would always stand beside you when the shit hit the fan.
Sharon, Ross’s wife also knew and it made her like Jimbo even more.
So Jimbo came out of the closet and felt one of the luckiest people alive because he had friends like Ross and Sharon who stood by him when all the rest fucked off.
*~*~*
Corporal Alex Jones lay bleeding in the swirling dust of Afghanistan after a bomb had gone off ripping apart the armoured personal carrier in front of him.
Amongst the sporadic gunfire, he could hear the screams and moans of agony coming from those soldiers still unfortunate to be alive after the blast.
Amongst the screams, he thought he heard his mum calling his name telling him it was time to come inside for dinner.
Corporal Jones couldn’t tell if it was day or night.
He knew he was mortally wounded but strangely didn’t feel any pain.
His chest felt wet and sticky and amongst the stench of death that wafted throughout the stink of burning oil, hot metal and fire, he could smell the iron tang of his own blood.
He began to sob because he knew he was going to die.
He didn’t want to die and wondered if he was having these thoughts because he was in shock.
After a short while the sounds about him grew dim and the panic he felt earlier was replaced with a tranquil feeling of serenity.
The sun above him grew brighter until all there was, was light.
He still couldn’t feel his legs but he stood up anyway and followed the sound of his mothers voice into that light, leaving the horrors of the world behind.
*~*~*
Amongst the slums of Sao Paulo, Brazil, Cecilia Meireles discovered a passion for writing.
It was a way for her to escape the poverty and killings that were a part of the everyday life that surrounded the small flat squashed amongst many, in which she lived with her ailing grandmother.
Her father had died in a car accident three months before her birth and her mother died from cervical cancer two years after she was born.
She grew up doing her best to avoid the gangs that killed each other over small pieces of territory on which they dealt in drugs and prostitution.
It was a forgone conclusion that Cecilia, like many girls, would end up being addicted to these drugs as she sold her young body to pay for their temporary illusion of escape.
But inside Cecilia there was a determination of steel that had been forged from the tragedies of her young life, a determination that guided her away from the path she had seemed destined to walk.
Amongst the awful, tragic lives unravelling about her in the slums, she wrote many stories and poems fuelled by the promise of the distant horizons she saw within her creative mind.
When her grandmother died on Cecilia’s 16th birthday, Cecilia honoured her by entering one of the many stories she had written into a competition being held by one of the city’s largest newspapers.
It was a story about hope and tragedy and it won Cecilia enough money to leave the slums, giving her a chance at another life besides the forgone conclusion.
She continued to win competitions and awards throughout the next ten years and became one of Brazil’s leading writers.
She was invited to travel the world giving lectures on writing and poetry and she used her notoriety to bring attention to the poverty and all its associated problems that plagued the slums of San Paulo.
At the age of fourty three, she had earned enough money to open a shelter for young girls and boys from the slums, giving them an education that would have been denied them otherwise.
She died at the age of sixty five knowing that in a small way she had made a big difference to the lives of some.
She became an inspiration and an example of how, when the strength of will and the power of dreams were combined,
anything can happen.
*~*~*
Chiang Zu Wi ran down the alleyway, his heart was pumping with fear and adrenalin.
He was sure the men chasing him were from the secret police.
He had been lucky so far in escaping detection.
He had lived in Liuzhou for a little under a year, a city in the south west of China with a population of 811,000 people, having escaped from North Korea where he had been a member of the Chosun Labor Party.
He had served his mandatory ten years of military service after high school and then worked as a repair man.
He fled North Korea after his brother and father were sent to one of the many labor camps for unpatriotic behaviour.
Chiang’s father had been overheard complaining to his son about the lack of food they had to survive on during the harsh winter.
North Korea’s regime is probably one of the most corrupt on the planet where cigarettes and alcohol go a long way but Chiang didn’t have the wherewithal to bribe a judge to release his father and brother.
After two months, his family were informed they had died from an unknown illness but they all knew Chiang’s father and brother had been beaten to death by the sadistic guards that ran the labor camps.
Chiang knew it was only a matter of time before he also was arrested and sent to one of the labor camps.
With the help of a broker, he was smuggled out of North Korea into China where he changed his name and was given false papers to enable him to find work and survive.
Sometimes he wondered if living in China was much better than living in North Korea. There were more liberties but little of it extended to freedom of expression, so Chiang had to be careful of what he said and who he befriended.
He often thought of his mother and sister back in North Korea and through his connections with the underground network, he sent them some of the small amount of money he earned as a factory worker.
As he hid amongst the rubbish bins in the alleyway, he realised that he must have been careless and aroused the suspicions of one of his fellow workers who had reported him to the Ministry of State Security.
As he squatted amongst the refuse of other people, he wondered what he would do now.
*~*~*
On a beach in war torn Somalia, a young boy called Jeffory Umbundo sat at the edge of the mighty life giving Indian Ocean that happily sang to him its eternal rhythm, on this day of his 10th birthday.
Above, the sky was an infinite blue that lifted his spirit up into its vast and supreme expanse.
For a brief time he experienced in his heart a happiness that was all to rare in his short life, yet this happiness was something that gave a terrible world hope, hope for a future that was not all together lost for the generations to come.
Jeffory Umbundo was one of the lucky few who received an education supplied by the missionaries who seemed to infest his poverty stricken country like flies to shit.
He grew up to be president, initiating reforms that eventually helped Somalia become prosperous and peaceful, enabling it to be a beacon of light to all other squabbling countries of the world.
He always remembered that day of his 10th birthday when he had sat beside the water and felt he could hear all the people of the world as they went about their days and nights, living lives as vast and as different as there were drops in the ocean.