I will place you in a whole new cell

You will look down on this cell at the beginning, but in the end you will learn to appreciate things

I think I made a wrong assumption…

I was lost in my thought, thinking how bad I was in judging people.

“Even there’s perfect thing within imperfection, right?” He stood there, reading my thought as always.

I tried to look at Him and smiled. Yeah, and I’m definitely wrong all this time. Thanks, anyway.

I was talking about one of my cell members. She is fourteen years older than me, kind of like an aunty to me. I mean, my sister is only three years older than me. I must be honest that I didn’t really like her at the beginning. The moment I read my new cell formation, the moment I read her name in the list, I somehow thought that my cell would wreck in no time. I knew her bad record; how she was “blacklisted” from her previous cell formation because she acted, well, arbitrarily.

It was indeed an atmosphere of “wreckage” at the beginning. She got disappointed somehow that she refused to join the new cell. I was okay with that. I mean, my new cell was quite awful without being added with another awful person. The problem was, my cell leader didn’t think so.

So, during my first period of attending the cell meeting and weekly prayer meeting, I was forced to see how my other cell members worked hard to drag her back into the cell. That was tough, really. Even for a person who did nothing to drag her back, I must admit that it was tough.

I wasn’t a type of person who gets along easily; never was and never is. Except, for a kind of condition, and that kind of condition doesn’t happen often. I’m totally grateful that He (capital “H” means God) prepared me by letting me knowing a person within my new cell: a boy at my age whom I claimed as my best friend until now (I do place some accentuation to the word claimed. Trust me, it was another long story). He, somehow, taught me about being “active” in order to get other’s attention. What? I thought at the time, what do you think I am? A ladybug?

This wasn’t a story about how I got changed in the end, sorry. Although I must admit that he indeed made a sparkling success in the end, but no, this was another story about another person. This best friend of mine, let’s say he has special intention in bringing the “lost” people into the right track. Mostly, he worked alone, but, well, during that time he entangled me into his plan. I didn’t understand why, and I’m still asking God the same thing. He was just trying to get her back into community and I know I couldn’t blame him, but I really wished that I didn’t need to get involved.

She is a great person, really. I really don’t understand how He placed such words within my mouth that I could spend my time chattering with her without even insulting or hurt her feeling. Now, that’s an important fact. Hey, I’m not a good talker, really, and I’m not a comedian. On the other side, I knew that she was an introvert one and easy-to-get-upset. At least that was my judgment about her. What touched me in the end was the fact that she appreciates my thoughts, my light jokes, and my simple talks. For a kind of person who is much more experienced than me, I really appreciate her for accepting me the way I am. And for the first time, I really thought that she was indeed worth to be escorted back.

“You’re being too cautious with her. Just relax,” was what my best friend said when we discussed about her. Apparently, he was far much easier to get her attention, enabling him to talk a lot more with her. “Then what if I leave her to you? You seem to know how to act better than me,” I said, partly joking. Partly, which means I partly considered it seriously. I was never good in doing the talk, often ruined everything.

This isn’t my part, I said.

Like always, He stood right beside me, caressing me with such peacefulness and gave me courage to move. “What do you feel,” He asked, “when you manage to make her laugh?”

You know that wasn’t me. I can’t do the trick, see. I just cannot throw a joke and hope for a laugh; most of the time it never works.

“But it works,” He simply said, waiting for my response.

I smiled.

I could feel Him embraced me with such love. “You don’t touch people’s heart with a joke or two. You touch their heart with yours. When you manage to give all your might, all your being, only for nothing but their smile, you simply touch their heart. Perhaps that is the simplest thing you’ve ever seen, or you haven’t seen, but do know one thing, it never fails.”

I remembered the moment I argued with my own heart about how there could be something wrong with her that made her, well, lose track. Look at the reality, my heart said with such passion. Do you think it is possible for a person who is real far from God to be entrusted with such ministries? Those aren’t simple ministry, and I know exactly how you don’t feel anything wrong about her delivering the ministry.

It was true indeed. It just didn’t fit: my judgment about how she had so many wrong things inside with the fact that she was capable in delivering ministries without me feeling wrong. I hardly have a feeling about a person, but once I do, it is usually strong. What I felt at the moment was a pain. I knew that she was pained with something I didn’t know, but the “thing” was not God. About that I’m sure, while in the meantime, I was brought to know her even closer.

I see how He answers all my questions one by one.

The moment when I was just with her after the prayer meeting, heading to a restaurant for dinner, I was quite startled to hear her telling me about her father’s death without me even asking. I knew from her story that it was the hardest time of her life, but she could share it casually like nothing weighed her.

Then there was a moment when she told me about her mother’s illness. It was a meningioma. What took my attention wasn’t the disease, but the fact that she had to sacrifice most of her time to care for her, and trust me, it wasn’t for a short period of time. I also knew that during the time, and during some period of time before since, she was having rough time with her mother. It wasn’t easy for her.

Lately, after cell meeting, when there were just two of us, she also told me her story about her past love life which didn’t go too well. I realized how much she was shaped from these failed relationships. One thing that caught my attention was her smile. It was amazing to see how she managed to keep smiling in telling such rough times. I don’t even think I could do that.

The latest moment was when she told me about her relationship with her mother that’s getting better: about rejuvenation, and about God’s protection. I couldn’t tell much about this. This was her part of share and not mine, but I must admit that amongst all of her stories this is the one that touches me a lot.

I realized it wasn’t about the story. It was more about how she managed to change her stories into testimonies. I could see, and clearly see, how God be the center of her life. I saw how she managed to give her support to her mother, not only physically but also in prayer. And I saw, more than any other thing, how she keeps struggling with her prayer and I know how she will make it in the end.

I was misjudged her. She wasn’t weak at all, and by weak, I mean spiritually. I judged her as a person who doesn’t know how to pray. I judged her as a person who couldn’t even make any testimony. All this time, I merely saw her from my point of view, and not from hers. And I know I was wrong by doing so.

I didn’t know that experiences could teach wisdom, more than Your words, I said in the end.

He laughed before He answered me. “Not really. But I did teach you one thing: whenever you cannot open your ears to listen, open your eyes to see. There’s always wisdom at every aspect of your life. That depends on your choice, whether to realize it or not.”

And when I finally choose to realize it and learn from it…

“… you’ll find yourself holding a person worth enough to be escorted back.”

Maybe she’s never really getting away from You. Maybe it was just me who didn’t realize.

“Yeah, maybe. But either way, you’re holding her now.”

I just then remember my mom once texted me and simply said one thing about her, “it must be fun to have a step-sister there.”

Yeah, it is. She’s my sister… and I’m proud of her.

“Thanks. I practice a lot. My favorite thing to draw is insects. Coincidentally, my favorite insect to draw is the millipede. Which explains why I drew a millipede yesterday. I like their segments and all their tiny legs. I really like watching insects when I’m outside so I can learn about them and then draw them better.”

Just then Bridget walked by with two of her friends. They didn’t notice Sam and me standing by the tall trees. “Abby! Look out! You have a ladybug on your shoulder!” Bridget shrieked.

Abby cried, “Get it! I don’t want some bug crawling all over me! Get it!!”

Cyndi, screaming, jumped away from both of her friends crying,”I HATE bugs! I’m outta here!”

And then it happened. Bridget walked over to Abby and smacked her, hard, on the arm.

“Got it!” Bridget shouted and flicked the fatally injured ladybug into the grass.

As they walked away, Abby (not a bit worried about the ladybug) just said, “Ewwww…”

I rushed over to the spot in the grass where the ladybug landed. Sam followed and we both crouched down, searching. “Do you see him?” I asked frantically. “I can’t find him!”

I looked to my right and saw Sam digging a tiny hole in the soil. “He’s not going to make it,” Sam said. “The most we can do now is give this guy a proper burial.” And so we did.

Afterward, we made our vow. We would become the Nature Ninjas. And we would defend nature against the evils of that Drama Queen Club, with as much ninja-ing as possible.

He’s hard… way too hard. His heart, I mean.

“We’ve been talking about this before. What makes him your best friend, then?”

I smiled, trying to remember things. My choice.

I never realized how I would end dealing with someone that persistent. And more to my surprise, I kept struggling with it. Knowing him perhaps is the best thing that has ever happened to me, and to keep struggling with his adamant heart, knowing exactly how much I care about him, was perhaps the most impossible thing ever. I know I love him. Well, not that kind of love, of course. I mean, I’m a man, he’s a man, and I’m not a pervert. No, I’m talking about the deeper love, the one that’s unlimited, unconditional; the kind of love that surrounds parents and their kids, or best friends. Although I must admit that I haven’t reached this kind of love that God shows me all the time.

Amongst all people in this town, why did You choose him anyway?

“You asked Me, remember? I still recall it clearly, how you really wish to have a friend, a best friend for exact. He’s not that much different from you. In fact, he was also shaped from this kind of pain that shaped you.”

I tried to check it, and he denied. Well, I couldn’t deceive my own heart. What He said was exactly what I felt the moment I’d known him better. But I also said the truth. He indeed denied.

He smiled before answering me, “Different personality. His adamant heart makes him so. Denying things doesn’t always mean disapproval. Sometimes, it just shows how much he wants to forget his past… or to run away from it…”

… or he really didn’t realize the process of shaping, I added my opinion.

“Either way,” He continued, “he is worth to get escorted back.”

I was quite shocked with His last statement. I thought it was me whom You were trying to get back. How come it is him now?

His smile wasn’t even faded when He heard my question. But at the time, I was really confused with the reality He showed. “People are lost from time to time. It’s just how they’re getting lost that’s different. Let’s say, You almost left Me at the firsthand. Him, on the other hand, was lost in finding Me.”

I opened my mouth, trying to say things, but I couldn’t find anything to say. So I remained silent.

“How many ministries he had done before this?” He asked me as if He understood my quizzical expression.

I… I’m not quite sure; three, maybe four? Does that even matter?

He kept His smile, just like a father trying to make his son understands things clearly. “You see, he tried to find Me all the way. I’m sure how much he took pride in telling you how great his spiritual life before. But still he failed in finding Me. How many reasons he threw?”

Clashing with people, felt unfit… I tried to think about any other reason.

“Disrespects?” He added. I nodded. “Ministry brings joy and peacefulness within, and by peacefulness I mean concord. You might find yourself clashing with others in a ministry, once or twice. But thrice? Come on. I see your experience in ministry has not exceeded him, but I know you know this better than him. Remind me, what is the true essence of a ministry?”

I wasn’t sure at first, but I tried to answer in the end. Love, I said.

“And what makes you able to accept other’s condition? No matter how much they’re defective…”

I felt my heart pounding hard, realizing that the truth was being elaborated in front of me. Love.

I started to protest, You’re not saying that he was lack of love, are You? All this time? After all he’d done?

He laughed, so soft, “No. No, I’m not. I was just saying that he has lost his heart in delivering ministry.”

And that was possible? I couldn’t hide my quizzical expression. It was just getting even clearer.

I could feel Him nodded. “I want you to know that time consumes heart. It strengthened relation, but it also weakened heart.”

I choked when I insisted Him with another question, how come?

“That isn’t a kind of statement to be questioned about. All this time, all this long time, you’ve been seeing so many things happen before your very eyes. Haven’t you ever realized this simple truth?”

All of the sudden busyness, that turns out to be a routine. People think about getting expert and with such reason that sounds reasonable, they think they can do it alone. They start to miss their quality time with You, well not really omit it, but they don’t take it seriously anymore. I closed my eyes, staring straight into nothingness, inhaling deep breath. Yeah, I exhaled, yeah, I think I know it.

“And what is the biggest downfall?” He kept asking me, really wished that I’d already known the answer.

When their heart gets so much blunted and they cannot even realize anymore that they’re… losing.

His smile widened. I could feel He felt so much satisfied, providing me with the same intense calmness. “Isn’t it amazing? People might get so much lost without even realizing that they’re actually being lost. That is why you still need others and not merely relying on yourself to find your way back home. Those who are arrogant enough to admit it will fail.”

But You’re talking. I mean, he can hear You calling, right? What fails it?

“His heart,” He said.

I got speechless for a while. This was some kind of understanding I couldn’t understand in the beginning. And to know how I started to understand things, it brought me lightheaded.

“Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.” (Proverbs 27:12)

“I keep talking to him, trying to get him back to his track. But you see, the essential part of hearing is a graceful heart. And no one could really change his adamant heart, but himself. It has to be his own choice and not mine.”

Then what was my part? I know in the end he really choose to change his heart, and You were done with it. That could happen without me being around.

He laughed again then asked me softly, “How many friends he has now?”

He is a sanguine. What else do You hope? His friends even exceeded mine. I was getting confused, again.

“And how many of them that you know managed to be his best friend?”

Now, that surely nicked me. I remembered once he said that he hasn’t got a lot of best friends. I tried to recall that time, when he told me his story with those that he was called “best friend”. It took me to a long pause before I closed my eyes in the end.

Then the vision came. I was having a chat with another good friend of mine. All I could remember was the night had been hung low. It was one o’clock in the morning.

Where have you been? She typed.

I laughed, then replied, been chattering with him. I didn’t realize it has been really late, but we talked a lot. Things I’m going to miss a lot when I’m leaving, I guess.

It’s funny, you see, to see your relationship, she replied in no time.

Don’t be jealous, I replied, still laughing. I think this chattering will be the last.

How come? He is your best friend, right?

I smiled reading her reply. Yeah, for now. I just don’t know for how long it will last. I just got the feeling that he will change during the time period I leave, and something within me says the moment we meet again, things won’t be the same. Was it melancholy feeling that I felt?

Ha, it’s impossible for him to forget you. Your thought is nonsense.

He’s a sanguine. Sanguine people tend to have many friends, right? Easy to befriend, easy to let them loose. I just couldn’t decide my position…yet. Whether he really assumed me as his real friend, or just his “friend”, I didn’t know.

Then the vision changed into another night. I was having another chattering with her in her car. The vision was so short, seemed like it was there only to remind me about what I was saying that time. “I’m not going to let him loose, yet. I know he got real big potential within. I just don’t know whether he has utilized it the right way or not. I just want to see him develop into something better.”

I felt like being pulled back to where I stood, still closing my eyes.

“So?” He was waiting there all the time. Such patience I couldn’t even understand.

You’ve told me in the beginning, part of the prophecy that I couldn’t understand: “you will grow together, learn from one another, and form each other”. I thought at first You wanted me to learn from him, and I did learn a lot from him. I never expected myself to do anything for him. Just knowing him and have him as my best friend is enough for me. I only do what I did as a form of gratitude, nothing else. I babbled it all in such speed. I didn’t even understand what my point was. The fact was I couldn’t even understand my feeling.

He touched me just in time I was about to cry. “Relax,” He said, “I won’t let you know how much he feels about your effort. This is his part to share, if he’s willing to. I just want you to know that you’ve done your part. For the first time I finally see you do greater things that exceed your capability.”

I was about to open my mouth when He continued, as if He understood my question. “I do talk to him. We do have our conversations, you know that. But I really long to have such relationship with him just like our relationship. Sometimes, he regards Me too high, too far. People could have their thoughts about Me, I see. They could place Me in their heart as their king, as their God, but most of the time I just simply want them to regard Me as their best friend. And do you know, my friend, what was the ‘thing’ that you’ve shown to him? Your part?” He waited with a smile.

It was his part, actually. I started to understand. You’re right. I don’t know what he feels about me or how he regards me. I only know one thing: that within his adamant heart lies something soft that caught me in the beginning. I didn’t try to change him, but this was all I learned from him.

Acceptance.

The slave auction is a grand event hosting thousands upon thousands of captives with thousands upon thousands of buyers. The large warehouse divided by twenty floors, which are divided by fenced stalls, bears a gaping center so that one would be able to view the happenings of the left, right, above and below. Captives are separated by gender, then by size. Rusted pendant lamps cast a dull amber glow above the depilated forms within each cell. Each is tethered by the ankle to a post that bears an identification number and the latest bid. They have enough space to walk a radius of two meters.

Roars of shouts thicken the air as the auction nears a close. Buyers are attempting to drive a low bid from the respective slave company. Slaves are audaciously advertising their worth. Shaia looks down at her ankle. It is still sore from the microchip implant, a crescent shaped cut that will be a scar. Her starting bid was 5000 jarefs, three months’ worth of income on her planet, with not yet even one bid. How is ones worth determined? How is that worth given a monetary value? What right does someone have to label a human being with a price?

“Look no further, my lord! I’m everything you need!”

The girl next to our heroine serves as an interruption to her humanitarian thoughts. Shaia looks upon her with curiosity. Her neighbor is of the stouter kind, though of equal height. She struts to and fro in front of passing buyers, even performing shows of physical strength.

“My good sir, what are you looking for? A gardener, you say? I’m terribly good at weeding, and I’m awful careful with roots and flowers and such. Just look at my ruddy hands. My lady, what about you? An in-home slave? Why, I’m excellent at cleaning. I’m good at sewing, cooking, and fixing. And you won’t hear a squeak of aches from me, no ma’am, I can promise you that.” The girl exhales a short sigh as she is ignored, but is yet determined. She glances at Shaia and notes her feeble posture. “Pep up, girl,” she says, “you want to be bought, don’t you?”

Shaia feels meek in comparison to her neighbor’s gumption. “Well, yes, I suppose so.”

“Suppose? You must be a first-timer.”

A small nod.

“If you don’t get yourself sold, you end up in the labs. You know what they do in the labs, don’t you?”

Sapphire eyes widen. You see, reader, unsold captives become the equivalent of laboratory rats in your time; but in this time, there are no such morals or ethics for humane practices.

“What can you do, girl?”

Shaia has to think. She was never one for talents and was actually quite ordinary.

“Certainly there must be something you can do. Can you at least cook?”

“I can teach.”

Her neighbor gives a pitied scoff. “A slave can’t do much with that. You’re just going to have to lie then, aren’t you?” She resumes her struts and swaggers so as not to miss an opportunity.

It is greatly uncharacteristic of Shaia to lie, especially when she has strong ideals about the truth. Yet she cannot accept her life as a sacrifice to science, for how will she be able to find Aeureilia? She promised she would do her best. She promised she would save her sister. Shaia finds herself suddenly shy knowing she must not be. For a few moments her voice fails its duty. Her lips only move the first few words as busy men rush by. Then she hears her whispered voice say, “I can teach.” She repeats this to each passerby, the next statement more audible and bold than the last. “I can teach.” Her hands wring the hem of her burlap gown. “I can teach.” Not one even spares a glance. “I can teach.”

An alarm buzzes to notify the last minutes of the auction. The noise suddenly doubles with shouts of desperation from buyers and slaves alike.

“I can teach! I can teach!” she yells desperately. Everyone is in a frantic hurry and pays her less heed than before. She realizes that she is trying harder for something that is not working. She must try something different. Instinct takes a hold of Shaia for that is where her impetuous boldness is derived. She grabs the wrist of the buyer closest to her and begs, “I can teach!”

Rosser of Pason gapes in surprise as he stares into the bluest eyes he can last remember. For a moment he is shocked by the captive’s intrepidity, but it is not her determined grip or her look of utter despair that holds him; rather, her glabrous traits flood him with a familiarity that he may regret if ignored. “Ella?”

“No, I . . .” she releases him, worrying that she is not what he is looking for. But she mustn’t give up. “I’m Shaia Kaim. I, I cannot sing, or dance, or draw, but-“

“You can teach, I’m sure,” the old man interrupted. “Where are you from?”

“Imberia.”

“Were you born there?”

“Yes.”

“How old are you?”

“Seventeen.” He looks disappointed. Perhaps loss of hope is a more accurate description. Shaia thinks that he too lost someone and is looking for her. She could only imagine the pain of believing she found her sister only to realize that she was wrong. She puts a gentle hand on his rolled sleeve and says with sadness, “I’m sorry I’m not who you were looking for.”

Rosser stares at her for a moment. He turns his back to her, enters digits in his remote, then scans her post. He continues to face the pathway and says over his shoulder, “You may not be who I’m looking for, but you’re looking to be who I need.” When she realizes he placed a bid on her, he hears her weep with relief. He remains at the post to ward off straggling bidders while praying he made the right choice.

“Greetings, everyone.” Rosser speaks to a crowd of fifty slaves as the ship departs. “Take care of the words that I say for it will help you on your journey thus forward. You are now of the Pason household designated to the labors of the resort. You are to rid yourself of basic expectations. Education, respect, choices, desires – these will hinder your adaptation if they remain ideals. Loyalty, obedience, and a humble heart are now your expected standards. You must have quiet steps and quiet hands when you work. When in view of masters, be still and ready for any command.” Rosser studies the grave faces before him. He softens his tone. “I understand this situation is the farthest from your choice, but trust when I say your fate is up to you. Master Pason is a fair man, and he bestows freedom for those who are able to earn it. However, it follows that laziness and rebellion do not go unpunished. Remember that he is not the one who captured you, and he is a choice master among the others.”

All on board is taciturn for the remainder of the trip for no one is in the mood to exchange pleasantries. The ship is bound for one of the neighboring solar systems within the galaxy, and is expecting to arrive in two days. The vessel itself is sophisticated and clean. Each individual has his own cushioned chair that is able to recline slightly for additional comfort. Though she lived as a free woman, Shaia never rode in a space craft, other than her original capture. Exposure to this high degree of technology is a luxury for most. For a moment Shaia feels she is embarking on her path to freedom, when in reality it is the exact opposite.

During the voyage, our heroine relies on her mind and imagination as solace for her grief. She harbors no bitterness towards her sister, though it would be understandable if she did, but instead she is ridden with guilt and anger towards herself. As the elder, she could have prevented them from going to the exhibition. She should have trusted her instincts. Alas, should-haves and could-haves are only devices to aid backward thinking. So Shaia dreams of endless ways to reunite her family. Her first step would be to send word to her mother and let her know of what happened but assure that she was out of harm’s way. The next step would be to locate Aeureilia. How in heaven would she be able to do that? Even if she were free back in Imberia, the task would be nearly impossible, and now that she is bound, the task is actually impossible. Unless!

“Everyone, welcome to Otium.”

Shaia cannot not help but gape at what her eyes can see. She has only heard and read of this planet to be considered the worldly Heaven. It is known that half of the planet is used as a resort, for Otium is one of the most scenic and climatically agreeable planets in its galaxy. The other half is leased to celebrities, tycoons, social and political magnates, and other elites.  The craft is docked near a body of water surrounded by a small canyon filled with gently arced waterfalls and rainbows. Plush green grass carpets the ground with soil so rich with minerals it is red. Varieties of flowers and blossoms are abundant yet organized, and to Shaia their mingled fragrance is divine. The sun is setting and casts a very golden glow, making colors seem more vibrant. At this moment, blinking is a detriment for she may miss something more exquisite than the last. She follows the others onto a carriage to be pulled by two grand and powerful creatures akin to horses. If only her mother and Aeureilia could witness such magnificence. Tears begin forcing their way through, for no matter the amount of beauty this planet possesses, she cannot be rid of how and why she is here.

The new slaves are taken to a large plain house at the border of one of the resorts. They unload and are given instructions of what to do and where to go. She learns that much of the labor will be out of doors, either maintaining the condition of the resort or serving resort guests. Having grown up in a household where she had to do everything on her own, the light manual labor is not overly daunting to her. Shaia is about to depart with the other females, but Rosser holds her back. “You are to come with me.”

Confused yet obedient, she follows the old man back to the carriage. She takes a seat beside him and is in awe of how much larger the animals were up close. The ride is silent, but our Shaia is one of a very curious mind and broad imagination. She loves asking questions for she loves to learn, and she loves being asked questions for she loves to teach. Knowing all do not share her passion, she attempts to side with patience lest she annoy the man who saved her.

“What is it?” Rosser asks, eyes still on the dirt road.

“I’m sorry, my lord?”

“You keep looking at me as though you have something to ask. What is it?”

He was more perceptive than she thought. Shaia thinks how to word her question before asking, “Where am I being taken to?”

“The Pason palace.”

She wants to ask why, but thinks the question inefficient. “What are my duties to be, my lord?”

“You will soon find out. And address me as Sir Rosser. Perhaps I should teach you the hierarchy titles since you are not familiar with them.” He gives her a questioning look.

She shakes her head.

“A free man is addressed as Lord or Lady. A servant above you is Sir or Madam. The master you directly serve is to be called Master. Thus, you call me Sir Rosser because I am merely a servant but still your superior.”

“Are you not my master then?”

“No, I am the head servant of Lord Pason. Not many servants in Otium have slaves.”

“Oh.” She was hoping Rosser would be her master for he seemed kind enough to her. “Who will be my master?”

“For now you are under my direction, but I plan to introduce you to Lord Pason and see if he may be interested in having you.”

His ambiguity worries her. “What do you mean by interested in having me?”

“It is as it sounds. Learn to curb your questions with your superiors. Here we are.” The carriage slows to a halt. They arrived at an air port to board a craft that will take them to the other side of the planet. Rosser is already near the vehicle when he notices the slave is not with him. He turns around and sees her petting the horses. “Come along!” he waves an impatient arm.

Shaia strokes the velvety muzzles one last time and whispers a thank you to each before running to catch up with her host.

The Pason palace is truly something to behold. Guarded by an invisible barrier, the extensive property is comprised of dozens of buildings, lush gardens, fountains and pools, and expansive courtyards. The architecture is archaic in design yet pristine in condition. It is what Shaia imagines Zeus’ realm to be like if it was embellished by Michaelangelo. Again, she is taken to a plain building at the edge of the estate. Rosser introduces her to the female overseer, Tae, who seems surprised to receive a new slave. “She needs immediate rest. Please help her settle in.” He turns now to Shaia. “Rest. I know the last few days have been a harrowing experience. I will collect you tomorrow morning.”

Shaia takes his hand in her two small ones. “Thank you, my lord, for everything.” Her grip is tight with genuine earnest while her eyes speak loudly of her grief.

Not bothering to correct her, he pats her hand and adjourns.

Tae shows Shaia the women’s communal bathroom and showers. She is given basic toiletries and a clean set of night wear. After washing up, she is taken to a dormitory shared by nineteen other females. She is assigned a top bunk by a window. Moonlight spills onto her pillow and she stares at the reflective orb. This moon is farther compared to the one she saw in Imberia, but it is still pearlescent and magical to our heroine. I’m standing on the moon, with nothing left to do, with a lonely view of heaven, but I’d rather be with you. She is comforted and suddenly very lonely. “Mother,” trembling lips whisper. Her small white hands cover her mouth. Aeureilia.

Only the moon’s face witnesses the full tears spilled from a broken heart.

Rosser studies the girl before him. This simply would not do. Though normally petite, the white garment adorned engulfed Shaia to make her look even more child-sized. She actually looked like an infant due to her hairlessness. “Perhaps we can . . .” he starts to roll up her sleeve, “. . . or maybe . . .” he gathers the excess material from behind, but there is nothing to cinch it. He sees a rope and fashions it around her waist as a belt. “This should do.” Taking a step back, he sees that his efforts are wasted, and so is time. He has no choice but to proceed. “Come. We are to meet Lord Pason. Make haste.”

Shaia does her best to keep up with Rosser. He is an old man, but tall and robust. They walk through halls and atriums with fountains and ivy walls aplenty.

“The galaxy’s economy has been muddled as of late,” Rosser informs without slowing his pace. “Lord Pason is beginning to bear the burdens that come with being a magnate. Tensions are arising among the mogul families, many already initiating war.”

“Oh dear, I can’t imagine the seriousness that comes with wealth. It must be trying and very stressful. I hope he’ll be alright.”

“As do all of us. He is in desperate need of hope. And distraction. For that I’m counting on you.”

Her brows furrow. Me? Distraction?

As they walk around the corner, Rosser notices a particular man bound for their direction. He grabs a firm hold of the new slave and moves to the side of the corridor away from the central path. Confused, she looks at the man who in soldier’s uniform, then looks at Rosser and notices that his head is bowed. She immediately does the same.

“Welcome back, Lord Pason.”

Shaia freezes. So this is her master.

“Rosser.” The man stops in front of the old servant. “It’s been quite some time.”

“Yes, my lord. We rejoiced when we heard of your latest victory against Syndia, and relieved when your health and safety was confirmed.”

“Thank you. Have you seen Lady Pason?”

“Not yet, my lord. I have arrived from Erndut just yesterday.”

“I see. Is this part of the new shipment?” He nods towards Shaia.

“Ah, yes, my lord,” Rosser answers in a curiously nervous way.

“From?”

“Imberia.”

He frowns. “Miserable and weak planet. Imberians know only to be simple and live simply. No strength or power there. She – I presume it’s a female – doesn’t seem very useful. Her form is pathetic, and looks a hideous creature to say the least.”

Although she cannot see him, Shaia’s face burns with shame as she feels the man’s eyes scan her from head to toe. His deep voice drips of judgement and contempt.

“I trust the price was low. What is she to be used for?”

Rosser is slow to respond. Usually the young master did not query of trivial things. “She is to be a household slave.” He hopes that information suffices.

The young master stares down at the shaven head and downcast eyes for a moment, then says to Rosser, “So be it. Carry on.” A sharp turn on his heel and the soldier continues down the corridor.

When he is out of sight, Shaia hears Rosser exhale a sigh of relief. “Come along,” says he.

“Sir,” she starts, “it may not be my place to say, but I cannot do it.”

“Cannot do what?” His look is quite impatient.

With futile efforts, she tries to control the tears that spring to her sapphire eyes. “I am grateful that you saved me from a wretched and meaningless life as an experiment, but I’m not sure this is any better.” Oh, the shame she would bring upon her family! Her mother would die of shock and she would never be able to look Aeureilia in the eyes again.

“What are you talking about, child?” He shakes her arms in frustration.

“A consort,” she whispers through tears.

“What?”

“Or courtesan.”

Rosser straightens himself, his lips pressed thin. “You were right to say that it is not your place to say such a thing. Freedom is now a privilege not a right. The direction your life leads is now in the hands of your master. Also, you insult my master greatly to think he would take a mere child to his bed.”

Shaia blinks twice. She is unsure what to think. “Forgive me, sir. I misunderstood what you meant by distraction.”

“He’s old enough to be your father,” he scoffs, still offended out of loyalty. He starts to walk briskly for they are almost near the appointed time.

Father?  She jogs to keep up the pace. “He looks very young to be a father of a seventeen year old.”

Surprise strikes the old man’s face. “Young? He is nearly seventy years.”

“Seventy years! How spry and youthful he seems!”

“When did you see him?”

“Just a moment ago. In the hallway.”

“Ah, that was Lord Garrex Pason, the elder Lord Pason’s son. I now understand your confusion. Now it is clear: my master, Lord Hanon Pason needs you. So I pray.”

Shaia is relieved that she does not have to be under the precept of that boorish young man; but now she is pressured to fulfill an older man’s needs that may be on his death bed. “I’m sorry, sir. I haven’t much to offer your master. I have no talents, and as the young master said, I am hideous.”

“Those are petty things to my master. He needs not of those. He needs hope.”

“How could I possibly give him hope?”

Rosser stops. “Because you are the spitting image of his late first daughter.”

Ever tried to track back your life and see how much you’ve gained? I haven’t.

I was sitting there at my desk, viewing old photos of mine. I couldn’t even understand the melancholy feeling that was stirring within. I kept sighing, feeling heavy about things I didn’t even know what.

You know, sometimes I really wish to turn back time and return to these happy times behind. I didn’t even notice to whom I was talking to. Part of me kept babbling to myself. About the other part, well, I know He always listens.

“Don’t run away,” He answered, calling my name in the end. I like it so much the moment He calls my name. Somehow, it narrows the distance between us, bracing the feeling that we are indeed close.

From what? I let my question hung. I wasn’t expecting any answer. I was expecting discernment.

“You kept hiding from the present, running away to the past, wishing for a moment to anchor your future there. To Me, that doesn’t even sound right.” His tone was firm yet soft. I could see true love within.

I’m not hiding. It’s just… I gritted a silence for a while, considering the right word to say.

… hard, to practically leave things one has built in great effort, the word was flowing in the end.

I could feel His smile as a respond to my words. “I know. I know every effort you’ve made, but have you ever seen how much you’ve sacrificed too? You’ve built enough, but you have also sacrificed enough.”

I didn’t understand what He meant, really.

I sacrificed a thing to build something, I said, trying to explain my thoughts to Him as if I explained to a child, right? That is why it is called effort.

He was still there with the same smile, only warmer. “You sacrificed a thing to make an effort. That is why you build something in the end.”

It seemed like He saw my confusion when He finally asked me, “Remind me about them.”

The photo in my laptop was showing me together with my last cell group. Best cell I’ve ever had for the last three years, I admit. The photos were taken in the early year, when there were only five of us. By the end of the year, many new members entered the cell, making a total of nine.

I laughed spontaneously. You know it even better than me.

“Try it,” He insisted with such excitement, but still with deep patience.

You gave this cell to me…

“… by request,” He added.

… by request, okay. I remembered how I really bugged Him a lot during the end of the year, two years ago. My previous cell group was – how should I say it – not bad. But not good either. I know I couldn’t say anything bad about them: people do grow, see. But let’s say I was the one who got the most portions of the “forming” process. I did learn a lot in the end, but that also left deep markings and hurting inside, enough to make me crying out to Him.

I remembered I cried to You, saying that I couldn’t stand it anymore.

“What was My answer that time?” I knew exactly that He already knew the answer, but He kept teasing me.

Well, I tried to remember, You weren’t answering directly. Instead, I couldn’t even hear You saying anything. I felt desperate, thinking that I would finish my last cell as fast as possible, and then leaving.

It was true. I became a part of a cell group three years ago. Every year, each cell group would be reformed. This is my fourth year and by the end of this month I will be leaving. I’m done with my study, practically making me an official doctor, and that simply make me have no official cell group for this year.

But then You answered. You said you would give me a group that would be totally different from the previous. I didn’t know how that would be possible. But that was true. Just as I began to question Your statement, I saw myself growing deep love to the cell.

“And you forget that in the end you have to let them go…”

I don’t, I interrupt Him. I didn’t realize my tone was slightly high-pitched. Sorry… but I have never forgotten that. I lowered my voice.

“Then why I see fear within you? A fear of being left, a fear of being forgotten, a fear of being lonely…”

He nicked me just in the right spot. Yeah, why?

I could feel Him embraced me. It was warm and really calming. “You see, things have been rough for you these times. I know how much you were formed, how much pain you have been through. But do know that there’s one thing that makes Me proud of you. It is that you always listen, and by listening, you learn. I see all your process of maturity. I always there, always be with you. I see through your heart and I do know your capacity: the moment when you say you can’t stand anymore, the moment when you’re tripped and can’t get up. I know when you were saying the truth.”

That was when You finally answered?

“See what you have been through. Is there any prayer you asked that I haven’t answered?” He smiled, still embracing me.

There was a vision coming through. I was there as a boy, together with my sister. We were so young that we hadn’t even understood things for good. I remembered in my prayer, I asked Him for a video game console, a puppy, and a trip to Disneyland. It has been a long, long time ago. I couldn’t even remember my age, probably ten or eleven. Then another vision came, many years later when I finally got my first video game console, exactly just like I wanted; then many years later when my mom finally (and surprisingly) allowed me to raise a Pomeranian; then many, many years later when we finally reached the new Disneyland in Hong Kong.

Those were a child’s wishes. I even forgot them in a year or two. But yeah, You did make it all happened.

“Don’t you learn a thing or two?” He was waiting for my answer, but I kept silent. My mind was surely flowing and swirling with things, but I couldn’t even find the answer He wished.

I didn’t realize I was frowning when He finally answered, “Do realize this: the first way of accepting is by letting go. I saw sincerity and honesty within your prayer as a child, and I noticed how you kept wishing inside your heart. But when things went wrong and seemed like you couldn’t get any answer to your prayer, you started to let it go…”

That means despair, I said it flat.

He laughed, “Perhaps yes. But despair means no hope. I, on the contrary, saw your hope within. It was a blazing flame in the beginning, the egoistic one. Time formed it into a tender one, the one which went well with My plan, if you understand.”

I was taught to keep hoping. But You taught me not to force my will, instead. Is that?

“You do learn,” He said with satisfaction in His tone.

Similar thing happened with my prayer about my new cell? I don’t think so.

“Slightly different, but yes. You had learned a lot during that time, you had learned to trust Me. But as I said, things were going rough for you and your hope was getting dim.” I could feel He stared pass across nothingness, as if He was remembering good old story.

“That was when you listened to the prophecy. I meant nothing but to light up your hope, so that you wouldn’t give up that easily.”

It has been a long day. After what seems like years of not sleeping I can feel the unfamiliar, gentle pressure on my chest as I sink back into my seat. The lamp post yellows the interior of my car making all of the emotionless technology seem warmer and inviting. I close my eyes for a little while just to see if it will work. The sound of the sea lapping against the shore is a faint memory. I can hear her giggle way off in the distance. The memory of the breaking waves has shifted this memory to the surface and into focus. That laugh. Her laugh. The musical rise and fall in contrary motion to the breaking waves. The two memories are antagonistic at first. Now they are slowly synchronising in harmony.
I look up at the stars and wonder at man’s obsession with them. Culture and science concerns itself with the stars, drawing patterns out of them, concluding from them secrets about ourselves. I am fascinated not so much by the stars but by the space in between. Glass half full people look at the sky and see the stars and most people are the half full kind. Nothing is rarely apparent to them. I look at the night sky confirming the nothing I feel inside.
I pick up my phone and call Mr. Watts.
“Hello?”
“Mr. Watts. It’s Lohman. Inspector Lohman…Arthur. I don’t know what I’m doing but…I’ve been busy all day. I want to show you what I’ve found…I…I think you can help” My tone is erratic, screaming with a self-consciousness that says, ‘Get yourself together, man!’
“What? What have you found?” He must know this is unusual. Good.
“Can you meet me?”
“Yes. Where?”
“the Seventh Star car park on the Cape Hill junction.”
“I’ll be fifteen minutes.”
Mr. Watts is on time. He gets out of his car and starts to patrol for a familiar face until he locks onto mine. I get out of my car meeting him under a decrepit smoking shelter.
“What can I do?” his voice is calm but his eyes betray his understanding of the gravity of the situation.
“Mr. Watts…”
“For God’s sake, call me Ishmael!”
“Ishmael. I’ve followed leads all day. You remember the description of the taxi driver that Martha gave me?”
“Yeah?”
“I called them up and bullied some details out of their employment records.”
“Wait. What if they call him up and, you know, warn him or something?” He was sharp. In my experience victim’s families are not this coordinated under stress.
“The taxi company employs almost exclusively fresh migrant workers. All I had to do was start bawling about Home Office employment background checks and they dropped the usual data protection act bollocks. Fear is our ally.”
“Oh.”
“Anyway, they tell me one ‘Victor Haines’ called in last night claiming he needed hospital attention to treat some kind of whiplash injury and he hasn’t been in today.” We start walking out of the car park. I keep the pace up. Timing will be essential. We make it around the block onto a removed residential road, Carsithorn End. The houses here are all terraced and fronted right onto the street. ‘To Let’ signs jut out from the second floors of odd buildings. Few family homes, lots of community disinterest. Apart from the two of us, the road is deserted.
“Last night Victor Haines was dispatched at midnight to the Amber Tavern in Quinton. Victor Haines, who didn’t need to complete his run because the customers changed their minds and were dropped off early. I called the hospital. Spoke to the admin about last night’s A&E. You remember…”
“…She hurt him.” He was following.
“The amount of skin present under her nails suggested it was significant enough for the attacker to need stitches. I cross referenced hospital records narrowing the search with the time of death and the nature of the injury. It matches. Victor Haines was treated last night for minor lesions about his face and neck. It’s him Ishmael. Victor Haines took your daughter!”
Ishmael looks as though he has not heard me so I start to repeat myself. Slowly, I notice his hands tremble. His face only reveals emotion by the flare in his nostrils. We are standing in a poorly lit section of the road. There is broken glass on the floor surrounding the nearest lamp post, adding to the darkness.
“I should’ve called it in, Ishmael. I have to report all my findings at the end of each shift but I didn’t. I couldn’t.”
“Why?” He is back, focused again.
“Because when I saw you today losing what we’ve lost is irreconcilable. I lost my daughter, my Hattie, a year ago.”
“How?”
“I was driving her home from a holiday in Aberystwyth, Wales. A driver, had a few drinks, came to overtake us on one of the valley roads when a lorry appeared on the corner of the oncoming lane. The driver reacts. Cut into us, sending us over the side. I remember the way the rubber screamed on the tarmac. It took two hours to get her out and another hour to get her to the hospital. She died.  The driver was brought to trial but acquitted due to someone grassing me up on my involvement with the investigation. And that was it. End of. It’s an eternally open wound. I can’t let you live like that. Like this.  If you’re thorough…take this man for your daughter, for mine. It is right” I’m looking for a sign. Come on Ishmael, are you with me?
“For Sarah.” His voice was detached and his eyes were fixed on the door. He knows where we are.
“Right. For her. You know where we are, don’t you”
“Inside?”
“Yes, Ishmael. You ready?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll delay the investigation but you must be thorough, understand?” I knock the door. We can hear footsteps. The handle twitches, drops and the door unlatches. A man stands in the doorway, perplexed. On the right of his neck is a thick dark purple line that curves from his collar to the nape of his neck. We three stand for a second in silence that is broken by Ishmael charging past me and into Victor. His hands claw at Victor’s face pushing him back into the hallway entrance, smothering his cries of terror. They disappear into a room. There is the sound of moving furniture. I lean into the doorway, pull the door closed and leave.

The Final Chapter: The A44 will be made available @ 18:00, Friday 25/01/2013

“It’s time.”

The voice awakened me. It was the usual voice I often hear, so soft, so calm. Whenever I hear His voice, my only reaction is nothing but trust. I remembered how awkward I felt, that I couldn’t even say a word. Not even a prayer.

You know what I had in mind… I said, paused in each word as if I weighed it.

“Five and a half years…” He answered me as if He knew my next answer.

I sighed then turned silent. I couldn’t even lift my head, staring at nothing in the darkness.

I know I had wrong thought, I said in the end, but a thought doesn’t go away only because it’s wrong, You see.

“I know I’ve taught you well, and I know you’ve learned. But despite all of the process, why you choose to back up now?”

So many things swirled within my mind. Help me then, I said.

I closed my eyes and the visions came.

There was standing a boy of eighteen. He was standing at the front porch of a campus, shouldered a pride, big enough to slowed him down, yet he kept moving. All I could saw was he was all alone, with nobody to be relied on. A few more chattering and he joined with his group. His new group, I supposed. It took only a short time when he finally befriended them. Physically, I knew he was weak: too thin for a person at his age and his height; but deep down in his smile, I knew he’d passed so many things. He was forged so hard, and for the first time, my doubt about he wouldn’t survive melted.

“New school year has always been hard, you see,” He said with the same calming sound.

So, that was his first year? I knew I didn’t have to ask Him that, I already knew the answer. Yet, my mind kept bugging me, so I asked Him. Will he ever make it?

“We’ll see. I want you to notice all his surroundings. See how things are so much ‘different’ than you used to know.” He then took me to a walk. People passing, chattering. I knew how things were so much different, but this kind of issue had never bugged me.

Race, culture, religion… are those what You meant?

He kept staring at the boy. He didn’t even answer my question, but deep down I knew the answer.

I was then taken passing the time. It was the same boy I saw, chattering and laughing with all his friends. They were talking about his grade at the end of his first semester. It seemed like he managed to hit A in the hardest subject of that semester. Only five persons managed to get the perfect score, and he was one of them.

Okay, so he’s a smart boy. What’s so special then? People do have ideals, and he’s one of the idealists.

“He decided to move on and crush the tide,” He answered, staring passed memories. “You know, all his friends gave up along the way, said that the subject was impossible to be mastered. I remember during one day he came to Me, praying, saying how he believed in things that are impossible. What I saw was even more heartened Me, he kept trying although I saw how much he cried in despair.”

So You decided to yield him?

“I always yield him,” He looked me in the eye, smiling. “I only gave him hope, and taught him to hold tightly to the hope. Come, now.” He took me away again.

I was taken to a villa. Inside, I saw people at his age, sitting in circular position. Boys and girls kept debating one another about choosing one of two persons. I turned my head around but I couldn’t even find the boy.

“He’s outside, along with his one friend. It seems like the vote is on,” He answered my puzzle.

Vote? What vote?

I heard them uttered some reasons: another yes and no until they reached a deal. A name came out then. I couldn’t read it exactly, but I got the sense that it was the boy’s name. He was called inside.

“They were discussing about who should be the next coordinator of the faculty’s Catholic organization. It seems like he’s on,” He continued, breaking my muse.

I don’t really like the idea. It seems like they’re picking up the weak.

“You think so? Now, let me tell you one thing. They put real deep consideration in choosing the boy. None of them ever thought that the boy would be chosen. Not the boy, not even the previous committee. I should let you know that the boy came to the gathering with no burden at all, knowing that he wasn’t any candidate.”

Then why?

“During the beginning of this semester I told him that I might entrust him with a leadership. He responded with a smile, but I knew he didn’t believe Me. Well, I couldn’t blame him for that, he was new at this – at hearing Me calling, I mean. So last night I tried to ask him again. I got real long pause and silence as his answer, but in the end he learned to trust. I was really glad when he said My will be done.”

He took me outside, where I saw the boy was being held together by all his friends. The boy was laughing, knowing that his friends trusted him a lot.

He’d never got such trust before, had he?

“Instead, he’d already got so much trust. He’s more mature than you could see. If only you could know him better, I’m sure you would learn a lot from him. You should know that he never looks down on a trust, as well as he never looks down on a friendship. He was forged a lot by failed friendships and mistrusts, which made him kind of afraid to take a new one.”

But he embraced himself this time. He had free will to decline, I presume.

“The boy has soft heart. Indeed he has free will to decline, but I told him one thing, that his friends might need him more than he – or they – could ever realize.” We had a walk then, leaving the boy and his friends. We looked for empty garden chairs and sat there.

I changed my position, making myself comfortable, enjoying every single time I spent with Him. Tell me what happened next, I continued.

“Not really bad for a boy who had no experience of being a leader before. I, Myself, was impressed with what he’d done. In the end he felt that he was totally failed, seeing everything he had set being ruined. I remember how he came to Me, crying, offered a resign,” for a while He chuckled, “but I rejected.”

I stared at Him, seeing Him smiling. It seemed like He was remembering good old story.

“He was surely desperate with all his friends that time, but he surely learned about one thing: one cannot reject My call, and once I call a person, I’d make sure that I will be the one who ended the call.”

I kept staring at Him, my eyes were getting wet but I knew I was smiling.

After all, he got what he deserves, right? You gave him descent prize in the end. You’re right, I think I have to learn a lot from the boy. But things have gone through the past…

“Every past is a part of present, and thus become a part of the future. The boy hadn’t gone far. He just lied within,” He pointed my heart, “to be awakened with even stronger spirit. Whom I see now, sitting in front of Me, is the same boy. Five years older indeed, much more mature, yet being spirited away.”

I stared to the ground. It seemed like my words were being taken away. I knew I was being scolded by a Dad, yet in the same time, being caressed by a Best Friend.

“I determined your road. I have made your way ever since you learned to trust in Me, and that means years ago,” He continued with the same calming voice. “I saw you coming to this city, bringing nothing but hope and I’d made sure that the hope you were clinging to helped you survived. I saw what you left behind in your hometown: your past, your pain, but also your cheering. It is time for you to move, and I expect nothing less from you.”

Lord, please… I couldn’t say more. It pained me a lot.

It hurts a lot when one is being faced with the fact that he has to leave all that he has built in effort.  The other fact about he might come back someday couldn’t even ease the pain. Things are built to change, and I do believe what I leave today, won’t ever be the same the next time I return.

“Indeed, things are built to change. But you are also forged to change. I know at this time, it’s still hard for you to accept the reality, but do realize one thing: affection won’t change, and it leaves deep markings in people’s heart. It won’t change.” With the last words, I was brought back to reality.

There I was, lying in my bed, still staring into the darkness. It was midnight already, and I was supposed to be sleeping already. I tried to understand His sayings, but I just couldn’t.

I sighed, realized how tired I was. I could still feel His presence after all, embracing me with peace.

I’m tired, I said in the end.

“I know. We’re all tired,” He answered.

What if… what if I couldn’t make it in the end?

“Well,” His smile widened, “only time will tell. You doubted the boy would ever survive in the beginning, right? But here he is, lying in his bed, questioning Me about his next step.”

I laughed.

Yeah, I think You’re right. He made it in the end. He’s a doctor now…

“… and you won’t see your answer unless you make your move. Make a deal with Me, you’ll return in a year, writing another story of victory.”

I will.

In those days cinema programmes were shown continuously. as one showing ended so it would start all over again with only a very short interval, to allow the lady selling the ice-cream enough time to come around with her tray. If you arrived after the film had started, then you could easily stay on to catch up with the part you had missed, and if the film was good enough, there was nothing to prevent you from staying on to see it all over again.

Shortly after my sixteenth birthday I had gone to the Adelphi and arrived late, therefore missing the beginning of the main feature. I can’t remember what the film was, but I expect it was a musical starring one of my favorites, Fred Astaire, Rita Hayworth, or Betty Grable, and I decided to stay on to catch up with the beginning. In the seat next to me was a young man about the same age, and as we waited for the programme to start again, we began to talk. It seemed that he too was a dancer. I couldn’t believe the coincidence, someone of the same age, with the same interests, living in the same area, and we had never met. His name was George Jones.

Wee Georgie Wood had been a well known comedian—both on the radio as well as on the stage. He was short in stature and slight of build, and he specialized in playing a mischievous schoolboy, a part he continued to play very successfully until he retired quite late in life. Wee Georgie Jones was another name that I had become familiar with after the Ellesmere’s talent shows, and I had assumed that he was an amateur comedian in the same vein as the other Wee Georgie.

When George first told me his name it immediately rang a note in my head, so I asked him “You’re not . . . ?” his embarrassed reaction told me that I was right. He explained that when he had been much younger someone had thought it a good idea to call him Wee Georgie, and he had become stuck with it. Poor George—he hated it.

Roadblocks to Poetic Preaching

Before two things may converge, that which keeps them separate must be bridged or removed altogether. There are things that get in the way of truly poetic, namely creative, preaching. But those things may not be as one would suspect.

In order to contemplate the more prominent “roadblocks”, it does become necessary to establish a particular philosophy with regard to preaching’s role in worship. Engaging such a topic inevitably brings one to the gates of worship style. It certainly seems to be a likely assumption that the Christian venues which utilize modern contemporary worship forms already have the most opportune settings for “creativity.” I would argue the opposite. I would argue that the historic rites and ceremonies provide a fuller and more substantative horizon, one that grows up and out of a broader reception of God’s Word while simultaneously standing upon centuries of Christianity “in context” rather than a single generation and its current locale on the world’s timeline. In other words, I believe that it is somewhat of a misnomer to assume that the church’s creativity is found in changing or adapting herself in order to be found relevant to the whims of the world. To reflect upon this further, consider the following from Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon:

“The church need not feel caught between the false Niebuhrian dilemma of whether to be in or out of the world… The church is not out of the world. There is no other place for the church to be than here. In the sixties, it became fashionable to speak of the need for the church to be “in” the world, serving the world. We think that we could argue that being in the world, serving the world, has never been a great problem for the church. Alas, our greatest tragedies occurred because the church was all too willing to serve the world. The church need not worry about whether to be in the world. The church’s only concern is how to be in the world, in what form, for what purpose.”[1]

Quite simply, to be “in the world” never means to be in subjugation to or shaped and carried by the world’s demands. To do this is to brush aside the much larger canvas of her deeply colorful, strange, and ornate language which serves as a rich soil for creativity while serving equally to keep her whole. It is this very language that finds itself rising from the biblical language of God, and it is by this that the church is shaped and communicated to the “now.” It is a foolish mistake to assume that she must adapt, that is, that she ought to disregard the rites and ceremonies (words and actions) of the Christians that came before her in order to become credible or acceptable to her current surroundings. The theology of an eternal faith suggests and encourages otherwise. To do otherwise seems to make service to the modern pop culture primary while allowing it to flex its influence in the church’s arena as truly uniquely fresh and creative. And in the end, the believers are led to an inability to discern whether it is God or the modern world driving the worship experience.

“For (Karl) Barth and for us, Nazi Germany was the supreme test for modern theology. There we experienced the ‘modern world,’ which we had so labored to understand and to become credible to, as the world, not only the Copernican world view, computers, and the dynamo, but also of the Nazis. Barth was horrified that his church lacked the theological resources to stand against Hitler. It was the theological liberals, those who spent their theological careers translating the faith into terms that could be understood by modern people and used in the creation of modern civilization, who were unable to say no. Some, like Emanuel Hirsch, even said yes to Hitler.”[2]

This is an inherently fatal flaw for many preachers who, whether they realize it or not, believe that what the world offers more fertile and interesting than the Church.

But could there still be more? Is this really only an attempt to be relevant or is it meatier than that? Is it illuminating a natural connection between good doctrine, good liturgy, and good preaching? Is it merely an imposition of personality and personal preference upon the people, or is it illuminating a deeper connection between sound doctrine, sound liturgy, and sound preaching? Or could it be worse, that is, the all-out fateful lack of spiritual discernment previously noted by Hauerwas and Willimon?

I would venture to offer at this point that the reader of this text should dismount from any horse charging in a direction that would attempt to fit the following homiletical discussion into a position expressing creative preaching as a handmaiden to contemporary worship. Such a course is both eisegetical and antithetical. It is eisegetical insofar as one imposes that creative preaching must be paired with so called “contemporary worship”. This displays a lacking in theological depth and character, is wrapped in apathy and less-than-studious efforts, and finally ends in a dreadfully faulted imposition upon the homiletical task while revealed in inappropriate levels of homiletical restraint. It is antithetical in that what may be considered “unusual” in the church really isn’t unique. In other words, I hear guitars and drums on the radio all the time. I see flashy presenters wearing snappy, hip clothes on the television all the time. These dynamics are neither unusual nor memorable. They are repulsively “cookie-cutter” and as far from meeting the ears of a post-modern listener as one can get. What if the course were reversed? In that, you would see the inherently creative power of tradition. If someone walked into a crowded room wearing a white alb, those in attendance would never forget it. As memorable as one would prefer to think that the world’s offerings may be, the truth of the matter is that each and every one of them rests at the peak of “Mount Forgettable” because they are limited to their context. Therefore, the results are the boring usual-ness of modernity, that is, the everyday world (the same world we experience before and after we find ourselves in worship) being presented as “in sync” with the people of God. Actually, when these forms collide, I believe that the joy of the Christian is regulated, if not completely muted, by the joy of the world.

This affects the preaching, as has been suggested, in that it sets the wrong limitations. Contemporary worship is an immersion into what, by design, is meant to lead the worshippers away from the language of the church, that is, the language they are to be taught to speak, the language that is to drive the preaching. Then, tragically, God’s people are robbed. That which is by nature distinct and connecting with the fuller joy of the “whole” becomes disconnected, usual, and horribly misunderstood as irrelevant.

Perhaps it is then that the quintessential roadblock to poetic preaching is the failure to understand the difference between the language of the church and the language of the world, both of which must be discerned as having different joys from different sources. I will speak to this issue in the next section. Until then, it may be expected that when attempting to broach the subject of defining and utilizing creative, poetic form within the context of the church, specifically her Lord’s work from the pulpit, we will probably find ourselves resting amidst the library of volumes written on the theology and craft of a particular poetic form already in use since the church began: hymnody (with which we will spend significant time in Chapter Fourteen).

In actuality, the church has never really been lacking in poetry. Since the creation of man, the poetic imagery of faith seems to evidence itself most brilliantly through the church’s song, and this song has held, and continues to hold, dominion over a vast domain.[3] It seems natural even now in the midst of sin that the forgiven human spirit in the process of re-creation would respond in thanksgiving to God through the poetic language of hymnody when His gifts are given and the burden of guilt is lifted.

“Hear, O Lord, and be merciful to me! O Lord, be my helper! You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; you have loosed my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness, that my glory may sing your praise and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever.” (Psalm 30:10-12)

Hymns are vigilant and precise. And yet they employ vibrant uses of language, carefully cultivated to record, reflect, and clearly express things that are to be remembered. Martin Luther is said to have been such a brilliant hymnographer, not necessarily because of his theological acumen, but because of his grasp of language. Martin Brecht comments that Luther had the ability to speak those wonderful truths with such clarity not simply because of “his familiarity with the liturgy and its rubrics, but even more from his ability as a poet.”[4]

It has been since Eden, whether it is found in describing our depravity or relaying God’s redemptive work in action, that the poetic verse of the church’s song has been and remains a natural vein for godly expression moved by the Holy Spirit within the emotive, fleshly context of man. Perhaps it is safe to say that most Christians have a favorite hymn. This is true because hymns are glorious mechanisms for both relaying and receiving the truths of Holy Scripture in a memorable way. But what about the sermon? Better yet, why not the sermon? Do people say the same regarding the preaching of the Gospel, the more important of the two, the one to which the other points? Maybe not, but not necessarily for the reasons we may suspect.

People listen to hymns differently than they do a sermon because when interacting with either, they are playing with different rules. Thomas G. Long says the following with regard to understanding the limitations of the listener’s subjectivity:

“Speakers and hearers, writers and readers meet on common ground defined in art by the mutual agreement that certain forms will govern the communication between them. These forms are not static; they are dynamic. They have parts, but moving parts… If the speaker is playing one game and the listener another, communication breaks down.”[5]

Long continues:

“When we watch the evening news we expect the newscaster to operate by the rules of informational communication, and our listening is governed by the rules of that game. If the newscaster uses two “becauses” in a row, we wince at the error and mentally erase one. If, on the other hand, we are hearing a poem, we have different expectations. We are listening according to another set of rules, and “because” twice in a row does not make us wince, it makes us ponder.”[6]

Understanding the game, other opportunities for play arise. For example, hymns have rhythm, a repetitive tool for memorization. A sermon can have this. Hymns have rhyme, also a repetitive tool for memorization while at the same time acting as a mechanism for connecting processes of thought and enhancing the participant’s linguistic ability to ponder what has been said. A sermon can have this, too. When immersed in schemes of rhythm, the listener is able to more carefully follow the thought process while carefully waiting for the next familiar pattern to carry him further. And these are only a few of the obvious forms available to the preacher. But does the preacher utilize these forms? If the answer is “no” then this answer is most likely a reverberation of the response to the previous question, “Do people actually hear and retain the message of the sermon?”

As has already been stated, people listen to hymns differently than they do to sermons. Both retain their wellsprings in Christian joy and yet most often only the hymns are as memorable. The job of the preacher is then to change the rules so that even though the listener may be expecting an expository rendition of the text, he receives something different, something poetic. But what will this poetic difference look like? Does the preacher need to learn a new skill set to accomplish it? The answer: Yes and no. A preacher most likely has a majority of the skills necessary to accomplish the task as he prepares exegetically, but there are additional skills that may be acquired through intimate interaction with literature. These skills will cause the preacher to take another look at what he intends to preach in order to see how it may be better delivered in creative and memorable ways using language.

At this point, what is it then that may be stopping the preacher from exercising his creative freedoms right now? Perhaps the following roadblocks are the most obvious.

Roadblock 1:

The first roadblock asks quite simply: Do you even have it in you to become a more creative writer and preacher? In a phone conversation with a former professor, the opinion was given that “you either have it or you don’t. It can’t be learned.” I humbly disagree. I believe the answer is a resounding “Yes.” This answer was given when the Lord set you apart as one of His preachers and gave to you the task of delivering His Gospel. If the answer is “no”, then you should not be a preacher. With that, we must be careful not to succumb to the assumption that preaching cannot be beautiful and that such prosaic opportunity belongs solely to the hymn writer or poet. Hymnody is a way (and a prime one at that) to proclaim the Word of God in colorful and memorable ways, but it is not the only way.

Perhaps this assumption, this roadblock, takes root within the hearts and minds of our preachers because it is so often that very few will be so bold as to claim the title of poet while even fewer are inclined to consider themselves as hymnographers. Certainly a preacher may believe that he can carry a tune. Maybe it is that he has even written a sonnet for his wife at Christmas, but he would never consider investing the time necessary for sharpening his creative writing skill. He doesn’t see himself in this light, and besides, writing poetry is hard and writing hymns is even harder. Austin C. Lovelace writes:

“The hymn is one of the most difficult poetic forms to master, for its small palette and vast subject matter make demands on technique which give pause to great poets yet seem to encourage the versifiers—those carefree souls who ‘have a feel for meter’ and ‘can rhyme,’ even though the results are doggerel.”[7]

Perhaps comments like this have perpetuated the discouragement.

Roadblock 2:

Preachers are not to begin their approach to the Word of God as casual and carefree versifiers. They are to have great fear and love for God and His Word as they seek to serve Him in faithfulness and humility. For the preacher, God’s Word is more than just simple language. It is God’s divine revelation to man. Perhaps it is then that another roadblock (which actually may be considered positively) begins to be seen. Could it be that most preachers tremble while even considering an attempt at carrying that which is already perfect into a more colorful (but not necessarily different) form? Is this the answer to Luther’s question? Is this why the world seems to have so much to offer linguistically while the Christian spirit seems so sluggish and cold? Perhaps this is merely revealing the great humility and respect for the Word of God that preachers are to have. Even further, perhaps it shows great restraint by preachers when they keep from forcing their personal likes and dislikes upon their people. Perhaps it is because history serves to show that God’s church throughout the ages has largely been comprised of faithful preachers seeking to have their work defined by what God gives rather than what we give to God. And that’s a good thing because what God gives is already perfect. But again, the perfection of God’s Word does not limit the stirring of its creative strength within the preacher and its subsequent expression. This is particularly true in the Lutheran tradition as compared to other traditions, and was so from early on. Take for example Joseph Herl’s comments regarding Luther’s hymn A Mighty Fortress Is Our God:

“Luther was not content to speak only in the words of the Psalmist; rather, his text uses the psalm as a springboard to the New Testament, bringing the comfort of Christ’s gospel into the Old. This method was followed by other Lutheran poets (e.g., LSB 340/341, ‘Lift up your heads, ye mighty gates’), and so Lutheran psalm paraphrases offered a theological richness not found in those of the Calvinist and British reformers, who insisted that the psalms, being the very words of God, be translated as literally as possible.”[8]

Herl points out that the Word of God quite naturally creates an arsenal of wonder that has the potential for revelation in tremendous and various ways. Each expression is a result of the text and not necessarily from preconceived formulas or restrictions.

Preachers know that great care must be employed as stewards of the mysteries of God. As has already been said, what God gives is perfect, and we take great care in seeing that it is relayed and not preferentially revised. John Pless, in his book entitled Handling the Word of Truth, writes:

“In an age of relativism and religious pluralism, it is essential to confess the full truth of God’s Word. Nothing that our Lord gives us may be set aside. Any error diminishes the truth of the Gospel, making Christ less of a Savior than He is. Insistence on purity of doctrine is not a matter of rigidity or inflexibility but of faithfulness to our Lord. Yet Walther recognizes that a sermon may contain no false doctrine yet fail to preach Christ.”[9]

Pless has now carried us to and highlighted an important issue at hand through his observation of C.F.W. Walther: Sermons can and often are packed full of wonderfully systematic details yet never actually preach Jesus Christ. For example, with regard to the doctrine of faith, Fleming Rutledge comments that you can talk a lot about it without any of your words being worth the effort:

“Clergy are often tempted to preach about faith. My homiletics professor, the distinguished Lutheran preacher Edmund Steimle, warned us not to do it. He said, ‘You can never get a person to believe by talking to him about faith. If you want your child to make friends with the child down the street, you can talk to her about friendship till you’re blue in the face and it gets you nowhere. What you can do is arrange a meeting where a friendship might occur. Or it might not. It is no longer in your hands.’”[10]

It may be a danger that the preacher becomes so abstracted into an intellectual contest pre-determined by formula to protect the authority and efficacy of God’s Word, so much so that the people listening actually lose their sense of direction. The spirit of faith within them so dearly wants to hear Jesus. They do hear the preacher speaking rudimentary and sound doctrine, and they may even walk away confirming the truths of what was preached, but they didn’t hear Jesus. They heard the preacher talking “about” Jesus, telling them some things that someone who lived a long time ago wanted them to know. In the end, is that really “pure”? Even further, because it is happening this way, the Christian becomes accustomed to this preaching and becomes unable to discern (perhaps even drifting toward what was previously presented – contemporary worship styles become a tempting “fill” for the gap). The listener comfortably assumes that this tension is acceptable because who can argue with pure doctrine. In other words, he settles into his seat in the pew and becomes contentedly bored because “that’s just the way it is.” Never mind that he has been trained to be disconnected from the reality that Jesus is speaking in the “now” – right now! Perhaps it is as Dr. David Scaer declared in one of his lectures on Christology while his tongue was firmly planted in his cheek:

“Lutherans preach terrible sermons because they are formulaic. We have in mind before we step into the pulpit that we will spend five to seven minutes telling the people off and then another five to seven minutes telling them it will be okay. Gads, people! Preach the text!”[11]

To interpret, Dr. Scaer was intending by his lecture to point out that a preacher doesn’t start with a formula (even if that formula is strictly an abiding by the Law and Gospel distinction) and go from there, but rather he starts with the Word. It would seem that preachers who start with a formula may end up lacking the one thing needful for Gospel preaching, that is, the honesty and integrity of the Gospel as it is relayed through the inerrant authority, the Word. Horace Hummel comments:

“‘Law’ and ‘Gospel’ sometimes became simply ‘bad news’ and ‘good news’ for the human situation of almost any type, with the Bible only a major source of paradigms and models… (T)he point here is that a ‘Law-Gospel’ hermeneutic independent of Scripture inevitably tends in more mystical or subjectivistic directions. When ‘Gospel’ is no longer normed by a closed canon with an inerrant text, final authority inevitably devolves upon each individual interpreter. The content of faith is swallowed up by the act of faith, the fides quae by the fides qua.”[12]

Almost by default, then, does the preacher feel the need to offer additives to all things in and around the sermon, to be so “experiential and relational that what one should experience or relate to actually falls between the cracks.”[13]

Pure doctrine is pure because it preaches the Christ revealed in the Holy Scriptures, crucified for our transgressions and raised for our justification. Its purest sense then is in merely preaching the text. The Law and the Gospel are present already and they will emerge and be discovered. David R. Schmidt offers the following in his article Law and Gospel in Sermon and Service:

“Rather than open the text of Scripture, the teachings of the faith, or the lives of the people to God’s gracious working through the proper distinction of Law and Gospel, the preacher simply embeds Law and Gospel proclamation in the midst of other material. He satisfies some rule learned long ago about what makes a sermon Lutheran: the proclamation of Law and Gospel. Such negligence is not faithful preaching and certainly not what is meant by properly distinguishing Law and Gospel in the sermon. It turns the Word of God, his life-giving message of judgment and salvation, into some Lutheran mantra that when spoken will redeem any excuse for a sermon ex opera operato. Would that preaching were so easy!”[14]

Roadblock 3:

Since we have touched on the idea of “formula”, let us explore further. Another roadblock to consider is that perhaps there is a false sense of security in the rigidity of “formula.” I relay this in somewhat of an anecdotal way. It has been my experience with some preachers that there exists a fear of telling the story. In other words, rather than preaching on the words of Jesus in the Gospel appointed for the day, the preacher chooses an Epistle lesson, simply restating Paul’s sermonic tone and content. In other words, you can’t be accused of heresy when you simply restate what the approved, Apostolic preached has already said. Of course I am not suggesting that preaching from the Epistles of Paul as opposed to the Gospels is wrong. Both are the Holy Word of God. Both deliver judgment and salvation. But recognize that both tell a story. And for safety’s sake or reasons of effortlessness, to evade the Gospel with such conscious or subconscious rationale should be avoided.

Roadblock 4:

Perhaps it is tired apathy combined with “force of habit.” In our day-to-day lives, it would be unusual to give someone directions to a particular location by describing the beauty of the trees in detail or explaining the history of a particular site along the way. It is much easier to simply give the basic details. Perhaps it is then that we find it more desirable to just “get to the point” and therefore much easier to give the right and left turns which compose the systematic roadmap. In this, we proceed without stopping to smell the proverbial roses (which were enhanced for the preacher already through faithful study and love for the Word) by describing the exegetically scenic view which carried you to your destination. For example, rather than excitedly proclaiming to the people why the ceremonial water jars just may be an important part of the revealed details with regard to the Law of God in John 2:1-11, full of visual images of Word, water, and wine, the preacher may simply skip over it as a familiar, but nonetheless dubious, part of the Biblical landscape. Why take the time to describe the scene contextually when it is easier to assume that we’re simply talking about “biblical times”? Of course there were probably some water jars there. There were jars all over the place. Who cares? Well, Jesus does, and maybe that’s why the specifics of the jars are included in the account. Study it. Find out. Perhaps by these jars used in the ceremonial cleansings according to the Jewish Elders, a point to recognize that even these ceremonies growing up and out of the commanded washings, proclaim to us that Jesus fulfilled every iota of the Law of God, even the obscure commands represented by those water jars specifically mentioned by John, used by Christ, and seen and understood by every single guest at the wedding. They are significant. Perhaps it is that by using them, Jesus demonstrates for us that He is the only One who can fulfill the whole Law of God, and then He proves this by miraculously changing water into wine in six stone water jars.

Roadblock 5:

Perhaps it is a healthy fear of eisegesis. As has been said, the faithful preacher recognizes that it is no minor episode when attempting to transmit the weight of scriptural truth into another form other than what has already been given on the page. A preacher does not want to feel as though he is imposing creative liberties or is reading into the text something that is not there, thereby lessening the possibility of purity. Faithful exegesis is a good first line of defense against such abuse.

Roadblock 6:

This final roadblock is a combination of three particular assumptions. It has more so to do with assumptions imposed upon the listeners themselves rather than the assumptions made by the preacher and imposed upon himself. Approaching the listener while ignorant of these may actually prove to be limiting roadblocks for the preacher’s scope of creativity.

The first assumption is that the person in the pew is an “objective” listener, one who recognizes and admits unquestionable alignment with an objective truth, remaining unaffected and unshaped by subjective opinion, and is actually willing to bend his subjective opinion to align with the objective. This is to believe that the listener is in fact able to ask “What is the text truly teaching?” as opposed to only asking “What does it mean to me and how will I assimilate this into what I already believe to be true?” The preacher must come to the pulpit ready to preach as though the listener is predisposed to the latter. Dealing forthrightly with this assumption in the preparatory process provides for even the remotest pieces of objective truth to become fertile soil for colorful preaching.

The second assumption may be that because the listener is obviously a “church-goer”, he must therefore be classified as being conservatively aligned with the public confession of the congregation or church body. This means the listener recognizes unquestionably that certain truths are “givens” within the Christian context, not because they are simply “traditions” or “practices” but because they are bound to the objective truth driving the narrative of the whole. For example, the preacher may assume each listener recognizes according to the objective standard of the fundamental Christian narrative that abortion is a sin and not a matter of personal choice. This, again, is limiting to the scope of preaching because it is allowing for rich, theological topics to go unnoticed and missed within the Biblical narrative being preached.

A third and final assumption to be considered here suggests that the preacher believes the listener holds enough familiarity with the contents of the Bible (especially if a congregation subscribes to a lectionary system of readings which repeats in cycles) that little explanation is needed with regard to the details of the Biblical systematic which give shape to the narrative. In other words, considering the previous example regarding abortion, the preacher assumes the listener thoroughly understands that abortion is wrong, however the assumption is also made  that he is fully capable of adjusting to the fuller discussion – that is – he comprehends the scriptural evidence suggesting that when the mother’s life is threatened, an abortion may be allowable and even necessary.[15]

If an assumption is to be made, it should be that it is more that likely the listener is truly a post-modernist, affected by politics and generational biases, and as a church-goer, perhaps conservative in name only. With regard to identity, the listener most likely subscribes to the liberalism of “freedom”, “destiny”, and “choice” ideology. Stanley Hauerwas provides enlightening commentary with regard to this roadblock in his book A Cross-Shattered Church: Reclaiming the Theological Heart of Preaching. Here Hauerwas argues that it is the subjective notion of liberalism to develop “arrangements without memory.”[16] He continues:

“Thus my claim that modernity names the attempt to produce people who believe they should have no story except the story they chose when they had no story. This is called ‘freedom,’ and it is assumed such an account of freedom is necessary to sustain an account of morality that cannot acknowledge that we live by gift.”[17]

William H. Willimon speaks similarly in his book Peculiar Speech: Preaching to the Baptized:

“(A)ll our talk of ‘freedom’ is but the rattling of the chains binding us to the authoritarianism of a liberal, democratic culture, a culture that, whether it is intended to do so or not, destroys human community by fragmenting us into a herd of isolated units, each detached from tradition, community, history, and one another, all the while telling us that we are free. Ironically, in such condition, detached from sources of true meaning, we have not gained our individuality but have lost it, for true individualism comes only for someone who knows and can name who she is. Of course, the democratic Empire now knows what the monarchs of old did not: detached, rootless, historyless individuals are more easily managed than people in groups, people who have names, stories, histories, and a home.”[18]

Both Hauerwas and Willimon make the point that if you are human, you already have a story and you are bound by it whether you believe it or not. Christianity is an objective encompassing of the human existence as it is lived according to the story of sin and grace, Law and Gospel. This is the narrative of the Word of God, ultimately making all humans dependent. Whether the listener realizes it or not, he is a slave to the Biblical narrative. It is his complete story, and it is a beautiful story full of wonderful imagery and detail.  It is the job of the preacher to carry the listener into this story and to reconnect him to what he is in his very person already a member, and yet to make him aware of that with which his identity is in ideological opposition. This is not only the shaping of heart and mind, but of word and deed. And it is accomplished through the efforts of telling the narrative.

Conclusion:

All of these are significant roadblocks, and still the list is incomplete. It is impossible to pinpoint each and every pastoral inhibition and to sufficiently offer prescriptions to remedy the issues. Therefore even the roadblocks expressed thus far add up to particular battles that the preacher must fight while consciously avoiding the sequestering of Christian joy. To sequester this joy is to slight the Gospel and its beauty.

With that, we must recognize and consider the differences between the world’s joy and true joy, namely, Christian joy; and we must do so by the Word of God.

The argument continues: where to go, whether to split up.

Some members of the group want to loop south again, and then east to Waterbury, where there are rumors of a successful resistance movement and a large camp of Invalids flourishing in safety. Some want to head all the way out to Cape Cod, which is practically unpopulated and will therefore be a safer place to camp out. A few of us – Gordo, in particular – want to continue north and try to make a break across the U.S. border and into Canada.

In school we were always taught that other countries – places without the cure – had turned into wastelands. But this, like most other things we were taught, was no doubt a lie. Gordo has heard stories from trappers and drifters about Canada, and he make it sound like Eden in The Book of Shhh.

“I say Cape Cod,” Pike says. He has white-blond hair, ruthlessly trimmed down to the scalp. “If the bombing begins again –“

“If the bombing begins again, we won’t be safe anywhere,” Tack interrupts him. Pike and Tack are constantly butting heads.

“We’re safer the farther we are from a city,” Pike argues. If the resistance turns into a full-on rebellion, we can expect swift and immediate reprisals from the government. “We’ll have more time.”

“To what?” Swim across the ocean?” Tack shakes his head. He is squatting next to Raven, who is repairing one of our traps. It’s amazing how happy she looks here, sitting in the dirt, after a long day of hiking and trapping – happier than she did when we lived together in Brooklyn, posing as cureds, in our nice apartment with shiny edges and polished hard surfaces. There, she was like one of the women we studied in history class, who laced themselves up in corsets until they could barely breathe or speak: white-faced, stifled. “Look, we can’t outrun this. We might as well join forces, build our numbers as best we can.”

Tack catches my eye across the campfire. I smile at him. I don’t know how much Tack and Raven have deciphered about what has happened between Alex and me, and what our history is – they’ve said nothing to me about it – but they have been nicer to me than usual.

“I’m with Tack,” Hunter says. He tosses a bullet into the air, catches it on the back of his hand, then flips it into his palm.

“We could split up,” Raven suggests for the hundredth time. It’s obvious she doesn’t like Pike, or Dani, either. In this new group, the lines of dominance haven’t been so clearly drawn, and what Tack and Raven say doesn’t automatically pass for gospel.

“We’re not splitting up,” Tack says firmly. But immediately he takes the trap from her and says, “Let me help you.”

This is how Tack and Raven work: It’s their private language of push and return, argument and concession. With the cure, relationships are all the same, the rules and the expectations are defined. Without the cure, relationships must be reinvented every day, languages constantly decoded and deciphered.

Freedom is exhausting.

“What do you think, Lena?” Raven asks, and Pike, Dani, and the others swivel around to look at me. Now that I’ve proven myself to the resistance, my opinion carries weight. From the shadows, I can sense Alex looking at me too.

“Cape Cod,” I say, feeding more kindling into the fire. “The farther we are from the cities, the better, and any advantage is better than none. It’s not like we’ll be alone. There will be other homesteaders there, other groups to join with.” My voice rings out loudly in the clearing. I wonder if Alex has noticed this change: I have gotten louder and more confident.

There’s a moment of quiet. Raven looks at me thoughtfully. Then, abruptly, she turns and shoots a glance over her shoulder. “What about you, Alex?”

“Waterbury,” he answers immediately. My stomach knots up. I know it’s stupid – I know the stakes are higher than the two of us – but I can’t help but feel a flash of anger. Of course he disagrees with me. Of course.

“It’s no advantage to be cut off from communication and information,” he says. “There’s a war on. We can try to deny it, we can try to bury our heads in the sand, but that’s the truth. And the war will find us either way eventually. I say we meet it head-on.”

“He’s right,” Julian pipes up.

I turn to him, startled. He hardly ever speaks in the evenings around the campfire. I don’t think he feels comfortable yet. He is still the newbie, the outsider – and even worse, a convert from the other side. Julian Fineman, son of the late Thomas Fineman, founder and head of Deliria-Free America, and enemy to everything we stand for. It doesn’t matter that Julian turned his back on his family and cause – and nearly gave up his life – to be here with us. I can tell that some people don’t trust him.

Julian speaks with the measured cadence of a practiced public speaker. “There’s no point in using avoidance tactics. This won’t blow over. If the resistance grows, the government and the military will do anything they can do to stop it. We’ll have a better chance of fighting back if we put ourselves in the middle of things. Otherwise we’ll just be rabbits in a hole, waiting to be flushed out.”

Even though Julian agrees with Alex, he is careful to keep his eyes trained on Raven. Julian and Alex never speak to or even look at each other, and the others are careful not to comment on it.

“I say Waterbury,” Lu puts in, which surprises me. Last year, she didn’t want anything to do with the resistance. She wanted to disappear into the Wilds, make a homestead as far as possible from the Valid cities.

“All right, then.” Raven stands up, brushing off the back of her jeans. “Waterbury it is. Any other objections?”

We’re all silent for a minute, looking at one another, our faces consumed by shadow. No one speaks. I’m not happy with the decision, and Julian must sense it. He puts a hand on my knee and squeezes.

“Then it’s decided. Tomorrow we can –“

Raven is cut off by the sound of shouting, a sudden flurry of voices. We all rise – an instinctive response.

“What the hell?” Tack has shouldered his rifle and is scanning the mass of tress that surrounds us, a tangled wall of branches and vines. The woods have fallen silent again.

“Shhh.” Raven holds up a hand.

Then: “I need help out here, guys!” And then, “Shit.” There is a collective release, a relaxation of tension. We recognize Sparrow’s voice. He wandered away earlier to do his business in the woods.

“We got you, Sparrow!” Pike calls out. Figures race into the trees, turning to shadow as soon as they leave the small circumference of brightness cast by the fire. Julian and I stay where we are, and I notice that Alex does too. There is a confusion of voices and instructions – “Her legs, her legs, grab her legs” – and then Sparrow, Tack, Pike, and Dani are emerging once again into the clearing, each pair saddled with a body. At first I think they are each hauling an animal, bundled in tarps, but then I see a pale white arm, dangling toward the ground, starkly illuminated by the fire, and my stomach turns.

People.

“Water, get water!”

“Grab the kit, Raven, she’s bleeding.”

For a moment, I’m paralyzed. As Tack and Pike place the bodies down on the ground, near the fire, two faces are revealed: one old, dark, weather-beaten; a woman who has been in the Wilds for most of her life, if not all of it. Saliva is bubbling at the corners of her mouth, and her breathing is hoarse and full of fluid.

The other face is unexpectedly lovely. She must be my age, or even a little younger. Her skin is the color of the inside of an almond, and her long, dark-brown hair is fanned out behind her in the dirt. For a moment I am jettisoned back to my own escape to the Wilds. Raven and Tack must have found me exactly this way – more dead than not, beaten and bruised.

Tack swivels around and catches me staring.

“A little help, Lena,” he says sharply. His voice snaps me out of my trance. I go and kneel beside him, next to the older woman. Raven, Pike, and Dani are taking care of the girl. Julian hovers behind me.

“What can I do?” he asks.

“We need clean water,” Tack says, without looking up. He has his knife out and is cutting away her shirt. In places it seems almost melded with her skin – and then I see, horrified, that her lower half is badly burned, and her legs covered with open sores and infection. I have to close my eyes for a second and will myself not to be sick. Julian brushes my shoulder once with his hand, then goes off in search of the water.

“Shit,” Tack mutters, as he uncovers yet another wound; this one a long, ragged cut along her shin, deep and welling with infection. “Shit.” The woman lets out a gurgled moan and then falls silent. “Don’t tap out on me now,” he says. He whips off his wind breaker. Sweat glistens on his forehead. We are close to the fire, which the others are stoking higher.

“I need a kit.” Tack grabs a hand towel and begins ripping it into strips, expertly and quickly. These will be tourniquets.

“Someone get me a damn kit.”

The heat is a wall next to us. The dark smoke blots out the sky. It weaves its way into my thoughts, too, distorting my impressions, which begin to take on the quality of dream: the voice, the movement, the heat and the smell of bodies, all fractured and senseless. I can’t tell whether I am kneeling there for minutes or hours. At some point Julian returns, carrying a bucket of steaming water. Then he leaves and returns again. I am helping to clean the woman’s wounds, and after a time I stop seeing her body as skin and flesh, but as something twisted and warped and weird, like the dark pieces of petrified wood we turn up in the forest.

Tack tells me what to do and I do it. More water, cold this time. Clean cloth. I stand, move, take the objects that are given to me and return with them. More minutes pass; more hours.

At some point I look up and it is not Tack next to me, but Alex. He is sewing up a cut on the woman’s shoulder, using a regular sewing needle and long, dark thread. He is pale with concentration, but he move fluidly and quickly. He has obviously had practice. It occurs to me that there is so much I never knew about him – his past, his role in the resistance, what his life in the Wilds, before he came to Portland, and I feel a flash of grief so intense it almost makes me cry out: not for what I lost, but for the chances I missed.

Our elbows touch. He draws away.

The smoke is coating my throat now, making it difficult to swallow. The air smells like ash. I continue cleaning the woman’s wooden legs and body, the way I used to help my aunt polish the mahogany table once a month, carefully and slowly.

Then Alex is gone, and Tack is next to me again. He puts his ands on my shoulders and draws me gently backward.

“It’s okay,” he says. “Leave it. It’s all right. She doesn’t need you anymore.”

For a second I think, We did it, she’s safe now. But then, as Tack pilots me toward the tents, I see her face lit up in the glow of the fire – white, waxen, eyes open and staring blindly at the sky – and I know that she’s dead, and everything we did was for nothing.

Raven is still kneeling by the younger girl’s side, but her ministrations are less frantic now, and I can hear that the girl is breathing regularly.

Julian is already in the tent. I’m so tired, I feel as though I’m sleepwalking. He moves over and makes a space for me, and I practically collapse into him, into that little question mark formed by his body. My hair reeks of smoke.

“Are you okay?” Julian whispers, finding my hand in the dark.

“Fine,” I whisper back.

“Is she okay?”

“Dead,” I say shortly.

Julian sucks in a breath, and I feel his body stiffen behind me. “I’m sorry, Lena.”

“You can’t save them all,” I say. “That’s not how it works.” That is what Tack would say, and I know it’s true, even if, deep down, I still don’t quite believe it.

Julian squeezes me, and kisses the back of my head, and then I let myself tunnel down into sleep, and away from the smell of burning.

For a second night, the fog of my sleep is disturbed by an image: two eyes, floating up through darkened murk. Then the eyes are disks of light, headlights bearing down on me – I’m frozen in the middle of the road, surrounded by the heavy smells of garbage and car exhaust…gripped, motionless, in the roaring heat from any engine…

I wake up just before midnight, sweating.

This can’t be happening. Not to me.

I stand up and fumble toward the bathroom, bumping my shin against one of the unpacked boxes in my room. Even though we moved in late January, more than two months ago, I haven’t bothered to unpack anything other than the basics. In less than three weeks I’ll be married, and I’ll have to move again. Besides, my old belongings – the stuffed animals and books and funny porcelain figurines I used to collect as a kid – don’t mean very much to me anymore.

In the bathroom, I splash cold water on my face, trying to shock out the memory of those headlight-eyes, the tightness in the chest, the terror of being flattened. I tell myself it doesn’t mean anything that the cure works a little bit differently for everyone.

Outside the window, the moon is round and improbably bright. I press my nose up to the glass. Across the street is a house nearly identical to ours, and next to it is another mirror-image house. On and on they go, dozens of replicas: the same gabled roofs, newly constructed and meant to look old.

I feel a need to move. I used to get the itch all the time, when my body was crying out for a run. I haven’t run more than once or twice since I was cured – the few times I tried, it just wasn’t the same – and even now, the idea has no appeal. But I want to do something.

I change into a pair of old sweatpants and a dark sweatshirt. I put on an old baseball cap, too, which belonged to my father – partly to keep my hair back, and partly so that if anyone does happen to be out, I won’t be recognized. Technically, it isn’t illegal for me to be out past curfew, but I have no desire to field questions from my parents. It’s not something that Hana Tate, soon-to-be Hana Hargrove, would do. I don’t want them to know I’ve been having trouble sleeping. I can’t give them a reason to be suspicious.

I lace up my sneakers and tiptoe to the bedroom door. Last summer, I used to sneak out all the time. There was the forbidden rave in the warehouse behind Otremba’s Paints and the party in Deering Highlands that was raided; there was nights on the beach at Sunset Park and illegal meet-ups with uncured boys, including the time at Back Cove when I let Steven Hilt put a hand on the inside of my bare thigh and time seemed to stop.

Steven Hilt: dark eyelashes, neat straight teeth, the smell of pine needles; the drop in the my stomach whenever he looked at me.

The memories seem like snapshots from someone else’s life.

I ease downstairs in near-total silence. I find the latch on the front door and turn it by minuscule increments, so that the bolt withdraws soundlessly.

The wind is chilly and rustles the holly shrubs that encircle our yard, just inside the iron gate. The shrubs, too, are a feature of WoodCove Farms: For security and protection, the real estate brochures said, and a real measure of privacy.

I pause, listening for sounds of passing patrols. Nothing. But they can’t be too far off. WoodCove advertises a twenty-four-hour, seven-day-a-week volunteer guard corps. Still, the community is large, and full of dozens of offshoots and cul-de-sacs. With any luck, I’ll be able to avoid them.

Down the front walk, down the flagstone path, to the iron gate. A blur of black bats skirts past the moon, sending shadows skating across the lawn. I shiver. Already, the itch is draining out of me. I think about returning to bed, burrowing under the soft blankets and the pillows scented faintly of detergent; waking up refreshed to a nice big breakfast of scrambled eggs.

Something bangs in the garage. I spin around. The garage door is partially open.

My first though is of a photographer. One of them has jumped the gate and camped out in the yard. But I quickly dismiss the idea. Mrs. Hargrove has carefully orchestrated all our press opportunities, and so far, I haven’t been an object of attention unless I’m with Fred.

My second though is gas thief. Recently, because of government-mandated restrictions, especially in the poorer parts of the city, there has been a rash of break-ins throughout Portland. It was especially bad during the winter: Furnaces were drained of oil, and cars of gas; houses were raided and vandalized. In February, there were two hundred burglaries alone, the largest number of crimes since the cure was made mandatory forty years ago.

I consider heading inside and waking my dad. But that would mean questions, and explanations.

Instead I cross the yard toward the garage, keeping my eye on the half-open door, checking for signs of movement. The grass is coated with dew, which soaks rapidly into my sneakers. I have a prickly, all-over body feeling. Someone is watching me.

A twig snaps behind me. I whirl around. A ripple of wind again disturbs the holly. I take a deep breath and turn back to the garage. My heart drums in my throat, an uncomfortable and unfamiliar feeling. I have not been afraid – really afraid – since the morning of my cure, when I couldn’t even unknot the hospital gown because my hands were shaking so badly.

“Hello?” I whisper.

Another rustle. Something – or someone – is definitely in the garage. I stand a few feet outside the door, struck rigid with fear. Stupid. This is stupid. I’ll go into the house and wake Dad. I’ll say I heard a noise, and I’ll deal with questions later.

Then, faintly: a mewling sound. A cat’s eyes blink momentarily at me in the open door.

I exhale. A stray cat – nothing more. Portland is lousy with them. Dogs, too. People buy them, and then can’t afford or don’t care to keep them, and dump them in the streets. For years they’ve been breeding. I’ve heard there are whole packs of wilds dogs that roam around the Highlands.

I move forward slowly. The cat watches me. I put my hand on the garage door, ease it open a few more inches.

“Come on,” I coo. “Come on out of there.”

The cat bolts back into the garage. It darts past my old bike, knocking against the kickstand. The bike starts to totter, and I spring forward and grab it before it can crash to the ground. The handlebars are dusty; even though it’s practically pitch dark, I can feel the grime.

I keep one hand on the bike, steadying it, and feel for the switch on the wall. I flick on the overhead lights. Immediately, the normalcy of the garage reasserts itself: the car, the trash cans, the lawn mower in the corner; cans of paint and extra tanks of gas stacked neatly in the corner, in a pyramid formation. The cat is crouched among them. At least the cat looks relatively clean – it’s not frothing at the mouth or covered with scabs. Nothing to be afraid of. One more step toward her, and she bolts again; this time shooting around the car and circling past me, out into the yard.

As I lean the bike up against the garage wall, I notice the faded purple scrunchie still looped around one handle. Lena and I used to have identical bicycles, but she teased me that hers was faster. We were always switching bikes by accident, after dumping them down on the grass or the beach. She would hop up on the seat, barely able to reach the pedals, and I’d climb up on her bike all scrunched up like a toddler, and we would ride home together, laughing hysterically. One day she bought two scrunchies from her uncle’s convenience store – purple for me, blue for her – and insisted we keep them fixed around the handles, so we could differentiate them.

The scrunchie is now creased with dirt. I haven’t ridden my bike since last summer. This hobby, like Lena, has faded into the past. Why were Lena and I best friends? What did we talk about? We had nothing in common. We didn’t like the same foods or the same music. We didn’t even believe in the same things.

And then she left, and it broke my heart so completely I could hardly breathe. If I hadn’t been cured, I’m not sure what I would have done.

I can admit, now, that I must have loved Lena. Not in an Unnatural way, but my feelings for her must have been a kind of sickness. How can someone have the power to shatter you to dust – and also to make you feel so whole?

The urge to walk has drained away completely. All I want to do is fall into bed.

I turn off the lights and close the door to the garage, making sure I hear the latch slide shut.

As I turn back to the house, I see a piece of paper lying on the grass, already spotted with moisture. It wasn’t there a minute ago. Someone has obviously pushed it through the gate while I was in the yard.

Someone was watching me – could be watching me even now.

I cross the yard slowly. I see myself reach the flyer. I see myself bend to pick it up.

It is grainy black-and-white photo that has obviously been reproduced from the original: It shows a man and a woman kissing. The woman in the picture is bent backward, her finger laced in the man’s hair. He is smiling even as he kisses her.

At the bottom of the flyer are printed the words: THERE ARE MORE OF US THAN YOU THINK.

Instinctively, I crumple the flyer in my fist. Fred was right. The resistance is here, nesting among us. They must have access to copiers, to paper, to messengers.

A door bangs in the distance, and I jump. Suddenly the night seems alive. I practically sprint to the front porch and completely forget to be quiet as I slip inside the door, triple locking it behind me. For a moment I stand in the hall, the flyer still balled in my hand, breathing in the familiar smells of furniture polish and Clorox.

In the kitchen, I throw the paper in the trash. Then, thinking better of it, I stuff it into the garbage disposal instead. I’m no longer worried about waking my parents. I just want to get rid of the picture, get rid of the words – a threat, no doubt about it. There are more of us than you think.

I wash my hands with hot water and fumble clumsily back to my bedroom. I don’t even bother to undress, just kick off my shoes, take off the baseball hat, and climb under the covers. Even though the heat is humming, I still don’t feel warm.

Long, dark fingers are enclosing me. Velvet-gloved hands, soft and perfumed, are wrapping around my throat, and Lena is whispering from somewhere far away – What did you do? – and then, mercifully, the fingers release, the hands drop from around my throat, and I am falling, falling, into a deep and dreamless sleep.

“Hey Di,” I say as soon as she opens the door.

“Hi S,” she says back. She looks over at the blonde haired beauty standing next to me. She looks back at me and quirks her eyebrow.

“Di. This is Mikaela. I photographed her yesterday and decided to bring her on set today to show her what goes on behind the scenes,” I explain to my confused manager.

“Hello Mikaela. It is very nice to meet you in person. I’ve seen you in countless amount of magazines and windows of shops and I’ve convinced myself that you’re 100% photoshopped but good god are you beautiful,” Dianna says as she holds out her hand and gives the girl one of her infamous charming smiles. That’s the one thing about Dianna that never fails to impress me. Dianna can be utterly confused with 50 million thoughts flying through her head but she has an incredible ability to hide those thoughts with a poker face every gambler would give all their money to have. That poker face and her irresistible charm were perfected in high school under the guidance of her cookie-cutter, Jesus-loving, white-fenced, one-and-a-half perfect children bearing parents. She was the golden child: drop dead gorgeous, head cheerleader, GPA of 4.0, and most of all, abstinent. Her parents’ birthday gift to her at the tender age of 16 was a 24K white gold purity ring. Being the perfect child, she accepted it, no questions asked. But you can’t have those looks and not have the entire male population (and some of the female population secretly) pining after you. Luckily for her, she had me as a best friend and years of chasing boys off her tail molded my bitchy attitude. I’m not a sight for sore eyes either and so, when threats didn’t work, I would just jiggle my twins their way and like clockwork, the drool would immediately lift off of her and dribble down my way instead. Thus, not only did I cement my intimidation level, but my seduction skills are unparalleled as well. Being partners in crime, it was only natural that we left for college together. We moved to California where she studied public relations and I discovered my passion for photography at USC. I was originally studying to be a doctor, but when one of my photos caught the eye of a big photography executive, I changed my path in life and naturally appointed Dianna to be my manager. When she escaped her parents’ plans for grooming her into becoming the trophy wife to study PR in L.A., they basically disowned her. Thus, I became all she had. Luckily, my parents are kind, generous souls who have always seen her as a daughter (sometimes, even more than me) and so they were more than willing to take her in. And about two years ago, she became my savior when I lost my reason for existence. We are each other’s coworkers, best friends, partners in crime, and most importantly, sisters. When you’ve been through half the shit we’ve been through together, you know we’re bonded for life.

“Thank you. You’re much too kind. Especially when you look like a goddess yourself,” Mikaela greets back with a smile.

“Alright, you’re beautiful, you’re beautiful, and I know I’m hot as fuck, so let’s get this show on the road,” I say with a smirk as I start to move towards the set. I see Dianna roll her eyes as I pass her and she turns to follow me. She hands me my camera and scurries off to another direction to do whatever it is that she needs to do while I go to talk with the magazine editor about what they want in the shoot. I’m in the middle of setting up my camera when I see Dianna walking towards me with a pale-stricken face.

“What’s wrong Di? You look like you just saw a ghost,” I say.

“I think I just did,” is her only response. That got my attention.

“Are you okay? What happened? Who did you see? Do I need to whoop somebody’s ass?” I immediately jump into protective mode, looking in the directions she just came from.

“I’m so sorry S. If I had known, I would have done something but I had no idea,” she starts apologizing profusely.

“What are you,” my question is left hanging in the air as my eyes catch a familiar memory making it’s way toward me. Two years. Two freaking years and she still manages to knock the wind out of me, leaving me both breathless and speechless. Dianna is right. She did see a ghost. A ghost that haunts my every dream and nightmare. A ghost that manages to infiltrate my every thought. A ghost that has me running into the bed of a different girl every night as some sick attempt to temporarily relieve the cold, lonely feeling that’s taken over the depth of my soul two years ago. It’s the ghost that I’ve tried my best to avoid when truthfully, I would give the world to see again. It’s the ghost that stole my heart. How fucking ironic is it that my worst childhood fear was ghosts?

“Hello,” the ghost says with those glimmering, gorgeous blue eyes that leave me weak in the knees. When did she get so close?

“Candice,” I manage to breathe out before my whole world goes black.

There’s a constant beeping noise intruding my ears. Funny. I don’t remember changing my alarm. It’s been set to the same song for as long as I could think of. When did I change it to this annoying sound? Maybe Dianna did it as a joke. I swear that girl has made it her life goal to annoy the heck out of me.

“I thinks she’s coming to,” I hear a voice say.

Coming to? What? Who? Oh god, am I dying? Is this hell? No, I’m not ready yet. I still have to get Dianna back for changing my prints last time. And maybe, nonchalantly, accidentally drive past Candice’s house to see her face one more time. I groggily open my eyes and I feel a bit of pressure on my hand. As my eyes slowly clear, I see a hand gripping mine, while a needle protrudes out of my wrist. What the hell? I look up to see shimmering bright blue eyes gaze back at me. Oh crap. How ridiculous. Two years without any interaction and she still manages to answer all my questions just by being there.

“Hi S. How are you feeling?” Shit. Why does her voice still give me the warm, fuzzy feeling? I haven’t felt like this since she left. This shouldn’t be happening. I should be feeling anger. She left you, remember idiot? God, I hate feelings.

“I’m fine,” I croak.

“I’m so sorry S. I didn’t mean to scare you like that,” she says.

“It’s fine. I’ve experienced worse. This is nothing,” I say. I see her flinch at the harshness of my tone and the underlining comment that came with it. Two years ago, I would have seriously maimed anybody who even thought about hurting her and now, I’m the one doing it. It’s funny how so much can change in two years. Not saying that it’s easy. No, it kills me to see the hurt and the sadness in her eyes and all I want to do is to envelop her in my arms and take away all her pain. I want to kiss her luscious lips and tell her how absolutely beautiful he looks. I want to tell her how proud I am of all the amazing accomplishments she’s racked up in the past two years but I don’t. I don’t because it’s why she left. Even though she finally has everything she ever dreamed of, she took away everything I ever dreamed of with her so no. I’m not going to praise her for hurting me.

What have I done wrong
To deserve this kind of treatment?
Wasn’t I the victim?
Haven’t I suffered enough?
After all that I went through and endured
How come I’m still being tortured?
Is this punishment for my sins?

If forgiveness he seeks from me
A sincere apology is all I ask
Proven by his words and deeds
Give me respect as a woman and colleague
Is it so hard to do so?
He’s so untrustworthy
Does he really expect me to just forget
Every pain and misery he caused me?

Date written: 2006/2007
Curious Thoughts: This is an unofficial part of the ‘Chapter Two’ collection. But now has become an official part of Chapter Three.

I was mystified
Wondered how it could be simplified
Because your ego is amplified
You ought to be stupefied.

Self-confident because you’re gifted
Well I think you’re just conceited
Admiring how many you’ve collected
Your manhood ought to be forfeited.

Date written: October 2 and 7, 2006
Curious Thoughts: I really have enough of those ‘sex education’ in my division with all those men talking about their sex life. When I used this into a desktop background all of their eyes turn into the monitor and read. They got the message. Anyway, this is also in Chapter Three.

I.
I love you…
It was all over
But I can’t forget you
Should I still wonder?

II.
You loved me…
Oh how I believed
It all felt good to me
All your love I received

III.
Yeah right!
You tangled me up
You’re bullshit!

IV.
I hate you…
For all the aches and miseries
That you put me through
And worthless it would be all your sorry

V.
You killed me…
Damn right you did!
But you weren’t satisfied yet
Not only did you take my heart and my life as well
You reminded me everyday of my hypocrisy

VI.
Well fuck you!
You’re so full of yourself!
Still thinkin’ I’m in love with you?!
Wake up to reality dude!
Cuz the truth is
I wanna murder you!

VII.
I loved you…
But you didn’t love me
Now I hate you
And I wanna kill you…
(Literally!)

Date written: October 1, 2006
Curious Thoughts: Just bitter and angry during this time. I guess this makes it to Chapter Three then.