U

we have moved to a new town. Mother is happy. Faces to check, lives to remember, gossips to share. Father saya everything is gonna be all-right. We visit the school, it feels afar. Our orders are to behave and be silent. Our sister is being trained. The emissars come around once a week to check our progress. We beg our parents to leave. Only the birds hear our laments.

Days

She stares into the horizon. The clouds are gathering fast. The town is burning, the smell of rubble and flesh swells the house. She prepares the meal, selects the cutlery and the best china. She sits down to wait. The fire engulfs the house, she prays for a while. They will never come.

Uncoming

yes I say yes. The emissaries sit straight on the sofa, all in black. They will wait until my parents give an answer. I sit next to them, ice crawling through the skin, a knot, a voice, a dizziness. I am seventeen, my friends go to parties, I stay at home. My mother says the rosary day and night, she give me her blessings and tell me how lucky I am. I will have no more worries, I would save the family. Nothing will ever happen again, no one will touch me. I sit down and start the journey.

1972

I had a bath, and then sat down to die on the first of September of 1972. The street deserted, the hideous heat wilting everything in sight. Aunt L. dances in the hall. We are going to be rich. No more cheap meat and food made of scraps. No more early mornings and begging for a job. You see, we used to be a principled family, going to church, praying to the Virgin every week for a miracle. Working hard, studying to make something of ourselves, just to go nowhere. We are fed up. 

Father came to the solution: I am a redhead, slim and young, a virgin to boot - The family is tight knitted, and I love them all. Our Leader favours redhead virgins. Need I say more?

Arch

Sliced and thrown in a rubbish heap, the body of the architect’s son finally rests. They will look for his murderers across the city red spots. They round up the ones they know and the defenceless. They will make sure nobody ever finds the real killers.