The eastern sky at twilight was a sickly pink, the fumes and heat coloring it like detergent. The midwinter was warm and clouds of dust roiled off mounds of dirt, construction equipment. Concrete everywhere, bulldozers encroaching with each day. Evil. Evil. Evil. The chant ran through the mind. Sitting sullenly, evilly, waxing fat as everything good disappeared into impasses of death. Evil. Evil. Stab the knife into the windpipe, then twist and pull out. Let the head lean back to open the wound.

There was once a dream in a faraway world.

Those crucial years, wallowed away in an indulgent misery, burning the bridges of life. The yield apathy. Reduced capacity for thought. Poor memory. Loss of vision. Scars run the mind, body. Can one be forgiven for flagging in the tatters of the world?

No. Evil. Evil. Evil. The child was too timid, too nervous, too stupid, unperceptive and did not raise itself well enough. Indulged itself and set down the track of annihilation. When there was no teacher, no shared vision, no connection...in the end, only the child could serve its own best interests, could have found itself teachers and more parents. So close but choking, it was not a world of dreams.

Skritching paper, so very little. So little time, all thrown away.