When people tell me I was born yesterday, they are right 1/5th of the time. Well, actually not born, I have many juvenile stages, but one adult stage, and it lasts about 5 days.

Think of it as getting your driver’s license when you are 90, and being legal to drink at age 93. Not that I can anyway, Nature, witty little mother that it is, leaves me without mouthparts or much in the way of a digestive tract, which explains why I am on the five day plan.

As you can guess, this really leaves only one activity to engage with over that period of time. And happily, in a target rich environment. Yes, we have to get the next generation going. Then split. Let some one else watch over the little dears.

Anyway, so far it has been three beautiful spring days of constant partying. I figured I would just pass over day one and two, but if you wanted the details, it was: Day 1 - Party, Day 2 - Party.

Party hardy, party until you drop. It happens soon enough.

Hey, but don’t cry for me. Think of all the advantages. No 12 step programs, I don’t live long enough to get past step 5. No need to listen to any stupid campaign commercials - I will not be around come June, let alone November. I can charge all I want, I never live to get the first bill. Ditto on Taxes.

If I go into a job interview, I always love the part about “Where do you see yourself in five years?”. The bearded, sandaled guy in the street with the “World Ends Tomorrow”, sign. I just tell him no, make it the day after tomorrow and he has himself a deal. I might go look for him tomorrow and tell him he has it about right as far as I am concerned.

Memo to self: Time to party.

Day four already, man time passes when you are having fun. I think I will do something different today and party. After I eat of course. Oh wait, I forgot, I can’t. I guess I will go just party. I am feeling a bit light headed, and I sure could use some food if I had any way to digest it. A life insurance salesman dropped by today. I bought a million dollar policy. Got to leave something for the kids and all. Somehow I don’t think the insurance company is going to be making money off me.

Well, that is the story of my life. I probably should have written more of it in past tense, but I really don’t have any feel for something being in the past. I am here, poof, I am gone. There is no past tense. It isn’t possible to reminisce over something that happened four or less days ago. The experience is not old enough. From young adult to wheezing geezer in 5 days. Heck, most creatures take vacations longer than that. A snail takes longer than that to cross a room.

I am not bitter about it anyway. I had five beautiful days of spring, who could ask for more? I don’t leave much behind except for about 100,000 eggs. If you meet any of my kids next year, say hi to them for me.

Who did I have them with? I don’t know. Were they older than me? Not by much if so. Younger, well you get the picture. There are probably half a million or so of us in this mile of lake shore. Good luck finding them again.

In the meantime I am feeling kind of sleepy/dreamy. The world is a beautiful set of greens. Each leaf with its own unique shade of green. Have you ever noticed that? And the sky is so blue, and the air is fresh with the scent of flowers.

Thanks for taking the time for listening to me share my life’s history. I don’t have time to wait for someone to notice it. They tell me eternity lasts a very long time. That will certainly be different.

I just need to rest... a... bit.

I will die before I am born, but I’m hoping you will help me change that. My story is both simple and complex, but it is one that must be told.

I am not from this time. I have lived in it for many decades now but I am a man displaced, displaced by a need to take action.

I will be born 30 years from now. I am a time traveler who has traveled to the past because the time in which I will be born will be a tumultuous one, or so I once believed. A group of my colleagues all gathered together to discuss the path that life had taken. We discussed in depth how dreary and depressing the world is, or will be. In the course of our conversation we decided we had to set the world back into its proper course. “To set right what once went wrong”, to steal a phrase that I have heard in this time.

I have no family. No friends. No loved ones to mourn for me. Or at least I will have none in the time that is to come. All that I had was my colleagues of inspiration and action. Because of my disassociation with the world in general, it was decided that I should be the one who should go back and do what needed to be done.

We built the one and only time machine. Even now, years after having used it, I’m still amazed that it worked.

40 years ago I arrived. My “mission” was simple: A few untimely deaths, some mysterious circumstances, ill-fated adventures and travels. Not for me, but for those who ultimately would have ended up creating the future that we all considered so bleak.

If you remove the lesser evils, the true evils will step to the front of the stage. That was never my intention, but the events that I created seemed to have brought the true evil out in this world, either due to no one being in its way or due to the very nature of evil that I created in some of my “duties”. Evil begets evil.

Whether because of what I did or because of some other circumstances unknown to me, the world that I have inadvertently created is vastly different, and darker, than the one from which I came. Your world, and now mine, is unfathomably evil. Even as I carried out my various and vicious acts, I saw other atrocities that made me shudder with horror.

The leaders, dictators, rulers and powers of your time are not the ones from mine.

The one lesson that I have learned, and that I hope to instill in everyone who reads this, is enjoy what you have. Regardless of the circumstances, or how dark your situation may seem, or how despondent you are, let it all go and look at the good in life. I wish I had.

My request is a simple one. Kill me. Not now, but in the future, after I am born. End my future demented ideas and concepts before I have a chance to carry them out. “Set right what will one day go wrong.”

I have specifically left out as many details of who I am as possible. No one needs to try to make it right in some other way. A different course can only make things even more dreadful than that are now, or will be.

To stop the cycle, I need to be removed from the equation before I get a chance to go back and destroy existence as I have already done.

I fully understand the consequences of a time paradox. If I am killed while young then I can never go back in time and ask someone to remove me from life, thereby letting me be born again and go back in time and do it all again... ad infinitum, ad nauseum. However, even in that worst case of paradoxes, half of time itself will be spent in a world that is not this one, and that is an incredible thing. But my true hope is that my death and the writing of my own past and future history will alter the plans that we so meticulously constructed the first time.

Therefore, I will give you the vaguest of information, but enough to piece the clues together and carry out the task that I am begging you to perform. After I am born, make sure that I cease to exist as rapidly as possible.

On August 23rd, 2037, I will be born and given the first names of “Micheal Andrew” and I give you the authority to kill me, with my apologies to any other unfortunate “Micheal Andrew”s born on that particular date.

Gather round me children, for I'm about to part to you the greatest story ever told, except for that one about Jesus, Jurassic Park, and possibly The Lion King. In fact in my tale I am very much like Simba, proud and noble, wild and unpredictable, hakuna and matatah.

My life started, as Simba's did also, inside my mothers womb. Spacious and luxurious it was not, no room even for a reclining chair. My exit was a glorious moment however, the maternity ward plummeted into silence as my mother hit a perfect high F, and I span from her, whirling into the daylight. My father, on horseback at the time of course, caught me gently in his arms, and held me to his stubbled face. He looked me once in the eyes and winked, and, as I am prone to do, I winked back. Our bond was forever sealed.

It was hard growing up in such a household, my mother the first Female President, my father a detective cowboy, solving crimes with his horse, Enrique. Pressure was always on, and our family went through many scrapes, and on occasions we even got up to some shenanigans. My first real memory is of saving the lives of a hundred Seminole Indians with my father, a damn had burst and we dragged all the little critters back to their reservation in a net we weaved from particularly strong grass. My mother then turned over the senate, with her bare hands, so the Indians could keep their reservation, and be able to roam free, grazing from dawn till dusk. Happy days.

As I matured I realised that merely being my fathers lovable, and beautiful sidekick was not going to be enough for me. So as summer picked spring up by her beautiful neck, and viciously shock some more colours into her cheeks, I made my way to Hollywood, to chase my dreams and the dreams of many others. I wanted to dance, to sing, to play a substantial but unrewarding role in a film about vampires with guns.

I rode into the city on the back of my horse Rocinante, the people stopped and stared. Obviously the people of this fair city had never seen beauty such as mine, my golden hair trickling down my back, rivulets of precious metal. The sun striking my bare shoulders dazzled even the most cynical onlookers. I heard a man turn to his wife and speak in a voice so tainted with admiration and lust that it was barely audible.

“Honey...you just don't see that everyday. Take a picture. Incredible.”

Her ham like hands rushed to her bag, and sausage like fingers pondered over the zip. Her porcine limbs flailed wildly with the camera and soon the flashes began, from all directions. I was illuminated like the Angel Gabriel himself, and at the time I did feel a divine presence all around me. My body was taut, and as I stared off into the crowd, who as one starred straight at me, the heavens opened their eyes and cried at my beauty. Rain cascaded down onto me. I glistened, and the heavens cried harder. My hair slicked to my head, but did not lose any of its magnificence. My beard however started to get itchy, so it was time for me to find my calling, couldn't hang around here all day.

I walked into the biggest studio I could find. Removed my robe, in all it's vermilion glory, and strode purposefully, and of course naked, into the directors office. He examined my perfectly sculpted chest, my washboard abdomen, and my serpentine limbs. He stood, and offered me his hand, and a long coat, for the beauty of my body was surely too much to bare for some of the other actors.

I walked to the set, I needed no script, I would just be me on camera and the world would bask in the reflected glory from their television sets. Cuddling the box for hope of becoming one with me. Proud and alert I starred into the camera and said the line I knew was right.

“I love bacon me.”

The world stood still, as did I, but I was less metaphorical. The director raised his hand slowly to his mouth, I had started my journey. But little did I know I had ended it as well. For that very day Kevin Bacon had declared war on the United States. I was seen as a traitor, excommunicated I moved to Finland. Where I now reside. I can only ponder how my Hollywood dream would have ended. It could have been my name in lights, bulbs telling the world “Luther P. Underbelly” was literally awesome.

I was born in a tiny northern town surrounded by towering spruce trees and muskeg swamp. I was educated in a trailer that housed the one room school that held students from across the globe. I look back and the only day that stands out from those idyllic years is the week that school was cancelled because a wolverine had been seen watching the schoolyard.

It has been said that the seeds of greatness are found in suffering. If that is so, then no seeds were planted until my family moved south. Surrounded by a peer group with no experience or interest in the north, I was first ostracized, then ridiculed. In my childhood reality I became aware of how difference leads to segregation.

Instead of fighting back, I set myself to escaping at the earliest opportunity. Correspondence school and summer courses allowed me to graduate more than a year early. Taking more than my share of awards brought me a scholarship and the continued enmity of my peers. Back then I didn’t care; I had no plans to ever return.

University was an eye-opener. Subjects in which I had never needed to work at suddenly required all night work sessions. Even more of a pleasure were the international students. I learned languages, cuisine and culture while delving deeper in my understanding of my own.

Beginning work as a social worker was a disappointment. The rapport between my clients and I was ephemeral at best. Their concern was survival at any cost. Neither they, nor the agency, nor their neighbours were interested in creating systemic change. My occasional forays into advocacy only lead inevitably to my discharge from the agency. I am profoundly grateful for being fired which saved my life, and sent me back to school.

In Graduate studies I made a study of my failure. What was it about being different that caused so much trouble? No longer content to wait at home for diversity to find me, I set out on a peripatetic path around the globe. Wherever conflict occurred I showed up to study it. I made friends and enemies on every side of every war zone I visited. Yet as my degrees piled up, my understanding remained a fragile ephemeral thing.

Being shot sent me home. I suppose I was fortunately to be alive at all, but I was filled with anger. Oddly enough, I was angrier with the people who had saved me than those who shot me. I had, suddenly to concern myself with the understanding of my own psyche. As I learned to maneuver my wheelchair, I learned as well to contemplate and accept my own feelings. The world became a place to experience rather than understand.
The irony is that letting go of understanding became the next step in comprehension.

I returned to school yet again, this time I “stood” on the other side of the podium. I became an advocate for accessibility. I became a magnet for those who found themselves barricaded from their goals by life and indifference. I was the General in a battle for recognition. I learned conflict from within. Once again life surprised me. As I became a champion for some people, I became a lightning rod for others. I met my wife in jail. To be absolutely truthful, I was in jail. She was the one who had arrested me.
While the law (and a disgruntled and inaccessible business I was picketing) required that I be arrested and charged, her sympathies were with my cause and me.

After my arrest and marriage, I began to consult with the police, at first unofficially, and later as a recognized and respected “expert” on reducing conflict. Whether it was gang warfare, or opposed demonstrations, I was learning to understand the pathology of fear that created the boundaries between groups. By attacking the fear instead of each other an irrational situation could be made rational.

I became a world traveler once again. My wife and I lived as nomads while we taught the necessity of battling the fear of difference that was so often at the root of conflict. At every opportunity I learned more languages, and tried new food. Only the advent of our first-born forced us home.

Fatherhood is the best job on the planet. Raising my sons, and later my daughter taught me that all the knowledge in the world wasn’t going to stop my children from fighting. I could, however, teach them to fight in a way that was safe and healthy. I wrote a book about it. It was that book that brings me here.

I am amazed at the irony; that I have been brought to this peace conference to teach you to fight.

My wife's school was closed because of a wolverine. The rest is indeed fiction.

I understand that it is customary to introduce oneself by name. However, unlike you humans, I have only a number: I am number sixty-four, and this is my story.

It all started seventeen years ago today, when some big-shot scientists decided to play God. In other words, I was created. I had no parents, no mother or father figure to teach me how to live my life. All I had, for the first five years of my existence, was a “computerized development aid”.

Those years were the longest and loneliest I have ever known.

The room I called home was little more than a white-walled water closet. Occasionally, a masked figure dressed in that same sterile white would appear with food, but none of them ever spoke. Not to me, not to each other. Perhaps they were machines, too. I never dared to ask them.

The conditioning they put me through was enforced with care and precision. At six every morning they would wake me up, give me breakfast and plug me into the machine. I would remain in a coma-like state for five hours while information was imprinted onto my brain. This was how I learned to read and write, as well as more complex things. I often woke to find lunch waiting for me. Late afternoon, usually around six, it was back to the machine to test my newfound knowledge. Every day I knew more, understood more; as the years ticked by, I began to grow restless.

It just wasn’t enough to answer their questions and do everything they told me to do. It wasn’t enough to spend every minute of every day in that cold cubicle, waiting for my real life to begin and wondering what it would be like to live as a human in the outside world. My restlessness festered and grew like a cancer. It became a bitter and terrible anger that consumed and transformed me.

When I was ten, the programme of my education shifted. It was time I knew the truth. I was their creation—a mutant, an abomination, worthless. Humans were unwilling to surrender their own precious lives to fight wars when a much better alternative existed. That was my purpose. To fight, to serve and to die for them.

After all, how can an animal—a construct, no less—have a mind or a will of its own?

Two years ago was when everything changed. It was towards the end of autumn. That morning, when the usual visitor arrived, he wore no mask, and addressed me as an equal.

“I have seen what they do to your kind. I have come to offer you an opportunity.”

At first I shrank away, sure it was some kind of trick. The scientist made no move to grab me, instead continuing to speak in a level tone.

“I want to let you go, but we’ll have to move quickly. If the boss catches me, my life won’t be worth living.”

I had to make a snap decision. This could be my one chance to be free of the laboratory, once and for all. I might never get another. With that in mind, I took the risk and left with him.

All the years of imprinting could not have prepared me for what I was about to experience. From the moment I set foot outside the door of my cell a myriad of colours and textures seemed to crowd in on me, as if they too were alive, and lonely. The sky was white, but not the white I knew. It was bright, warm and welcoming. I drank in the air as though I’d never breathed before, relishing the icy freshness, treasuring every moment.

My better senses told me it wouldn’t last. Nothing was holding me back. There were no chains on my feet, real or metaphorical, and the scientist acting as my escort was several feet away, watching my reaction with carefully measured indifference. I understood at once: if they saw him with me, outside, he could lose his job… or worse.

Was it all a big trick, a test of loyalty? Would guards be waiting nearby to return me to my cell? And even assuming I got away unharmed, how could I survive out there? As far as I knew then, I was the only one of my kind. I wouldn’t exactly be difficult to find in a world full of humans.

Yet, despite all of this, I couldn’t bring myself to think of a return to my previous existence. That cramped cell seemed like a thousand years ago and a million miles away. Out here, under the bright sky and with a brisk breeze dancing through my fur, I felt like I was finally home.

So I did it – I ran, and never looked back. No one tried to stop me. I’m still running to this day – running and hiding and hoping they never come to find me.

My life. If I were to write my autobiography like a regular person with a story to tell, I would start with how I was born. I am not, I don’t have a story to tell and I am going to begin with how I will die.

I will wake up to the sound of the kettle and the shouting of the folks upstairs having another argument about how best to roll their next cigarette as they can’t afford to buy a packet each. Next, I will wrap my pleasantly warm body in a suitably soft dressing gown and proceed to wash my face, brush my teeth and generally mess around with various moisturisers in the bathroom until I am satisfied I no longer look my age.

Cue untimely death.

As the man upstairs strikes his wife across her (already bruised) face with the back of his (already bruised) hand their young child decides to jump on their (stolen) grand piano, sending it threw my roof and on to my (perfectly groomed) head. How lovely, and the kettle had just boiled.

Had I been reading the beginning of this autobiography myself, I would be thinking to myself many things. Firstly, if this person (whoever she may be) has just woken up, how can the kettle be on? Answer - I have a husband. Secondly, who is this person, and why am I reading about her death which is yet to happen? Answer - I am Grizelda Gold and I am nobody, or should I say a nobody. You are reading about my future death in the same way you are reading about my future husband - with a sense of wonder, amusement and of course complete bewilderment (I hope). He is tall, dark haired, green eyed, has masculine features and the hint of a beer belly. Now I should hope you are not reading this like any other autobiography would be read - with a sense of time being wasted, complete boredom and, by the end, a sense of dissatisfaction as the book fails to come to a suitable conclusion. I am therefore, supplying you with one, but at the start.

Cue depressing birth.

I may be the only person that can recall the day they were born. The reason I remember it is that it was the worst day of my life so far, and I am near enough middle age now to know better than to tell you my exact age. The first thing I saw was…well nothing, as my eyesight hadn’t fully developed yet. The first thing I heard was the screaming of my, soon to be deceased, mother and the sobbing of my, soon to be in jail for armed robbery, father. The first thing I smelt was the inexplicably cheap aftershave of the doctor that was holding me by my ankle (so I am told).

The second day was a little better, as I could no longer hear the screaming, but the smell of the repulsive (and yet rather attractive according to my aunt) doctor would linger in my nostrils for weeks to come. How I longed for the day I could open my eyes and set sight on the ghastly wallpaper in my father’s living room for the first time.

Cue boredom for twelve long years to the first major character building event of my life.

I kissed Christopher Manson on the cheek after he had offered to carry my books home for me. He obviously didn’t like it and threw my own books at me in either fear or disgust (or perhaps both). I ran into the house and straight up to my room, crying discreetly so that I wouldn’t have to sit through a “he’s not worth it, he doesn’t deserve you” lecture from my father. This is when I turned my back on all men (until obviously sometime in the, hopefully, near future when I apparently get married to someone who owns a kettle).

Cue twenty (roughly) years ago, a sudden death in the family and my last day at my relatively new job.

It wasn’t pretty. I threw some heavy desktop stationary at my boss/lover and told him to “go away and die” if I remember correctly. He began to cry uncontrollably so I comforted him before fleeing the scene of the crime. I had stolen his wallet and broke his nose (in two places).

Cue present day and my writing this sentence.

Today has been the best day of my life. I bought a computer and began to write my autobiography. No-one will read it, as it won’t be published. There are a number of reasons for this. The main one - I am a very uninteresting person with a monotonous life, who would want to read about me? Plus, I ruined the ending for everyone in the first paragraph.

I am told that they had to give trauma counseling to the medical staff who were present at my birth. It is not that my coming into the world was medically difficult, but perhaps my threat to sue the doctor for that slap on the butt was a little strong for someone only minutes old. Mind you I should have gone after the mendacious persons who brought me into this world. Having your father call you a ‘poisonous little tick’ is a little rough on a kid not yet a day old. What ever happened to the so-called ‘maternal instinct’? The parental units are supposed to love you unconditionally, but they could run away fast enough.

Life continued as it began, my parents’ divorce and ensuing non-custody battle made headlines. My pugnacious comments to the press didn’t make things easier, and no one in the antediluvian court system was prepare for an infant to sue for parental support. My lawyer kept calling me Baby Herman, I was all set to tie up Disney in litigation over the Baby Herman thing, but the movie came out before I was born. My lawyer talked me out of it. The idea of a prognosticating screenwriter stealing my life before I was born was too much of a stretch even for our courts. Besides I would have had to take up cigars, and they are disgusting as well as a health hazard.

The end result of that three ring circus was that the parental units got to pay a never ending series of highly trained caregivers to suffer the indignities of babysitting a child with an IQ an order of magnitude higher than their own. I did manage to get an internet connection and computer that accepts voice input. Once I had the pestilential device set up to my satisfaction I could talk with other people who had a prayer of keeping up. Hawking was great fun until I pointed out a mistake in his math. You think that he would have a better sense of humour. Cosmology isn’t really my bag anyway. The math is way too simple. Quantum mechanics is the same. If you’ve flipped one bit you’ve flipped them all.

But I digress; my first year was the quintessential life in Hades. I would just get into a discussion of tertiary tensor calculus, and I would fill my diapers. In spite of my advanced intellect the rest of my corporeal being was new born infant. It took until the beginning of my second year before I gained control of my faeces output. Once I could wear real clothes, sit up, and deal with bodily functions on my schedule I seem to have graduated to purgatory. I even went out in public. People looked at me as an unhirsute dwarf. They stuck their big greasy faces in mine and made baby noises. They usually screamed and fell backwards, when I snapped at them that their proboscis was showing. I used to use other words, but my worker at the time suggested that I stick to words that weren’t actually obscene.

The next big challenge was the letter calling me to register for Kindergarten. Here I am, a walking, talking certifiable genius, and they want me to go to Kindergarten? I have met children my own age. They know I am not one of them. They fall into two categories: the one’s that cry and run away, and the ones that run away then cry. After my first day of school, the School Board and I arrived at a compromise. They would leave me alone, and I would leave them alone. I heard that they were even able to hire the teacher back.

It was about this time that I finally identified a field that was sufficiently complex to hold my interest. Social dynamics is the study of how people interact as a group. Individuals are not truly mathematically describable, but the larger the group, the more they fit into definite equations. There are a lot of similarities to chaos theory.

The first test of my math was playing the stock market. I made enough money to free myself from the parental units. Being able to hire and fire my own staff was freedom indeed. I couldn’t believe how many post doctorates were so desperately looking for work. Finally I was able to have an almost intelligent conversation with my staff.

That brings me to the present. I plan to sponsor a renewal of the SETI program. There has to be someone else like me. There must be other intelligent life out there, because there really isn’t any here.

July 26, 1987. The greatest bundle of joy was born into the world. He was extremely cute, and my parents were insanely jealous because while that lucky couple's baby was a nice pink, I was skinny, red, wrinkly, bald, and horribly incompetent in a way babies shouldn’t be. Like my parents, I would have been jealous too, but I appreciated his beauty- he was such a hunk. I was born in limbo; my family was falling apart and the eighties were melting away. Conceived by accident, I was an ice piece floating in the strawberry margarita that was soon to be downed by a violent alcoholic. The comforting swaddle of my childhood would be blighted by a divorce five years later; my world would be sinking faster than the Titanic. And this time there would no James Cameron to save or glamorize my pitiful existence, but that is a story for another time.

The marital problems between my parents were temporarily forgotten as they melted over my new head of hair, my nice smooth baby butt, my rosy color, and smiley disposition. Given my improved physique, they became determined to make me gal-wonder, the Child Prodigy. While the teenagers of that time were rocking out to Michael Jackson and Van Halen, I was stuck listening to oldies and instrumentals. And I’ll tell you all that Bach and Beethoven did zilch for my creativity and math genius. Apparently because I was such a smart pretty girl, with my mother’s looks and my father’s attitude, I was going to turn out alright. After all, my mother was a beauty queen and my father an all-star jock. Who knew I would turn out to be as unpopular as dandruff on a black sweater, and about as attractive as a zit on prom night. Oh, don’t feel bad for me; I had some glory days… before puberty.

Well, maybe not. During Kiddy College, a place for smart pre-preschoolers, we had the annual nativity Christmas play. Due to the fact that none of us had any raw acting talent, volunteers were accepted for the major roles (paging Ted Neeley for Jesus, do we have a Ted Neeley in the house?). Picture this, 20 screaming kids, nearly peeing themselves with excitement, all vying for a piece of the spotlight. Anyway, when the part of Mary was called, my hand immediately shot up. . . as well as ten other manicured female hands. They just had to pick me!!! I was cute, brunette, virginal, and I looked damn good with the Joseph. But no, they picked this blonde skank who looked like Jamie Lee Curtis on more steroids than Arnold Shwarzenegger. You can bet I threw a fit!! Weren’t people going to be confused when they saw two Josephs and a baby Jesus? Back then I didn’t know what gay meant; all I knew was that two people of the same sex who were intimate was a no-no. But now, I refuse to marry unless everyone in this country can wed the person of their dreams too. But back to that play, they cast me as a moondust totin' star slingin' angel. I may have looked sweet, but like heck I was an angel. Call me Lucifer, but I was determined to get my payback.

The night of the play arrived with a flurry of red and green festivities, spiked eggnog anyone? "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" crackled through the old speakers; signifying the birth of the one- eyed cabbage –patch- doll-perched in a Dolce and Gabbana-hand bag -Jesus poser...it was angel time, baby. My moment had arrived. As I fronted the angelic line, I walked toward the rickety manger picking my nose the entire time. The shenanigans didn't stop there; as I climbed up the stage to bless the virgin mother, I mounted the golden stool behind the "part-stealing abomination" and, GASP, ate my booger!!! What a little heathen child I was! I had my parents shrinking in embarrassment, Joseph laughing, and Mary glaring. Too bad hardly less than thirty percent of the population noticed my devious act (for posterity, my parents bust out the video recording every Christmas). Nothing ever works right for me. What was triumph and glory to me, was interpreted as “annoying as hell” to some other people. You’d think my complete lack of social niceties would have gained me some cool points, but apparently I was too hardcore for my Evangelical peers. It just turned out that they were more interested in getting saved than my little games.

The rain was lashing at the windscreen and making the car shake as it hit. The window wipers could not keep up with the torrent that was bombarding us on our journey. It was dark, cold and raining and we had nowhere to live. All I had was my Dad and this tin can of a car that we were sitting in. I was four years old and my family had just been ripped apart. I would never see my mother or my brother again. My only friend would be Fred; my bear with the red bow tie.

When we arrived, I wouldn’t leave the car. I knew the house; I went to it often with my mum sometimes. The lady who lived there was evil and in the dark with the rain hammering down, the house looked daunting. The view that I had from the windscreen of the car that night was not just of a house, but of the start of a brand new, terrifying double life.

*

The night my parents split up marked a turning point in my short life. My new step-mother made my life a living Hell. She bullied me and tormented me until I was a shadow of my former self. I learned to be quiet and not to ask questions. On the surface I was a happy child with lots of friends, but in reality I was reserved and a loner, but with this new found sense of loneliness came a passion for writing.

Through school I wrote a lot, my teachers loved to read my stories and some of my shorter ones often got published in the school newspaper. After I left school, I followed my teacher’s advice and went into writing as my choice of career.

My first published novel, ‘Oranges in the Snow’ was a best seller and topped the charts for three consecutive weeks. That still remains, to this day the high point of my life. However, it was not to last.

One day, shortly after my fourth novel had been released, a familiar woman turned up on my door step. Twenty years after I turned up to her house in the pouring rain, she had turned up to mine.

She looked older now, but her face hadn’t softened. She was still the hardened woman that I feared as a child. She stared at me with those cold, harrowing grey eyes and pursed her lips.

“You do realise that you have been committing plagiarism?” she spat, her face contorting so that her eyebrows met.

I shook my head; I was bound to the spot with fear. My childhood memories came flooding back to me. I knew if I defied her that she would resort to those tactics she used with me as a child, and I didn’t want that.

“You know exactly what you’ve done!” She yelled, her face turning redder. “I’ll see you in court!”

*

There it was, on the front cover of the newspaper, “Top Selling Author – Guilty” with my face plastered all over. I rushed out of the newsagents in floods of tears; my career was over. After that I started to get hate mail almost daily. I found that people just read the newspaper’s version of events, rather than thinking that there may be more to it than meets the eye. When I was asked to do an autobiography to put my side of the story across I jumped at the chance. I didn’t steal my step-mother’s diary and take notes from it, I merely based some aspects of my story on things that happened in my life and this happened to be shared with her. It is not true that I was an “average” writer; after all I have had some of my books top the best seller’s chart. They say never judge a book by its cover; in this case it is not far from the truth.

***

Amy’s step mother, when questioned about the allegations made to Amy said, “She was found guilty in a court of law for plagiarism. I have read the copy of her autobiography that you have sent me and I can safely say that she has another fiction book under her belt. Her life was easy, yes her parent’s split up but it happens to a lot of children. I provided for her and cared for her for a number of years, I was very proud when her books did so well. She was never a strong writer but we always supported her in her decisions. I was hurt when I read her latest novel and found that she had copied sections of my diary and passed it off as her own work. Writing a book of lies about it will not help anyone.”

No one knows who I am. Not a single soul on this godforsaken planet has even the faintest notion as to what I do or what I have done. For nearly 8 decades I have crept through the darkest shadows and the tightest alleyways, I have tramped upon the highest rooftops and have passed through the smallest of windows. I have lived the sinners lifestyle.

Only 344 victims have ever seen my face, and none of them are able to reveal my identity in their current state. I have completed 683 requests in my lifetime to date, and all of them I have done flawlessly. Am I a legend in my profession? Possibly. I don't go by any name or any picture, I only go by nicknames and pseudonyms that people have given me. My life has been far from glamorous, that is fact, but there are those who envy to be me, to have the skills that I have, to have seen what I've seen.

Since my birth in Manchester, England in the year of 1925, the politics of nearly 20 countries have been altered by my work. Like an artist I have improved over time, learning new skills, crafts, and trades. I have always charged a very high price, because the risk of what I do is immense. Being hired by only the most noble of politicians, I have gained access to the most deepest and darkest secrets. It is true that my work can be seen throughout history, but where? I cannot reveal such secrets.

My boyhood was almost nonexistent. Very quickly, from the age of 10, I started my trade. I didn't have a mother, nor did I have a typical father. The only father figure that I had did not act as most fathers are expected to. For the art that he taught me was not of painting, drawing, sculpting or carpentry. He, himself, practiced this one specific trade for nearly forty years and was willing to pass his secrets to me. Learning skills, like the ones that he was showing me, by example, was hard to watch at first. After years of watching him, and practicing by myself, I learned to appreciate how difficult it was to be a professional at what my father had so cleanly perfected.

Being an eager, young lad at only the age of 25, I found it was nearly impossible to live with the general populace without attracting suspicion. Going in and out of my flat at 3 in the morning was apparently suspicious to some, and I didn't need the added publicity. When I was 27 I moved out into the woodlands. Although not completely invulnerable to having the occasional passerby on a trail, my small and inconspicuous cabin was perfect for a traveling professional like myself. By the time I reached the age of 30, I was well known in my field. I had more requests than what I could handle, and by the end of 1940 I had already completed over 100 jobs.

My father died when I was 45, and that was the only time I ever remember crying. He was the only person I could talk to, relate to, and care about. Due to my status, I was unable to attend his funeral directly, instead I had to visit his grave in the dead of night. Sometimes I question my lifestyle and ask myself how I ended up with this so-called “life”. My father used to say to me, “You will have doubts, m' boy, but don't you give up now. You're one of the greats. Be a legend, boy.” Every time I would report to him after completing a job he would, almost ceremoniously, tell me that I would be a legend.

I had always thought that when I would get older, less and less customers would come to me. Instead, though, as my reputation grew, so did my popularity. By the time I was 55, I had done the bidding of 459 customers, which added up to over 500 jobs. There were a lot of repeat customers, because they were clearly impressed with my work each time.

Around the age of 70, I started really limiting the amount of work that I was doing. I couldn't do nearly as much as I used to when I was 40 years younger, and my clientèle could obviously tell. As each month passed, less job offers were available and I, myself, was beginning to feel tired, exhausted even. That's why, at the age of 82, I retired from my profession. Physically, and even mentally, I couldn't take it anymore. The years of constant pressure, hiding, and working, had taken there toll on me.

I did not live a glamorous life, nor did I really “live” a life at all. That's why after 72 years of working in the tightest alleyways and the highest rooftops, I decided to retire from being a professional assassin...