“Why doesn’t she fire me when she knows I only do all the wrong things in the world?” I wailed at my mom and fell on my bed face down to hide the conspirational tears that were threatening to streak down my cheeks.

Living in the same house felt strange to me since the time I began to understand the language of the world and left my own baby tongue behind. Not only this but the affection I received from this so-called Aunt’s husband was even more perplexing and yet gloriously breathtaking as I didn’t have my own father. To have a person act like he was your father was a greatly wonderful feeling to have and also to receive presents and gifts at my birthdays and on days when my results in school would be astounding for him was yet another angelic mind boggler for me but I didn’t care. I thought my life to be perfect as it was, and nothing could have ever made it better.

Days were great and nights fantastic. I didn’t have any other siblings but for me, my mom and Auntie’s husband acting as a pseudo father were enough. Time flew past by. Its wings amazingly did not make a sound as it flew away. Life accelerated at warp speed on a high-speed roller coaster ride. Little did I imagine that roller coasters have those dips as well.

And then it happened. Sitting alone one day brushing my evening sun colored hair and basking in the gloriously golden sunlight of early noon, I heard things unheard of in places where people are to live peacefully. I was seven; too small for such harsh words. But these things don’t look at the time when they come.

Uncle Edward, Aunt Carla’s husband’s voice floated up in the attic:
“But Carla we cant just kick ‘em out of the house. Be reasonable. Where will they go, where will they live, sleep, eat food? And you know Martha doesn’t have any skills. She’s nil on life’s experiences…”

“Yeah so you have to become the ultimate god of the lesser things in the world, right!” Aunt Carla snapped him short.

“C’mon. You’re so intelligent. At least you can be rational in this case. After all she’s your sister. Even if she is step, you both still have the same father.”

The shock of this knowledge dulled my senses and the hair brush slipped out of my hand. My mom was not at home which at that crucial stage I felt was lucky. She wouldn’t have wanted me to know this at all.

When my mother came home from the weekly shopping that she did every Sunday, she looked at me and concern shone from her face. She asked whether I was alright, making a face I just grunted and clutched my head as if it were an anvil. She immediately put me to sleep with a soporific medicine.

When I woke up, life was different, to say the air to life was different. My mom looked so tired and drawn, but she was still working around the house. But my aunt looked as if she could kill. She would’ve have really killed me, if I hadn’t asked mom the date on the newspaper which Aunt Carla wanted. But the atmosphere was taut. It seemed that any moment something would explode and the whole world would get covered with its debris.

For years the knowledge of who Aunt Clara and Uncle Edward were, remained with me like a dark un-revealed secret till he came. And with him came Samantha. He was my best friend and Sam my arch enemy. He liked me with his heart and Sam loved him with passion. We were a group of three, but could never be really friends as I wanted all of us to be. It all ended; the friendship, the love and hatred when Sam murdered him and then committed suicide.

Till the time when I came of age, I had no idea of a real father, no knowledge of a close friend and no clue of what the world was. My mother had died when on my eighteenth birthday, when some reckless person crushed her to death through his car. From then onwards I quit celebrating my birthday and mourned my mother’s death when the date came.

On the day when I had to leave the place which I had so lovingly called my home, I finally understood one fact about life. You never know what the next day holds for you. Every body I knew was either dead, or was not willing to say that they wanted me in their life; even Uncle Edward. I had nothing to live for, nor something for which I could die. From the education I had, I could only be someone’s maid servant or a beggar. After days without food and nights without rests, a person came to me and gave an address and told me to go there. He gave me a cartload of money and a package which I had to deliver to that address. I was happy; at least I could do with some food and pair of decent shoes. Some how life had something different in store for me that day.

“I beg you; I have no knowledge about the package. I was just giving it to that person, because another person had given me money and told me that he wanted a package delivered, that’s it.”

The Police Officer looked at me with an expression of extreme boredom and handcuffed me. The next thing I knew was the cell I was put in. My eyes were dry, so much had I cried that there were no tears left any more. Days were months and months were years. I had been given a life sentence. At least I was given decent food; I had clothes to wear.
__________________________________________________________________
“Come out, you have been set free. The charges against you were false.” A policewoman drawled.

The newfound freedom was too much for me. With no money and no living relatives, not even Aunt Clara and Uncle Edward; I had nothing to do in my life. Day by day, the world became bleary and dull. Spring; summer; autumn; winter; it was a cyclical play with no ending.

Giggling I staggered in to the alley still drawing it in through my mouth. It was my best friend; my great savior; my life. Without it my life would be dull and drab; my being would enshroud with pain and agony of the years gone by. Now I wanted nothing. Burglary was an art and my affair; and smoking it was my soul.

I lie now on the dirty floor of the same alley, blood is every where and so is smoke. I have no regrets as I wait for my last breath. What I had not been taught was how to live, and this I had learnt my self. For me there had never been a right thing or a wrong one. There was and has always been only one thing; Inky blackness every where.