Slave Trader

William Allan

“Smithy!” an oily voice called loudly.

Jon knew this voice, and it made him sick to his stomach just to hear it. It was Husain - a thug from the port - employed as ship’s whipper on cargo boats, invested in ‘crowd control’.

“I am in need of your craft” - he said, for no apparent reason with irony - then laughed a murky laugh - “we need cages - big cages … and manacles - with keys of course … and spikes big spikes.”

He went on to roll out his shopping list of his metallic requirements.

“My Da is dead, and he cannot work no more.”

“Well, you can do it Son. Good practise now you are the chief owner, I say.”

“I cannot. I know not how. I cannot.” Jon said this firmly that the oaf might hear him plainly.

Jon looked at the ground. In saying this he was lying to this hideous man. Yet even his father had refused work from the slave traders - and Jon felt exactly the same. The smell of this man was menacingly close by.

-Gabriel Brunsdon, Finding Self - Second Guesses- Azlander Series

Relief

She had no recollection of what had just passed … of the car that had been forced into the tree, as she had idled into the wrong lane, absorbed in her moment, losing concentration and focus as she had done. It is the blight of the intuitive, to be less present in the present, distracted with their persistent sense of other-worldliness.

A small crowd had formed, with quite a few broadcasting the event on their phones.

Relief surged through her like a lightning bolt. There was an ecstasy of energy, as Eve discovered that her body was unharmed, and she uncurled from the tangle of metal, as a whole and healthy woman as before. It was a miracle.

And then, then, the scene became complete: and she saw for the first time the other half of this story: there was a man sitting in the gutter crying, and a wagon up against a tree. It was on fire.

-Gabriel Brunsdon, Finding Self - Second Guesses- Azlander Series

Impact Shock

With the shock of the impact, Eve’s clairvoyance kicked in, and she could see Angels all around her. In that moment she thought that it was herself that had died.

Needles had escaped back into the seat behind, and was looking on the floor of the sedan for the diamond Eve had dropped with the impact.

A man in a blue uniform with an upturned moustache rattled her side door frantically until it opened, and leant across, shining a light into her eyes, then fitting a brace around her neck, he spoke something - but she did not hear what it was that he had said. Eve was taken by his golden aura, and the angelic beings that hovered at his shoulders in a flurry.

-Gabriel Brunsdon, Finding Self - Second Guesses- Azlander Series

Into the Light

“What do we do now?” Patricia asked her mum, who sympathetically was holding her hand.

“Let me take you home. We have a lot to catch up on. You can rest there, and Molly can settle. In a few days, you will feel like new.”

Patricia felt the peace of these words, and her mother’s presence calmed her. She did not feel stressed or particularly broken - and that in itself was soothing too. She nodded, turning her mind’s eye away from the world she had just left, gathered up her little one, and followed her mother slowly into the light.

-Gabriel Brunsdon, Finding Self - Second Guesses- Azlander Series

All my Fault

Toby sat hunched on the curb-side with his head in between his legs. It was as though the weight of the news was literally crushing him. He did not go to his wife’s car - or what was left of it. He was not moving. He could not move.

Even though Patricia was ‘in spirit’ and no longer alive, she could hear and smell and see what was going on, as though it was close by her. She could taste the petrol on the road, and heard a woman in the background crying, she could see the other vehicle jammed up against the hedgerow with some small figure sitting in the back.

“It's all my fault” the woman was screaming, “I was looking into my phone; I just did not see it coming.”

-Gabriel Brunsdon, Finding Self - Second Guesses- Azlander Series

World's Collide

Molly looked around. Her birth mother, in spirit form, had been holding her all this time while her grandmother, who was also in spirit, was talking with her.

“It was a terrible accident my dear, but you are alright now, I promise", she said for what felt like the fiftieth time.

“Cars can be like that” she continued explaining - “one minute you were in the world, and the next you can be taken out of it.”

The toddler pushed her head into her mother’s shoulder, wrapped her arm around her neck and clung tight. She started crying again.

“It’s the shock of it all” her grandmother said to her daughter, who was staring into a worldly window where she could see her husband at the scene of the crash. His own car had just pulled up behind the police van, and the ambulance had turned off its lights, resting there, waiting for the Coroner to appear.

-Gabriel Brunsdon, Finding Self - Second Guesses- Azlander Series

Starting Over

“My life is over” she wailed.

“No, no my dear, it’s really not. You have to just pick yourself up and start again.”

Her life as she knew it was over.

Starting again meant the whole reincarnation and being a baby again - a long protracted time of feeding and crawling, and walking, and, with God knows what type of parents.

“I am so sorry that it came to this”, the voice soothingly said.

“It's just that … that I thought I would have more time.”

“We all think that, whether ninety - or two."

“But I was only two, and my mother loved me very much.”

“Yes, I know dear, she did. And she is with you right now.”

-Gabriel Brunsdon, Finding Self - Second Guesses- Azlander Series