I fostered a child, for a time, whose name was Relief. She was a young thing when she came to live with me and she had violence in her heart put there by the man wearing a bandana over his face who murdered her mother and disappeared into the night. He had no doubt assumed Relief had already succumbed to the bullet wound he put in her, but years of active shooter drills taught her to play dead well and she was left to dial the officers after smearing her own blood all over her face.

And when I took young Relief in, I had no doubt that her previous foster parents did not die of natural causes as the paperwork so clearly stated, although it is natural for one to die from concentrated nicotine poisoning.

Relief did have a way with words, though it was half as impressive as her way with forging documents, and she did try to kill me on her first night in our shared abode. Unfortunately for her, it didn’t take and I am still around to share this message with all of you.

Young Relief ran away after taking me for dead and then seeing me rise in the night to raid my fridge. It is no doubt that seeing the dead walk frightened her some, for she had seen a large number of corpses and never once did one walk.

Relief aged out of that system on the railways and, by the time I saw her once again, she was a full grown adult. Still, though, she feared to see me walking and ran. The train took her, just as it took her from me when she was young, and she, unlike I, did not rise after the great metal thing struck her.

When the Great Work is laid out in front of us,
We must not let ourselves be consumed by fear,
And in acting in fear reject heaven.