What a drag! I knew I shouldn’t have come here tonight. Old Murdoch from the board of directors was giving his annual speech. Others were scattered around the old mansion talking about hunting and polo. Giles and Julian sat playing chess at a large oak table at the back of the room I was in. Of all the senior executives in the company I was by far the youngest, by at least fifteen years. This was the trouble with ‘work’ functions. I simply didn’t take pleasure in the same sort of activities as my upper middle-class peers.

As Murdoch droned on and on towards midnight, concierges whizzed past with immaculate trays of sushi and Pimms. I leaned against the large stone fireplace and thought of all the other places I’d rather be, as others listened with their ears erect like those of a pointer dog. Just as I thought of slipping away unnoticed Murdoch finally finished, the lights dimmed slightly, and the beautiful music started.

The prettiest girl I’d ever laid eyes on stood in the corner holding a mahogany cello like her first born child. The purest melody ever heard by human ears brought a new light to the room. All I could do was stare. The girl had long black hair and impossibly pale skin. Her bright red and yellow dress was decorated generously with summer flowers; her radiant presence providing a stark contrast to the dull black and grey suits in the room. I stood there transfixed. She was ‘The Butterfly’.

I closed my eyes, allowing the melody to wash over me undisturbed by the mundane visuals of the room. What seemed like hours passed. The music ended. The girl disappeared back into the dark and the white king fell on the old oak table.





The memory of it all is so painfully vivid. The classroom was colder than usual. A thick, dark cloud of foreboding lingered in the air. The teacher’s dull drone had sent me wandering into my thoughts - and not for the first time on this particular day. My previous daydreams had been predominantly populated with worrying thoughts about Dad and Clayton….Was the journey going okay?….Had they nearly reached their destination? I recall it as clear as if it were yesterday. My whole body was shaking in waves of anticipatory fear. I could sense something was wrong.

As I stared out the window I let the beauty of the autumn afternoon ease my mind momentarily. A carpet of browns and yellows littered the ground below, leaving only the odd patch of green visible among the withered leaves. Death was in the air. A confetti of leaves being blown in circles on a rogue gust of wind captured my attention. I could feel my eyes begin to close again when suddenly a horrific vision flashed through my mind…

I could see Clayton….and Dad…something was wrong. It was the plane. Some sort of unlikely accident had blasted a hole in the side of the aircraft. A sandstorm of bodies and objects flew through the plane in a resultant wind tunnel. The last thing I can remember seeing was Dad holding tight on to Clayton’s wrist as he was being sucked towards the gash. As reality and the sub-conscious freely intertwined, I screamed out in desperation as loud as I could in the classroom: but before I could force out the words, Dad had lost his grip and Clayton was sucked from the plane.

“Please Daddy, don’t let go.”

It was too late. Like a dead leaf in the breeze, Clayton was gone.






I stood there frozen in time as the sharp green array of shapes on the cardiograph slowly morphed into a perfect straight line. The doctors had told me that Clive was suffering from a series of heart-attacks, which could prove to be fatal. This didn't make sense to me...how could a man with no heart suffer from a heart attack?

"I'm so sorry Mrs Jagg. He's gone. We'll give you a little privacy."

The nurse put her hand on the sleeve of my cardigan as she softly spoke the words. The long sleeves were my only disguise today - I was lucky. Of all places a hospital was no setting to be showing off the burns, scratches and bruises on my skinny, pale arms. I was lucky - sometimes I had to wear sunglasses to disguise violet bruises, other times high polo-necks to hide crimson handprints. I hadn’t always been pale and skinny, that had been only one of the physical results of fifteen years of abuse. But then again, it had been all my fault.

As tears started to flow from eyes so tragically aged and weathered before their time, the nurse glanced back and sensitively gave me the look she gave to the rest of the grieving widows. However, this time, she was wrong. The crystal beads running down my face were not tears of grief…they were tears of relief. I was no longer someone’s possession; my thoughts and actions were no longer perpetuated by the fear of another beating. I was free.

As I placed the gold ring on the cabinet beside the bed I softly spoke the words ‘Til Death Do Us Part’. For the last fifteen years I had been ‘walking into’ doors….now, at last, I was finally getting to walk out one. For good.





I watch them. The twins. Coordinated perfectly in red and white. Tommy's denim cords matching Lisa's bright crimson cardigan. They laugh and joke at the foot of the hospital bed; their blissful ignorance of the situation merely a product of their innocence. The Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis had tightened its grip long before they were old enough to comprehend. I could always see the fear and reluctance in their little eyes as their mother told them the man lying motionless on the bed was 'daddy'.

They would never understand. Nobody will. Not you. Not the patronizing nurses who speak to me like one of my four year old kids; not even my loving and faithful wife Monique. No-one could begin to comprehend the horror of spending every tedious minute of life trapped inside a body which refused to cooperate. Just try to imagine knowing that an incurable disease is eating away at your spinal cord; the only certainty being death. My condition is so bad that I can barely even move my eyes anymore. As the four identical tiny eyes stare curiously into my own I can’t even let my children know I’m sorry that I'll never get to see them grow up.

It tears me apart to know that my son and daughter think of me as a vegetable. How can they possibly know that inside I function exactly the same as everyone else? They will never understand I can hear every last word and see every smile as they wave goodbye. My active mind is painfully tortured and tormented in the lonely solitude of my body’s prison. I have no way of communicating my eternal misery to the outside world. All I can do is rot here and wait for my inevitable death; in my very own brain cell.