1956...
 

"Leave me alone!" The scrawny kid tried to run from his tormentors, but they were
older, stronger, and meaner. His skinny little legs were running out of steam, but if he
could just get to the Colonel's office, then they'd leave him alone. He didn't see the
dip of the road in front of him. His foot caught in the indentation and he fell forward,
his glasses falling off his face.
The older army brats grabbed him by his shirt. The oldest one, a rather strong
nine-year-old named Teddy hauled up little Lee Stetson by his shirt. "Told you we'd get
ya! This is for wimps who duck out on a fight!"
"But I did--" Teddy socked him good in the eye. Lee bit his lip, trying to fight
back the tears. Teddy and his buddies took turns bashing him and inflicting a nose bleed
and two black eyes in the process. Lee stumbled and fell onto the ground and proceeded
to have the daylights kicked out of him. Tears and blood mixed to form pinkish rivers
down his cheeks.
"Hey look! The geek's cryin'! What a baby!"
"Yeah! Sissy! Wimp!"
"Geek!"
They laughed and began walking off, but not before they kicked his glasses out of
his reach and took his baseball cap with them. Lee sat there, watching them go, afraid to
move for fear they'd come back and starting beating him up again. He sniffed, rubbing his
nose and getting blood all over the torn shirtsleeve for his trouble. He picked up his
backpack and broken glasses and began limping towards the Colonel's office. He tried
to stifle his crying. The Colonel said real men didn't cry. Still, the six-year-old
didn't understand why the older kids picked on him. He just wanted to be left alone....
/Don't laugh at me!/

1970...

"Hey Metal Mouth!" Frances playfully swatted her little sister's ponytail
as she pranced out of the house, dragging Donald behind her. Donald, for his part,
merely gave a half-hearted wave to the fourteen-year-old. Abigail Holt came outside
to see her oldest daughter and her soon-to-be son-in-law to the car. Laura merely sat on
the porch, trying to make herself invisible. That way, Mom would have nothing to yell
at her about. /Laura do this, Laura don't do that, Laura act right, don't be such a
tomboy/ Her mind went through her mother's litany of lectures. She stared at the rose
bush by the step. She hated her older sister's teasing and she hated her damn braces.
/God, ain't I ugly enough?/
Abigail tapped her younger daughter on the head. "Laura, at least have the common
courtesy to say goodbye to Frances and Donald."
Laura managed a half-hearted wave, secretly wishing they'd beat it. Abigail
glowered at her insociability. "Laura, smiling /can/ make a person look pretty."
Frances, for her part, merely giggled. "Oh, don't worry about it, Mother. She's just sulky
because she's got braces, aren't you, baby sis?" The young girl had never been very good
at holding her temper in. "Shut up, Frances!"
Flipping her sister off, she ran to the backyard, hearing her mother telling
her sister, "I don't know what's gotten into that girl. You were never like that Frannie."
She picked up her glove and baseball and began practicing her pitches. Tears pricked at her
dark eyes. Everything was wrong! Dad wasn't around anymore, not since the Army had sent
him home from 'Nam, Mom had never really liked her. Even her own sister made fun of her.
It wasn't the stupid braces! It was just another change in life! Nothing ever stayed the
same anymore! She sniffed and threw the ball hard.
"Your curve's a little off, Spitfire." Laura bit her lip. Lee was spending two weeks with them this summer. She turned around to see him standing there in a pair of grease covered jeans and a tee shirt. He had been working on his bike while he was in town.
He was cute, with his sandy hair and friendly hazel eyes. In Laura's fourteen-year-old
eyes, he was gorgeous. She blushed. He was also twenty; but somehow, just by looking at
her, Lee made her /feel/ pretty, which she wasn't. /At least Lee doesn't laugh at me./

1966...

The underfed youth huddled in the grimy alley in London's White Chapel District.
He tried to ignore the rumbling of his stomach. He couldn't remember the last good meal
he had. Hell, his last meal had consisted of bread of sawdust quality he had lifted from a bakery's dumpster. /Who'd notice the bloody thing was gone anywhere./
Somewhere in the maze of streets, he heard drunken laughter and gunshots, typical
nightime sounds for this area; typical sounds of the past few years of his young life.
He saw two shadows streak past him and hurriedly stood up. Trouble was coming and he didn't want to be around when it came. There had been a rash of robberies with accompanying murders and the coppers were taking it upon their bloody selves to actually go after the buggers. Unfortunately, it also meant they were picking up anyone who happened to look suspicious, which included him. He pushed one dark lock out of his sapphire eyes and began to walk towards the pubs. Maybe he could find someone who'd be willing to give Mickey O'Leary a bit o'food. He bit his lip. Then again, maybe not. The last family he was with hadn't wanted him, why would a group of total strangers feed a bastard with no name.
Oh, he /had/ many names...Sean, Mickey, Michael, Jimmy, Brian...he just didn't know his
own bloody name. So right now he was Mickey O'Leary. Thunder rumbled above and lightening lit the sky like a Banshee over Dublin. Silvery streaks of liquid began falling on him, growing harder and heavier by the second. The boy ducked into an abandoned building,
slipping in the mud as he did. Two people passing began chortling with drunken laughter
at the sight of a skinny youth covered in mud as he pushed his way into the dump of a
building.
Climbing into an overturned bin, the boy curled up in a fetal position to get warm.
Then the tears came, as they did every night, no matter where he found to make his bed.
/Why doesn't anyone want me?/

1964...

"I guess she's on our team."
Laura tried to ignore Matt's mumbled "Great, we've got the shrimp on our team."
She tried, but it was so hard! She was always the last one to be chosen for teams and
the first one to be put out of the game. It wasn't fair and it wasn't her fault she was
too small to keep up with the other kids. She even had trouble holding the bat when they
decided to play baseball; it was just to heavy for her smallness.
"Here!" Kelly threw Laura a glove. "Go play outfield."
Go play outfield where no one ever threw the ball, where there was never any danger
of missing an out because Laura was too slow to catch the stupid ball. Laura dug the toe of
her sneaker into the dirt before wandering off to the far end of the old baseball field.
She didn't miss the comment Matt whispered to Sean. "Man, why does she even play
with us? Everytime she's on our team, we lose!"
Laura stood at the far end of the field, her eyes watering. Maybe a ball wouldn't
be hit out here today. Daddy said she would grow soon, but not soon enough to win the game.
The ball went sailing through the air with a loud crack of the bat.

1951...

"And what were ye saying your name was?"
The young woman shuddered, suddenly cold. "Megan. Megan Sharon O'Neil."
"Megan Sharon O'Neil. Good. Now, how far along might ye be?"
The nurse stared pointedly at the young woman before her. She was one of those young girls who were "in trouble," as they say. This one was a pretty lass too. Ah, that was the shame of it. Too pretty and not enough self-will or control. She cleared her throat. The young woman looked up, her luminous sapphire eyes bright with tears. "About two months."
"I see. Do ye be having anywhere to go?"
"No. It's alone I am."
Typical. These young girls got themselves in a mess with no means of helping
themselves and no means of supporting a baby and then wanted to beg for help after making a fine mess of things. "Well, we can send you to a home and ye can have the child. Now,
who might the father be?"
Tormented eyes, full of recent troubles and past hardships, lifted up. "Daniel
Chalmers."
The nurse wrote the name down. At least this one knew the father. "And why isn't
he here now?"
Nervously awaiting the contemptuous stare she knew she'd receive, the girl mumbled,
"He's serving time."
Well! Wasn't this one of the better cases! Pregnant, single, and the father in
prison. The nurse shook her head, ignoring the girl's tears. Standing up, she beckoned
for Megan O' Neil to follow her. "The first thing we'll do is give ye a checkup. After
that, we'll find a group home to get you to."

1984...

The old guy shivered as the cold wind went through the thin windbreaker he wore.
It was more than some of the other bums had. He stood on the corner, waiting for someone
to drop their breakfast on the ground or into the trash as they passed. He was starving.
When was the last time he had had a decent meal. Hell, he couldn't remember the last time
he didn't need the bottle in his pocket to keep warm. Hopefully the shelter would have an
empty bed tonight.
He limped to the archway of the abandoned building he used to stay out of the weather.
Two women passed, throwing a bag on the sidewalk, barely noticing the dirty, homeless man
shivering in the archway. He had become something of a permanent fixture in the last few
years. Uncorking his small bottle, the man, took a swig, his tears becoming part of the
alchohol he drank. John, or Jack, as the shelter people took to calling him, struggled to stand, trying to reach the crumpled up bag to see if there was still some food in it. The damn
leg was giving him trouble again. He tried to push himself up one more time. A young man
walked past. Furtively, he kicked the bag in Jack's direction, quickly looking away and
walking down the street.
Jack ripped open the bag, finding a half-eaten McMuffin. The cheese was already starting
to harden as the bicuit cooled. He bit into it greedily as people walked past him, trying
to look through him.
The small bit of food felt good. Jack watched as a little dark-haired girl walked by,
holding onto her father's hand. She smiled in naievty, waving before her attention was
directed elsewhere. Tears rolled down a grimy face. He had a little girl once. He had had
a big girl too; and a wife who couldn't understand why he woke up screaming at night. She
could never understand he didn't want to drink and he didn't want to be sick, but the booze
kept the haunting images of destruction and the horrible memories of torture and starvation
away. Hell wasn't Vietnam; it wasn't Korea. Hell was in his mind, always and forever.
Jack smiled. The streets became deserted as people went into their warm offices to do
the daily grind. He remembered a little girl, the little girl he had had to leave behind
because his moods were becoming more erratic, the drinking more meaningful in his life.
She'd be a grown woman right now. She would be beautiful and happy.
A scrap of newspaper blew past him, getting stuck on the corner of the building.
Some headline about some detective solving a murder. John huddled closer to the wall.
A light snow began to fall, as soft and clean as his little girl's touch had one been.

1952...

Daniel sat up groaning. Another day behind this wall of steel and rock, one less
day to go, slipping away like beads on a rosary. He looked out his small window. The lump
in his throat grew. It shouldn't have been like this! He had watched from the window
yesterday as they had laid Megan's body in the ground. He hadn't known she was pregnant!
What had she given birth to? A little boy or a little girl? Daniel was slowly driving
himself insane with the question. Meagan was dead and he had killed her.
Another part of him shouted that it was impossible to die from a broken heart. Wasn't
it? He wept, another part of the shell of sanity slipping away. He knew the child had been
taken. Was it because Meagan couldn't live without their child even in death?
He sniffed loudly, willing away thoughts of the child. Some divine power had decided
to pay him for one last hurrah by taking away the only treasure he had never chased hard enough.
Daniel punched the wall, yelling inwardly at that bitch called Fate.
The cell door slid open. A guard was grinning happily. Daniel's wrists and ankles
were being shackled. The coppers led him out of the cell. He was shoved in front of a
measurement wall. A cardboard sign was shoved into his hands. They were transferring him
to Dublin's main prison today.
The photographer's voice came from behind a large lens. "Right. Left. Front. Good.
Get him out of here."
He was yanked from in front of the wall and led to a van, locked into the back with
no company but the little demon which kept hopping up and down on his brain screaming, "You did it! It's your fault! Haha! You did it!"
He buried his face in his hands in an attempt to get peace of soul and mind, oblivious
to the loud laughter of the two police in the front of the van.

A small Cycle of Lives in an instant...

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