by Martin Roth
Prologue
I met my mother just once more after she died.
She told me she was happy now, that she didn’t regret dying. She was dressed in a purple sarong and she smelled of camphor wood, the fragrance that the Japanese sailors used to give her. A golden glow came from her shiny black hair, and when her hands moved I could see a soft blue light. She was standing right in front of me, but her voice was muted, as if she were on the other side of a thick curtain.
In the dream, or vision, or whatever it was, she said she had always loved me. I tried to ask why she had abandoned me, and what had happened to my father, but she just stared ahead, a wistful smile on her face. Then she was gone.
It was the most beautiful experience of my life.
But it didn’t stop me becoming a killer.