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This writing was accepted for publication in the 108 page perfect-bound ISSN# / ISBN# issue/book... “6 Feet Under” Down in the Dirt (v136) (the May 2016 Issue) You can also order this 6"x9" issue as a paperback book:

Order this writing in the book A Stormy Beginning the Down in the Dirt Jan. - June 2016 collection book		get the 318 page Jan. - June 2016 Down in the Dirt issue anthology 6" x 9" ISBN# paperback book:

Dig Deeply the Grave

Bill DeArmond

    The tyrant raised his glass and addressed those gathered for this special occasion. “Let us recognize the birth of my first son,” he beamed. “He is a noble spirit born into this new haven of grand destiny. He will lead our family and this realm with great vision and humility.”
    As the assemblage obligingly clinked their fine crystal in approbation, the boy in his hand-carved cradle stared at his father with strangely cold, steel eyes; the faintest beginning of a smirk hiding behind the infant’s lips.

*****

    Not far away in distance but miles removed in opportunity, another boy, wrapped in diapers made from a worn curtain, shivered in the arms of his haggard mother, both too weak to stir from the cold, hard bed. Deserted and destitute, she had survived as best and as long as she could. Life under the tyrant was difficult for even an educated person, let alone this young, single mother. Her sustenance and health care stolen away had rendered her incapable of warding off starvation and disease.

*****

    In the terrible silence of the night, ominous clouds veiled the glimmer of the moon, shrouding the land in a cloak of black. Death, descending toward earth through this abyss, thought, “What must be done is better done in this void.”
    Death moved silently through the streets, eyes piercing the troubled slumber of those who awaited his eventual touch—their lives as fragile as the strands of a spider’s web.
    Pausing at the despot’s house, Death was uniquely torn between duty and conviction, for Death possessed knowledge of a future far more terrible than man could imagine, let alone experience. If Death now took the tyrant instead, would that break the yoke of the man’s oppression of the people, those whose souls had so long been exploited for his gain? Or should he snatch the rich man’s son as an object lesson? Obviously, the offspring was destined to follow in his father’s example. It was the only mode of thought to which the child would ever be exposed, and he would be emboldened by his father’s accumulated power and corrupting wealth?
    But Death was not privilege to the circumstances of this fateful decision; he was only a messenger of providence, claiming those souls whose journey was now complete. So, with as much regret as an eternal force could express, Death moved past the estate and onward to the place of poverty and misery.

*****

    Death entered the most miserable and desolate bedroom of the most miserable and desolate dwelling in the most miserable and desolate part of the city. There, in repose on a ragged cot, lay a gaunt woman ravaged well beyond her twenty years. She embraced an infant so tightly as to return the unfortunate babe to her womb.
    “It’s not fair,” whispered Death. “But then life, by its design, isn’t meant to be fair.”
    Reluctantly, Death reached out with arms now glowing vibrantly warm and embraced the trembling woman and child, crossing them into His spiritual realm, rescuing them from the bitterness of this earthly life, while the tyrant and his son slept soundly, unaffected by the sadness surrounding them.

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