One More Dead

I was sat on the floor when they told me he was dead. They didn't tell me his name, just that he'd ben killed far from home in a place full of anger and death. My step-father was playing online Pacman in the other room, and the sound of fruit and ghosties trickled through. He got up to open the front door for my mum just getting home with the shopping she'd picked up on the way back from work. I didn't hear her waiting, because somebody I didn't know was dead.

I hope I didn't know him. Sort of. I'll never know him now, along with most of the rest of a world that will never know him, and there doesn't seem to be any hope or happiness to be found there.

My mum was smiling and cheerful with bags of good food. I sat on the floor with the remote in my hand and tried to listen to the words and moiving pictures as she joked about having bought herself her own birthday cake. There were men waving guns in the street, celebrating. What were they celebrating? Maybe they thought they had freedom, for their life, for their God, or maybe they thought they'd got themselves some power and vengeance. Again, for their life, for their God.

I didn't know. The broadcast casually made it look like they were cheering that he was dead. I hope they weren't. I eye despair carefully if they were. I think it's unlikely that was the case, because the report seemed prepared and shinily produced, and when they told me he was dead they were giving me news just in. I turned off the programme after the case of the death by dangerous driving, and I ate cheesecake for dessert.