REMEMBER, REMEMBER, THE FIRST OF NOVEMBER

It was a cold and rainy November 1st in 2003. I was in a crowded public cemetery, and the place was littered with wilting flowers, melting candles, and people carrying containers of food and a plethora of plastic chairs as if they were heading to a Sunday picnic or preparing for the apocalypse. The wind had a dizzying smell--a concoction of smoke, sweat, wet grass, ketchup-doused spaghetti, and possibly, rotting corpses. The ground was sticky with mud and small puddles of water were in every corner of the cemetery like dangerous open manholes on main roads.

THE BIRTHING PLACE

Or how I became a murderer of infants.

You know you have never really lived until you have witnessed a hundred baby spiders come out of a single egg. I should know this because one stormy night, I have killed a huge spider with an insect spray--only to help it deliver its hatched babies.