“I was sent to an orphanage, and walked a hard life since. I ran away from the cold heartless orphanage and lived on the streets by my wits and criminal skills. Those I ran with were as hardened by their experiences of a brutal uncaring world as I was, bitter that fate smiled on others while we had to fight for daily bread and dirty water. Alcohol was the only safe liquid to drink. It also brought forgetfulness if not a drunken peace. “The only glimmer of hope for a profession was when, by my reputation for being a successful and nasty street fighter, I was recruited by the Agency. They needed a strong arm and sharp knife to guard their criminal activities and collect on bad gambling debts. I soon was graduated to caring a firearm and became a deadly shot. And I do not mean accurate when I say deadly. “The Agency became a twisted family; we took care of each other and provided a dark sort of comradeship that bound us with oaths of allegiance and financial support. “When day, I had to face myself. “We were on a collection job. Some fool had made bets he could not pay, and ran up more debt trying to win enough to pay his obligation to our gang. We broke into his hovel and roughed him up. He had no money and we were to make an example of him so his neighbors, also heavily in debt to us would be terrorized into paying us off. There was nothing in his small run down rooms that could be hocked for even pennies. “After my companions had their fun beating him bloody, they dropped him on the floor and left him to me to finish. I was cutting him up alive with my sharp hunting knife, when his wife came back from a late job as an ill paid cleaning lady. She screamed, ran into our midst to cuddle her now unconscious and dying husband. “She looked up as we smirked. She looked at each one of us right into our callous eyes. When she looked at me, I realized she recognized me. I couldn’t place her, she was old wrinkled, dirty and crying as the life blood of her husband stained her clothes. “You all should be ashamed of yourself,” she whimpered, “He owed you so little, yet his sin was to try to win money he could no longer earn with his old and broken body.” “Lady, there is no shame in us,” Jacque snarled. “Alian,” she look into my eyes, “you were not a bad boy when we lived next to your parents, but you did not listen to God, He is disappointed in you. I have prayed for you every day since your parents were taken from you. I heard you had run away from the orphanage. I became a prayer warrior to intercede on your behalf to God.” “You should not have wasted your prayers on me old lady,” I growled. “You should have prayed for a lucky number.” My companions laughed at my witty retort. “I do not know why God has allowed you to kill my love,” her tears ran down her face as she gazed lovingly at the corpse she clutched. “But I know he waits for me in God’s arms.” “Go join him now,” I roared as I thrust my knife into her side. “My brutal attack even made my companions pull back. “I forgive you,” she gasped as her life ebbed from her body; her dying eyes pierced my soul with a tenderness I could not understand. “God can forgive you as He did me.” She barely uttered. And then she crumpled over her dead husband. “Let’s get out of here,’ Jacque yelled. We didn’t need to run out into the streets, no one would hinder our exit; we left the carnage with a normal stroll, as if we had just visited with them and needed to move on. “I wiped her life’s blood from my knife. I didn’t even know her name. I still did not know which former neighbor this pathetic couple had been. “I returned to my room and broke open a bottle. Forgive me? What did I care what a decrepit old lady thinks about me. Prayed for me daily? Who was listening to her? What benefit did she gain by her prayers? She and her pathetic old man were worse off than me. How dare she forgive me… “What did I mean by that, I thought? I would have spat with my last breath on a creep that had not only killed my spouse, but knifed me in my grief. “Why should I want God to forgive me, I should be pleaded with to forgive Him. He was no friend of mine. In all His power, didn’t He just stand by as I saw my parents sink beneath the pounding waves, His awful storm killed my remaining family. Where was He when I was given over to the orphanage? “But, why and how could she forgive me? I had no pity on her. “How could she still pray daily, when obviously she was living in a hovel and her husband fell into gambling to try to make ends meet? “I became haunted with her words. I couldn’t get them out of my mind. I drank, but I didn’t get drunk much anymore; it deadened my fighting skills which I used extensively. “I roamed the streets and found myself in front of a small church in the back streets of our stench. It was late; an evening service was being held. I did not comprehend what I was doing as I sat in a back pew. The preacher, of some unknown church group was preaching about the Love of God and His forgiveness that was received by believing on His Son.