This column starts a series of columns that are part of one story--a fictional story about abortion that will hopefully open a few eyes. I'm not sure how many weeks it will take to complete, but here is the first chapter.

Weep No More

By Robert Schiener

Chapter 1.

Mary had never seen brighter lights in her days as a full-time waitress at Biff's Cafeteria. Mary was sure of that. But something was undoubtedly more mysterious in the air this evening than in any other she had spent alone at Woodsbury Apartments or in the seclusion of her 1957 Chevrolet.

These lights radiated with fierce power and authority into her stunned eyes. Mary then recalled Judy Garlin's plight in the Wizard of Oz and the oddity of it, yet the explainable reality of a dream gone wrong. Had unforeseen forces captured her thoughts in the night and taken her to a desolate land of bright stars, suns, and comments? Or, had it taken her to the inner core of the sun itself? Although never interested in post-secondary school, Mary had keen interest in astronomy and unthinkable galaxies light years away and for a minute believed her sleep had taken her afar.

But that thought soon became erroneous as she heard a tender voice in the background wisper angelic hymns of praise and worship over the most unsuspecting of objects: Mary, the human. Shortly after, Mary was stunned to find an airborne video of herself fifty degrees to her right in the last minutes of her life before she remembered going to sleep. Mary began to self-doubt herself that she even had gone to sleep. Further, Mary never remembered this slice of her life.

As she consumed the soundless video, she saw the red lights of ambulances, police cars, and the local sheriff at the foot of her Chevrolet. Dan Quigen, a local hero from the first world war and veteran sheriff of Darensville was well known to her and she immediately recognized something was terribly wrong by his unstable demeanor. Quigen, however, was well known for his consistent calmness and professionalism during even the most fearful and tedious situations a sheriff could ever encounter. Yet, the video showed a terrified and mentally disturbed sheriff with a streaming river of tears flowing to the newly paved road.

At this point, Mary became engulfed with a fear of the higher order. She could hardly gather her thought as she peered at the bright lights and then to the general area of the video. She then remembered the spiritual voices and became conservatively frustrated at the prospect of never deriving them.

At that instant, the voices stopped and pierced through her soul with such a sudden might that they threw her into a subconscious state and transformed the physical Mary into an intangible entity able to think and communicate only through her soul. Without any doubts or reservations, she was now righteously and thoroughly convinced that Mary Walters was dead at twenty-nine years of age and laying in the lap of the Lord Jesus Christ.

This latter thought provoked additional worry and fear, as she then scanned her entire life for any good and any bad which might help or hinder her prospects for eternal life.

One potential hindrance struck her soul upfront with sheer terror and literal consequence. This hindrance of her young life presently stood in the form of a beautiful ten-year old child stretched in the lap of Veronica and weeping silently and consistently at Mary's newly transformed soul. He was completely covered in a white robe with a thin river of blood running from his heart to a groundless floor. As Veronica had wept in the eyes of Jesus so long ago, she herself wept innocent tears at the sinless child.

The child had been murdered at three months.