I was born wet, naked and hungry.

Then things started to look up as I was dried with a soft and warm towel, was wrapped in a very comfortable cotton blanket and was given a particularly good brand of milk for my fist meal. However there was something missing as I drank the sweet juice produced by a loving mother for her infant child warmth. For you see, my mother died during childbirth and the milk was kindly donated by a cow named Betsy, who lived on a farm just outside the city. The infant the milk was so lovingly produced for was the calf number TZ-4023/45, whom unbeknownst to any member of the human species, was named by Betsy after her older brother, who died at the hands of a rodeo security guard named Bill, after trampling his rider to death and refusing to go back to the stables to await another humiliating encounter with his cruel captors. Betsys brothers and her sons name was Dorn. Little Dorn was taken away from Betsy, as he was six months old, was slaughtered in a gloomy slaughterhouse and was served with a side of mashed potatoes in a mushroom sauce on a Christmas celebration for the hospital doctors, which was also attended by the physician who oversaw my birth. Betsys body, however, never realized that her child was gone and kept on producing the sweet nectar that served as my first meal. At least she was allowed to nurture Dorn for half a year, which was six months more than what my mother got. From what I heard later on, during my life, my mother wasnt the conventional type of woman. Her life cycle began by waking up, as the sun was high enough to shine over the thirteen storied building across the street into her messy apartment on the third floor of an old five-storied apartment block, built in the early nineteenth century and decorated with not so cheap looking baroque ornaments, whos smaller parts now and then realized they are superfluous in this time and age and bid farewell to their existence by falling a few stories down to shatter into the dust they came from. The sound of their demise was apart from the sun the only thing that woke my mother and reminded her to go to work. She worked at a beauty parlour, residing in an expensive shopping centre in the rich part of the town, where all the neglected trophy wives went to spend the not so hard earned money of their husbands in desperate attempts to make themselves look younger and prettier than the naive bimbos their husbands took on one-night-stands in expensive hotels in which my still drunk and high mother was sometimes woken up by the imported cleaning ladies. This was the third part of her life. Going out into overpriced night clubs with her friends to dance and forget the not so comfortable lifes they lived by drinking too much, trying all the different substances, the government deemed too dangerous to be legal, and occasionally leaving with a rich stranger, whos wife might have been the woman who was earlier that day complaining how her husband wont notice the new nail-colour she was applying, and to disappear for a few moments in the ecstasy of meaningless sexual intercourse. I highly doubt that I was the first child she was pregnant with and wonder why unlike the unknown number of my half-brothers and sisters I did not end as a pile of organic waste in a bucket at the abortion clinic. Perhaps she finally got tired of running away from her problems and wanted to change her life and keeping me was the first step towards that goal, like a smoker determined to quit throws all his remaining cigarettes into the toilet. If that is true and I am no different than the wet cigarettes in the toilet, did she ever love me, or was I only an object that would force her to change her life, even though she was not completely ready to change. And so I have to wonder if in her last moments, when she realized that my birth would cost her life, she regretted her choice of keeping me. I would like to think that the same motive that made her decide to change her life on my behalf would also make her accept the trade: her life for mine. Perhaps she fell in love with my father,

whoever he may be, and was hoping I would make him leave his wife, whom he obviously did not love if he slept with my mother, and marry my mother so we could be a happy and loving family. If that was her plan, it went terribly wrong and left me alone in an unfriendly world with nothing but my unrepayable dept for my life and the burden of not knowing why she accepted the trade, if she accepted it at all. Apart from my life there was very little I inherited from my mother. Her apartment was repossessed a few months after her death, since its hard for a dead person to earn money and pay the mortgage. She had no savings and her bank account was closed by the bank and its contents merged with the banks reserves, from which they offered seemingly fair loans for people who wanted something, but could not afford it with the amount of money they made doing whatever they did. At least my mother didnt employ the bank for such a loan and didnt leave me with any depts to pay. Even her funeral didnt, as far as I know, cost anyone anything. Even her death certificate was lost in the endless bureaucracy and so my mother never officially died. The down side of these events was that I dont know what happened to her body and no one even knows if there is no grave for me to visit and to leave flowers upon. The flowers she did own and must have really loved and cared about, judging by the fact that she owned more flowers than clouts, have withered away in the absence of her love and voice during the few months the notices of the unpaid mortgage were stacked into the unemptying mailbox, along with the rest of the unpaid bills and spam mail offering great bangings by the stores she mostly shopped in. Although her mailbox did go unnoticed, her apartment didnt. The only person who noticed the mailbox was a postman named Rodney, who spread the word of my mothers absence through most of the district and unknowingly encouraged the people with low moral standards to pay it a visit. While the mailbox was filling up, her apartment was being emptied one break-in at a time and when the bank finally came to seal it off, the door had been taped back together six times and anything worth taking has been taken. The only thing left, as the cleaning crew came to prepare the apartment, now owned by the bank, were some old clouts, a few books on nothing in particular and the withered roses lying in the dirt they were born in, with no cup to hold it together, since they too have been stolen by some junkies at the third break-in, to cultivate the illegal species of cannabis in. The clouts and the book could have been given to charity, but, the bank, not believing in giving anything away for free, decided to throw them away along with the sad dried up remains of the flowers my mother cared about so very much. So the list of my inheritance grew shorter through the months and years, until the day I was old enough to comprehend the emotional value of material things. By the time the bank was through with my mothers dept, the list contained only the things she had with her as she was rushed to the hospital during labour. On the list there were a few pieces of jewellery and some expensive brands of makeup which disappeared one at a time, while they were in the custody of the social worker assigned to take care of me. Her cell phone, by a strange coincidence, disappeared just as the social workers phone broke down. The only other thing was her wallet, which changed its brand from a well known fashion designer to a cheap one, made of very poorly imitated leather. Its contents, however worthless they were, remained mostly the same. There of curse was no money in it and the rest consisted of a piece of paper with a disconnected phone number, a card with the number of a taxi service, a card that granted you access to the VIP section of a night club called Mints that closed down the same year I was born and a picture.

On this picture there were three beautiful women, huddled up together, hugging themselves over their shoulders and on their lips were the most beautiful smiles a person can produce. The first woman was a lovely woman with long hair, curled at the end. It was the colour of the oak leaves in autumn just before they break from their father and slowly glide to the ground to join their brothers that left their father years before. With time their colour grows darker until they resemble the colour of the womans eyes, which despite their darkness glow with the brightness of a city that never sleeps. Her full, in a smile upturned lips were glistening with the colour of cherry marmalade and combined with the milk white of her perfectly formed teeth, gave looking at her smile the feeling of wonderful anticipation you get when youre looking through the glass at the ice-cream shop, as the kind and smiling man is scooping up a free sample amarena ice-cream. Her skin reminded me of endless sand beaches, during the short time after the tide and before the sand dried up in the sun. Like the sand, the perfection of her skin was complimented by a few dark spots, like sea shells washed ashore during the high tide. Although she wore no jewellery, here and there the perspiration on her skin reflected different variations of white, making any additional look enhancements superfluous. The dark of her skin was further enhanced by the thin white shoulder straps of her top, hiding a pair of firm natural breasts, pushed into a seductive position by a slightly too small bra. Over her shoulder, contrasting her dark complexion was the pale hand of the second woman holding her over the shoulder. The colour of this womans skin was like looking into a white cup of cafe with too much milk and dousing it with brown sugar would create the same contrast on the foam as the contrast between the skins of the two women. Her hair was falling from her head like a spectacular waterfall, which through the countless years washed away the stones that might cause the stream of water to distort and cause the colour of the sun reflected in it to be anything but the colour of her hair. The stream of hair abruptly ended at the base of her head and spread in a circular and perfect line until it reached her cheeks, making her forehead a levee that prevented the stream of hair from falling over her face. In a certain way, her hair resembled a helmet of a sun goddess from whichs sides dangle two short golden chains of her earrings carrying iridescent pearls, born after decades of being carried the womb of their mother shells in the immaculate, by the industry untouched, ocean of the Pacific whos clear blue colour corresponds with the colour of the pearl-bearers eyes. They shine, like the last stars of the night just before dawn, from the perfectly symmetrical face, darkened by a lair of skin-powder, made even more noticeable by the falling hair. Her lips were the colour of raspberry syrup on the hardened skin of vanilla pudding and slightly curved into a smile to the right. Her face had a mischievous look that only confirmed the sign, misshaped by her perky and braless bosom, on her pink sleeveless shirt which said in capital black letters: IM MISCHIVOUS. Her left hand, just like her right, was lovingly extended over the shoulder of the third woman and was with a bit of effort pulling her closer to herself. There was a hint of sadness in the third womans expression, although she was very good at hiding it. The black lipstick on her lips made her mouth resemble a tasty looking piece of dark chocolate covered cake, shaped like an earnest smile, and covered with whipped cream. There were no beauty spots on her face, but their absence mended by a black piercing just over the right side of the lip. Above it, her eyes appeared like two circular patches of grass in the middle of a dusty field as they are illuminated by the full moon, and above them her hair came crawling down like streams of black matter. At first glance they appear to be unkempt, but as you look at it again, you notice that the black chaos, whichs colour can only come from the absolute absence of light, is intentional and the

long entangling streams fall down exactly as they should until they reach the lower chest and cover all but the deep cleavage in her elegant black gown. The background was that of a fancy night club, with walls covered by a dark shade of red tapestry, close but not quite as dark as red vine, or was covered with small square pieces of mirror forming giant mosaics which reflect the light, but are useless if youre trying to fix your makeup or hair. The furniture consisted of armchairs of every possible colour, in which, by their looks, you could sit for days and not feel sore, and square marble tables supported by four strong-looking legs made of stainless steel, as a drunken looking and loosely dressed woman in the background demonstrated, was a good idea, since people liked to dance on these tables. This group of the exceptionally breathtaking creatures was embraced so lovingly, that it is impossible to think of them as anything but the best of friends, who went through life, supporting each other in their happiest moments and their darkest hours. I always loved and admired the way they loved each other. They looked so happy. The only problem with this only real inheritance of my mother was, that it did not say, which of these three women was my mother and by the time I was able to ask this rather important question, every person who could have been able to answer this question has moved on and left no way of finding him or her and even if I did find that person, there is a very high probability he wouldnt remember a young woman who died giving birth to a child years ago. So I spent countless hours looking at this picture, trying for any resemblance between me and any of the three, not finding anything conclusive; shifting my affection from one to another in a matter of moments; telling every one of them that I loved them, that I missed them and talking to them about myself, my life and asking them if they were proud of me. But their answers were always the same almost mocking carefree smiles and looks. I would often get angry at them for not talking back and for leaving me, at everyone for not being able to tell me which one was my mother and at myself for being alone and unable to stop loving them. My outrages would usually end in me crying, channelling the anger from my body in its liquid form only to feel empty in the end. The picture became more and more hurtful to watch and I often caught myself trying to rip it apart, but a part of me knew that the sadness wouldnt go away with the picture, but would only become more unbearable without something in the material world to fill the emptiness. There was also the fear of losing their faces in my minds eye or even of them merging into a single woman that would become nothing more than a woman I might have seen on the street. In the end, after a moment of internal struggle, I would crumple the picture of my three mothers and threw it away in a corner until I felt the need to see them again. But this need wont arise for a few more years, since I was just born and for now feel a greater need, that of a warm embrace by a mother, who will never be able to fulfil this need and there is no feeding bottle in existence that can replace the warm feeling of a loving mothers bosom. So for now I except the warm milk of a loving mother on the farm far off and dont even comprehend the tragedy that occurred. Soon I will go to sleep and maybe the face of my mother, which will eventually fade from my memory, will look at me from the hospital table, with eyes full of love and joy and no sign of regret for excepting the bargain: my life for hers.