There was a house down the street from where I lived as a child. The older kids told me that it had burned down a few years ago. There had been a family inside, a father, a mother and a boy about my age and my height. He had my hair colour and my complexion and hands the same size as mine. They caught the man who had burned down that house. They found him guilty of murder and he was sentenced to death. They tried electrocution. It failed. They tried lethal injection. It failed. They even tried to chop off his head with an axe. This, too, failed. Eventually they gave up and let him go free. The older kids told me he walked around my neighbourhood every night. They told me his name was Nick. BACK   HOME