To: God
Re: The eleventh hour

Damien and his lack of sleep, he’s totally messed up. I speak to him every day still, either on the phone or MSN, but he gets worse every time we speak. I’m so worried for him.

He’s dropped out of college now. I knew it was going to happen. I spoke to him last week about it. He really didn’t want to do it, he was so upset, but with the way Michelle is treating him and his total lack of sleep, he was so far behind. He had four assignments since the beginning of term, and he’d only managed to complete one of them. Didn’t even start two of them. If he hadn’t dropped out, it would only have been a matter of time before he was kicked out. I feel so sorry for him and what his future holds.

He just can’t listen to reason. He listens, but he’s incapable of doing anything about it. Even if he got up the courage to stand up to Michelle, he doesn’t have the energy to do it. She’s completely drained him.

Michelle ignores Chelsea most of the time, she’s too consumed by the wedding. At the moment she’s trying to nag Damien into selling his car to pay for it all. His pride and joy, his car. Michelle’s excuse is now he’s not at college any more he doesn’t need it to drive there. It’s almost like what happens when the unstoppable force meets the immovable object. Almost. I have no doubt that Michelle will be able to beat him down far enough to make him sell it, even if he’s not low enough now. She’s crushing him.

Damien came over to my house last week and brought Chelsea with him. She’s such a beautiful baby, she’s absolutely gorgeous. She looks just like a little female version of Damien. She’s got his eyes and his mouth. She has no toys or anything though, nothing to keep her entertained. You should have seen the smile that came across her face when I picked her up! She was cooing and gurgling at me, and she’s got such a gorgeous smile, I wondered when the was the last time anyone picked her up from the way she reacted to it, and she cried her eyes out when I put her down. Damien was asleep on my bed (he sat down, I picked up Chelsea and when I turned back around he was fast asleep. I didn’t want to wake him because I knew how tired he was. I really don’t think he should be driving over to my house like that), and the sound didn’t wake him. I suppose he’s so tired and gotten so used to her crying, it has no effect on him now.

There’s a problem coming up now. Michelle wants to show her baby and her husband-to-be off to the world. She’s been on Facebook a lot recently and noticed that Damien hasn’t listed her as her partner on his profile. She sent him a request to update their relationship status, but if he does, Kirsty is going to see it, and Damien has no energy to come up with an excuse for why he doesn’t want to put it on the internet. It’s all going to end in tears and shouting, I know it.

I’ve told Damien he has to end it, and he knows he can’t go on forever like this, but he still hasn’t done anything. He has no energy to anything at all.

Damien and Michelle are taking Chelsea to the doctor for her six week checkup this week. Michelle’s nagging Damien more now because the guideline for having sex after birth is six weeks, she’s nagging him all the time now. It’s all Damien can do to walk ten metres, let alone be having sex, and especially not with Michelle. He’s told me he never wants sex again. Not that Michelle cares what Damien wants or feels.

Poor little Chelsea, she’s so helpless. Nobody cares about her. I hope Damien does something about his situation, he’s got Chelsea’s welfare to think about too. She can’t grow up the way her parents are now.

I’m sure there had to be better ways of getting me and Jack talking to our dads than lapdancing for Jack and lying to me, you know. Gabriel could have tried asking for starters. She didn’t have to be so underhanded about it all.

I still feel mentally scarred from my hen night, and I’m never going to forgive what I’ve managed to piece together of what happened at Jack’s stag night. Nobody got hurt, depends what you mean by hurt. We didn’t need practice seeing or touching each other, we’ve had plenty of that since, we could have managed without it. I did kind of enjoy it, but it was ruined by the fact that we were outside in our underwear. It was so cold! Not to mention we were in full public view. I’m just so glad there was nobody else around.

Dad hasn’t brought any girls home since me and Jack got back from the honeymoon. He stays home most nights now. He’s only been out a few times, and he’s usually home before midnight. He doesn’t talk to me much, I think he’s shy. I can feel him looking at me a lot of the time though, the way a dad is supposed to look at his daughter. I see him looking a lot especially when Jack comes home with me. I wonder what’s going through his mind.

I got my first letter through the post today addressed to Poppy Honeywell. It was fantastic! Seeing it there on that paper all official. It was just magic. It still hasn’t really sunk in that I’m married to Jack, it still seems like a dream sometimes. I just wish it could last longer. It’s November now. The doctors said Jack would most likely be dying in November or December. It feels horrible. That day, when I turned over the calendar and saw it was November, it was terrible. Every day now, I wake up next to Jack and feel so relieved that he’s still there next to me breathing. The sound of his breathing sounds so wonderful to me now, even though I know it doesn’t sound right. I’m so scared that one day I’m going to wake up and he’ll be dead. And after what the doctors have said, I know it could be any day now. They’ve given him weeks to live. I stand there staring at the calendar wondering which day it’s going to be. Jack’s getting worse. He was fine until about a week ago, but since then he’s been getting really ill. He keeps getting really bad headaches and he doesn’t have the energy he used to. Monday night he slept for 14 hours straight and the way he is now we’re lucky if we have sex three times a day. We haven’t had sex in the shower for five days now. Been three days since we even had a shower together. Even Jack’s voice is changing. It’s starting to get rough now. It’s starting to sound painful for him to talk, and he’s coughing a lot. He lies there all day telling me how much he loves me. I think it’s all getting to him now. I can hear the fear in his voice. He sounds like he wants to cry sometimes, but he won’t do it in front of me. We both know this is it. This is the beginning of the end. All we have to do is go upstairs and he’s breathing like he’s just run a marathon. All we do is lie there almost all day. Sometimes he’ll start touching me and then suddenly stop, and my mind always instantly jumps to the worst conclusion, but he’s just fallen asleep. He falls asleep so easily now and so often. He fell asleep in the middle of kissing me yesterday. This was three o’clock in the afternoon. It’s horrible, and the worst part is, I know he’s not going to get better. He went to see the doctor at the hospital this week but they’re not doing much for him. I wonder whether they can’t do anything or they won’t do anything. They told Jack he was lucky to last as long as he has with his health, but what’s happening now has always been inevitable, and no matter what medication they give him it’ll hardly make any difference. The only thing that can help him is chemotherapy, and Jack’s refusing to have it now. He says he hates it and he doesn’t want anything that’s going to prolong his pain. I know when he says that he’s in much more pain than he’s letting me know. I can feel him trying to hide it from me, he doesn’t want me to worry, but when he hides it it makes me worry even more. I know it’s serious if he doesn’t want me to know. He wouldn’t even let me come to the doctors with him, I had to stay home and ended up with Damien and Chelsea. I sat there with Damien on my bed and Chelsea in my arms and it felt so right in such a wrong way. I wanted it to be Jack on my bed and our child in my arms. I wouldn’t, not yet, but I know the chance for me and Jack to have a proper family is never going to happen. Not without a miracle. I’m really going to start crying if I write any more. I’m on the verge now. Damn, here I go…

He doesn’t even have the energy to make himself breakfast any more, I usually make it for him now. We sit there at the table in the morning reading the paper together. Sometimes he leans his head on my shoulder. Sometimes he’ll fall asleep on my shoulder. The newspapers these days, they’re so depressing. What is it with American politicians being idiots? Can they not get someone smart to do it? (Or are smart people too clever to try for such a job?) At least Sarah Palin didn’t actually win. She spent that much money on clothes and makeup and jewellery, but it still didn’t change the fact she wasn’t aware that Africa was a continent! Jonathan Ross, I wish they’d hurry up and do something about him, because they’ve been complaining about it for long enough. So many children have been killed recently. Baby P, that’s the kind of thing that makes me ashamed to be human. How can someone do that to ANY child, let alone their own?

Gabriel, I’ve got a better idea. Let’s just send them all to sex camp where they get punished by…I don’t know. I’m sure you’ll be able to think of something. I’m sure you’d be more than up for that, right?

I must have been off from school that day. Anyway, by what measure is pornography a good business to get involved in? When has it EVER been a good business to get involved with? I don’t need drooling stares, I’ve got a husband. Pornography is for sexually-deprived old men who are too sad to go out and actually get a girlfriend. They sit in their rooms at their little computers watching porn and never go out. The ones that do go out end up raping people. The world would be such a better place without porn. You have no idea how much money you’d have to give me to let anyone else see those DVDs. More than that, you’d have to give me a huge amount of money to even make me watch them, and I’m in them. Oh, by the way, I got your package last Thursday. Didn’t even bother to open it. It’s flat and it’s got something hard and round inside it. I know what’s inside. Did you really have to illustrate the envelope? The poor postman…

See, the thing that worries me about what you wrote there, ‘A little more with other people wouldn’t go amiss’, I wish I could pretend you were talking about me expressing what I think…

Marriage isn’t about restricting yourself, it’s about showing your partner how much you love them, how you place them above anyone else. If you love someone that much, it’s natural. When you love someone, it’s not restrictive, because you don’t want anyone else.

I was drunk at my hen night. I’m blaming that.

It’s nice to know my bouquet is there in all its beauty. After the wedding our parents took all the flowers back home, but they were all dead by the time we got back from the honeymoon. Makes me smile to know my bouquet is still there and alive and will be that way for a long time, even when other things are gone…

If by ‘great’ you mean ‘mentally scarring’, then yeah, truth, dare or get spanked by everyone was great. Should never have let you be in charge of the dares. And you and your ‘This is my game so I get the first spank’ and how every time it was Michael’s turn to get spanked you took everyone else’s turn and just got to spank him 22 times. It worked for me though, I didn’t want to spank him. I didn’t want to spank anyone.

Some of the things you come out with never cease to amaze me. ‘I was not trying to seduce your husband…Just get him aroused at the sight of my gorgeous body’. THERE’S A DIFFERENCE? There were a million non-sexual ways you could have got Jack to talk to his dad. Why couldn’t you have just lied to him like you lied to me?

Sex is a lot of fun, I’ll give you that, but I still can’t understand how you can want to have sex with someone you don’t love. How can you do it? All Jack has to do is look me in the eyes with that smile of his and I’m ready for it. There’s no way I could do it with anyone else. It’s been a while since I last saw that smile properly though, not mixed with tiredness…

And here I was thinking that boobs were for breastfeeding babies! I don’t know any girls who do that at all, let alone all the time. I have no doubt that YOU do it all the time though.

Some of us have some sense of good taste. You, on the other hand, you’re just “you should wear this devil costume, you should wear this schoolgirl uniform, you should wear this, you should wear that”. I know what kind of guys you go for, and Jack’s not like that! You can do your things your way and I’ll do my things my way. Don’t complain about me and I’ll do my best not to complain about you. Having one person isn’t being limited, it’s called being in love, not just sleeping with the first person who comes to you or in you.

HOW will I be happier with you having lap danced for my husband?!? I’m glad you can live without my trust, because you’re not going to be getting it back for a very long time. I really hate you sometimes.

Well, I’d better get going. Jack’s going bed now. It’s only just gone eight o’clock too. Even Emily hasn’t gone to bed yet. I love him so much, I can’t bear to see him like this.

-Poppy

To: Poppy
Re: Energy, Stress and Another Chance

It is not at all surprising that Damien is shattered. Most of his energy is spent trying to avoid spending energy on the things he no longer cares for. Caring for a newborn baby is stressful at the very best of times, but to be forced into doing all the work yourself, trying to keep two girlfriends from each other and thinking your entire life is going to be committed to an extension of what's happening now...

Especially when he knows full well he messed up a relationship that could have meant none of it taking place.

As a friend you can only be there when you can, give advice if need be. You can't change what is after all, his choice. He could easily dump both girls, even if it means losing access to Chelsea. It doesn't appear that he desires access to her in any case. Of course, things could be different, but it's hard to devote energy into bonding with a child when you simply have no energy left to spend.

It seems Michelle is becoming less and less stable too. Damien's lack of devotion is making her try to correct him, the method being to "encourage" him to do more. Not that she particularly wants to do the work anyway, but it's a good excuse for her to justify in her mind forcing it on him whenever she can. Seeing his lack of desire to do it though is starting to get to her, and it'll only make her take harsher actions to try to force him to change.

Most of all though, it's the child who'll get it the worst. At the moment she's too young to really understand anything other than "I have to cry for ages before anyone sorts out my problem". When she grows up a little, and sees how everyone else's parents but hers seem to really love their children, that could well have horrible effects on her own mental state. Having a mother who won't lift a finger to help her, and a father who can't even seem to identify her as a human being and only helps her because he's forced to won't do her any good. You're quite right of course, her name is the least of her worries...

Now, we've discussed this a little in the past but not gone into detail regarding the life process. The universe has been created so that every event that can happen, does happen. Some of your scientists (not to mention sci-fi writers) have come up with very similar ideas to this, basically involving parallel universes.

Sometimes, souls choose a particular series of events that they desire to experience, usually in collaboration with other souls. When this happens, they follow through the life cycle of that event. For example, you and Jack have chosen to experience a relationship together in a certain way, and thus your souls follow exactly the same choices. Every choice that you didn't make still plays out, but there is no soul attached to those choices (this is also why you're consciously experiencing these choices and not others).

The amount of possible choices is vast, but not infinite. There are only a certain amount of atoms in the universe, and therefore only a certain number of possible events that can happen. This is also the reason why the universe is so huge, it needed to be as big as it is for two reasons. One is that enough time had to pass between the beginning and end to allow for all the possible events, and the other is that it had to have enough "raw material" to allow for every interaction of particles possible.

It might well sound so far above reality as to be considered impossible, but that's God for you.

It does seem to be a human tradition that hen/stag nights are supposed to be a last reminder of your freedom, and therefore you're supposed to do all the crazy things you won't be able to do after you're married. By that measure, it seems to have gone very well! It also gave you a chance to start patching things up with your dad, and did the same for Jack too.

Despite the method used, the end result worked out perfectly. You and Jack got a little practice in seeing and feeling each other's more intimate parts (which you both enjoyed no matter how pissed off you were), you got married in time, you found out plenty about your Dad and as you've already indicated, had fantastic sex! Nobody got hurt, and although people don't like to think the end justifies the means, if the end result doesn't, what exactly do humans think does?

The conversation you had with you Dad was a wonderful indication of what you actually have in common, and the way life can sometimes be so ironic without your realising it for so long. You have a chance to accomplish a lot of healing now, if you can keep talking. He'll be a good person to have there for you too, since he's had personal experience of what you're facing. It was very nice as well, that you went from not wanting your Dad anywhere near you to him giving you away at your wedding. Shows how much can change in such a short time, if people are willing to be open with each other. Keep it up, and you'll find things get much better. At the very least, you know what happened with him all those years ago.

Well, as you saw it's very difficult for angels to stop being themselves, even for a little while. After all, if you're not yourself you're nothing at all. It's almost like asking you to just stop loving Jack, it just can't be done because it's as much a part of yourself now as water is a part of clouds. Gabriel does try to mix herself with Michaels feelings though, it's just more long term, and it generally has to be done in a perverted way.

-----Original Message-----
From: Complaints Department [mailto:Address removed by anti spam software]
Sent: 31st October 2008 23:49
To: God
Subject: FW: Life and Living

No of course it isn't, but still, for certain things it would surely be easier for your society to just get rid of them rather than try to punish or rehabilitate them. Has to be taken in context obviously! I'm not talking about executing people for dropping litter here!

Oh but Poppy you two could make a fair amount of money from this! You have a lush, sexy body and people should see it! Weren't you taught at school that pornography was a good business for a young woman to be involved with? Or that at those rare times when you should put clothes on, you should always think about what will cause the most drooling stares. No wonder your planet is in such a state...

I suppose you are having sex a great deal though, and you've been trying some different things (didn't I say he'd be kissing your 'lips'?)! That at least shows there's some hope for you after all!

You should never be afraid to say what you think or feel, and it's lovely to see you're getting over that with Jack. A little more with other people wouldn't go amiss though!

Yes, I was right. Don't ever forget it!

Oh no, we're not getting married. Marriage is for humans and other such muppets (Gazardiel). To think of restricting yourself in such a way, with actual vows, as a means of expressing love... Still, it does mean a fun hen night, as you can attest!

Yeah Gazardiel is treating your bouquet well. He has a huge place full of that kind of stuff. He basically collects something from each wedding he visits, and it's all kept perfectly clean and unchanging. The flowers won't even die, at least, not until he does. He visits the place as if it were a shrine.

That truth, dare or get spanked was great! It's a classic (well, for me anyway)! Oh I was not trying to "seduce" your husband... Just get him aroused at the sight of my gorgeous body. It was necessary (and fun)! He had to be enjoying himself doing the kind of things his father caters to in order to be able to communicate properly with him.

What makes me want to have sex with someone else? The fact that sex isn't just about expressing love! It's also a great deal of fun, and can be very perverted, which is my purpose in life.

Well, no I didn't really think you'd measure me, I was more 'hoping' you would. Still, just because Jack noticed, if you can't explain it, he'll have to drop it because he can't ask me himself. No harm done.

Yeah I didn't flash anyone at the wedding! As for the boobs thing, oh come on, girls do that all the time! That's what they're there for! Gosh, you've been having sex in so many places, such a lot I can't believe you hadn't realised that...

Now watching you (in full HD) is one thing, but hearing you talk about it has its own charm! At least you know now that there's plenty of stuff you can do that isn't wrong in any way, even if you are still limited to one person. I do love the way you can't refer to Jacks big penis at all though, makes you seem cute and innocent, it's quite attractive! You should try that on Jack sometime! Maybe in a schoolgirl uniform...

Ok, the more serious bit, the trust thing. The fact is, I can live with any damage done. I'm not like Michael, who feels he should be honest all the time. As long as the end result works out for those I care for, it's ok that you haven't forgiven me. You'll be happier because of it in the long term, even if you were a little upset at the time. That's what matters to me.

Love, light and medical experiments,
Gabriel

Signature - There'll be time for explanations later. And hopefully, some sex!