Are You Human? — Bill Reed

‘Those born from a womb, beings egg-begotten, Born out of moisture or spontaneously arising, May they rely on the excellent Taught Thing Instilled and resided in all lovely lusts.' The mother of Jimmy Massey knew nothing about any Pieter Garel Swensen walking into the Sri Lankan sea and coming out the next day, so was said, as the thirteen-year-old who started making all the predictions that starting coming true. Nor did she know anything about any of the girl's predicted murders of religious saints across Asia and Australasia, or how come her Jimmy, a simple taxi-driver, got killed along with the priest in Cairns Cathedral that Easter. But the mother of Jimmy Massey did know it was Dr Valentino Sebastian who kept sniffing around her community's chapel and, while she mightn't be aware of what he could do with birthings, she was always waiting for him to come for the child visited upon her. And then, no matter what all the police and the investigators and the nosey-parkers might say, she would see the black shore and hear the howling â€" and even all that wouldn't be the death of her. She didn't need any of the hullabaloos about the girl's loopy predictions regarding ancient temple inscriptions to know that.