Free Everything Is So Political by Sandra McIntyre

way or if they will winch me up on a crater, strangling me by the neck like a stray dog and watch me suffocate from my own resurrected desire to live, to break free. Justice Will Be Served!
    I prefer the second for two reasons. First, it is fair. And second, I want to be beamed up into the sky, like Jesus and unlike Judas, who rustled shamefully with the tree that held him. I want the horizon to be the last thing I see. Let them winch me up. It’s more a testament to my belief and to their disgusting cruelty. I’ll submit to my destiny without a struggle. I will show them.
    I don’t like surprises. At least I know how and when. How many people have that luxury of knowing?
    6
    Do murderers have obituaries?
    I imagine mine…
    Ms. Sheyda Porrouya of Tehran, Iran died on the 11 th of March 1999 from a broken neck after hanging by a court order from a noose.
    Sheyda Porrouya was born on the 1 st of April, 1979, the only daughter of the late Rustam and Arezoo Porrouya who were both killed under separate but equally tragic circumstances. Following graduation from Fatima Zahra High School, Sheyda immediately sat for her concour exam (university entrance exam) and passed with flying colours. She spent her first and only year in university studying voraciously, excelling at subjects such as Persian History and Mythology, English and Poetry, and leaving a very strong impression on those students and teachers who crossed paths with this unconventional and fiery young soul.
    Ms. Sheyda was known by one and all as an incorrigible dreamer. Sheyda, the owner of a very unique and congenial disposition, was also an adventurous sprightly thing with endless stories to tell, and a relentless lover who believed with all her heart and being in the triumphant nature of love and in happy buttery and everlasting endings. Though her early death, brought on by the just decision of a hanging, meant that Sheyda didn’t live to accomplish her small dreams of loving the whole world, and in her own misunderstood way, rescuing it, it was her firm belief that we all, each and every single one of us, had an hour to shine, and that her timely death was her hour of shining.
    Ms. Sheyda’s interests included an admirably and steadily growing collection of angel figurines, books, especially ones translated by the mysterious but brilliant Mustafa Sepehr. She was a natural and very gifted writer, though none of her writings would ever see the light of day, due to political correctness and reasons that reek of cultural and religious sensitivity. Some of her writings were also deemed as harbouring hate and hostility for the Islamic Regime and thus were burnt after her death. She was a keen observer of both birds and man, noting that in terms of freedom, birds always had the upper hand, or in this very instance, the upper wing.
    Ms. Sheyda Porrouya is survived by her incarcerated teddy-bear, her faithful rag doll, Laleh, a universe that stops ticking for no one, and her many beautiful and undying dreams.

The Briefcase
    Ethan Canter
    C oughing into his handkerchief K– turns onto the old metal bridge. The wind across the water sprays freezing rain against his face, batting him from side to side as he walks. He narrows his eyes and hunches his shoulders, tries to hide behind the shelter of his up-turned collar. He cups his hands and warms them with his breath, but it makes him cough again. He digs his hands into his pockets and rubs his fingers against his palms, but the tingling, nearly anaesthetized sensation only makes them ache more.
    A dirty, beady-eyed pigeon hobbles to the edge of the bridge. As K– passes, it takes flight. He watches it drop towards the water below, then disappear under the bridge.
    A transport truck barrels past, making the bridge shake, and pulling behind it a thick mist of rain and diesel exhaust.
    Across the bridge and halfway down a vacant street fluorescent light glows through the condensation-covered