Michael is thirty-nine and gay. Like his little niece, Kim, who has a learning disability, he is considered a non-citizen under the draconian Normalcy Laws. Kim’s parents quietly arrange to flee to New Zealand, where the Normalcy Laws haven’t been implemented. As Michael has a good job and has been careful to hide his homosexuality, he doesn’t consider going with them. Instead, he remains behind and goes about his business as normal until one morning when he is confronted by two Black Guards. Hooded, Michael is taken to what he assumes is the Department of Law. Once people are taken there, they never see the light of day again. Elimination is the only punishment in the New World Order. There he is interrogated by The Man, a handsome officer of the Black Guards. In a desperately hopeless situation, is there any hope of surviving elimination? No one ever has in the past, but Michael discovers something about The Man that hints at his situation not being as bleak as it appears. Can he dare to hope there is a way out? Or is he so delusional that his fantasies of freedom have clouded his judgment? Under the oppressive Normalcy Laws, nothing is certain.

Forbidden

He must have nodded off. The sound of tires on gravel woke him.


“Yep. We’re about to meet our wives.”


Michael was nervous. He didn’t know why. They were nothing to him and he was nothing but a paying customer to them.


The front door was open so Bevan opened the screen door and called out, “Anyone home?”


“Come in, darl,” said a husky, smoker’s voice.


Bevan kissed Michael lightly on the cheek and walked through into the lounge room where two middle-aged women were sitting in a dimly lit space nursing what looked like whiskey and Cokes.


“Ladies, I’d like you to meet Michael.”


Michael stepped forward and nodded to each of the women.


Brenda was wearing a black top with sequins cascading down from the neckline and a black skirt. Her face was tanned and lined from too much exposure to the sun. Her hair was up in a loose bun except for three or four curled tendrils of hair framing either side of her face.


Chapter 21